• loathsome dongeater@lemmygrad.ml
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    2 months ago

    Walt piles up bodies but it is clear that the bodies originated from the ultra-rich Gretchen and Elliot and not our hero Walt because of the poverty of life they cause by accumulating surplus value.

    Is this correct? I only watched until the bee filler episode but as I recall the bourgeois couple do not show up after the first few episodes. I don’t disagree that they have a hand in the criminality that follows but I don’t think the show tried to make their role in it apparent. After the first few episodes it essentially becomes Walt’s Bizarre Adventures in Cooking and Dealing Meth.

    Edit: nevermind looks like they feature more in the show as the next paragraph says.

    • Sodium_nitride@lemmygrad.ml
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      2 months ago

      Yeah, Walt is fully responsible. The bourgeois couple are revealed to not even be that bad. The idea that they stole from him is walt’s delusion. He left because of his inferiority complex (which he developed at a very young age).

      Honestly, the show is closer to being a Greek tragedy. Many people take it to be a critique of capitalism because of the background context and world models we as an audience bring to the show.

      In fact, the show goes out of its way to show that every moment in time, Walt has an out that he refuses to use because of pride. The show itself also analyses the role of the state or big business in the crime or poverty happening only tangentially and gives very little screen time to it.

        • Sodium_nitride@lemmygrad.ml
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          2 months ago

          By the chronology of the show, no. It would have been infinitely easier for Walt to have swallowed his pride and taken money from gretchen, or even borrowed from hank.

          Him becoming a drug lord was always about his own personal pride and sense of worth. It made him feel alive and powerful.

          • ghost_of_faso2@lemmygrad.ml
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            2 months ago

            The spark comes from it though, also think about a more structral approach; a socialized health care system would have taken the floor out of Walts meth and drug empire, he would have likely just been a high ranking pharma industry guy.