Breaking Bad--Cultural Resistance

·         Resistance is defined as “those symbolic and material practices that challenge, subvert, or suspend the cultural codes, rules, or norms, which through their everyday operation create, sustain, and naturalize the prevailing social structure in a particular space and time” –Ott & Mack

·         Walter is performing the practice of cooking meth that clearly challenges cultural codes, rule, and norms. He is able to cover this secret identity of his because his brother-in-law is DEA agent, which allows Walt to become knowledgeable of how they catch drug cartels. He is able to easily imitate normal emotions to keep his appearance socially acceptable by coming home to his family each night and eventually, is able to get his wife, Skyler, on board and together they launder money through their car wash business that they open up together.

·         5 intertwined principles of resistance—contextual, tactical, creative, cumulative, and incremental.

·         Resistance is contextual: the time and place of Walter's act of cooking is crucial to its status as resistance because rather than being a fixed quality, it is specific to particular times, places and social relationships. He carefully chose Jesse to be his cooking partner because of his connections and knowledge of how exactly the drug business works. Together, they chose particular places and times to cook the meth in order to avoid suspicion from Walter's family and obviously the police and DEA.

·         Resistance is tactical: Walter's resistance is an action or practice, not a product or outcome that exists spatially. A tactic is disappearing almost as quickly as it appears. Because of Walter's highly profound knowledge in chemistry, him and Jesse are able to produce mass amounts of high quality meth. This leads him to having a quota that he much meet each week to satisfy his boss, Gus, and the needs of the meth heads.  

·         Resistance is creative: Resistance is about “making do” and turning the rules to one’s advantage, taking advantage of the system. Walter is set up perfectly in his situation to take advantage of the legal system. Every time he comes into contact with Hank, he is able to find out more information about how they are tracking down this blue meth, which allows Walter to cover up his tracks that much easier.

·         Resistance is cumulative: In isolation, acts of resistance rarely constitute a serious threat to the prevailing social structure, but over time, multiple acts will accumulate. In this case, Walter is literally producing thousands of pounds of the purist meth, which makes the audience questions whether or not someone is going to start noticing and if he is going to get caught. This aspect of the show is what keeps viewers tied in and keep watching.

 

• Resistance is incremental: Because of his chemistry background and knowledge of how the DEA operates, Walter starts his meth cooking business of small, but smartly chooses when to expand according to the connections he obtains. He spaces out each act of resistance to keep the level of suspiciousness low, but is still able to satisfy his needs of more money and eventually complete power.