Breaking Bad is Literature

You know, since I started working on this blog while Breaking Bad is airing, I’ve started putting this little tag letting you know that I’ll be covering spoilers. Is it even necessary? I mean, I post these the Friday after the episode aired. That was on Sunday. Did you really manage to avoid everything until then? If you didn’t, then you deserve to have me tell you that the episode ended with Walt turning into a Dragon and attacking Arizona. Grrr. Arrggh.

As you may know, next week is Banned Books Week. Which means we’ll be taking a break from Breaking Bad Shakespeare Fridays. I’ll be doing a special on Monday analyzing if it ended as a Shakespearean piece, or merely as something Marlowe may have slapped together to cover his drinking debts, because screw Marlowe. You heard me.

In the meantime, and in the spirit of Banned Books Week next week, I wanted to take a special look at Breaking Bad in the spirit of banned book weeks. Mostly, this show that I’ve been comparing to a Shakespearean tragedy (because it very much is a Shakespearean tragedy, and there are people with phD’s that agree with me, not just a guy with a blog and three days to fill. (I suppose I could cut back, but here I am...). Many of the themes are the same, the body count is lower than in a lot of Shakespearean Plays, the violence is just about the same, but I think you’d be hard pressed to find someone to put Breaking Bad in a classroom as an example of great literature. (Never mind that Shakespeare didn’t write a word of his plays to be read, he wrote them to be performed, yet we say how Shakespeare is nothing but literature.) 

Quick note: some of this post is because of last week’s Breaking Bad, in which we poured some Schraderbrau on the curb for ASAC Schrader. However, I hope that people understood that in an episode that contained a shootout between two DEA Agents and a group of Meth-Dealing Nazis, both DEA Agents being murdered, the brutal torture and imprisonment of a guy, a knife fight between a husband and wife, and the kidnapping of a baby, the helpful censored made sure we didn’t hear any naughty words in the form of ASAC Schrader’s final “Fuck” to the bad guys. I’m glad that we got to think of the kids in the audience not hearing any bad words before Walt confesses to letting a woman die because she was getting in the way of his Meth-Cooking.

That brings me to my point of Breaking Bad and Shakespeare, mostly with violence. The body count in Shakespeare’s plays are pretty high. There’s murder (most foul), rape, suicide (oh, my... the suicide), torture, and one instance of a pie that would make the writers of Saw sit down and say, “hey... maybe Shakespeare should have toned it down a little bit.” At what point do we trade off violence (and some language) for the “literary factor.” Let’s face it, there’s symbolism in Shakespeare, there’s symbolism in Breaking Bad. I can’t stress enough: Walter White should be up there with the great pantheon of Shakespearean characters. He’s got pride, jealousy, no matter how far down the rabbit hole he goes, he’s doing it all for his family and can justify it (until his wife pulls a knife on him.)

So what makes something “literary”? Is it because a bunch of guys in wigs decide that something is literary? (That’s how they do it right? Or am I thinking of the British Legal System.) What makes, say, Hamlet more literary than Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke, which many consider to be one of the best in the medium? Why is Macbeth great art when Breaking Bad is “just a TV Show”? Again, I’m using Shakespeare not just because this blog is called “Bad Shakespeare” and not just because I’ve been comparing the two for the past however many weeks (I’m too lazy to go back and count. Someone do that for me.) but because Shakespeare wrote PLAYS. Things up on the stage for us to see. Things that would be interpreted a certain way because an actor decided that Hamlet should be played as depressed flimmaker in 2000. (Damn you, Ethan Hawke. Just... damn you.) Or because Wesley from Angel should dive in the grass as much as possible while people try to trick him.

I guess I’m getting at the central question I’ve asked plenty of times: Is Breaking Bad literature? I’d say yes. Yes it is. But something like this would be banned from classrooms, because of it’s violence and language. (Oh, and Shakespeare LOVED the bad language. He just hid it better than we do today.) But this violence and language... it’s nothing compared to what we’ve seen in the past. It still has all those juicy elements that I would love to tackle in a classroom, and do so in a way that will help kids learn something about revenge tragedies, fatal flaws, symbolism, and everything that Shakespeare would love to teach us. Because Shakespeare loved the bad guy, and show us what made him tick.

But hey, don’t take my word for it. Here’s Aaron’s speech at the end of Titus Andronicus, where he curses the fact that he can’t do more evil.

AARON. Ay, that I had not done a thousand more.

Even now I curse the day- and yet, I think,

Few come within the compass of my curse-

Wherein I did not some notorious ill;

As kill a man, or else devise his death;

Ravish a maid, or plot the way to do it;

Accuse some innocent, and forswear myself;

Set deadly enmity between two friends;

Make poor men's cattle break their necks;

Set fire on barns and hay-stacks in the night,

And bid the owners quench them with their tears.

Oft have I digg'd up dead men from their graves,

And set them upright at their dear friends' door

Even when their sorrows almost was forgot,

And on their skins, as on the bark of trees,

Have with my knife carved in Roman letters

'Let not your sorrow die, though I am dead.'

Tut, I have done a thousand dreadful things

As willingly as one would kill a fly;

And nothing grieves me heartily indeed

But that I cannot do ten thousand more.”

The Tragic Flaw...

Quick note: This post is going to contain spoilers for some of the “Final Season” episodes of Breaking Bad. I’ve generally tried to keep my analysis a season behind, but something came up that was so juicy, I had to work it into my analysis. What will follow is part of the discussion for “Buried” the second episode of the Final Season. Or the 10th episode of the 5th Season. I’m really fuzzy on the math of this. But if you haven’t watched it live, through DVR, old school videotape, had your friends re-enact the episode for you, or downloaded it legally or illegally, then I strongly suggest that you’re probably a time traveler from the 18th century. and you’re not sure what Breaking Bad is and why we choose to stare and glowing rectangles for so much of our lives. In which case, I have some other spoilers for you, and we can talk later. Onto Breaking Bad Shakespeare Friday!

Shakespeare loved the tragic flaw. In fact, when studying Othello, King Lear, Hamlet, or Macbeth (the big four tragedies), chances are pretty good that your teacher (albeit not as handsome as me) probably started out the discussion with a brief overview of each of the main character’s tragic flaws. (Inevitably screwing up Macbeth’s tragic flaw and mixing it up with Lady Macbeth’s but that’s another post.) But what a lot of people don’t cover is the fact that the “tragic flaw” is available in all flavors, and affects so many of the other characters. In Othello, the argument could be made that as much as Othello is jealous and easily manipulated, so are Desdemona (she let’s her husband kill her) and Iago (who throws everything into motion because he’s jealous of this dude who’s skin color is not the right color for him and has everything he wants). Most of Hamlet could have been avoided had they had a sitdown at the start of the play rather than taking advantage of all the madness, corruption, and paranoia. The play may have been shorter. And Macbeth is about a dude who’s kind of happy until he gets the idea to be ambitious, then his wife got all ambitious, too. Then Macduff gets all revengy and ambitious. Then they all die. As Bruce Willis might say, “Macbeth won’t be attending that hat convention in July.” (He gets beheaded, so the line is hilarious.)

My point being that the same with Breaking Bad: everyone has spent a long time analyzing Water White’s tragic flaw, which is a combination of pride and ambition. He’s too proud to accept help, so he has to go on and cook meth to pay for his treatments. (At the point in the series that he’s offered financial assistance by his former business partners, he’s already had one major failure as a drug overlord and had to murder two people. One of them he strangled with his bare hands.) Pride and ambition have long been associated with people on this show. Jesse throws out several batches of meth because he can “do better.” Gus Fring... oooooh, we’ve talked about good ol’ Gus, but when Walter crossed paths with him and hurt his pride, how long did it take him to go all boxcutter on people? 

But there’s one line that sums everything up, for me at least. Last week on “Buried” we get the conclusion to the long awaited showdown between Heisenberg and Hank. This is the moment that Hank has been waiting on for a year, and we’ve been waiting on for five. Then the moment is over as the two men run to their respective wives, and eventually Hank ran to Skyler. While confronting her, he let of this gem of a line: ““He looks me in the eye and says ‘If what you think you know is true.' IF!” 

Had anyone told me that line without the context, I’d look at you and say, “That’s a great line from Walt. Writing like that shows us what’s going on in his head.” But that’s Hank. Hank who’s pride is hurt, not from the fact that the Meth Druglord he’s been hunting for the better part of the year is his brother-in-law, but from the fact that he’s being taunted. The fact that he’s being underestimated again. That despite the fact that he’s figured out that his brother-in-law is Heisenberg, he can’t get the confession he wants. He can’t get the few words that he wants: “I am Heisenberg.” 

It’s things like this that push the show over the edge from mere entertainment to something deeper. To something that is more Shakespeare-like. I’m interested to see where we go from here. Really that line starts to seal up Hank’s fate: He’s going to have to die. Hank’s pride is going to get in the way, the same as Walt’s pride affected him, the same as Skyler’s pride is starting to affect him. The whole thing is just going to keep going in a vicious cycle, much like Macbeth or Othello or Lear. Now we get to add White to that list, and all the prideful people around him.

Breaking Bad Shakespeare Friday: I'm So Blue

Saul, Hank, and Skyler are all important characters on the Meth-cooking, plot twisting, Franch-creating show that is Breaking Bad. And their use certainly enhances my argument that we’re not watching Breaking Bad so much as The Tragedy of Walter White, Chemistry Teacher of New Mexico. And I’ve not gotten, (to what I feel) are the big four of the series: Mike, the ultimate Henchman; Gus Fring, mild mannered Chicken Shack owner/Meth Kingpin; Jesse Pinkman, apprentice; and the man himself, Walter White the Science Guy. (You were thinking it, too. I just said it.)
   
    I plan on getting on each of those characters, but quite frankly, I need to take a bit of a break in discussing solely the characters, because I’m doing a disservice to what makes Breaking Bad Shakespearean in it’s execution. (No pun intended to the many, many people killed by Walter White.) So this week, I want to talk about something this show does well: Symbols.

    Symbols were ALWAYS a big part of what made Shakespeare who he was in his writing. From a bloody hankerchief to a dagger (that may or may not be before me) to characters themselves, Shakespeare loved him some symbols. Breaking Bad and it’s writers are no exceptions.

    The biggest, of course, comes during the season’s second season, the Pink Teddy Bear. I won’t go into too much detail on this one, simply because it’s been over analyzed to death. The Pink Teddy Bear showed first in the White’s pool, (technically in a music video for a fake band, I’m going to count the show because of it’s impact) then showed up in “flash forwards”. The episode names formed the titles “Seven Thirty Seven” “Down” “Over” “ABQ” giving us the foreshadowing to the season finale, when the event happened, indirectly caused by Walter. The bear came to represent Walt’s path of destruction. Later, when he finds the eye of the bear in the pool, he saves it, adopting it as a personal talisman. I believe the act of him picking up this one last piece of the bear (that’s taken away as evidence) as the final moment when we are to see “Walter White, Guy trying to help his family” to “Walter White: Bad Guy.” (Not that he was ever good, but this is a full on embracing of the role.)

    Then there’s the fly. The fly, a contaminant in the Meth Superlab where Walt clocks in as if he were going to work at a factory, is also a strong symbol. I think this one hasn’t been explored as much. While some people discuss that it’s his “guilt” I think it’s more than that. Thinking in science terms, Walt started the show with sort of a contaminant, his cancer. As he gets drawn deeper and deeper into the criminal underworld, he realizes that he’s becoming contaminated himself. While he wasn’t a saint, he did start the series working two jobs to protect his pregnant wife. He started the show as a decent guy, not a great guy. But the fly continues to appear, a visual representation of Walt’s descent into Heisenberg.

    Color. Color is another big symbol in the series. Each character has their own, “color scheme” that proceeds them (Green, orange, purple...) I won’t really go into who is wearing what, I want you to be watching this and seeing what you can see, but I want to talk about the Meth itself here. In the first episode, Walt does his best to cook the purest Meth he possibly can. (I’m capitalizing “Meth” because in this case, it’s almost a character.) And he succeeds. It’s the hit of the down, because Walt believes that if you do something, you do it right and you do it the best you can. (Indeed, Jesse has saved a paper from when he was in Walt’s class that said “Apply Yourself.” Another recurring theme.) He does this because Jesse had a signature where he put Chili Powder in the Meth, and Walt hated the idea. Do your best, you don’t need any sort of “help” from phony signatures.

    But later, when they’re cut off from their usual recipe, they steal a chemical that turns their Meth blue. (They use real science talk for this. I point out again, English. I can barely keep up on Star Trek.) From that point on, they do their best to ensure that the Meth remains blue- Heisenberg/Walt’s signature. This also a window into the world of Walt’s corruption. His once pure Meth is now a different color... blue... so people know that it’s Walt. It’s blue. A fairly innocuous color. It’s not bold like red, or regal, like purple. It lacks the foreboding of black, or the moral ambiguity of grey. It’s blue. But this one tiny visual change is kind of ignored when a lot of people discuss Breaking Bad. It comes at the end of the second season. It comes when Walt is still sick, when he’s still trying to figure things out for his family (despite the millions he’ll eventually earn, he originally sets out to earn only enough to keep his family safe when he dies) and he makes one tweak, out of necessity. Then despite unlimited resources, he keeps the tweak. So everyone knows it’s him.

    Because as we move into the home stretch of Breaking Bad Shakespeare Fridays, we need to start discussing Walter White's Tragic Flaw. (Which is apparent in all of Shakespeare's great tragedies.) In this case, it's Walter White's Pride. And that is what the blue represents.

Breaking Bad Shakespeare Friday: Macduff is Hank!

   Giant note: I said I was not going to cover season five of Breaking Bad just yet as I work on my Shakespearean Analysis. However Sunday’s mid-season finale thrust itself into my analysis with one tiny moment. I’m going to have to discuss it, briefly. Season Five Spoilers ahead.   

    So we’ve covered the comic fool, the wife, and the overall feel of the series Breaking Bad that make it truly a Shakespearean piece. Now let’s talk about classic Shakespearean character: the Brother-In-Law.

    Ok, so maybe not the CLASSIC Shakespearean character. (The most famous being Hamlet’s Uncle, who ends up killing his brother and marrying his sister-in-law.) But in this case our “hero” (or the only truly good guy in the story) is Walt’s brother-in-law, Hank. What makes Hank interesting is that there is so much potential to make Hank a giant joke. Because Hank is a DEA agent. And Hank is constantly looking for Heisenberg, Walt’s meth drug lord legend/alter-ego. And Hank constantly asks Walt for assistance with some of the finer details in finding Heisenberg.

    But Hank isn’t an idiot. He’s a good guy. Buy “good guy” I mean that he actually cares for his family, and doesn’t suspect Walt for the simple reason that Walt is a good man. (To him.) There are several moments in the series where Hank could easily bust Walt: early theft of lab equipment, the initials W.W. found in the notebook of a man that Walt had murdered so he couldn’t steal his formula. (Note: This is where season five has thrown us a curve. While Hank ignored this fact initially, he found further evidence and put two and two together. This is our proof that Hank isn’t an idiot.)

    But what is it that pushes Hank from “character” to “Shakespearean influence on the show?” Because he’s driven to action. Most characters would play him off as a joke. As mentioned, that would be the easiest way to go with the character. Whoops, his brother-in-law is cooking meth! Right under this nose! Hilarity ensues. (The movie version would star Adam Sandler in both roles.) But they don’t. They make him a complex character that cares about his family. But Hank wants to keep people safe any way he can, especially his own family.

    Hank is also a symbol of how far Walt is willing to go. It’s clear that Walt, Jr, idolizes his DEA, action thriving Uncle. It’s also clear that Walt is jealous of that. At one point, Hank is attacked and nearly killed in a hit that was meant for Walt. (Yes, Walt didn’t order the attack, but he is indirectly responsible, particularly since Hank was put in the position to be attacked by Walt.) This drives him into action. Hank is our Macduff. Hank is not our focus, but he is our hero.

    So where do we go from here? A happy ending for our protagonist is for Walt to get away and live happily ever after. A happy ending for Hank, the “hero” role is for him to catch Walt and be validated that “Heisenberg” is off the streets. There are a million places to go. While we have a direction (and eight freakin’ months to find out what happens) but at this point literally anything is going to happen.