Meth, Markets, Masculinities: Action and Identity in AMC’s Breaking Bad

Abstract

The television series Breaking Bad presents a concept of identity as a product of complex processes involving assemblages of human and non-human elements. The development of characters’ identities over the course of the series is unpredictable, not only because they must constantly be responding to pressures over which they have no control, but because of the vitality of the matter with which they interact. The protagonist is chemistry teacher Walter White. The narrative follows Walt’s attempts to use a substance crystal meth as an instrument in the construction of an identity that will enable him to exercise some control over his life and his world. The attempt does have an effect, on Walt, on his environment, and on the people he loves. Like the chemistry experiments that Walt enacts in class for his students, the interaction of various substances often results in dramatic transformations. But those classroom demonstrations are deceptive; there Walt appears to manipulate matter as one manipulates tools he is the actor who, bringing his knowledge to bear on inert substances, produces effects that are always desired and always predictable. However, his as the series progresses, and Walt applies his skill to the production of crystal meth, the hierarchical model of the human agent effecting change through the manipulation of matter is inadequate to explain the enfolding narrative. What happens to Walt and his family is the effect of a non-hierarchical assemblage of human and non-human elements. In Breaking Bad, meth itself, along with other non-human bodies, is an actant. The transformations produced through their interaction with human bodies are dramatic, often dangerous, and always surprising. Drawing on the works of actor-network theorists such as Latour and Bennett, this paper will examine Breaking Bad’s challenge to anthropocentrism, where objects are also actants, and transformation occurs through the assemblage of the human and the non-human.