Walter White Masculinity

The American cable network series, Breaking Bad, centres around the prosaic and archetypical life of Walter White. As a middle-aged, white, male chemistry teacher, the character is initially portrayed without authority and with a certain lack of masculinity. In this television drama series, we see the stereotypical setting follow Walter White throughout his unfulfilling job and domestic pressures of dealing with a griefing wife, combined with the inability to control his son’s debilitating cerebral palsy. Mr White is at a point in his life where — despite having intellectual ability — his potential is being wasted. At work he faces insubordination and at home he is depressed by the average household situation, and it is these pressures that …show more content…
As death approaches he spirals towards a darker and more malevolent set of ideologies. Following these televised dramatic experiences — that ultimately lead “Heisenberg” to make the nefarious shift from everyday college chemistry professor to this overwhelming mercurial meth lord — we see that the dominant society mourn “Heisenberg’s” death, and they may even consider it an epic tragedy . The sympathy evoked for the character shields Walter from any negative feelings, as his transition from protagonist to antagonist is completed. The audience takes pleasure in the performance, as the narrative reveals itself, the audience in a dominant position indulge with the character’s greed. To clearly understand the hegemonic reading of Walter, one may transfer the same logic of the position on the TV series Dexter: Dexter Morgan is a serial killer who prefers to target criminals, despite the many murders he commits, the audience still aligns itself with this type of unrealistic, self-justice, and unconventional reasoning that is employed by this “Dark Hero”. From the negotiated position, without addressing the more obvious concerns that stem from Walter’s immoral machinations, one may search the paratext to find that Walter still breaks the societal moral code. An alternate reading would interpret the risk that he places upon his family as ignoble and irresponsible; without the ‘ochlocratic logic’ (like in the example of Dexter) Walter is realistically a criminal overlord who’s code represents evil. To distinguish between the hegemonic and negotiated position, one may juxtapose the rationality of both positions, in hopes that the contrast would highlight a difference in the understanding of the meanings encoded within the text. Walter breaks the vows of marriage, interestingly, the hegemonic view

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