After Walt learns that he has terminal cancer, he decides to become a criminal drug producer by entering the lucrative meth market. Unlike his low-paying teaching position, Walt is able to gainfully profit directly from his chemistry knowledge by producing high quality, potent crystal meth, which becomes the most sought after product in the American Southwest. As a successful gangster, Walt exemplifies the tenets of neoliberal entrepreneurism. He carefully weighs the risks and benefits of all of his strategic business actions. For instance, it is Walt who convinces Jesse that it is worth the physical risks of doing business with the ruthless, vicious Tuco (Raymond Cruz) in order to distribute their product in bulk, rather than selling small bags on the street. And, although Tuco and his men physically assault Jesse, Walt fearlessly demands that Tuco pay for the meth he stole from Jesse plus fifteen thousand for Jesse’s pain and suffering. Also, when one of Jesse’s street dealers is robbed by a drug-addicted couple, it is Walt who tells him (Jesse) that he must exact street justice for the couple’s crime. Walt bluntly makes his point by handing Jesse a gun and telling him to handle it. Walt understands the brutal code of the streets that if they do not punish people who steal from them, then they will be easy targets for every drug addict and felon in Albuquerque.
In the illegal drug economy, dominating a market means controlling territory through physical violence and intimidation. Law enforcement agencies, whether local or federal, function in a pure adversarial role in that they do not want to regulate the illegal market, they want to eliminate it. They want to eradicate it because of the implied moral and social threat the market represents to the dominant capitalist market. However, the illegal drug market and how it is operates has more in common with the vicious nature of modern capitalism than any other system. In a sense, Breaking Bad’s criminal market with its constantly changing market territories and wealth, its winner-take-all ethos, and unwanted government intrusion (law enforcement agencies) into its operations represents the brutalities best associated with the global, neoliberal marketplace.
As a successful entrepreneur, Walt’s primary concern is maximizing his profits and protecting them from the prying eyes of government officials. Of course, he also has the added incentive that if his massive income is detected by the authorities, then it may lead to an investigation that will reveal his criminal activities. When one of Jesse’s street dealers is arrested, Walt meets Saul Goodman (Bob Odenkirk), a local, sleazy criminal attorney, who, referencing The Godfather, offers to be Tom Hagen to Walt’s Vito Corleone.[1] Saul becomes a business partner and sets up Walt and Jesse with a lucrative transaction with Gustavo “Gus” Fring (Giancarlo Esposito), the owner of a chain of fast food chicken restaurants called Los Pollos, to produce thirty eight pounds of meth for $1.2 million. Saul shows Walt the mechanics of money laundering to provide the appearance that Walt’s money derives from legitimate sources. Once Skyler discovers Walt’s secret life, she reveals her strong business acumen for hiding their illegal assets by buying a local car wash as a vehicle to launder their monies. Neo-liberalism’s liberalization and deregulation of banking and financial laws have led to the increase of money laundering, especially in Latin American countries. While money laundering is an illegal activity, it does share affinities with rapid monetary exchanges and established tax haven countries, which have become common practices of global corporations in neoliberal societies.
The neoliberal entrepreneur par excellence in Breaking Bad is the enigmatic Gus Fring. Gus’s public image is one of a benevolent, local businessman and community leader. He serves as the main supporter of a local charity race and never hesitates to give his time or money for a worthy social cause. In essence, Gus assumes the appearance of a compassionate businessman, a character type best lauded by welfare era liberalism. However, beneath the surface, lies the cold heart and rational, calculating head of a neoliberal criminal entrepreneur who uses his fleet of Los Pollos trucks to distribute meth across the southwest. Gus runs a multi-million dollar drug empire that has enough capital to build Walt a state-of-the-art manufacturing lab in the sub-level of a large commercial dry cleaning plant. As Hank later learns, Gus’s operation is global in scope because the dry cleaning plant is a corporate subsidiary of a German conglomerate. When the circumstances call for it, Gus is capable and willing to commit horrendous acts of physical violence to preserve and strengthen his criminal empire. Gus, in “Box Cutter” (7/17/11), coolly puts on a hazmat suit and severs the carotid arteries of one of men who bleeds to death in front of a tied-up Walt and Jesse. Without fanfare, he coldly sacrifices one of his best men to set an example for Walt and Jesse of the fate that awaits them if they do not follow his orders.
Directly below drug cartels and large-scale operators, like Gus Fring, are the smaller drug entrepreneurs and dealers. In Albuquerque, the criminal drug market is dominated by undereducated, poor Latino Americans and white males who are lured by the quick cash and flashy lifestyle over low-wage employment. The white males usually serve a supporting role to the drug operations and/or act as consumers. Both of these groups are socially marginalized by a mainstream neoliberal global economy that only offers them low-wage jobs with little opportunities for social advancement. The American Southwest, with its sparsely populated rural areas, lack of social services, unproductive farming, weakened labor unions, and close proximity to the Mexican border, is one of the prime regions for the production and distribution of meth (Pine 2007). Latino American males are distinguished by an extreme form of “machismo,” which includes toughness, aggressiveness, sexism, and risk-taking behavior (Saez, et al. 2009). The impoverished whites emulate the mannerisms, language, and fashion associated with African American hip hop culture. The media dominated culture that surrounds these young men is filled with images of aggressive drug lords and vicious gangsters,[2] which affects and reflects their self-images and social behaviors. Because of these influences, the criminal drug culture in Breaking Bad is coded as hyper-masculine with an emphasis on power, dominance, and aggression.
Methamphetamine or meth has been called a neoliberal drug because it provides low-wage workers with more energy to work longer hours. It enables them to work fourteen-hour days and stay awake for as long as three weeks. Jason Pine (2007) asserts that the illegal meth is part of a much wider range of “performance enhancers” that have become both the fuel and the product of the neoliberal fetish of productivity and achievement within “the market.” These chemical boosters include everything from Starbucks double espressos to highly-caffeinated, energy drinks, steroids to Viagra, Xanax, and Adderall. Within this expanding legal narco-capitalism, workplace and everyday pharmacological doping have become normalized, expected, and in the case of students required to take attention deficit disorder medication, even mandatory. And, while increased legal restrictions on the sale of cold medication has made the rural production of meth more difficult, Wall Street brokers and college students are still able to obtain Adderall with few complications (Pine).
“I am awake,” declares Walt to Jesse, following his decision to begin cooking meth. Walt’s new vocation provides him with the excitement and renewed desire that has been missing from his stultifying middle-class existence.[3] Walt’s terminal condition and criminal entrepreneurship, liberate him from his former staid existence and frees him to express his repressed aggression. At the car wash, Walt explodes when his boss asks him to wipe down cars again. Walt assaults the display racks. In another scene, when Walt and his wife Skyler take Walter Jr. (R.J. Mitte) to buy pants, some young guy makes fun of Junior in front of his friends. Walt responds by knocking the guy to the ground. The old Walt would have walked out without saying anything and burned with internal rage. At the end of his first day as a meth cook, Walt is both physically and emotionally shaken, but also invigorated. Back at home, he meets his wife’s troubled inquiries with atypical sexual aggression. For Walt, neoliberal entrepreneurism restores his sense of normative masculinity and provides him with new-found confidence. Over time, as Walt finds himself becoming a full-fledged criminal, his cancer eventually goes into remission and his doctor is impressed with his recovery.
1
In
2
I’m referring to the popularity of gangsta rap, a subgenre of hip hop music, that focuses on urban crime and the violent lifestyle of inner-city youth and criminals, as well as the violent video games, such as the Grand Theft Auto series.
3
Jodi Dean says that, in the 1997 film