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Walter White Fandom In Vince Gilligan's Breaking Bad

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From fan-made movies to memes, the fandom that surrounds the television show Breaking Bad is one rich in creativity. Like other fan cultures, the Breaking Bad fandom has a way of ‘poaching’ the original text and reconstructing it in order to relay certain ideas and ideologies that may not have been intended. In this essay, I will analyze the fandom that surrounds the television show Breaking Bad, how I participate and interact in this particular replay culture, and how gender roles and norms are reflected in the text, as well as how these ideologies influence me, as a viewer. The media text I will be analyzing throughout this essay is the television drama Breaking Bad by Vince Gilligan. This show depicts the story of Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher, who decides to start producing crystal meth with one of his former students after being diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer, in order to …show more content…

A participatory culture, as Jenkins describes, is a culture around a media text in which fans take their views and reactions to a text and translate them into social interactions and creation (1988). For Jenkins’ example, he describes how female Star Trek fans will rewrite episodes into fanfiction with strong female leads and feminist ideologies (1988). This is a form of participatory culture considered textual ‘poaching’. Viewers take the parts of the text that they enjoy, and recreate what they believe to be lacking. In a similar vein, while the show was still releasing new shows I was an active participant on the Reddit Breaking Bad thread. Here, myself and other fans would create and share theories about the shows progression, or about specific character’s storylines. This allowed me to be forward thinking about the text and story line, as well as allowing me the freedom and creativity to predict where the show might venture next and what the characters might do in

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In Vince Gilligan’s television show Breaking Bad, the main character, Walter White, experiences an eastern style journey in his life as he battles cancer and tries to accumulate money to leave his family with. Walter White, also know as Walt, is a high school chemistry teacher and an assistant at his local car wash. At the beginning of season one of Vince Gilligan’s show Breaking Bad, Walter White is diagnosed with an inoperable lung cancer. Due to this cancer he abstains from working, therefore not being able to provide for his family.

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In the popular television show Breaking Bad, the main character, Walter White, cooks and sells methamphetamine in order to leave behind money for his family after learning of his terminal lung cancer. The pilot to the series does an excellent job of portraying methamphetamine in ways that evidence suggests is true. Most illegal methamphetamine in the United States is cooked in small “stovetop” labs that may only exist for a few days in a remote location. (Drugs, Society & Human Behavior, pg. 135). Walter and Jesse Pinkman, his lowlife addict assistant, purchase an RV to drive to the remote desert region of New Mexico to cook the illicit meth.

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