Breaking Bad: Critical Essays on the Contexts, Politics, Style, and Reception of the Television Series
Files
Document Type
Book
Description
Breaking Bad: Critical Essays on the Contexts, Politics, Style, and Reception of the Television Series, edited by David P. Pierson, explores the contexts, politics, and style of AMC's original series Breaking Bad. The book's first section locates and addresses the series from several contemporary social contexts, including neo-liberalism, its discourses and policies, the cultural obsession with the economy of time and its manipulation, and the epistemological principles and assumptions of Walter White's criminal alias Heisenberg. Section two investigates how the series characterizes and intersects with current cultural politics, such as male angst and the re-emergence of hegemonic masculinity, the complex portrayal of Latinos, and the depiction of physical and mental impairment and disability. The final section takes a close look at the series' distinctive visual, aural, and narrative stylistics. Under examination are Breaking Bad's unique visual style whereby image dominates sound, the distinct role and use of beginning teaser segments to disorient and enlighten audiences, the representation of geographic space and place, the position of narrative songs to complicate viewer identification, and the integral part that emotions play as a form of dramatic action in the series.
ISBN
9780739179246
Publication Date
Fall 11-21-2013
Publisher
Lexington Books
City
Minneapolis
Keywords
television, melodrama, neoliberalism, cable television, masculinity
Disciplines
Broadcast and Video Studies | Critical and Cultural Studies | Mass Communication | Television
Recommended Citation
Pierson, David. Breaking Bad: Critical Essays on the Contexts, Politics, Style, and Reception of the Television Series. Lexington Books, 2014.
