Serious Question about Breaking Bad meta
Sep. 18th, 2013 08:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skywaterblueEverywhere I go on the internet, I read well-intentioned meta and recaps by Serious Authors who all have the habit of separating Walt from Heisenberg and referring to them as different people/personalities. As if the character has MPD, or was a fantastical contemporary version of Jekyll and Hyde.
... is it just me, or is that interpretation not supported by ANY textual evidence in the show? And yes, it's quite ablest, but more importantly, the show is VASTLY easier to interpret 'correctly' if you're not dividing Walter White into different alters.
The thing that baffles me about it most is that the people most likely to do it are people who are not Team Walt whitewashers, but people who think Walt is an irredeemable bastard for all the things he's done. And well, yes, he is - but he's also not suffering from some kind of illness. Heisenberg was always Walt, Walt was always Heisenberg and complicated for everyone who'd wish otherwise, there's no easy splitline or way to divorce the two, because that division is an artificial construct made up by viewers.
As Walt Whitman would say, we contain multitudes.
ETA: There are now spoilers in the comments.
... is it just me, or is that interpretation not supported by ANY textual evidence in the show? And yes, it's quite ablest, but more importantly, the show is VASTLY easier to interpret 'correctly' if you're not dividing Walter White into different alters.
The thing that baffles me about it most is that the people most likely to do it are people who are not Team Walt whitewashers, but people who think Walt is an irredeemable bastard for all the things he's done. And well, yes, he is - but he's also not suffering from some kind of illness. Heisenberg was always Walt, Walt was always Heisenberg and complicated for everyone who'd wish otherwise, there's no easy splitline or way to divorce the two, because that division is an artificial construct made up by viewers.
As Walt Whitman would say, we contain multitudes.
ETA: There are now spoilers in the comments.
no subject
Date: 2013-09-19 10:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-09-19 12:23 pm (UTC)I think it's tricky because...
SPOILERS
... I have seen a lot of folks trying to digest Walt's final phone call to Skyler in "Ozymandias" as some kind of battle between 'Heisenberg' and Walt in which Walt finally gets the upper hand by basically giving Skyler an alibi, but if you're not maintaining that added level of fictionality, then the entire (narrative) purpose of that call becomes much clearer as does the functioning of the bookending of first call/last call. WALT secretly believed those things of Skyler from the very first episode. WALT never much cared for Hank and his outsized masculinity usurping his role as alpha male of the family. None of those things were Heisenberg, because Heisenberg isn't some kind of split personality of Walt... just a handle that WALT picked up to remake himself and express things he'd believed for years.
So of course Walt doesn't reveal where the bodies are, and yes, I'm afraid that Walt actually does believe those things of Skyler. (That initially the SHOW ITSELF believed them is a bigger problem I have with the whole front half of the show.)