All Hail the King: Walter White as Tragic Hero

"This is the first day of the rest of your life, but what kind of life will it be, huh? Will it be a life of fear, of 'Oh, no no no I can't do this'? Of never once believing in yourself?"
-Walter White, Breaking Bad, Season 1, Episode 7: A No-Rough-Stuff Type Deal

For as long as I can remember,

Hamlet

has been my favorite classical play. At times, it has been my favorite all-around play. I have a personal theory (which I have absolutely no interest in proving) that a significant factor in

Hamlet

's continuing popularity is that it hits so many young men at just the right time in their lives for identifying with angst, indecision, patricide, and so much else. It is a truly great work of literature, and it's a great play - though that latter is as much for flaunting the rules as for any decent playcraft.

What I find extremely interesting about people's responses to the play, however, is something that I believe they tend to neglect in their interpretation of it. That is, the concept of divine order (or justice) that permeated Shakespeare's life at the time he wrote it. Very few people question the morality of Hamlet's actions in the course of avenging his father's death, apart from perhaps having some qualms about how it all works out for poor Ophelia. Yet the play is mercilessly just. In his pursuit of a murderer, Hamlet becomes a murderer, and is thus killed himself.

When

Breaking Bad

first premiered, the concept was so bizarre I and Wife Megan felt we had to give it a shot. AMC was just transitioning into its phase of incredible original programming, and that as much as the critical buzz and series conceit was so strange we just had to see what it was all about. Embarrassingly, I don't believe we made it through the first episode. I found it too bleak by half. Maybe if I had lasted the 45 minutes or so, I would've clued in to what makes the show so amazing but - as it is - I chose to leave it to the critics and cynics.

I'll admit I was wrong. I enjoy knowing when I'm wrong, even when admitting it is difficult. In this case, the admission is easy as pie.

Breaking Bad

is an exceptional example of drama and cinema, even outside of its television milieu, and I was a fool to wait as long as I have to catch up on its four seasons available to me. I'm now contemplating renting the first half of season 5, just to get caught up and experience the final episodes in real time - something I have never been compelled to do before.

I have another theory, one specific to

Breaking Bad

and its writers, and one that I've been debating a bit with a few people lately. This theory represents my personal hook into the series, which means I have a ready bias about it. If I'm wrong, I lose interest in the series or - worse yet - whenever the series finale rolls its way around I am bound for horrific disappointment in its story-telling. My bias is of course what leads me into debate about it. I need to test my theory against others' perceptions, to learn if I'm fooling myself.

It is so easy to fool oneself. You need only pay attention to yourself above all others.

My theory is this: Walter White is a character cast in the mould of the classic tragic hero. Furthermore, the writers know it, and use tragedy as their guiding principle for their tremendous, unified story arcs.

Boring as it may be for a way to begin, I feel the urge (rising, UNSTOPPABLE) to define some terms. Many of the disagreements I have had with people on this theory have I believe sprung from one word: Villain. People seem very invested in the idea of Walter as a gradually developing villain, and when I call him a "hero," they take umbrage. They take it all the way to Mexico and back.

My use of the term "hero" in this sense is not strictly speaking the inverse of "villain." I mean a hero in the sense of a "protagonist." I'm not sure why the term "tragic protagonist" has never caught on - it has lovely consonance. Perhaps it's a preference for the inferred irony of some of literature's most villainous tragic heroes. And therein is the crux of the semantic difficulty - a tragic hero can be a real dickhead.

(Perhaps it's for another post, but I take umbrage [all the way to Umbria and back] with the misuse of the term "anti-hero." People seem to think they understand what an anti-hero is based on the concept of a hero as a swell, stand-up guy. Ergo, to them an "anti-hero" is someone imperfect or not nice. But that's rather missing the point, or at least beside it. Grrr. Anyway...)

So why is the definition of hero-protagonist (

Snow Crash

fans, amirite? Hello? Is this thing on...?) so critical? Well, to begin with, the dramaturgical definition of a hero is simply more useful than "a righteous dude." And to conclude: That definition supports my argument.

According to literature both literate and dramatic, a hero is:

  • Chosen, rather than choosing of his fate.
  • Reactionary, usually reacting to antagonist characters, but sometimes just to such forces.
  • On a journey, in which he will learn and gain things and eventually apply these winnings to the world from which he comes.

And that's about it, as far as commonalities go. Mythological heroes may be transformed, comicbook heroes may operate from super-natural abilities, and Scoob and the gang may always catch their criminal, but none of those factors define them as heroes. Heroes are our connection to a story of learning and change, our guides, and there are no promises either the story or the hero will end happily.

Enter tragedy. It's another much-maligned term, in that people tend to take the colloquial usage and apply it to fiction. It is of course tragic when six nuns die in a horrific and sudden bus accident, and still more tragic when sixteen newly ordained nuns on their way to give cookies to quadriplegic blind orphans die in a horrific and sudden bus accident, one that could've been prevented by the driver simply using Google Maps instead of Apple ones. But it is a travesty rather than a tragedy, in the dramaturgical sense.

In fiction, a tragedy has a specific form. It is not enough for things to end badly for all involved. If it were, you could have a hysterically funny play that in its last ten minutes kills every character you care for (Paging Martin McDonagh [Just kidding! {Really kidding - you don't care for his characters one bit!}]). Much as we might enjoy such a play or movie now, it doesn't qualify as a tragedy, because a tragedy has to do with inevitability. In a tragedy, we feel the end coming, and know 1) nothing will ever be the same afterward, and 2) there is

nothing

we can do about it.

So when I call Walter White a tragic hero, here's what I'm saying:

He is on a journey through strange territory, from which he is returning with things he applies to his origins.

Hardly anyone would argue with this, I think. A good portion of the humor in the show has to do with Walter applying skills associated with his hard-earned "street cred" to his increasingly shaky suburban life. Whether it's carrying a second cell phone or learning how to get the drop on a thug, Mr. White has been on one darkly heroic cycle.

He reacts to antagonists.

This is an easy one to get tripped up on. After all, Walt expends so much of his effort in maintaining or regaining control, and in the long run (to date) he's been very successful. He adopts little pretense by the end of season 4 - he is IN CHARGE, and "the one who knocks." It's also difficult to cite an antagonist to Walt when we first meet him. Who's got it out for him when he's a mild-mannered chemistry teacher? Certainly not his overbearing boss at the car wash? Nope.

No, it's cancer.

An antagonist isn't defined solely by being in opposition to the protagonist. Something very important is accomplished by the antagonist - the inciting action. The thing that gets the ball rolling on the plot, for the hero to react off of. It can seem counter-intuitive at first; we'd like to believe that we are good, and that good is active, but consider for a moment some incredibly heroic story (in the "heroism" sense). Odds are you'll see Superman doesn't appear until some schmuck falls off a skyscraper, and Beowulf can't get decisive until Grendel rends a few limbs himself.

Cancer incites Walter to his new lifestyle, and is what threatens to prevent him from achieving his aim of providing enough support for his family once he's gone. It does so directly, by occasionally crippling him when he has to cook meth or kill a dealer, and indirectly, by threatening to end his life before he can pull through enough business to make his gamble worthwhile. The antagonism passes hands (not to Tuco - that's a period during which the plot frankly frays) to Gus just about as systematically as possible. In the beginning, Gus is literally impelling Walt to return to cooking, and Walt's cancer even abates in conjunction with his increasing fear for his life under the threat of Gus's rule.

He has a fatal flaw that will prove his downfall.

This is some of that inevitability I referred to earlier. Beyond the vague sense that this series of events can't possibly work out in Walter's favor, he has to evince some seed of failure or lack of insight that will eventually destroy him. Oedipus had his figurative (eventually literal) blindness about his parents, Macbeth his ambition, Lear his prideful vanity. Pride is a classic.

Hubris - overbearing pride or presumption. Mr. White has it in spades. It could be argued to be his characteristic trait. It prevents him from getting out of his dangerous business, from accepting financial help from an old colleague and flame, and drives him to improve and protect his product. So prideful is he, in fact, that Walt may have allowed Hank to find him out as "Heisenberg" rather than allow someone otherwise uninvolved in his affairs to believe he

wasn't

responsible for that magically pure meth. It remains to be seen if that moment of pure hubris will prove his tragic flaw. Walt's ever-shifting momentum and position make for some taut suspense on that count.

He is a noble/every-man, brought low for the gratification of the masses.

With

Death of a Salesman

, Arthur Miller very specifically made a tragedy of someone who was

not

a king, thereby implanting the idea of a tragic everyman as something of a contemporary American take on tragedy. We can certainly argue for Walter being an everyman like Willy Loman - an imperfect working man simultaneously sacrificing all for, yet undermining his family - but I'd also argue he can be perceived as something of the knighted class. He represents white, middle-class America, and though he's hardly well-off he also stands in stark contrast of benefit to the meth addicts and pushers with whom he comes to consort.

For a time, at least.

Walter White is chosen.

This may be the toughest point to argue, and brings us back around to the beginning of the story of

Breaking Bad

. Walt proving a predominantly reactive character does not of itself indicate that he is chosen, merely that he is subject to much circumstance (which is of itself a rather Shakespearean tragic-hero trait; but never mind). No amount of strange conjunction (like the grief-addled father of his partner's deceased girlfriend crashing a couple of planes over his house at just the right time) or unique portents (such as a roving stuffed bear's eye) or elaborate subsurface camera angles proves W.W. to be the chosen one. The question to answer is, "Why must it be him?"

This is where kings have it all worked out. They are ordained by God, generally speaking, and the land suffers as they do. It's hard to get more chosen than that. It's difficult to say whether or not there is a God in the world in which

Breaking Bad

's story is told (and here again we have a whole other dissertation) but if there is, he or she seems to be pretty far from the crime scene, so to speak. Still, there's another divine factor that we contemporary audiences are somehow less reticent to accept as a part of our stories. I'm speaking of course of fate.

If you rewatch the first episode of

Breaking Bad

, it's hard not to feel as though forces are aligning to send Walt down his eventual path. Every incident gives a subtle, necessary nudge to him, from how his diagnosis is delivered to his being along for a scouting mission on a meth lab a former student happens to be involved in. In the hands of lesser talent, this would read simply as weak writing, but the trend of

Breaking Bad

 has been to continue to make excellent use of far-reaching and interwoven influences. In fact, the structure of whole episodes and even seasons involves setting up a quixotic moment ahead of the story, in the future, making the action of the story a steady march to that inevitable conclusion. As though it's delivered to us by a soothsayer - we don't know what to make of the brief portent of what's to come when we receive it and once it becomes clear ... it's too late.

Walter White was destined to his fate, and it could be none other than him. All that remains is to see where that fate ultimately lands him.

How I Will Know That I'm Right:

  • There will be an antagonist in season 5.
  • Walt will die - preferably as a direct result of his hubris.
  • There is a God. Or at least a sense of divine order.
  • You'll tell me.

I have plans (SECRET WAYS) to see what's been aired of season 5 soon enough, though I frankly expect it to seem to refute my argument. At least, if I were the writers breaking (har har) a fresh season at the midway point, I would probably raise my protagonist up pretty high. All in preparation for one very tragic fall.

Is Nigh / Is Not Nigh

The world's always just about to end in New York City. It's not just a staple of our cinema, but a strange background noise to all the on-going construction and planning for the future. We traded in our "THE END IS NIGH" wearable placards a long time ago for ones that read things like "CASH 4 GOLD" and "

Flashdancers

- 2 4 1!" Because we're used to the idea. So much so, that when this date finally rolled around, we just hoped it'd be something interesting, like a giant creature or zombie plague, rather than the plain ol' typhoons and militant citizenry.

I've entertained an apocalyptic fantasy or two in my time.

John Hodgman

sums up this type of fantasy pretty succinctly when he describes it as one in which we envision ourselves not only as survivors, but special survivors - the ones too wily to wilt in the face of Armageddon.

I honor today's date over at one of the Tumblr 'blogs I oversee with Friend 

+Dave Younce

- Post-Apocalyptic Fashion - with the kind of pragmatically light-hearted look that comes natural to a naturalized New Yorker:

A Very Merry End-o-the-World to You!

Please enjoy, and if you've gotta go - go out with some style...

New York, NY

Hurricanes are threatening to become passé. Last year we had one, plus an earthquake. Of course, we're now hearing that Hurricane Sandy may be followed up by a nor'easter (which, in my head, is already named Annie - as in, lil' orphan). Just imagine if that proves to be a repeat of "Snowpocalypse," the storm that rocked the whole of the east coast not that long ago. At this rate, weather systems seem increasingly likely to cause another enormous blackout, like the one we had back in 2003. And even if they don't, with the pressure they've been under lately I suppose it's also possible we just might have another transit workers' strike before the end of 2013. But I don't mean to be pessimistic! Over the past decade or so, our police force has successfully foiled under a dozen proven terrorism attempts. Sure, they also clashed with our own citizenry over the Occupy Wall Street protests, but.... Hey! At least no one's flown any planes into any buildings here, lately!

I'm not aiming to make light of any of this. I'm just tired.

I used to consider it a cliché, the way that movies concerned with monumental American events (including, of course, disasters) so frequently feature New York as a landscape. After living here for over a dozen years myself, it seems more apt than anything else. Even when we set aside the iconography so necessary in film, wherein a subset represents the larger culture, the fact is that a lot befalls our fine 'burgh. Manhattan is set on some ley line intersection of fortune and desperate fate.

This event-riddled lifestyle of living amongst "the five boroughs" used to be a way of life I relished. As a kid, I used to run outside when it was windy. I wanted the world to be an exciting place, dramatic and narrative, swirling and swift. I still do. I still entertain survivalist fantasies and pursue the occasional unnecessary speed. It's just that last Monday night, as I prepared to huddle up for the night with Darling Wife and Tempestuous Twelve-Week-Old on an air mattress in the most central room of our railroad apartment, bags packed and boots by the makeshift bedside in case of a sudden evacuation, it all seemed suddenly a bit too ... well: disastrous.

And not a moment later, it seemed too familiar. I'm tired.

We've fared among the best of all the locations where Sandy laid down her land legs. We're in central Astoria, and though not five miles hence our friends in Long Island City have a quasi-war-zone on their hands when they step outside, here plenty of people are having food delivered and getting far more drunk than they generally would on a weekday. Personally, the storm has had the following effects:

  • A paid week off from work, for the most part (OK: I have worked, but from home, and as the email server went down so did the list of tasks I could reasonably accomplish);
  • Hours upon hours of more time with my family than I could've otherwise expected;
  • Clean laundry and apartment; and
  • More Facebook, Google Reader and Tumblr than any one man ought to have thrust upon him.

There are people whose lives are at risk, and those who've lost their lives already over this latest storm. I have nothing to complain about. The spookiest thing about our Halloween was that we're hardly exercising enough these days to justify some peanut-butter cups. Instead of power failures or looting, we've had to confront the fact that we were just too baby-encumbered to do anything adventurous for our four-year anniversary last night. We're incredibly fortunate, and I'm very grateful.

And I'm tired. Tired of the risk, the threat, the struggle of living here. I'll always love New York, and always miss it once we've had enough and moved on. I'm sad even now, with no special deadline for leaving, at the thought of no longer living here. I have been sad for years - when I happen to think of it - years over which the option of leaving NYC for greener (but NOT by definition more lovely) pastures has grown increasingly practical. I've been subliminally preparing myself for the day, because in the midst of the uncertainty involved in calling this city my home I've had complete certainty about how I will look back on it: with little else but longing.

But just maybe we should get going before the Mayan calendar ends. After all, we've already got our "go bags" packed.

To All the Jokers Out There

I don't yet know if it was a killing in any way inspired by the content of the series. It's too early in the news cycle at this point for us to be sure of anything related to the gunning down of 12 people at a midnight premier of The Dark Knight Rises in Colorado. As of this writing, it could be religiously motivated terrorism, it could be indiscriminate or a crime of passion. What's difficult to ignore (for those of us millions who know the movies, and the tens of thousands of them who know the comicbooks that contributed to those movies) is that a man took it upon himself to murder an audience for a story that's laced with issues of copycat vigilantism, violence, morality and ethics. Not to mention: Justice.

I can't effectively weigh-in through one post on any of these topics individually (heck: I can barely suss out the distinction between morality and ethics without a self-conscious Google or two) much less the lot of them, entwined. I mean, does justice even exist? Or is it, rather like "honor," one of those old-fashioned ideals that seems a little too black-and-white to a contemporary society? Are our societal ideals rife with concepts that just appeal to our baser natures? Or are they ideals, in earnest, and we just need to keep striving to conceive of them in a truer sense?

There is one thing about which I do have something unique to contribute. Maybe it's wrong-headed, or too soon, but every so often we each and all have a reaction to something going on in our society that we need to work to process. This definitely falls under that category for me.

I was in college by the time Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went on their spree in Colorado, but freshly so, and the crime held eerie echoes for me. In early high school, with certain friends, I planned crimes all the time. Those plans never involved murder, but were closely related to new feelings of rage that I didn't know how to handle. I played, and loved, the video game Doom. On the birthday before my freshman year of high school, my mom took me out to get me the black trench-coat I so desperately desired, and I wore it regularly - even in terribly inappropriate climates - right into college.

I also possessed an obsessive love of Batman, the character. I described him as my idol. That may seem unconnected, especially when you hear my rationale for this idolization: That he represents someone who not only survived trauma, but turned it into powerful motivation to excel and strive to make things right. That was an earnest rationale. It just leaves out that I also idolized the character because he could and did powerfully destroy other human beings with his bare (all right: gloved) hands. Is Batman's moral (or ideal) that he take no human life justification enough for his methods of achieving "justice"?

One thing I greatly appreciate about the recent trilogy of Batman movies is that the writers and director seem to be aware of the moral ambiguity of one person deciding what is right, and using violence to achieve that determination. They utilize and glorify that for our entertainment, but I appreciate the awareness nonetheless. After the first film, the media was already drawing comparisons between this Batman and American foreign policy in general, George W. Bush in particular - "You tried to kill my daddy, I'ma come out there with all my wealth and might and end your reign. Means and United Nations be damned." And in The Dark Knight, Batman literally eschews international extradition law. The writers then up the ante in the film's climax, showing our hero as a hunter willing to massively violate the rights of citizens in order to catch his prey. It seems to me they know that this is what they are doing, and that they want us to experience ambiguous feelings about it.

I suppose the great dichotomy between the iconic hero and villain of these stories - Batman and the Joker - can be a confusing one. Both are vigilantes, both rely on fear to achieve their ends, and both are flamboyant as all get-out. One is supposedly moral, the other amoral, but I've already pointed out that their ethics are not nearly as easily distinguished from one another. That leaves us with order versus chaos.

Who doesn't love a little chaos? I suppose for me it's been something of an acquired taste, but it's one I've definitely acquired as a performer and an audience member. Chaos can seem more sincere, frankly. Life does not readily present us with reasons - much less reason - and particularly in the contemporary age there seems little justification for a belief in a greater purpose, much less power. Purpose itself seems a hollow construction, under these circumstances. So, there are those of us who embrace a character bold enough to take that notion to the logical absurdity. There are some who just want to watch the world burn.

I'm not implying that the man who committed these murders was in any way inspired by the character of the Joker. Lord knows, we're likely to have more than one piece of unoriginal news coverage in the coming weeks that points out connections between this criminal and Joker's callousness, or Bane's paraphernalia (never mind that the cosplay an opening night inspires is a perfect cover for someone who already has destructive designs). What I am saying is that these characters have come to represent certain perspectives and behaviors of contemporary Americans, the same way the character of Batman has, or any ongoing archetype. The causation of it can not be sussed out with a few Googles, and odds are that culture in general exists as it has for all of human history: a sort of feedback loop between how we are, and how we portray ourselves in media.

So, causation aside, who has the right idea? Are human beings meant more for order, or chaos? Is it all so meaningless that the only true justification for action is how it affects the individual, the self? I acknowledge the possibility. Maybe we're all just too frightened of it to face it.

Maybe. But I'm disgusted, both by the incident early this morning, and the notion in the abstract. What utter selfishness. What a nauseating disregard for or ignorance of anything outside of one's own perception. Little wonder that we are eager to ascribe part of the cause for such actions to youth and/or mental illness - these are the two handiest explanations for such inward-obsessed, disconnected personalities. Regardless of the cause, and even regardless of the question of chaos versus order, even the Jokers of the world must admit that theirs are essentially selfish acts.

I have one argument to make to such people in such a debate, one thing to suggest that they're fools beyond even the kind of fool their worldview suggests they ought to be. If none of it matters, if life is indeed as meaningless and people as insignificant as in your philosophy, why do you have a purpose? Why must you do what you do, be it for personal gratification or illuminating the rest of us to your perspective?

You might just consider the possibility that your commitment to nihilism is best expressed in the same direction as your attention is. On yourself.

Two Influences

I was 24 years old when it happened. It was a gorgeous day -- I mean really, really beautiful. The kind of advanced autumn day that is both bright and slightly cool and, once I thought I was relatively safe and had let someone know that, I sat in Central Park and watched the people go by. It was a fairly surreal thing to do but, then again, even the most common of things felt strange that day. I sat on a park bench just east of Sheep Meadow and watched as dozens of people in suits and carrying briefcases walked north through the park, no one particularly rushing, most people seeming slightly dazed, or even simply surprised, like me, that it should be such a beautiful day. This was before the twin towers actually fell down, you understand. That hadn't even occurred to me as a remote possibility.

Of course I can't say for certain, but I'd wager that any artist living in and around New York City on September 11, 2001, has lingering effects in his or her work thereafter. You wouldn't have to actively explore the issues or circumstances, or even the relevant emotions, to exhibit this influence. No, I see it coming out in myriad little ways too, without our even trying. Of course, many do try.

Friend Kate

often did in her work with

Kirkos

, but particularly in the last full-length piece she created with them/us,

Requiem

. Directly or indirectly, we all had a profound personal experience, and we all keep returning to it in the hopes of making a little more sense of it . . . or at least of ourselves, afterward.

I have never quite tackled it head-on in my work. I did

some agit-prop theatre

that referenced the following war in Iraq, and I wrote a bit on it, even going so far as to start a play all about three people's personal lives leading up to the big day. (I still plan to return to that someday; feel it was a bit too big for me at the time.) I even fantasized a little choreography for a dance about it, and I am in

no

way a choreographer of dance. In fact, it's interesting to me that I took my creativity over the tragedy into dance, if but in my mind. I think there's a reason for that. I'm not sure, but it may say something about how abstract it felt at the time, unknowable -- just a series of visceral experiences that couldn't be ordered into anything particularly narrative or thematic. It felt, and I suppose it still feels rather, like an experience not meant to be understood.

It's curious to me, also, how profoundly I felt this year's anniversary. In previous years certainly I paused to reflect and (especially in the few anniversaries immediately after) even took some private time to remember and process and grieve. Yet this year, I was rather emotionally floored for a few days. I didn't know anyone personally who died in the attacks that day. Not that it's necessary to justify my response, but in seeking explanation there's no light to be shed in that direction, and what particular significance could the eighth year after hold? It was terrible, of course, and they say all New Yorkers have some kind of collective response around this time, our stress levels instinctively rocketing up. Still, this year seemed different, somehow.

I have an opportunity that's up-and-coming to make a show of my own. Actually, it's a commitment to provide a show for ETC's side stage program, Out On a Limb. When I submitted my proposal, I wrote about presenting something that explored a more intentional incorporation of circus and physical skill acts into scene work. That's something I've always wanted to see, and it seems the perfect time to explore it. It remains a very unformed idea, without even a story to back it up yet, and I find myself wondering if this could be an opportunity, too, to explore my responses to the events of 9/11. If it proves to be, it still won't be my focus or specific goal. Primarily, I want to fuse reasonably naturalistic acting with ecstatic and impressive movement.

An interesting personal coincidence related to 2001 is that it was the year that I met David Zarko -- now artistic director of

ETC

(not to mention the guy responsible for most of my professional acting opportunities) -- and in the same year was my introduction to circus skills. In many ways, it was the year-of-birth for who I am now as a creative artist, so it's bound to hold quite a bit of sway over anything I make. When it comes to that infamous day, I'm glad that in addition to all the horror and confusion, I especially remember what a beautiful day it was. There's something in this that comforts me.