Cannot unsee

[lizbee]

This week, at the behest of suburbannoir, I started watching Breaking Bad.  (We have a thing where I watch one of her favourite shows, she watches one of mine, etc.  Last year I watched The Wire for her, and she watched Babylon 5 for me.  SHUT UP, THEY ARE TOTALLY COMPARABLE.)

Anyway, I'm only four episodes in, but it's the internet, I've seen pictures from future seasons and whatnot, and I already know that Skyler is the very worst character in the history of storytelling (on account of how she's a woman, and has opinions, and expects to be treated with respect, as far as I can tell), and according to The Guardian, the whole show shamefully appropriates the drug culture of people of colour (and only PoC) and turns it into a white middle class fantasy, and worse, isn't even an accurate depiction of the meth industry! 

(Which I can vouch for.  I've transcribed cases involving meth cooks and users, and either way, the transcript tends to come out looking like this:

SUSPECT:   ...(INAUDIBLE)... fuckin' ...(INAUDIBLE)... cuntin' ...(INAUDIBLE)... fuck - - -

And let me tell you, I am SHOCKED and APPALLED that television, of all media, would enhance the truth.)

The actual point, however, of this post is this:

Yep. Good luck getting that one out of your head!  And don't do meth.  It's legit nasty.

Comments

[wolfy_writing]

So all of the white meth users and meth cooks back where I'm from who left the toxic remnants of meth labs scattered around my home town were also appropriating the drug culture of POCs? Or was I imagining them as part of a white middle class fantasy?

[nonelvis]

PERFECT.

[attackfish]

*Tries hard not to laugh at the idea that drug culture is entirely a POC thing that white middle class people have no involvement with, given that I'm a white middle class girl with addicts all over my family.*

The thing that kills me about Breaking Bad is that I'm from Albuquerque, and I was much much closer to the drug culture there then I would have liked. Yeah, meth exists there, and it's a problem, but not more than anywhere else, and the drug everybody worries about is heroin. Heroin is a huge deal in Albuquerque because the major town for the cartels to bring it up from Mexico and then distribute it from is right near by, and we're the nearest city. It's dead cheep, and it's everywhere. Between Breaking Bad and In Plain Sight (which I love) and their whole storyline with Mary's sister being involved with the meth dealer, everybody thinks Albuquerque=meth, which given that we have a horrible, horrible drug problem, and it's not meth, is kind of sickly ironic. Also, I couldn't believe the sister and the meth dealer storyline. I would have had a much easier time buying it if she were smuggling heroin instead.

[umadoshi]

We have a thing where I watch one of her favourite shows, she watches one of mine, etc.

That right there is a beautiful friendship.

[sabotabby]

Breaking Bad is so great. I would say that it's the greatest.

I feel like one of Skyler's last defenders. I got my mom hooked on the show and I constantly have to argue why Skyler-hate is irrational and misogynist.

[sabra_n]

Huh. I have to say, that's the first time I've heard of anyone saying that Breaking Bad appropriates "PoC drug culture"(!). I have heard objections to the way PoCs are only cast as enemies in the show, but that's about it.

[aberration]

Well, that's an excellent follow-up to the Walter White murder nightmares I was having earlier this week!

[angrymermaids]

I'm having trouble wrapping my head around how Breaking Bad could possibly appropriate POC drug culture when meth is overwhelmingly stereotyped as a white person drug. Specifically a middle-class white person drug. I can't. (Haven't seen the show, but my brother loves it.)

Here in white-ass Nebraska, I always see cops hanging around the tanks of ammonia that goes into corn fertilizer by day and meth labs by night. I guess people try to sneak up and siphon it off when no one's looking.

[skywaterblue]

The problem I have with Skyler is that she's about as well-cast as Mandy Hampton in the West Wing. I should defend her, because she's theoretically an interesting female character and I dislike being on the same side as most of these people, but really. She has no chemistry at all with the main lead and is mostly inert in pretty much everything else the show gives her to do.

[abigail_n.livejournal.com]

This (http://tigerbeatdown.com/2012/07/24/the-whitest-show-on-tv-11-statements-about-amcs-breaking-bad/) is a pretty good (albeit spoilery) discussion of Breaking Bad's problems with race. The issue isn't cultural appropriate (a rather bizarre criticism to make since just about every drug dealer on the show who isn't Walt is a PoC) but the near-absence of non-white people except as criminals (this is apparently especially egregious given the demographics of Albequerque), and even more than that, the way PoC are treated as disposable obstacles in Walt's path. There's a pair of characters in the third season, for example, who are basically inhuman - they have no thought, no feeling, no desire and no motivation except getting Walt, and they are literally taken apart on their way to him (which barely slows them down, since again, they're not human enough to care about themselves or each other). That level of dehumanization just doesn't exist for the white characters.

It's an excellent show, but its failure on this front leaves a bad taste in my mouth.