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proximoception) wrote2013-08-22 09:23 pm
proximoception) wrote2013-08-22 09:23 pm
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We just finished season 4 in our Breaking Bad rewatch.
I didn't remember Elizabeth Bishop's picture popping up at the end of season 2, but I guess it's been a while. And while I loved her poems three (?) years ago maybe I hadn't seen many images of her yet, enough that it could have glided by.
Julie pointed out that Jane's mother's maiden name was Bishop, too - a redundant tribute, or were we supposed to think of Jane as a sort of child of Bishop? I guess both were addict/artists, though EB's drug was drink.
*
Rewatching lets you see how the show's almost exclusively focused on raising the ante on Walt's decisions to harm, post-career shift. The progression's this:
Killing a bad person who will kill you unless you kill him first - guy in van. (Not really a dilemma, for most.)
Killing a bad person who will kill you and hour family unless you either kill him first or turn yourself in to the cops.
Killing a bad person who you fear might kill you unless you either (...) the cops.
Letting die an arguably bad person who might cause the death of a loved one unless (...) cops.
Killing an arguably bad person with no intention to kill you but whose death will prevent both you and a loved one's having to either die or turn yourselves in.
Killing several mostly bad persons who do intend to kill you and one or more of your family members because they more or less accurately assume you've gratuitously put them in danger of being killed or imprisoned by the authorities unless you turn yourself and spouse (...) cops.
Putting at risk of death an innocent child, failing which either you and one or more family members will be killed or you'll have to turn yourself and your spouse in to the cops.
Since Walt's himself dying it's made clear to us that he accedes to many of these acts of violence not from meaningful self-preservation but to safeguard a certain kind of memory of what sort of man he was. It's made clear redundantly that his kids will be cared for just fine if he dies - Hank and Marie are clearly doing well (that house), lack children of their own, love Walt's. There's a whole replacement family waiting, basically, and Skyler's perfectly capable of working, his son's almost out of the house anyway etc. The show jumps through hoops to demonstrate that this isn't a Jean Valjean situation, is ultimately about the placing of your own desires over others' needs, asymptotically approaching the final evil of paying with others' lives for your own imagined rebirth.
Jesse I understand less well. He's a strange counterpoint - the criminal who's not imposing himself on others but himself somehow pushed into crime. Mostly by his own sense of his own lack of value - this is the role someone as bad as he feels he is deserves. Where Walt's creating a strong second self (shades of Gatsby) Jesse's actualizing a weak one, an operation that weirdly requires the exercise of gifts he can't see himself as possessing. But Jesse's less clearly and consistently the Jesse I'm describing than Walt's that Walt, maybe because he has to play a number of roles in service of that more show-centering transformation.
I didn't remember Elizabeth Bishop's picture popping up at the end of season 2, but I guess it's been a while. And while I loved her poems three (?) years ago maybe I hadn't seen many images of her yet, enough that it could have glided by.
Julie pointed out that Jane's mother's maiden name was Bishop, too - a redundant tribute, or were we supposed to think of Jane as a sort of child of Bishop? I guess both were addict/artists, though EB's drug was drink.
*
Rewatching lets you see how the show's almost exclusively focused on raising the ante on Walt's decisions to harm, post-career shift. The progression's this:
Killing a bad person who will kill you unless you kill him first - guy in van. (Not really a dilemma, for most.)
Killing a bad person who will kill you and hour family unless you either kill him first or turn yourself in to the cops.
Killing a bad person who you fear might kill you unless you either (...) the cops.
Letting die an arguably bad person who might cause the death of a loved one unless (...) cops.
Killing an arguably bad person with no intention to kill you but whose death will prevent both you and a loved one's having to either die or turn yourselves in.
Killing several mostly bad persons who do intend to kill you and one or more of your family members because they more or less accurately assume you've gratuitously put them in danger of being killed or imprisoned by the authorities unless you turn yourself and spouse (...) cops.
Putting at risk of death an innocent child, failing which either you and one or more family members will be killed or you'll have to turn yourself and your spouse in to the cops.
Since Walt's himself dying it's made clear to us that he accedes to many of these acts of violence not from meaningful self-preservation but to safeguard a certain kind of memory of what sort of man he was. It's made clear redundantly that his kids will be cared for just fine if he dies - Hank and Marie are clearly doing well (that house), lack children of their own, love Walt's. There's a whole replacement family waiting, basically, and Skyler's perfectly capable of working, his son's almost out of the house anyway etc. The show jumps through hoops to demonstrate that this isn't a Jean Valjean situation, is ultimately about the placing of your own desires over others' needs, asymptotically approaching the final evil of paying with others' lives for your own imagined rebirth.
Jesse I understand less well. He's a strange counterpoint - the criminal who's not imposing himself on others but himself somehow pushed into crime. Mostly by his own sense of his own lack of value - this is the role someone as bad as he feels he is deserves. Where Walt's creating a strong second self (shades of Gatsby) Jesse's actualizing a weak one, an operation that weirdly requires the exercise of gifts he can't see himself as possessing. But Jesse's less clearly and consistently the Jesse I'm describing than Walt's that Walt, maybe because he has to play a number of roles in service of that more show-centering transformation.