Travis Limbert Final Paper Heroes and Villains 4/26/2012 The Heroic Narrative Breaking: Bad Heroes or Good Villains The Heinz dilemma Lawrence Kohlberg Google Scholar, (1971) http://info.psu.edu.sa/psu/maths/Stages%20of%20Moral%20Development%20According%20to%20Kohlberg.pdf (accessed 22 April 2012)., a hypothetical ethical exercise proposed by Lawrence Kohlberg, was the center of debate during one of my undergraduate courses. The Heinz dilemma is about a husband with a dying wife, a scientist who has a cure, but is charging more than Heinz can afford. Even after borrow money and begging, Heinz only raises half of the needed money for the cure. The scientist refuses to accept half payment or reduce his price, which prompts Heinz to break into the scientist’s house one night, steal the drug that will save his wife, leaving what money he raised behind. The point of this dilemma is to raise questions of morality and ethics, while arguing the merits to Heinz’s actions to save his dying wife. My class could not come to an agreement on if Heinz was justified or not, which was the rationale behind the exercise. The reason why this dilemma is contested and discussed is because it hits at core human emotions and driving forces, why do we do what we do, and if that is socially acceptable. The television show, Breaking Bad, is an AMC original production that has received high praises for its unique take on a drama series. In many ways, Breaking Bad is the Heinz dilemma brought to life. The show is based around the life of Walter White, a middle-class high school chemistry teacher who turns to cooking and dealing meth to raise money for his family and his hospital bills, after he is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. Walter is driven by the desire to make sure his family is provided for once he is gone and is willing to break societal and cultural mores in the process. Just like Heinz, Walter is willing to do whatever it takes to provide and take care of those he loves. Yet with Breaking Bad, there is a slight twist to the Heinz dilemma. The premise of the show is to watch normal, good person turn into something evil and villainous. Although Walter is the protagonist of the show, he is clearly not a heroic figure. Yet, the majority of the narrative told over four seasons is devoid of any truly heroic characters, and the only decent people are ancillary characters. This raises the question of what is so compelling about a show that focuses on the dark, villainous side of the human condition. In this paper I explore the cultural power behind a show like Breaking Bad in relation to the discussion of the cultural notions of heroes and villains. What happens when the villain becomes the main character, instead of the hero? Should heroes and villains be thought of as binary opposites or as cultural relative concepts based on intent? How the line between hero and villain can truly be ambiguous and what this means in relation to a contemporary television program. Breaking Bad is part of a recent shift for the AMC television network from being a movie broadcasting channel to a channel that has new, original content. This shift includes shows like Breaking Bad, Mad Men, and The Walking Dead that focus on intense drama to drive the narrative arcs. It is no surprise that a contested ethical dilemma, combined with drug trafficking and abuse, would be a hotbed for drama. Breaking Bad premiered in 2008 and currently has four seasons, with the fourth season finishing summer 2011. The show is billed for a final fifth season. The show has won multiple awards for drama and best series, as well as the actors wining multiple awards for their performances. The show has been well received by audiences and is critically acclaimed. The show beings with Walter White, a mild mannered high school chemistry teacher who works a second job at a car wash to generate enough financial income to support his family. Walter has a wife named Skyler and a high school aged son Walter Jr. who suffers from cerebral palsy. The show takes place in Albuquerque, New Mexico and kicks off when Walter is diagnosed with a severe form of lung cancer. The doctor gives Walter six months to live, but also suggests an aggressive form of chemotherapy that might be able to save Walter, but the chances of procedure working is very minimal. Walter decides to just embrace his demise because the procedure costs thousands of dollars and the last thing he wants to do is suffer through chemo just to die leaving his family drowning in debt. After intense begging from Skyler, Walter decides to start treatment for his cancer, but faces a crisis of how to pay the bills. One day Walter rides along with his brother-in-law Hank, who works for the local Drug Enforcement Agency, to a drug raid. When Walter is left alone in the car he sees a former student of his, Jesse Pinkman, trying to flee the scene of the crime. Walter chases after Jesse and propositions him about going into business together to make methamphetamine. Jesse knows how to sell meth and Walter knows how to cook it due to his chemistry background. Jesse is confused why his old teacher is now interested in the drug business, but decides to go along with the plan. This becomes the premise for the show, following Walter and Jesse around as they cook and deal meth and all the problems that follow. Walter had a chance to have his bills paid by a wealthy friend of his, but refuses his friend’s charity due to his pride. Walter could not think of any other way to pay for his medical bills and provide for his family on his own other than dealing drugs. He was also recently fired from his car wash job and could barely pay the normal bills. Faced with an existential crisis, Walter decides to go into the drug business long enough to pay his bills and build up a savings account to leave behind for his family. Walter still believes he will be dead in a few months, so as long as he can sell enough meth and make enough money, his family will be stable once he is gone and will never have to know the true origins of the money. Walter’s initial intentions are noble, sacrifice himself since he will be dead soon, for the greater good of his family. Just like Heinz, Walter is willing to do what is necessary to save his loved ones, even though he recognizes the criminality of the situation. As the show progresses, Walter’s chemo treatments are successful and his cancer goes into remission, yet this does not stop Walter from cooking meth. Walter seems to enjoy his new work and the power that it grants him. Walter’s intentions slowly move throughout the course of the show from their noble origins to darker, selfish objectives. During a 2011 interview with National Public Radio, Vince Gilligan, the creator of Breaking Bad, spoke on the driving forces behind creation of the show. One big component for Gilligan was exploring the implications of a midlife crisis, which was something that had been nagging at the back of Gilligan’s mind since he had turned forty. The other component he was interested in exploring was watching an upright citizen turn corrupt. According to the NPR interview: “The larger story in Breaking Bad is about more than just drugs, says Gilligan. It's about a man who finds himself entering a life of crime without any idea of how that life works. Or, as Gilligan wrote in his pitch to AMC: ‘You take Mr. Chips and turn him into Scarface.’” “‘Breaking Bad’: Vince Gilligan On Meth And Morals.” NPR, 19 Sept. 2011. http://www.npr.org/2011/09/19/140111200/breaking-bad-vince-gilligan-on-meth-and-morals (accessed 22 April 2012). At the core of the show is watching Mr. Chips, a reference back to a film and novel both named Goodbye, Mr. Chips. Mr. Chips is a shy school teacher who falls in love with a young girl and gives up his dreams to make her happy. It is a tale of a mild mannered man willing to do anything for the woman he loves and in the end becomes well respected by his school. Walter White is very much Mr. Chips at the very beginning of Breaking Bad. Yet, soon as Walter starts cooking meth he starts to change. The other character Gilligan references, Scarface, the gritty and gory crime film about the horrors and violence of drug trafficking. Whether it is the 1932 film version or 1983’s Al Pacino’s version, the narrative of Scarface stars Tony, a violent, ruthless man who is not afraid to kill to get what he wants. His driving force is gaining power through the cocaine drug business. Tony is not to be viewed to be a heroic character, but a tragic villainous protagonist that meets a grim demise. Tony is the polar opposite of Mr. Chips, not willing to sacrifice himself, but to be driven by solipsism. Yet this is the journey of Walter that has been set out throughout the show. Gilligan also said in the interview that ‘[t]here will be 16 more episodes in Season 5. How much darker can Walt get? Is his journey complete — his journey along that arc from good guy to bad guy? At this point, it's a tricky thing to answer,’ he says. ‘Probably a casual viewer to the show might think [the show is] about morality or amorality. I suppose that there are things that Walt does probably need to atone for — and perhaps he will, when it's all said and done.’ NPR. The fifth season mentioned by Gilligan is the last season of Breaking Bad, which has yet to be filmed. This reiterates the ideas of the progression, the arc from good guy to bad, is very important to the narrative of the show. The question “How much darker can Walt get?” NPR. is a way for Gilligan to tease the audience about the depth of Walter’s fall, which has already proven with Walter committing multiple murders and other crimes so far. In some ways the show is about morality, the dos and don’ts of American culture. But as Gilligan hints at, this is merely a surface reading of the show which ignores the depth of the narrative. It is in this space, which I argue Breaking Bad wrestles with the cultural notions of heroes and villains, explores the ambiguity of this dichotomy, and muddles these distinctions. What is a hero? For scholars like Raglan Lord Raglan, “The Hero of Tradition,” in Dundes, ed., The Study of Folklore. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1965), 142-157., to determine if someone is a hero they must fit a certain number of steps on a heroic scale. This is an attempt to find a cross cultural litmus test to determine who is a hero and who is not. For Ray Browne, heroes could be fantastical as well as real. Browne wrote: Heroes are ordinarily Olympian-distant, cold, unapproachable and, at times, indifferent, although people make every effort to humanize them, When heroes are hugged to the bosom of familiarity they reach an even higher and deeper level of heroism than the conventional Olympians. The hero treated with love, respect, familiarity-thought sometimes bloodied in the fray, reaches a stature of importance no other can achieve. Ray B. Browne, “Lincoln in the Bosom of Familiarity,” in Browne, Fishwick, ed., Heroes in Transition (Bowling Green: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1983), 308-324. For Browne heroes included the demi-gods of the past, but felt the heroes that were more human, more ‘real’, had more resonance due to their familiarity. There was something unique and relatable to the heroes that were more human. In general, a hero is someone who represents the ideals of a culture, someone who is admired for their qualities or deeds. A hero is someone who the citizens can look up to for inspiration and learn the cultural codes. This means that heroes embody cultural notions of behavior and ethics. In a newspaper article Leonard Pitts Jr. calls the United States a “nation lacking in heroes.” Leonard Pitts Jr. “Heroes Give us Worthy Dreams” Indianapolis Star 26 Aug. 2001. Pitts is talking about a lack in fantastical heroes, not the everyday heroes that Browne emphasized. As a nation with hero issues, it is interesting to have a popular television program about a normal person turning to villainous pursuits. And as a normal person, this exploration of cultural norms through Walter White feels more real, more humanized than any tale about Heracles could convey. While initially Walter White is an ordinary hero, he could also be seen as an ‘anti-hero’. M. Gregory Kendrick in his book, The Heroic Ideal, looks at historical examples of heroic types and compares and contrasts them to modern examples. Kendrick finds the origins of an anti-hero type in the picaresque novels of old Spain. “Whatever the nature of the wrongdoing or the apologias for it, heroes are neither remembered nor honored because of their misdeeds. This is not the case, however, with the anti-hero picaro, or ‘rogue’ [.]” M. Gregory Kendrick, The Heroic Ideals: Western Archetypes from the Greeks to the Present. (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2010), 188.He finds this as the first example of a different type of hero, one that focused on an everyday person who was more ordinary than extraordinary. He also pointed out that these heroes are remembered for their transgressions, which is another defining aspect that sets them apart from other heroic types. Another reason these heroes are different than the other heroic iterations has to do with their birth, as well as their heroic abilities. Kendrick also writes: The miscreants celebrated in these early modern folktales and novels are decidedly different lot from the more conventional heroes of Western myth, history, and religious hagiography. Whereas most of the heroic figures we have examined up to this point command considerable resources, are gifted with extraordinary abilities, and serve some abstract ideal, these fictional rogues are low born, impoverished, bereft of any singular talent or skill save cunning, and have no purpose in life except to survive by ‘hook or crook’. 189. This type of roguish heroic character aligns well with Walter White. These characters lack any divine or extraordinary ability (e.g. Heracles or Superman) and are just poor, down-on-their-luck fellows that only get by through their wit. Walter is this weak (and for the first two seasons, sickly) man who gets by with his chemistry knowledge and outsmarting those in his way. His initial dive into dealing drugs and the act of drug dealing are also reflective of Walter’s lower class status and hardships, which also aligns him with these early rogue heroes. Kendrick even acknowledges that some many of these rogue heroes were in fact criminals, which makes their status as hero complex. Kendrick finds that the horrible conditions of the poor people who first enjoyed these novels found these characters, despite their criminal activity, as heroic. In many ways Kendrick’s argument calls for cultural relativism, that despite these rogue heroes activities or intentions, they were celebrated by those in squalor who found the narratives inspiring or at the very least some form of vicarious justice on a hard system that had marginalized them. The concept of an anti-hero raises issues with a structuralistic approach to heroes. If the concepts of hero and villain are to be set up in binary opposition, foils to one another, then in what sense does an anti-hero even exist? If the anti-hero is to be set opposite of the hero as M. Gregory Kendrick 184-188. or Marshall McLuhan Marshall McLuhan, “The Popular Hero and Anti-Hero,” in Browne, Fishwick, Marsden, ed., Heroes of Popular Culture (Bowling Green: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1972), 135-138. suggest, then does that not mean that the anti-hero occupies the same space as the villain? The very nature of the name ‘anti-hero’ invokes the sense of opposition to the hero, being antagonistic to what the hero stands for. Yet the anti-hero is still considered of residing in the heroic space while villain does not. But why? Karl Kerenyi in his article, “The Problem of Evil in Mythology” finds that historically good and evil, the dividing lines between hero/villain, are one of the most basic human divisions. Karl Kerenyi, “The Problem of Evil in Mythology” 1-18. It is in these spaces of good and evil that morality and humanity are explored. For Kerenyi evil is some profane meddling with the bond between the human and the divine, forcing mortals to recognizes there mortality. 7. Kerenyi is arguing on intent since he recognizes the problematic goal of deciding if a character is good or evil (e.g. Loki). Considering the person’s intent, if the character is committing evil acts for an evil purpose, then that character should be considered a villain. The same can be argued for Walter White. At the start, his cooking and selling meth was to save his family, not even himself. He was to be a sacrifice so that his family would survive, but through a twist of fate Walter lived on. He was tainted by the power drug dealing gave him and his intentions slowly changed. At one point Walter had enough money, but decided to keep cooking meth. Eventually Skyler found out what Walter has up to, as well as others. Walter had to start paying people off and launder his funds through a corrupt lawyer named Saw, becoming further stuck in the quagmire of meth peddling. Walter’s drug production escalates to him cooking meth for Gus Fring, a regional drug lord, at the price of three million dollars for three months of work. By the time season four begins, Walter has a contract with Gus to cook for him full time for fifteen million dollars a year. Walter’s life becomes of struggle of power, money, and freedom, with his original reasons left as a mostly overlooked plot point. The acts that Walter commits could be considered evil acts with an evil purpose, moving Walter to a villainous space. Walter’s original heroic intentions are no longer the motivational forces for his character. The change in Walter’s character needs to be understood as a shift from hero to villain instead of a different interpretation of the same character. For example, Carolyn Cooper’s work explores the different narratives of Eli Whitney and how based on where the narrative originated and how it would paint Whitney as a hero or villain. Carolyn Cooper, "Myth, Rumor and History: The Yankee Whittling Boy as Hero and Villain" Technology and Culture 44 January 2003, 82-96. Once again the idea of cultural relativism is key, in regards to whether the creator of a cotton machine was either a hero or villain. In regards to Whitney, it was a matter of who and where the story was told if he was a hero or villain. Vlad the Impaler, Christopher Columbus and William Wallace are other examples of how context is important to the framing of a person of heroic or villainous. However, this is not so easy to decipher in regards to Breaking Bad. As a television show, there are not multiple versions of the narrative, some celebrating and other decrying Walter. This once again lines Walter with the picaresque anti-heroes of Spanish novels, sharing a one single strand narrative. How should Walter be looked at in regards to cultural relativism? Gary Hoppenstand studied the vigilante-heroes of the Great Depression era pulp fiction serials and how those heroes could be reflective of the current cultural mood. Gary Hoppenstand, "Pulp Vigilante Heroes, the Moral Majority, and the Apocalypse" in Browne, Fishwick, Marsden, ed., Heroes of Popular Culture (Bowling Green: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1983), 115-130. These vigilante-heroes are very similar to the rogue heroes; heroes willing to go to great extremes (including murder) to uphold some form of code. For Hoppenstand, this type of hero was extreme and criminal in behavior, but was acceptable because the villains these heroes fought were even worse. These vigilantes acted like a conservative right hand of justice, smiting any undesirables and Others who try to circumvent capitalistic principles. Hoppenstand’s argument hinges on intent, citing that despite the actions of these vigilante-heroes was a lesser of two evils in comparison to those they stopped. 118. What is considered evil and villainous was contextualized within the narrative. In the narrative of Breaking Bad, Walter’s motivations are not wholly reinforced as justified like the pulp vigilante-heroes. The season three finale and season four explore the ramifications of Walter’s order of Jesse to murder Gale. Gale was a quiet, soft spoken man that was hired to be Walter’s assistant to cook meth under the guidance of Gus Fring (the man who was paying Walter millions of dollars to cook meth for him). Walter feared that Gus was grooming Gale to replace him, so he convinced Jesse that Gale must be killed. After much fighting, Walter finally convinces Jesse to drive over to Gale’s house and shoot him in cold blood, which Jesse does. This becomes the crux of the narrative tension for the fourth season and really shows the lengths Walter will go to protect his newfound power. It is also reflective of Walter’s tension with Gus, and Walter’s willingness to use and kill people to try to remain in control. A few episodes later, Walter tries to convince Jesse that they need to kill Gus because Gus could kill them at anytime. At this point the audience is not sure if Gus is a real threat or if Walter is being paranoid. Jesse is given a vial of poison by Walter, goes over to Gus’s house, but cannot go through with the plan. Walter is furious with Jesse, they get into a fight and go their separate ways for period of time. Eventually Jesse’s girlfriend’s son is deathly ill and it seems that he might have been poisoned. Walter convinces Jesse this must be Gus’s doing and convinces Jesse that they must kill Gus. Eventually Walter and Jesse succeed, killing the regional drug kingpin. The audience learns in the final minutes of the season four finale that it was Walter who had poisoned the little boy, in a way to manipulate Jesse and get his help to overthrow Gus. Jesse has no clue Walter was behind the poisoning, but the audience knows. The episode ends with Walter now having ability to take over the entire meth drug ring in the Southwest region. These are horrible acts that Walter commits, not to mention that Walter was responsible for the death of Jesse’s pervious girlfriend at the end of season two. These actions would seem to make Walter a villain. The opponents that Walter faced might be able to compensate for his deeds and provide some form of rationale, just like the pulp vigilante-heroes. Walter’s first nemesis, Tuco, was an excellent foil that seemed to justify Walter’s actions during the first and second seasons. Tuco was the first drug distributor Walter and Jesse tried selling their meth through early into the show. Tuco was a manic drug addict with a fickle temper and was prone to violent outbursts. When Jesse first approached him about selling meth, Tuco’s response was to beat Jesse to a pulp. Walter eventually reaches an agreement with Tuco and they start producing meth for him. This only lasts a short time because Tuco violently beats one of his own henchmen to death during the first drug exchange with Jesse and Walter. Walter and Jesse are disturbed by Tuco instability and wiliness to murder his own employee, but before they could do anything, Tuco kidnaps the two of them and takes them to Mexico. Tuco’s plan is to keep Jesse and Walter imprisoned in Mexico and to force them to cook meth. They attempt an escape, during which Jesse shoots Tuco in the stomach, and they get away. Tuco, as the first narrative foil to Walter, helps justify Walter’s actions. Tuco is a violent agent of chaos, which threatens to destroy anyone around him. Walter’s and Jesse’s extreme actions are rationalized because they have no choice since Tuco could not be reasoned with. Once again, at the beginning of the show Walter’s intentions were greater than himself and the foe he faced was psychotic, allowing him to be heroic like previous mentioned types (pulp and picaresque). From this point, Walter moves from rogue anti-hero to villain. Some of the questionable actions Walter commits include: watching Jesse’s girlfriend choke to death to manipulate Jesse, poisoning a small child to manipulate Jesse, ruining the lives of his family members, and causing the death of multiple people. His intentions become self-serving and power driven. Walter lacks a hyper-treacherous foil with Gus that would help redeem or at the very least recontextualize some of his motivations. Gus is a quiet man in his fifties who owns multiple fried chicken fast food restaurants, as a cover for his regional drug business. Gus is shown as calm, reserved and logical man who is willing to do what is good for his business (both chicken and meth). Gus is willing to work with Walter through their issues and helps Walter out, yet Walter resents the power that Gus holds over him and the fact that Gus might be smarter than him. Gus is the first character on the show that rivals Walter’s intellect and might even be smarter. Walter’s and Gus’s falling out and final fight is shown as a battle of the minds, who can out smart whom, with Walter finally winning in the end. This does not mean that Gus was not willing to kill to protect his interests, which is shown multiple times, but that Gus was never this hyper-villainous character to balance out the actions of Walter. Gus has an intellectual foil to Walter, but lacked the aggressiveness to warrant Walter’s behavior. It is for these reasons I find Walter White as villainous by the end of season four. While Walter can been seen as fitting within heroic types at the beginning of the show, his progression moves him towards villain. And this is exactly what the show’s creator wanted, to show the progression of a mild-mannered man into a cold, violent villain. In an interview on the finale for season four, Vince Gilligan said in regards to Walter’s deeds: I would never make that argument, that you should see him as a good guy. I mean, the whole intention of the franchise from Day 1 was, we're going to take the good guy and turn him into the bad guy. And at a certain point, you stop rooting for the bad guy and I make no bones about that. It only makes sense at a certain point to stop sympathizing with this man. But hopefully, no matter what, he remains interesting. Maureen Ryan, “‘Breaking Bad’ Creator Vince Gilligan on What Walt Did and the Future of the Drama.” Huffpost TV, 9 Oct. 2011. http://www.aoltv.com/2011/10/09/breaking-bad-vince-gilligan-season-4-finale-walt-gus-jesse/ (accessed 23 April 2012). Gilligan recognizes that Walter’s actions are no longer able to be rationalized as heroic, but that is the narrative point. The audience is supposed to wrestle with the tension of watching a man fall, watching a hero break bad. The title for the show, Breaking Bad, comes from a southern colloquial phrase, break bad, meaning to “raise hell, go bad”. “Vince Gilligan Explains Why Breaking Bad is Called Breaking Bad” YouTube, 4 June 2010. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9572UEEa530 (accessed 23 April 2012). Even the title of the show reinforces Walter’s journey from hero to villain. This villainous character, former good guy, is the narrative tension that Gilligan hopes will keep audiences watching. What are the cultural implications then for the mainstream American audience? Something important is going on when Breaking Bad becomes such a popular show (or years before a Scarface remake becomes a popular film). A reason for the show’s popularity could be people like watching someone who, despite his financial hardships, is succeeding in contemporary America. The show first aired in the early months of 2008, roughly half a year after the economic collapse in the United States. Walter, like many Americans, was facing the difficult task of trying to survive during this major economic downturn. Walter was working two jobs because he was unable to raise a family on a teacher’s salary. This tension is compounded when the White family is struck with Walter developing cancer. Fighting with the obstinate American healthcare system, Walter only legal choice is to wait to die or damn his family with large debts from inflated medical costs. Seeing it as his only possible way of providing for his family, Walter takes his chemistry knowledge and jumps into the drug dealing world. This could also be seen as reflective of the cultural climate of the time, calling for an overhaul of the American healthcare system and affordable insurance plans. While the show has moved away from these motivations, it provides a space for people to sympathize, even empathize, with Walter as a character. The rest of the show then can act as a vicarious expression of the desires to turn evil, in an attempt to gain power over a system that is marginalizing. In some ways this is an empowering narrative, allowing for the breakage of cultural values in order to save oneself. Breaking Bad can be read as a narrative that speaks for a culture of disenfranchised people going through hardship, just like the rogue anti-heroes. Could it mean that even a perverted version of the American dream, peddling drugs as a bootstrap-pulling-device, is good enough for audiences at the time? The show could be seen as a cautionary tale, that despite the extreme hardships that a person might face, the extreme options (like cooking meth) only lead to bigger problems instead of solutions. The drastic measures brought on by drastic times are never worth it in the end. The narrative of the show would be seen as a conservative tale that reinforces the cultural hegemony and proves only behaviors that are official sanctioned are valid methods to achieving the American dream. Either way, Breaking Bad calls into question American cultural ideas of heroes. By narratively shifting from hero to villain, the show hits at the heart of the cultural relativism of heroism, while at the same time alienating audiences. Viewers are pushed from rooting for Walter to wanting to see his villainous acts come to an end. Heroes are supposed to represent the cultural ideals, things for citizens to strive for and templates for acceptable ways to act. Walter complicates this idea, but in many ways is more human because of it. Humanity exists in the moral grey areas, not the black and white world that is often presented in heroic narratives. Walter’s motivations, just like the Heinz dilemma, problematize our cultural morals and help us wrestle with deep, complicated issues. Limbert 16