An Essay on Liberation: Breaking Bad
To help fans in need of a recap, El Camino star Aaron Paul went on Jimmy Kimmel Live last week to summarize all of Breaking Bad in under three minutes.
The drug world is a convenient setting for selling white supremacy because it allows for a white underdog in an openly racialized conflict. Besides the War on Terror, there aren't a lot of other scenarios in which it's possible to root for the particularly American cocktail of meritocracy, the little guy, the good guy, and the white guy, all at the same time. Put it this way: A show about a small American toy manufacturer laying waste to the villainous and inferior Mexican industry would be such a transparent and reactionary play on post-NAFTA anxieties that no luxury advertiser would dare sponsor it. But when Jalopnik's Travis Okulski about what Chrysler thought it had to gain from being associated with an abusive husband and meth cook, the luxury carmaker responded with a staid “The placement on Breaking Bad is part of an overall marketing strategy to place products in TV shows and movies. This vehicle was the right fit in terms of the plot line and the character.”
His synopsis is pretty good, but if you’re looking for a more in-depth guide to the show and its characters, motifs, and other preoccupations, then you may instead want to turn to the video essays below. They not only serve as a great refresher as you prepare to reenter what I guess we can now call the Breaking Bad Cinematic Universe but also provide you with some things to look for as you watch the film.
Why Breaking Bad is Televisions Magnum Opus (Video Essay)
Throughout his adventures, in spite (or because) of bad livers, broken hearts, and other ailments common to the modern world, Ensley has managed to marry well, and to help raise one of the great American mutts, and three cats of indeterminate, though likely royal, lineage. He has also always been a reader, writer, and TV and film watcher par-excellence. He has presented papers at regional, national, and international academic conferences on topics ranging from the American industrialist Samuel Colt to the television show Breaking Bad, and he has published peer-reviewed scholarly essays on Babylon 5, Breaking Bad, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Farscape, and Marvel's the Avengers. With his wife, K. Dale Koontz, Ensley is co-author of Wanna Cook? The Complete, Unofficial Companion to Breaking Bad, and A Dream Given Form: An Unofficial Guide to the Universe of Babylon 5, both of which are available right here on Amazon!
Videographic criticism examines media using the same material that it seeks to analyze: sounds and moving images. Videographic practices can reveal otherwise hidden facets of media, with videographic works potentially exploring aesthetic, experimental, poetic, and affective dimensions more effectively than written scholarship. , which won dozens of awards throughout its five seasons, is particularly suitable for videographic criticism due to its notably vivid visual and aural style. Additionally, its construction of character is distinctive and groundbreaking, making it a welcome series to advance understanding of characterization in television and its connections to important facets like identity politics, morality, and viewer engagement. Each video essay can be viewed separately or watched together in the context of the book.
Before watching El Camino on Netflix, refresh your memory of Jesse Pinkman, Walter White, and the rest of the Breaking Bad gang with these video essays.
Mittell is currently working on a video essay book about Breaking Bad, which also includes an essay examining Jesse’s relationship with Jane Margolis (Krysten Ritter), who makes an appearance in El Camino. I don’t think I’ve ever felt a death as hard as I felt Jane’s, and this essay explores that moment in a compelling, albeit hard to watch, way.
Breaking Bad can be considered a rags-to-riches tale
Pierson, D (2013) Breaking Bad: Critical Essays on the Contexts, Politics, Style, and Reception of the Television Series Maryland: Lexington Books.
The Chemistry of Character in Breaking Bad: A Videographic Book
Breaking Bad’s hero turned antihero, Walter White departs from the character everyone knows and can relate to, into an increasingly nefarious villain.
A Video Essay Guide to Breaking Bad
Ana MontesENGL 0190WP #2Mrs. ZiegelBreaking Bad is an award winning crime drama series created and produced by Vince Gilligan. In the beginning of the series the main character, Walter White, teaches high school chemistry. When Walter started feeling sick and bleeding when coughing, he decided to go to the hospital and was later diagnosed with lung cancer. Without his friends and family’s knowledge he turns to selling crystallized methamphetamine with former student, Jesse Pinkman. He does this in order to financially support his family in the future after he dies.
Two More BREAKING BAD Video Essays
In examining Breaking Bad, many video essayists have turned to the show’s formal elements. With Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan directing El Camino (he directed five episodes of Breaking Bad, including the first and final episodes of the series), expect much of that style to find its way into the film.
Two More BREAKING BAD Video Essays
Breaking Bad, created in 2008 by Vince Gilligan, is an incredibly popular television show that depicts Walter White, a man who after learning he has cancer, transforms from a meek schoolteacher to a drug kingpin in an effort to leave money for his family. Viewer response has been especially strong for this show, especially in reference to Walter’s wife, Skyler, who has many fan pages dedicated to hating her. By using Annette Kuhn’s feminist theory of film studies, this paper will attempt to explain the mass hatred that surrounds Skyler.
FREE Breaking Bad Essays | Best Examples for Academic Success
What we see in Breaking Bad is that the bonds between people are conductors. What one person does or wills reaches out through their relations into a broader network: a social network. The familial community at the center of the drama discloses this truth in an acute fashion. As one person curves his will inward to suit his own purposes, he affects and influences the rest of the family members. It is not just the consequences of Walter’s pride that spread; pride itself spreads. Under the strain and stress of one person’s incurving concern, each member of the network begins to abide in a new reality, one in which the rule of pride is infectious. Whereas we were introduced to this family as a community of mutual concern—for all intents and purposes—we watch them slowly deteriorate as the dilemma and deception Walter introduced make it impossible for others to care for him—or one another—authentically. Even before Walter’s lies are uncovered, the lies separate him from authentic participation in the community. This distance causes uncertainty and even fear, causing the other members to recoil in anxiety without even knowing what it is they fear. Corrosion seeps into otherwise unperceived places, compromising even the best of intentions.