“I am the Danger”: Domestic Space and Problematic Masculinity in Breaking Bad
The popular television show Breaking Bad spent its nearly six years on television depicting a man who constantly endangered and harmed children, his community, and even his own family. Walter White represents a constant threat to the domestic space—the home, the family, everything that is safe and familiar. For some, the concept of a show based on such a dangerous man and featuring so prominently a drug as feared and despised as crystal methamphetamine would not sound even slightly appealing. Yet the show proved to be wildly successful and critically acclaimed like few programs before it. Rather than repulsing viewers because of its portrayal of danger lurking in the domestic space, Breaking Bad proved successful because it appealed to viewers’ fears of that danger.
Breaking Bad debuted on AMC in January 2008, shortly after the beginning of the American economic crisis in 2007. The show was first developed by in 2005 by Vince Gilligan, who had worked for the popular show The X-Files for eight years. Gilligan had attempted to sell Breaking Bad to multiple networks including HBO and Fox, but had been turned down multiple times because the premise of the show was deemed too off-putting for audiences, particularly because of the show’s central focus on meth. Breaking Bad enjoyed critical acclaim for the majority of its run on television. The show enjoyed steadily climbing ratings on Metacritic through its five seasons, beginning with a 74 of 100 in its first season and receiving a 99 out of 100 rating for its final season (earning Breaking Bad the Guinness World Record for highest-rated television series ever). The show was nominated for 153 awards, winning 50 of those nominations; the awards won include 10 Emmy awards during its five seasons (one for Outstanding Drama Series) and 4 American Film Institute awards for Best Television Program of the Year. Breaking Bad’s popularity has made it the subject of a good deal of writing. Aside from the wealth of what has been written as television review, Breaking Bad has been a topic of study in the history of television, moral philosophy, and sociology.
Breaking Bad begins with Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher who must work a second job at a car wash to support his family. His son, Walter Jr., has cerebral palsy, and his stay-at-home wife, Skyler, is pregnant. Walt is then diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. Fearing for his family’s financial future when he dies, Walt decides to begin cooking crystal methamphetamine (meth) with one of his former students, Jesse Pinkman. Over the course of the series, Walt and Jesse become increasingly powerful and wealthy, building a drug empire that reaches from their home in Albuquerque, New Mexico, across the United States and even into Europe. Walt’s advancement through the world of meth dealing is opposed by rival drug lords and his own DEA agent brother-in-law, Hank Schrader. Central themes throughout the show include Walt and Jesse’s turbulent relationship and Walt’s transformation from submissive husband and father to violent and dangerous kingpin.
In a speech which became well-known amongst critics, Walt explains to his wife, Skyler, why she need not fear for their family’s safety despite his involvement in the meth business (4.6 “Cornered”). When Skyler worries that he may be in danger, Walt replies, “A guy opens his door and gets shot and you think that of me? No. I am the one who knocks.” This quote positions Walt precisely in the anxiety Americans feel over the violent drug trade. Walt does not tell Skyler that they do not need to fear harm—this sort of assertion would be comforting. Rather, Walt tells her that he is the man who we fear, the man who stands outside our home, ready to kill us. It is our front door, our own domestic space that he stands threatening. Walt says, “I am not in danger, Skyler. I am the danger.” Walt’s problematic image of masculinity shines here, but it also reveals exactly what Breaking Bad plays on in its most potent moments. Walt is the danger threatening our domestic space—he is a quiet, unassuming, white family man who teaches our children while secretly poisoning our community and enacting violence on our children and in our neighborhoods. Whether there are real Walter Whites lurking in the cul-de-sacs or if he exists solely in the fiction of Breaking Bad, Walt represents a distinct American fear of threats to the domestic space.
Why Breaking Bad’s central character threatens the precious domestic space is a more complicated question than how he does so. Walt’s actions in the drug trade routinely harm those around him, but his reasons for being involved in the drug trade are as close to home as the danger that makes the show so tantalizing. Walt hurts those around him in pursuit of success in the drug trade, but he works in the drug trade out of financial greed and an attempt to attain his perception of masculinity. Because Walt sees masculinity as a pose that men adopt when they have power over others, especially financial power, he sinks into the drug trade—a shortcut to achieving that ideal of masculinity. Throughout the series, Breaking Bad portrays Walt’s disastrous quest for masculine power and the damage that quest does.
For Walt, masculinity means two things. The first is control over others. Walt manipulates people by lying to them, threatening them, and holding money over them. His ability to control others seems to be of primary importance to him. The other aspect of masculinity that Walt pursues is money. To him, a man is able to make money and to use that money exactly as he pleases. For Walt, masculinity is in direct proportion to how much money a man has. For this reason, he refuses to sell his stake in his meth business for $5 million even when he once calculated that he needed less than $1 million to support his family; the cashout would prevent him from making even more money (5.6 “Buyout,” 2.1 “Seven Thirty-Seven”). Money is valuable not just because it allows Walt to have spending power, but because he loves the power it gives him, as when he pushes a real estate agent into letting him buy a model home—“Name one thing in this world that is not negotiable,” he says (3.6 “Sunset”). But money is not just a tool for spending. Money is part of Walt’s reputation, which clearly matters to him. As he tells Jesse, he is not cooking meth solely for the money—he is “in the empire business” (5.6 “Buyout”). Walt’s reputation is explicitly shown to be a chief concern for him, as when he makes a potential business partner “say [his] name” before proceeding with a deal (5.7 “Say My Name”). In the pursuit of money and control over others, Walt harms those around him, illustrating how his fractured image of masculinity is destructive.
Breaking Bad brings danger close to home for viewers by using economic and racial elements which are familiar to mainstream white middle-class America, tying the masculinity Walt pursues to familiar capitalistic and immoral ideas. The show also depicts Walt doing terrible harm to his neighborhood, his own home, and his family, illustrating the devastating effects of his skewed perception of masculinity. Finally, the show’s contrast between Walt and Jesse as paternal figures condemns Walt’s masculinity by showing how he turns his back on his role as a father. Together, these criticisms illustrate that Walt’s concept of masculinity as a matter of wealth and control over others as fundamentally flawed, in turn criticizing capitalism and mainstream ideas about masculinity.
Economy, Meth, and Race
The show’s success is certainly due in part to the quality of its writing, production, and acting, but something about the show also strikes a chord for many Americans. The show’s subject matter—a high school teacher and family man’s descent into the world of meth, one of the most feared drugs in America—nearly kept it from ever reaching television screens in the first place. But the taboo of the show’s heart is part of what makes it so appealing to so many viewers. Breaking Bad is popular not in spite of the danger it poses to the domestic space but because of it. The show’s success signals that Americans feel its threats to the domestic realm are reflective of a real or perceived danger. Economic concerns, specifically meth-related concerns, and racial matters make Breaking Bad feel close to home.
Breaking Bad begins with a chiefly economic conceit. Walt is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and is immediately worried about how his family will survive financially when he dies (1.1 “Pilot”). He already works two jobs to support his wife and son; his daughter on the way will compound the problem further. This is his rationale for beginning to cook meth—he sees on the news that a meth cook can make a great deal of money very quickly. Walt is a figure at this point with whom many viewers can identify. He struggles to make ends meet and wishes for a way to quickly garner more money. Walt equates monetary power with masculinity, so at this point in the show, he is emasculated. He works two jobs to get by, and he is not in a position of power at either. The pilot shows him ordered around by his supervisor at the car wash where he works; at school, his students clearly do not care about his class. Walt’s decision to cook meth allows him to take power not only by making money but also by having control of himself at work. This is the first key way that Walt reclaims his masculinity.
Walt’s plight as a financially troubled man is especially significant in the time period of Breaking Bad’s release. As noted earlier, the American financial crisis of 2007 had begun only a few months prior to the premier episode’s airing in January of 2008. As the American economy continued to flounder over the following years, many Americans found themselves in increasingly dire financial straits. Walt is a man who had control of his life taken away and who needed money, and viewers were in the same boat. Critic Alan Sepinwall calls Walt “the recession era’s everyman” because he was such a relatable figure for so many Americans for this reason (357). Breaking Bad appealed to viewers who sensed that the American economy threatened their lives whether or not they were directly affected. The housing market collapsed, and 850,000 homes were repossessed by banks in 2008 alone (Armour). Even if an American did not lose their home, the ubiquitous reporting on the financial crisis created a sense of panic and potential danger. The threats posed by the economic meltdown were even the same sort of threats posed by the show; without adequate funds or even a home, domestic life is severely affected. The real and perceived economic dangers to the domestic space were reflected in Breaking Bad.
Walter White is the force that destroys many lives in Breaking Bad, so the force that drives Walt must also accept responsibility for his evil deeds. Capitalism is very much blame for Walt’s belief that masculinity depends upon money. Jeffrey E. Stephenson argues that Breaking Bad illustrates how the capitalist ideal in America pushes people away from more important virtuous ideals (211). Walt is a walking embodiment of greed turning a person away from virtuous behavior. This criticism of capitalism was an especially valuable one at the time of Breaking Bad’s release. Thoughtless financial greed was the cause of so many companies’ failures, and as Walt turned into a more and more selfish character, he began to resemble the bailed-out corporations who were blamed for the recession. He was a figure who desperately grabbed at money no matter what it meant to his community, and that looked a lot like the ugly side of capitalism.
While the recession opened Breaking Bad’s audience to considering the dangers of capitalism, meth’s status in American culture gave the show the ability to work with one of mainstream America’s greatest fear. Meth’s role at the center of Breaking Bad makes the show unique in the world of film and television—no other major media has given meth such a prominent stage. Meth has a particularly dismal reputation; many Americans view meth as a drug which destroys the mind and body of its users and which tears down the lives of both the drug’s users and their families. Books like Sterling Braswell’s American Meth: A History of the Methamphetamine Epidemic in America warn their readers that meth is “the greatest threat to a civilization ever posed by a drug” (Braswell xi). This characterization is not uncommon—the titles of the numerous books on meth describe it as an “epidemic” routinely and frequently demonize the drug in superlative terms. The American government has struggled to deal with meth, perceiving the drug in the same language; one 2006 hearing before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources was titled “The Methamphetamine Epidemic in Colorado.” There are even reports of the development of candy-flavored meth, supposedly cooked in order to appeal to children (Weisheit and White, 131). In the American imagination meth spreads like a disease, threatens to destroy our civilization, and tries to seduce our children—a more evil image is hard to come by.To the majority of Americans, meth is the most feared and despised of all drugs.
Beyond its widespread damage, part of the fear of meth is that the drug can be synthesized with fairly easy-to-obtain products and without much education, and as opposed to other drugs which must be grown in particular climates, meth can pop up practically anywhere. The potential for producing meth anywhere is described by Breaking Bad character Gustavo Fring as a sort of advantage from a meth-cooking perspective (4.8 “Hermanos”). Breaking Bad repeatedly capitalizes on the fact that meth can be cooked anywhere. Walt is taken on a DEA ride-along to a meth lab located in a suburban house which looks exactly like all the other houses around it, suggesting that meth could be cooked in any neighborhood without arousing suspicion (1.1 “Pilot”). Later in the episode, Walt and Jesse cook meth inside an RV they buy specifically to house a meth lab, placing meth inside another kind of home. In the final season, Walt and Jesse begin cooking in a mobile meth lab which they move from house to house with a fumigation company (introduced in 5.3 “Hazard Pay”). When the fumigation company covers a house with a tent and the family is evacuated, Walt and Jesse enter the home and cook meth inside. This crafty maneuvering allows Walt and Jesse to cook meth without danger of being caught, and it places the dangerous and feared drug directly in the homes of innocent and unsuspecting families. Breaking Bad utilizes the qualities of meth to make it an even more frightening drug and one which threatens the domestic space of all Americans.
Walt’s use of home spaces to cook meth highlights another factor in his selfish and dangerous pursuit of masculinity. Walt does all that he can to exercise control over a situation, often to the detriment of those around him. Not even once in the 62 episodes of the show does Walt ever cook meth in his own home. He does, however, constantly cook meth in the homes of families who would never agree to allow meth to be produced in their homes. What American would accept a stranger entering their home without permission and creating a drug that poisons their community? The control that Walt exercises over strangers is sickening, but Walt seems very at ease with it. He watches television in the invaded homes and drinks beer on an unknown family’s couch (5.3 “Hazard Pay”). Further, creating a drug like meth which “makes lunatics out of the once sound-minded” is a method of controlling others (Braswell ix). The meth that Walt makes and the way he makes it illustrate another element of his problematic ideal of masculinity—control.
The anxiety over meth in America is a racial one, though it may not be explicitly discussed as one. Meth has a reputation as being used heavily by the white population, a distinction which brings the drug closer to home for a majority of Americans. Many characterize the majority of meth users as “overwhelmingly poor and white” (Braswell xi), and that image is largely borne out in Breaking Bad. While a portion of the meth dealers in the show are Latino, every meth addict shown in Breaking Bad is white. Throughout the series, every major nonwhite meth cook is killed off, eventually leaving only Walt, Jesse, and Todd—three white men. Walter White’s surname seems especially resonant in light of the racial component of meth use—he is representative of the American struggling under the recession and he is representative of the middle class white American. White racial identity also becomes significant later in the series when Walt becomes involved with a white supremacist gang. This gang is thoroughly immoral in every way, killing innocents including women and children in order to get what they want.
The white supremacist gang represents the logical conclusion of Walt’s image of masculinity. They have control over others, the first part of Walt’s masculinity, in the form of extreme violence. Multiple times, the gang is depicted with a daunting arsenal of weaponry which they brutally use on characters in show. They also prove willing to control Jesse completely, taking him prisoner and forcing him to cook meth for them (5.14 “Ozymandias”). The gang is comfortable using violence to control Jesse; when Jesse nearly escapes their compound, they make him watch as they murder his girlfriend and threaten her young son (5.15 “Granite State”). The gang also possesses massive reserves of cash once they steal all but one of Walt’s barrels of money (5.14 “Ozymandias”). During an argument between two members of the gang about money, one asks, “No matter how much you got, how do you turn your back on more?” (5.15 “Granite State”). This line of thinking is exactly like Walt’s—more control and more power is always better. For the audience, it is clear that such thinking is wrong. Associating the masculinity which Walt so tirelessly pursues with a group as heinous and evil as the white supremacist gang illustrates just how wrong that image of masculinity is.
The prominence of economic, drug-related, and racial issues in Breaking Bad all make Walt’s story closer to home for many Americans who live the middle class white suburban life. The problematic masculinity that Walt pursues is tied up in the presentation of those factors, criticizing the ideal itself and the way that Walt pursues it. Each time that Walt harms those around him, it reflects on the broken masculinity which is dependent on money and control of others.
Danger at Home
Walt poses a very real danger to those around him, particularly in the domestic spaces he occupies. Because of his involvement in the meth trade and the pursuit of masculinity and money that put him there, he harms his neighborhood, his own home, and his family. Each time he harms one of these aspects of the domestic realm, the viewer is invited to consider Walt in light of the destruction he wreaks, particularly because of the motives he has for harming them. Again and again, Breaking Bad’s audience witnesses Walt’s greed and pursuit of masculinity lead him to harm those around him. These examples remind the audience that his capitalistic, controlling masculinity is wrong.
One of the series’ most striking moments is Walt’s indirect causation of a horrific airplane accident. Walt breaks into his meth cooking associate, Jesse’s, apartment looking for meth and money (2.12 “Phoenix”). Walt finds Jesse and his girlfriend, Jane, high on heroin, and Walt knocks Jane on her side while trying to wake Jesse. Jane begins to choke on vomit, and Walt watches as she dies without attempting to help her. He finds the money and meth he was looking for and leaves. Because of Walt’s greed and his decision to not help Jane, Walt causes and allows a young woman to die. Jane’s father, an air traffic controller, is distraught over his daughter’s death (2.13 “ABQ”). Distracted by his grief, he directs two airplanes into each other, causing a terrible crash over the city of Albuquerque, where the show takes place. Fiery debris and dead bodies rain down over Walt’s neighborhood, causing huge damage to hundreds of homes. The audience is left to recognize that Walt’s greed has caused the deaths of 167 innocent people on the planes involved in the crash and the destruction to his neighborhood. The show also highlights the loss of life caused by the plane crash by beginning several episodes with a teaser depicting a burned pink teddy bear in Walt’s backyard long before the audience knows that the bear comes from the plane crash (2.1 “Seven Thirty-Seven,” 2.4 “Down,” 2.10 “Over,” 2.13 “ABQ”). The pink teddy bear is an implication that a child was aboard the planes—an obvious enough probability—but the fact that the teddy bear literally falls into backyard is an almost divine indictment of Walt’s selfish pursuit of money.
While Walt does not knowingly cause the plane crash over his neighborhood, he does consciously endanger his neighbors in other ways. In the finale to the fourth season (4.13 “Face-Off”), Walt endangers his next-door neighbor, a middle-aged woman named Rebecca. Walt needs to enter his house, but he suspects that hitmen are waiting inside for him. Watching his house from a nearby street, Walt calls Rebecca and asks her to check whether his stove is on. Rebecca enters the White residence, and Walt sees a pair of hitmen leave from the back of the house. This scene is highly dramatic: Walt manages to escape fairly certain death with his trademark craftiness. But the scene also demonstrates that Walt is willing to send a neighbor with whom his family is close—Rebecca and Walt have obvious rapport, and she has a key to the White residence—into a situation that could easily end in her death. Walt knowingly puts a totally innocent life in danger in an effort to protect himself. Walt manipulates Rebecca into helping him because he is accustomed to lying to people in order to have power over them; it is worth noting that he uses his power over a female neighbor rather than a male one, as it attests to Walt’s fractured sense of masculinity. Walt’s choice to lie to Rebecca demonstrates his preference of control over human life.
The White residence is more often threatened by Walt himself than it is by hitmen. His home is often depicted as having its sense of domestic safety being corrupted. He hides stacks of money made from cooking meth in the walls of his garage (2.12 “Phoenix”) and in the vents in his baby’s nursery (2.4 “Down”), literally making his home into a shelter for his ill-gotten money. An even more disturbing image is presented when Walt hides bundles of cash and a revolver in a box of diapers in his yet-unborn baby daughter’s room (2.1 “Seven Thirty-Seven”). The money and gun represent exactly what drives Walt to subvert the safety of his home—the financial means by which he defines his masculinity and the violent power over others that he equates with masculinity. Walt degrades his own home through his involvement in the meth business and the masculinity that drives him.
Walt’s greatest violations of the domestic space target his own family. He mistreats and endangers his wife and children frequently throughout the series. In one of the most disturbing scenes in the series, Walt sexually assaults his wife, Skyler (2.1 “Seven Thirty-Seven”). Walt arrives home from a drug deal in which he felt thoroughly emasculated by his dangerous associate. Walt and Skyler briefly talk, and Walt follows Skyler to their kitchen, where she prepares food for him. Walt is obviously emotionally distraught, and he literally cries on Skyler’s shoulder, but soon begins attempting to have sex with Skyler. Skyler protests repeatedly, finally yelling at Walt to stop when he ignores her objections. Walt leaves the kitchen without apologizing, and Skyler tells him, “You cannot take [your frustration and fear] out on me.” In this scene, Skyler is patient, understanding, and forgiving. She tries to provide for Walt by making him a meal; the audience is also keenly aware that she is pregnant, providing Walt with a child. Again, Walt’s problematic masculinity is at the center of the pain he makes others feel. His stubborn and disturbing insistence on having sex even when Skyler says “no” suggests that he is desperate to assert his masculinity in some way after feeling emasculated by his drug deal. Walt’s pursuit of money and masculinity drives him to abuse his wife, truly damaging one of the most important domestic relationships.
Walt also harms his son, Walter Jr. The fact that Walter Jr. is given his father’s name attests to the sort of masculine power over others that Walt grappled with even before he entered the drug trade—he uses his son as a sort of legacy for himself. So when it comes to light that Walter Jr. goes by another name with his friends—Flynn—Walt reacts with anger that his son rejects his name (2.4 “Down”). Later in the same episode that Walt discovers his son’s preferred name, he takes Walter Jr. out in the family car to give him a driving lesson. However, Walter Jr.’s disability makes driving difficult, and Walt refuses to allow Walter Jr. to compensate by driving in a non-traditional way. When they nearly crash because Walter Jr. is unable to safely drive in a more traditional manner, Walt sarcastically calls him Flynn in an attempt to demean his son. It is clear from this scene that Walt’s primary concern is not his son’s wellbeing or self-esteem; rather, it is how well his son embodies the masculinity Walt himself wants to attain. The denial of Walt’s “legacy” with the informal name change emasculates Walt, so his son’s inability to behave as Walt would like is doubly offensive to Walt’s skewed perception of masculinity.
Walter Jr. is acutely aware of the troubling masculinity that his father presents him with. In another of Breaking Bad’s most difficult scenes, Walt threatens his son’s relationship with his uncle. Walter Jr. is very close to his uncle, Hank Schrader, a confident DEA agent who jokes constantly about Walt’s bookishness (read: non-masculinity). At a party for Walt’s cancer going into remission, Walt, Walter Jr., and Hank are all seated at a table in the White’s backyard (2.10 “Over”). Over tequila, Hank tells the two a story about his exploits in the DEA which emphasize how manly he was in the line of fire while fighting a Mexican drug cartel. Walt is clearly unimpressed by Hank’s story, and when he pours more tequila for himself and Hank, he also pours a shot for Walter Jr., who looks to Hank for approval before drinking. Hank gives Walter Jr. a nod and continues telling stories. Increasingly irritated, Walt pours more tequila for all three; Hank protests Walter Jr.’s second shot, telling Walt, “The kid’s sixteen.” Walt ignores Hank’s objections and pushes Walter Jr. to drink, asking angrily, “What are you looking at him for?” when Walter Jr. looks to his uncle again. When Walt goes to pour a third shot for Walter Jr., Hank blocks the glass, but Walt pours the tequila over Hank’s hand. Hank suggests Walter Jr. pass on the drink and takes the bottle away from the table. Walt argues: “My son. My bottle. My house.” Walter Jr. drinks again and then throws up in the pool. Hank rushes to help him while Walt returns to his seat, unhurried, and drinks again. It becomes clear in this scene that Walter Jr. is not Walt’s primary concern—if he had been, Walt would have listened to Hank’s cautions or gone to help his sick son. Walt’s real objective in this scene is to illustrate how powerful he is; it is his son, bottle, and house, and he controls each of them. His son must look to him for approval rather than his uncle, as this is another sign of control. Locked in a standoff with Hank, a man who is unquestionably masculine and powerful—a man who is frequently Walt’s foil throughout the series—Walt is pressed to assert his masculinity, and he does by abusing his son’s desire to impress him. Walt exploits his son whenever his own feeling of masculinity is on the line.
Even Walt’s baby daughter, Holly, is subject to Walt’s problems with masculinity. When the show draws near its close and Walt must flee from police, he pleads with his family to leave their home with him (5.14 “Ozymandias”). His wife and son refuse to leave, and Walt tries to physically force them to come with him. When Skyler draws a knife on Walt and wounds him, Walt grabs baby Holly and drives away, effectively kidnapping his daughter. However, Walt abandons Holly at a fire department shortly after he escapes police, illustrating that he took her only as a form of collateral so he could safely evade law enforcement. Holly functions more as a tool for Walt than as a daughter. He uses her to assert control over a situation. The only thing that Walt takes with him besides Holly as he drives from his house is a large plastic barrel filled with money. He flees with his money, a form of proof of his masculinity, and his baby, literal proof of his masculine ability to produce a child. Walt’s choice to use his daughter rather than be a parent illustrates the manner in which he forsakes the domestic space in pursuit of his idea of masculinity. The domestic space—Walt’s neighborhood, home, and family—is threatened and harmed throughout Breaking Bad whenever Walt is given an opportunity to embrace his problematic masculinity.
Who Will Protect the Children?
Breaking Bad frequently depicts children being harmed. These most vulnerable members of society become the subjects of terrible danger in the show ostensibly to emphasize to the viewer that the meth trade does severe damage to society. Walter White is a father, and he begins his journey into the drug trade to make money to support his family—as a family man, he should protect and help children. But he does not, and the children who are shown to be victims of the meth business are remarkable testaments to how Walt’s greed and masculinity are more powerful corrupting forces than the drug trade itself. Walt’s partner in crime, Jesse Pinkman, is set up as a foil to Walt in regard to paternal masculinity; even though Jesse is not a father himself, he cares for and takes care of children far more readily than Walt does. Further, every child shown being harmed in the series is a boy, suggesting that masculinity is indeed the focus of the child-centric segments of the show. They are especially valuable as comparisons to how Walt regard his own son, Walter Jr., and the result is frequently that Walt cares very little for either his own son or for other children. The examples of children harmed by the drug trade illustrate how Walt’s image of masculinity is flawed because of how it disregards fatherhood.
The boys harmed in Breaking Bad put Jesse and Walt in largely opposing roles so that the viewer can clearly see the difference between their personal brands of masculinity.
One such squaring-off happens when a young boy is discovered to be selling meth for a gang that rivals Walt and Jesse’s distributors. Previously in the series, eleven-year old Tomás Cantillo is shown shooting and killing one of Jesse’s best friends (2.11 “Mandala”). The murder is shocking; Tomás rides up on a bicycle to Jesse’s friend, circles the man on his bike, then firing seven shots into the man. The scene is striking because it places extreme violence in the hands of a child, even placing the child on a bicycle to emphasize the innocence Tomás has as a young child. Jesse takes note of how disturbing a gang using a child is, and when he learns about it, he is distraught. He tries to figure out a way to kill the gang members who are using Tomás, even going to a prostitute and trying to get her to help him poison his targets (3.12 “Half Measures”). When the prostitute is reluctant to help, Jesse appeals to her as a mother, pointing out how morally wrong it is to use children in the drug trade. Jesse’s concern for Tomás is highly parental, especially compared to Walt’s reaction to the issue of an eleven-year old selling meth.
When Jesse’s attempts to take revenge on the gang members for using Tomás attract the attention of his and Walt’s boss, Gustavo Fring, both Jesse and Walt are taken to a remote location to discuss the matter of Tomás being involved in selling meth. Jesse and Walt learn that the gang works for their boss, so violence against the gang members is unacceptable. The gang is forced to agree to stop using children in their drug dealing. When Walt and Jesse leave the meeting, Walt makes clear his position on matter of Tomás. “Sometimes compromises have to be made,” he tells Jesse, who is still upset that the gang is not receiving further discipline. That Walt cares so little about such a young child being involved in the meth business reveals that his parental impulses are lacking at best. Later in the episode, Tomás is killed by the gang which he worked for, and Walt’s statement about making compromises seems far more tragic. While Jesse’s paternal instincts drive him to protect and later avenge Tomás, Walt has compromised himself. He no longer cares about the safety and wellbeing of children; he is far more concerned with money and proving his masculinity. Compromises like Walt’s are what allows Tomás to die at the hands of a brutal gang.
A more extreme juxtaposition of Jesse and Walt’s contrasting parental masculinity involves the murder of a young boy. When Jesse and Walt perform a large-scale heist to obtain a chemical needed to synthesize meth, a fourteen-year old boy happens to witness their crime (5.5 “Dead Freight”). With little hesitation, Jesse and Walt’s employee Todd draws a gun and shoots the boy, killing him. The following episode begins with Jesse and Walt determining how to deal with the situation of a murdered child (5.6 “Buyout”). Walt breaks down the boy’s dirtbike into pieces and disposes of the corpse with efficiency. Meanwhile, Jesse is emotionally devastated. When Todd approaches Jesse, claiming that “shit happens,” Jesse attacks him. Todd’s “shit happens” remark sounds a lot like Walt’s “compromises have to be made” speech—it seems that Walt has next to no fatherly feelings for the boy who is just a few years younger than his own son. Jesse, however, takes the boy’s death to heart. He spends much the rest of the series wracked with guilt over the boy’s death, even going to his lawyer and insisting that millions of the dollars he has earned in the meth business go to the boy’s family (5.9 “Blood Money”). While Jesse tries to give his money—his economic masculinity—away to benefit the boy’s family, Walt’s money accumulates in a storage unit in a pile too large to count, benefitting no one at all (5.8 “Gliding Over All”). So Jesse proves more masculine than Walt in terms of fatherhood and in financially providing for a family.
The most extreme case of Jesse and Walt’s masculinity facing off is during an actual showdown between the two characters. Jesse begins dating a woman named Andrea who has a young son named Brock, and he takes a protective, fatherly role in the family. Walt and Jesse have become estranged, but Walt needs Jesse’s help to kill their drug kingpin boss, Gustavo Fring. Jesse refuses to help Walt, but Brock suddenly falls ill, apparently of poisoning (4.12 “End Times). Jesse suspects Walt of poisoning Brock, but Walt convinces Jesse that Fring had Brock poisoned. Jesse helps Walt kill Fring, and the season ends by revealing that Walt did in fact poison Brock (4.13 “Face-Off”). This is one of the most controversial moments in the series—it is clear that Walt is willing to poison a child if it means being able to advance in the meth business by murdering a man. Throughout Brock’s hospitalization, Jesse is distraught, constantly at Brock’s bedside and trying to help Brock’s recovery. Jesse’s behavior looks fatherly. Meanwhile, Walt, a father, is the man who poisoned Brock. Clearly, Walt’s fatherhood no longer matters to him. What matters instead is money, and he pursues that form of masculinity at the great expense of the masculinity of fatherhood.
The treatment of these boys reveals volumes about Walt’s fatherhood, especially when compared to Jesse’s treatment of them. Walt is unfeeling and cruel, even manipulating others by using children (his own and others). The most vulnerable members of society—children—are not safe from Walt. Jesse’s compassion and protectiveness offer a more generous portrait of fatherhood, suggesting that Jesse is the more masculine of the two men. But Walt’s idea of masculinity is wrapped up in control and in money, and children seem to get into the way of his pursuit of those goals. Because Walt is caught up in his twisted sense of masculinity, he harms those who he should protect and help—Breaking Bad illustrates just how dangerous his capitalistic view of masculinity is.
Is Walt the Danger?
In any early scene in Breaking Bad, Walt sits at a table with his family. He shares the story of how he romanced Skyler when they first met, and as Walter Jr. listens, Hank laughs and asks him, “Bet you didn’t think your old man had it in him, huh?” (1.4 “Cancer Man”). With this question, Hank reinforces the early image of Walt—emasculated, even before his son, in practically every way. But Hank’s jab at Walt also hints at something much larger in Walt’s character. He did have “it” in him the whole time—his distorted masculinity remained dormant until the drug trade gave him the opportunity to realize it, gathering cash and amassing power as he pleased. But Breaking Bad faults Walt for having this fractured idea of what a man should be. Though his ideas are rooted in capitalistic greed and warped senses of masculinity in American society, Walt is the only one who is truly on trial. The society which gave him the idea that real men have mountains of cash and get what they want by whatever means they please seems to stand just off camera, escaping the sort of ire that viewers heap on Walt. While Walt is not a victim—certainly not the way his victims are—he is not completely responsible for coming up with his ideas of masculinity. What Breaking Bad suggests about capitalism and American masculinity is deeply concerning: Walt may be the danger, but he is surely not the only danger that American culture had a hand in making.
Works Cited
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Breaking Bad. Vince Gilligan. AMC, 2008-2013.
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Stephenson, Jeffrey E. “Walter White’s American Vice” Breaking Bad and Philosophy: Badder Living Through Chemistry. Chicago: Open Court, 2012. Print.
Weisheit, Ralph A. and William L. White. Methamphetamine: Its History, Pharmacology, and Treatment. Center City, MN: Hazelden, 2009. Print.
