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Sep. 29th, 2013 12:42 amThinking some thoughts about the show that maybe I can convey without spoiling much. Not much but some, so take that as a warning.
Do we need to think of fiction characters as having free will, or just the same general relationship of ignorance we do with our own future actions? Are protagonists separable from minor characters in that we'll forgive, excuse and/or forget their sins like we might our own, or quite the opposite?
The non-spoilable, because present from the beginning, procedure of Breaking Bad is to lure you into identification with a person doing genuinely bad things by a) its adopting some of his own casuistry in how he and the events he sets in motion are at first presented (the better to scorpion sting you from the back with deferred revelations, consequences), b) by having those bad things start much less bad than they gradually get, c) by getting you grateful to him for creating such exciting, involving situations, and d) by blessing him with the magical luck (though of course the good's usually activated by bad, by the reliability of the unforeseen) and other storytelling supports traditionally reserved for the welfare of heroes. It's made so obvious that the show's doing all that that you're shocked, are supposed to be routinely shocked, that its tactics work anyway.
So we're supposed to weave in and out, maybe as he worsens increasingly out but in our cumulative investment in his story increasingly in, close to him then far away. We watch his excuses for his actions fall apart, such as they are, note the full tally of evils he has caused, observe the luck at last fall away. Even our gratitude for diverting us is attenuated - secondary characters start to drive more of the plot, whether they can survive their clashes with the increasingly villainous main character becoming the emotionally interesting matter as much as, perhaps finally more than, whether he can. And of course matters are more cerebral now: the writing, the presentation start to take the center stage. We've been tricked into caring what all this means, our involvement has opened out into a wider space of concern.
You couldn't call it Brechtian - the distance that startles us into thought doesn't bore us away because it soon closes again. But it may have some of the virtues Brecht was shooting for. We can't help thinking about disjunctions between what we'd like to see and what we ought to. We start to see how the lies Walt told, that we in a sense helped tell on his behalf, are a bit like those we tell ourselves. The things we want easy in narrative bear a certain relation to what we'd like to find easier in our own lives - the way we welcome the frictionless paths there isn't unlike how we're tempted to embrace and excuse ready shortcuts here.
That much of the design becomes crystal clear, and most of it is from early on. But it's less clear if we're to blame him. Avoid doing what he does? Sure. Avoid people like him if we meet any? Of course. But is he at last responsible?
We're good at absolving ourselves for what we've done wrong, and where this isn't possible are good at ritualizing, hence minimizing, self-castigation, but I think we're astonishingly harsh with our future moral selves. There are things we must simply not do - there needn't be a specified punishment, just horror at the thought of finding oneself the one who'd do that. That horror preemptively punishes. We blame Walt the way we blame a hypothetical future self, it may be. Because in a sense he is one.
Maybe we don't even need him to have free will, just to have had it at some previous point. Do I even mean free will, though, or just the wrong will. It's insane to blame someone for what they can't control (hence insane to blame anyone, anything, as compared to attribution of cause or delivery of threats or other warnings); there can be no free will beyond the copout senses - e.g. free from external constraint, random, part of the one unified self-movement of existence. But there's one circumstance where it might be that we can't help being insane: when we try to dissuade our future self from doing wrong. A magical toggling point between entire unacceptability and full absolution is helpful, here. "I must not do X because all will become bad" seems too weak - arguments that make sense are too easily dimmed as desire brightens. But the thought of being cast out of oneself, that undercuts the logic of even desire - for who would feel that desire then? Blame, evil, may be a metaphorical extension of death into life so as to limit our terrifying self-persuasive abilities. It's wrong (inaccurate, though in many cases useful) to do it to others, to our present self. But I wonder if we need it to be open season on our future self, if absolute rhetoric's needed to sustain non-drifting action. Maybe "bad" - not just badly informed, badly raised, badly off-kilter - really is a way a fictional person can be. Because some inalienable aspect of our own, our inflowing/outspilling fictional front, our onward extension in time, always is.
And yet this too is a person. I wonder what the experience of fiction can do to our heuristic insanity. Perhaps it allows a momentary forgiveness of everyone we will be, might be. At times. But if so how is it we forget. Our ability to forget scares me more than even blame - and I blame blame for all religion's evils.
Do we need to think of fiction characters as having free will, or just the same general relationship of ignorance we do with our own future actions? Are protagonists separable from minor characters in that we'll forgive, excuse and/or forget their sins like we might our own, or quite the opposite?
The non-spoilable, because present from the beginning, procedure of Breaking Bad is to lure you into identification with a person doing genuinely bad things by a) its adopting some of his own casuistry in how he and the events he sets in motion are at first presented (the better to scorpion sting you from the back with deferred revelations, consequences), b) by having those bad things start much less bad than they gradually get, c) by getting you grateful to him for creating such exciting, involving situations, and d) by blessing him with the magical luck (though of course the good's usually activated by bad, by the reliability of the unforeseen) and other storytelling supports traditionally reserved for the welfare of heroes. It's made so obvious that the show's doing all that that you're shocked, are supposed to be routinely shocked, that its tactics work anyway.
So we're supposed to weave in and out, maybe as he worsens increasingly out but in our cumulative investment in his story increasingly in, close to him then far away. We watch his excuses for his actions fall apart, such as they are, note the full tally of evils he has caused, observe the luck at last fall away. Even our gratitude for diverting us is attenuated - secondary characters start to drive more of the plot, whether they can survive their clashes with the increasingly villainous main character becoming the emotionally interesting matter as much as, perhaps finally more than, whether he can. And of course matters are more cerebral now: the writing, the presentation start to take the center stage. We've been tricked into caring what all this means, our involvement has opened out into a wider space of concern.
You couldn't call it Brechtian - the distance that startles us into thought doesn't bore us away because it soon closes again. But it may have some of the virtues Brecht was shooting for. We can't help thinking about disjunctions between what we'd like to see and what we ought to. We start to see how the lies Walt told, that we in a sense helped tell on his behalf, are a bit like those we tell ourselves. The things we want easy in narrative bear a certain relation to what we'd like to find easier in our own lives - the way we welcome the frictionless paths there isn't unlike how we're tempted to embrace and excuse ready shortcuts here.
That much of the design becomes crystal clear, and most of it is from early on. But it's less clear if we're to blame him. Avoid doing what he does? Sure. Avoid people like him if we meet any? Of course. But is he at last responsible?
We're good at absolving ourselves for what we've done wrong, and where this isn't possible are good at ritualizing, hence minimizing, self-castigation, but I think we're astonishingly harsh with our future moral selves. There are things we must simply not do - there needn't be a specified punishment, just horror at the thought of finding oneself the one who'd do that. That horror preemptively punishes. We blame Walt the way we blame a hypothetical future self, it may be. Because in a sense he is one.
Maybe we don't even need him to have free will, just to have had it at some previous point. Do I even mean free will, though, or just the wrong will. It's insane to blame someone for what they can't control (hence insane to blame anyone, anything, as compared to attribution of cause or delivery of threats or other warnings); there can be no free will beyond the copout senses - e.g. free from external constraint, random, part of the one unified self-movement of existence. But there's one circumstance where it might be that we can't help being insane: when we try to dissuade our future self from doing wrong. A magical toggling point between entire unacceptability and full absolution is helpful, here. "I must not do X because all will become bad" seems too weak - arguments that make sense are too easily dimmed as desire brightens. But the thought of being cast out of oneself, that undercuts the logic of even desire - for who would feel that desire then? Blame, evil, may be a metaphorical extension of death into life so as to limit our terrifying self-persuasive abilities. It's wrong (inaccurate, though in many cases useful) to do it to others, to our present self. But I wonder if we need it to be open season on our future self, if absolute rhetoric's needed to sustain non-drifting action. Maybe "bad" - not just badly informed, badly raised, badly off-kilter - really is a way a fictional person can be. Because some inalienable aspect of our own, our inflowing/outspilling fictional front, our onward extension in time, always is.
And yet this too is a person. I wonder what the experience of fiction can do to our heuristic insanity. Perhaps it allows a momentary forgiveness of everyone we will be, might be. At times. But if so how is it we forget. Our ability to forget scares me more than even blame - and I blame blame for all religion's evils.
