"Breaking Bad" and its Philosophical Context - Part 1

http://alexnotov.com/post/11939566310/breaking-bad-and-its-philosophical-context-part-1

by zealoushacker • 15 years ago

18 12 15 years ago

Mpdreamz3• 15 years ago

I really wonder why you felt the need to cut this up in parts. I think i would have enjoyed reading your post untill part 8 in one go. I'm noticing a trend that long pieces have to be served in bitesize chunks lately either through pagination or several independant blog post. Presuming that all these part will try to get the same point across one big post versus many small ones would do that point more justice. Anyhow i hope part 2 will get on my radar when its posted.

aiham• 15 years ago

It's often for more page views and advertisement impressions.

Edit: Maybe not in this case, but the news websites that do surely do it for the extra impressions.

cluboholic2• 15 years ago

i know exactly what you mean, annoying news sites, which break an article of 10 photos into 10 pages..

zealoushacker3• 15 years ago

Definitely not in this case. I decided to break it up into individual parts, so that I would have more time to think about the content between parts... and perhaps even change my view by the end of it. I am currently in the middle of season 3... and Walter has been displaying too much altruism for my taste of late.

cluboholic2• 15 years ago

most probably he didn't get to write the whole thing in one go

zealoushacker3• 15 years ago

I had decided to break this up into parts, because it will allow me to think about what I will write more carefully. At the same time, I had wanted to publish what I prepared in my mind, while it was still fresh.

Thank you for your feedback. I will be following this up with part 2 tomorrow.

No, this is not for ad impressions. I have zero ads on my blog. There's a reason I quit the world of advertising after a year at an advertising agency.

Mpdreamz3• 15 years ago

The feeling i get with parts is that it'll be ramblings of an unsaturated chain of thoughts. If its one big piece i asume careful thought went into the structuring and each section has been revisited once if not twice.

This not directed at you personally in any way and of course my personal bias. No evil intent was assumed :)

diamondhead• 15 years ago

Besides of the health issues, Walter was working for a car wash company at the beginning of the first season and his pregnant wife was trying to get financial help from his ex-girlfriend who became millionaire thanks to an old scientific research of Walter White...

First question people ask is, is it ok for Walter White to cook meth for earning what he already deserves? It's the easy part of the question of Breaking Bad.

Walter White started cooking by blackmailing Jessie, one of his old students. (remember another student of him who disrespected and made fun about Walter when he was cleaning a car) From the first episode to the end of 4th season, Walter White has fucked Jessie's life up. He made many manipulations in Jessie's life to have Jessie work for him.

Hard part of the question starts here, is it ok for a teacher suffering from cancer to destroy one of his student's life for earning money?

To me, the answer is absolutely no. But I see that many people who enjoy how Walter White became a tough guy, think Jessie already lives what he deserves as a young punk.

zealoushacker3• 15 years ago

Diamondhead, I agree re:Jessie - partially. Though I am a fan of black and white, I think Walt is simply not so cut and dry. It is my opinion that Walt's character is sympathetic to Jessie from the very beginning. Even towards the middle of season 3, when Walt finds himself needing to protect himself from Jessie, he still has more than just protection in mind. He really does care for Jessie. What else would explain him not deciding to outright have him murdered? Saul, after all, does mention the possibility of having to explore "other options." At that suggestion, Walt scoffs at Saul and instead proceeds to offer Jessie the partnership. Granted, I question some of the altruistic tendencies in Walt - though mostly he is out for himself and his family.

ddw• 15 years ago

I like Chuck Klosterman's take on this show: http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/6763000/bad-decisions

tl;dr: "Breaking Bad is not a situation in which the characters' morality is static or contradictory or colored by the time frame; instead, it suggests that morality is continually a personal choice. When the show began, that didn't seem to be the case: It seemed like this was going to be the story of a man (Walter White, portrayed by Bryan Cranston) forced to become a criminal because he was dying of cancer. That's the elevator pitch. But that's completely unrelated to what the show has become. The central question on Breaking Bad is this: What makes a man "bad" - his actions, his motives, or his conscious decision to be a bad person? Judging from the trajectory of its first three seasons, Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan believes the answer is option No. 3. So what we see in Breaking Bad is a person who started as one type of human and decides to become something different. And because this is television - because we were introduced to this man in a way that made him impossible to dislike, and because we experience TV through whichever character we understand the most - the audience is placed in the curious position of continuing to root for an individual who's no longer good."

I've only seen the first few episodes, but am hoping to find some time to go through it now. I get plenty of morality from shows like "Mad Men" and "The Wire" in which we feel conflicted because the characters we love are doing bad things (in fact you could say that this is the main theme of serious, dramatic TV shows now), but I think the appeal of "Breaking Bad" is watching a desperate man make the conscious decision to become "evil."

Mpdreamz3• 15 years ago

A question unanswered is wheter Walter actually has changed at all. Had he had to make life or death decisions before the diagnosis would he truely have acted differently?

Quite often Walter's actions are motivated purely by narcisistic reasons a tendency he showed even at the start of the show.

jeffdechambeau• 15 years ago

Morality tends to be governed by two views: you can either judge an action by its outcomes (consequentialism), or by its motivating principles (deontology).

From the consequentialist perspective, Walt's pretty clearly a bad guy: meth is a brutal drug with very little social upside. Sure he's able to bring about good for his family, but I'm sure there's a whole network of people who's lives are worse off because of his work. Overall he's probably created more bad than good in the world. Because meth tends to tear you down in the long run, I don't think it's fair to say he's responsible for the goodness of the high that his customers feel, as in the end it's a destructive addiction and not a recreation.

A fair response to this is that if Walt didn't cook the meth, someone else would, so there's the same amount of "bad" whether he does it or not, so why not take the money and run? I think the simple answer is that something doesn't magically become not-bad if someone else is willing to do it. Walt can still cook meth, but it's hard to say it's ethical from this first point of view.

From the deontological point of view, it's a bit murky. If you boil this down the view to its core, it's a moral test that's summarized as: "I can only do this if I'm ok with other people doing it too."

So, has Walt acted in ways that he (or we) would be alright with people doing broadly? Here's a couple spins on what he's doing:

1. "A man should be able to do whatever he needs to to provide for his family." While I might feel like I should be able to do whatever I need to to feed my wife and kids (provided they existed), I clearly wouldn't want someone else exploiting my family to feed theirs. So this fails the test and is immoral.

2. "I can profit off of goods that are addictive and destructive." This one is tricky, unless you're a libertarian and think that everyone is free to make their own good or bad decisions and that they own the consequences. I'm sure people will advocate this (and I assume the linked article will too, given the line "rational decision to provide a product to people whom have voluntarily decided to consume it") but I think it lacks nuance and legitimacy. Nonetheless, what Walt is doing would at least be internally consistent so long as he's okay with other people selling equally bad goods, and making them available to, for instance, his son. The argument here is the generic one about why stuff should be illegal or not.

So where does this leave us? I don't think there's a strong case to be made that Walt is a moral guy. No matter which of the two lenses we use, his actions look pretty bad. But I think that's what makes the character and the show so compelling: Our morals are an abstraction that we've placed upon the world to make it easier to navigate, and he's moved into a darker world where these rules don't matter, and what's more is that he's thriving.

I think that's the hook, that somehow this meek and mild guy who played by the rules his entire life was able to shed them entirely and find himself completely at home--and the audience is along for the ride, assuring themselves that they could thrive in a world without rules just as Walt has.

"Breaking Bad" and its Philosophical Context - Part 1

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