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The only thing one can learn from Breaking Bad is you eventually get killed dealing illegal drugs, and put your family in danger. There is nothing romantic in

by camus2 13y ago

The only thing one can learn from Breaking Bad is you eventually get killed dealing illegal drugs, and put your family in danger. There is nothing romantic in BB,it's a gruesome description of a world you might want to avoid at all cost.

jmduke 13y ago
At risk of derailing the original article, this is a really interesting point. Both Breaking Bad and Mad Men are shows that go at lengths to depict how flawed, unhappy, and usually outright immoral their protagonists are, but both Walter White and Don Draper are the target of a lot of escapist fantasies. (Try searching on Twitter for #TeamWalt.)
- shashashasha 13y ago
  It reminds me of this essay, on Breaking Bad and culture: "But despite these cautionary endings, they don’t sell Scarface and Godfather t-shirts at every tourist shop in Manhattan because people like to remind themselves about the dangers of hubris. Stories and the characters in them are more than lessons, and a narrative’s most ideologically weighty elements don’t map onto a seventh grade worksheet about major themes. Long after we’re done watching we hold moments with us: shot angles and character dynamics, snippets of dialog and unquestioned premises. The point of critically examining cultural objects like Breaking Bad isn’t to place them in categories good or bad, to predict the ending, or even to decode what’s “really” happening; the point is to pay attention to our attention, to look at how it’s being held, on what, and how someone’s making money on it. If pop criticism is to be good for anything, it’s that." http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/walter-white-supremacy/ http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/walter-white-supremacy/
  - 001sky 13y ago
    +1 As a general point, illegal activity has entertainment value. Goes for all sorts, especially killing and violence.
Ellipsis753 13y ago
To be honest, as Breaking Bad is purely fiction I'm not even sure if you can "learn" that you'll get killed from dealing drugs.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  People learn from fiction all the time, though BB isn't exactly fiction that is designed for pedagogical value.
  - gweinberg 13y ago
    Lessons you "learn" from fiction tend to be unreliable. Fiction is not only not true, it is often systematically misleading.
    - dragonwriter 13y ago
      > Lessons you "learn" from fiction tend to be unreliable. That's true from lessons learned from fact, too, as they are more often than not drawn from non-representative, skewed samples of facts, which are each individually true in isolation, but nevertheless support faulty lessons. Good lessons -- drawn originally from systematic, careful study of fact -- OTOH, are often illustrated with carefully constructed fiction from which more people learn them from than do directly from the facts.

by camus2 13y ago

jmduke 13y ago

At risk of derailing the original article, this is a really interesting point. Both Breaking Bad and Mad Men are shows that go at lengths to depict how flawed, unhappy, and usually outright immoral their protagonists are, but both Walter White and Don Draper are the target of a lot of escapist fantasies. (Try searching on Twitter for #TeamWalt.)

shashashasha 13y ago
It reminds me of this essay, on Breaking Bad and culture: "But despite these cautionary endings, they don’t sell Scarface and Godfather t-shirts at every tourist shop in Manhattan because people like to remind themselves about the dangers of hubris. Stories and the characters in them are more than lessons, and a narrative’s most ideologically weighty elements don’t map onto a seventh grade worksheet about major themes. Long after we’re done watching we hold moments with us: shot angles and character dynamics, snippets of dialog and unquestioned premises. The point of critically examining cultural objects like Breaking Bad isn’t to place them in categories good or bad, to predict the ending, or even to decode what’s “really” happening; the point is to pay attention to our attention, to look at how it’s being held, on what, and how someone’s making money on it. If pop criticism is to be good for anything, it’s that." http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/walter-white-supremacy/ http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/walter-white-supremacy/
- 001sky 13y ago
  +1 As a general point, illegal activity has entertainment value. Goes for all sorts, especially killing and violence.

Ellipsis753 13y ago

To be honest, as Breaking Bad is purely fiction I'm not even sure if you can "learn" that you'll get killed from dealing drugs.

dragonwriter 13y ago
People learn from fiction all the time, though BB isn't exactly fiction that is designed for pedagogical value.
- gweinberg 13y ago
  Lessons you "learn" from fiction tend to be unreliable. Fiction is not only not true, it is often systematically misleading.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > Lessons you "learn" from fiction tend to be unreliable. That's true from lessons learned from fact, too, as they are more often than not drawn from non-representative, skewed samples of facts, which are each individually true in isolation, but nevertheless support faulty lessons. Good lessons -- drawn originally from systematic, careful study of fact -- OTOH, are often illustrated with carefully constructed fiction from which more people learn them from than do directly from the facts.