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astonished: how had disliking a character spiraled into
homicidal rage at the actress playing her? (qtd. In Ryan)
To write this phenomenon off as simply a manifestation of
“attitudes toward gender,” overlooks the larger and far more serious
problem: the existence of an underlying cultural sickness that surfaced as
some viewers were drawn into, and became part of, the series’ own mad
darkness. Let’s be more to the point: the reaction, “homicidal rage,”
reveals a psychotic, possibly even demonic mind-set that certainly plays
a role in Breaking Bad and that may have similarly manifested itself in
our culture’s “existential vacuum” in the Newtown killings and other
school shootings, in several mall shootings, and in the character of
Miranda Barbour, the “Satan-worshiping” woman from Pennsylvania,
who admitted to police that her killing spree included less than 100 and
most recently involved a man she located in a sex-ad on Craig’s list
(“Craigslist Killer”).^®
Discussions of the demonic, and of other matters related to the
spiritual, are no longer fashionable, it seems. Yet, the demonic is a
necessary component of the Manichean universe —and it is an
undeniable component of Breaking Bad. Walt’s early reference to the
soul, his brief acknowledgment of the operation of some kind of cosmic
design, the penitents’ crawling to the altar of their own dark deity, the
sociopathic cousins’ use of the Ouija board, and the identification of the
main character with the devil all contribute to creating a series framed in
an almost Manichean darkness that seems to have consumed, however
temporarily, not only Walt himself, but also the souls of a few of Walt
White’s most ardent fans. When all is said and done, we can say that
Breaking Bad is a disturbing though extraordinarily powerful series,
conceived out of the darkness, be it psychological or spiritual, that seems
to be slowly poisoning oirr society. The appeal of the series thus may
have as much to do with our own culture’s loss of its spiritual and ethical
center^^ as it does with the fact that the series was brilliantly conceived,
brilliantly written, and brilliantly performed.
College of Southern Nevada
Richard Logsdon
Notes
29
I acknowledge that my thesis leaps from the empirical to the metaphysical
dimension, an understanding of which can only deepen our appreciation of the
series and its larger cultural significance. Thus, the Manichean.