The Aestheticization of Evil
I would like to discuss with you the problem of the moral purification of immoral acts in modern cinema. I will construct my hypothesis around reflections on the long-running series "Breaking Bad," not because this series is particularly special, but simply because it effectively illustrates what I want to talk about.
The series consists of five seasons, where for 4.5 of them, the protagonists manage to violate the law in a very heroic, fantastic manner in the name of earning money, and in the remaining 0.5 season, responsibility and the death of the main character (MC) ensue.
I would like to draw your attention to the following point. The presentation: the MC is a chemistry teacher who finds out he has a terminal illness; his son is disabled, and his wife is an empty shrew living by shallow ideals. His decision to use his chemistry skills to cook methamphetamine is morally justified. The plot then develops around survival in this business, which necessitates stealing/killing/lying/money laundering, and so on. Most scenes are dedicated to inventiveness. The story of the series is an epic of mastery, willpower, and creativity. The ability to operate outside the law and still triumph is elevated to a cult status. Even when the main character strangles a man with his bare handsit is filmed like an orgasm.
The concluding 0.5 season looks like a forced payment by the series' producers for being allowed to film crimes for 4.5 seasons. Yet, the MC's final reckoningnot by law, but by chanceseems to suggest to us: reason is the power that allows you to spit on everyone (the law, morality, society, the state, stupid gangsters with automatics); only chance can still oppose him.
The MC's death also speaks of purification. A catharsis occurspurification through death. We now have nothing to blame the MC for. He paid. And in the realm of feelings, in the deepest interpretations of this event by the viewer, something like redemption takes placeredemption by this beacon of science, for all those yearning to follow the same path.
As I noted above, this series is merely a successful illustration of the problems I would like to discuss:
1. The majority of screen time in such "masterpieces" is dedicated to the aestheticization and heroization of the sinner; the moral justification of atrocities.
2. The reckoning is presented as a "nod to the genre" or a payment for the right to glorify crime.
3. Punishment, even if inevitable, is perceived as the completion of the drama, as an atonement for all future sinners, and not as retribution.
I suggest we discuss this phenomenon if this topic resonates with you.
The series consists of five seasons, where for 4.5 of them, the protagonists manage to violate the law in a very heroic, fantastic manner in the name of earning money, and in the remaining 0.5 season, responsibility and the death of the main character (MC) ensue.
I would like to draw your attention to the following point. The presentation: the MC is a chemistry teacher who finds out he has a terminal illness; his son is disabled, and his wife is an empty shrew living by shallow ideals. His decision to use his chemistry skills to cook methamphetamine is morally justified. The plot then develops around survival in this business, which necessitates stealing/killing/lying/money laundering, and so on. Most scenes are dedicated to inventiveness. The story of the series is an epic of mastery, willpower, and creativity. The ability to operate outside the law and still triumph is elevated to a cult status. Even when the main character strangles a man with his bare handsit is filmed like an orgasm.
The concluding 0.5 season looks like a forced payment by the series' producers for being allowed to film crimes for 4.5 seasons. Yet, the MC's final reckoningnot by law, but by chanceseems to suggest to us: reason is the power that allows you to spit on everyone (the law, morality, society, the state, stupid gangsters with automatics); only chance can still oppose him.
The MC's death also speaks of purification. A catharsis occurspurification through death. We now have nothing to blame the MC for. He paid. And in the realm of feelings, in the deepest interpretations of this event by the viewer, something like redemption takes placeredemption by this beacon of science, for all those yearning to follow the same path.
As I noted above, this series is merely a successful illustration of the problems I would like to discuss:
1. The majority of screen time in such "masterpieces" is dedicated to the aestheticization and heroization of the sinner; the moral justification of atrocities.
2. The reckoning is presented as a "nod to the genre" or a payment for the right to glorify crime.
3. Punishment, even if inevitable, is perceived as the completion of the drama, as an atonement for all future sinners, and not as retribution.
I suggest we discuss this phenomenon if this topic resonates with you.
Comments (59)
There's no story at all without evil. So the question can only be about how evil is treated in the story. I haven't watched the series so I cannot comment in detail, but in principle, I would suggest that a move away from the strict rules of separation of heroes and villains, white hats and black hats, cowboys and Indians, is long overdue.
That the hero is the villain, that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, is nothing new in the world, but somewhat rare at least in US cinema tradition. So it's all in the treatment of characters, and the details of the message conveyed, that I don't know about.
But that we are the goodies and they are the baddies, is a dangerously complacent message that must surely encourage intolerance and divisiveness. Avoiding that message gets a preliminary in-principle thumbs-up from me. :up:
To suggest this man would be in any way an anti-hero there seems to be a missing link here.
The MC is conspicuously named Walter White, and considering this is an American series I'm sure there's a clumsy attempt at societal commentary in here somewhere that we're missing.
I agree with this, just as I agree that this isn't exactly news.
For example, in another well-known series, "Game of Thrones," each character does something morally reprehensible (at least according to our understanding of medieval and even modern morality). And for modern cinema, this is something of a quality mark. On the surface, this adds realism. The creators tell us, "You can't be a saint, we're all sinners," "the world is a complicated place," "not everything is so clear-cut." It looks cool.
But that's just on the surface. At its core, every such creation contains a metanarrative: "no one is responsible for evil deeds," "there is no justice," "you can do whatever you want, as long as you're careful."
Sin, bad deeds, immoral behavior seem to become the norm. There's no punishment, and if there is, it's later.
Here on the forum, topics about morality, ethics, and morality are very popular, focusing mainly on classic trolley problems and the like (I think everyone is familiar with these themes). But I'd like to talk about something else. After watching such films or TV series, it feels like morality has been completely sidelined in decision-making today.
That is, when solving a hypothetical trolley problem, a modern person doesn't ask themselves, "What should I do?" but rather, "Who witnessed my actions?", "Can I justify this action to the people I care about?", "Do I even have to justify myself to anyone?", "Which decision will be most beneficial to me, and not to someone else?"
That's where I see the problem. That's what I'd like to discuss.
Quoting Tzeentch
I'm really curious if this was the creators' intention. Can you elaborate on your idea?
Eh, I'm just riffing, really. I don't know if it's there, though it wouldn't surprise me.
Walter as a stand-in for "dissatisfied middle-aged white man", with his terminal illness being a vessel to have him act out his ultimate power fantasy (which apparently is becoming a petty criminal).
It sounds just about bad enough to come from Hollywood, doesn't it? :lol:
I'm rewatching BB now, and I really don't see it this way. Walter's crime destroys his family and friends. At the end of the show, he is alone and miserable. In the moment the viewer cheers his victories, in the big-picture the show does not glorify Walt.
In Season 1, we're rooting for him, though. In S1, no one around him respects him. We cheer when he fights off the boys who are bullying Walt Jr. for his disability. We cheer those early victories where he puts assholes in their place and learns to stand up for himself. Over time, Walt turns less sympathetic, and by the time we hit season 5, Walt is a complete psychopath but we've known him since S1 so it's a bit different than just turning on the screen and seeing a psycho.
So no, I don't see BB as glorifying crime upon reflection. If at the end of the show Walt lived in a giant mansion with all his friends and family, then yeah, I call it glorification. Walt's adventures are exciting and risky, but not ultimately good. In nearly all cases, financial success comes at the cost of family and friends.
EDIT: In the earlier seasons there's more of this in-the-moment glorification, for instance when Walt blows up Tuco's office. In season 5, it's much grittier, and you're likely terrified of Walt, e.g., when he coordinates the prison hit, it's conveyed in brutal detail. No one wants to be Walt in those later seasons.
He doesn't start off as a drug lord. He starts as a pathetic man who no one respects and has seemingly never stood up for himself, and is now faced with his own mortality, which is both terrifying and freeing. You cheer him on in the beginning.
A TV series is about emotion, pulling us into dilemmas and relationships that keep us guessing, speculating, and wanting more. The best ones show us something new and unexpected, exploring situations we hadnt considered. In that sense, Breaking Bad, as a multi-layered, expectation-defying narrative, achieved exactly what it set out to do.
There are many possible explanations for Breaking Bads story choices. The main one, I think, is that 'bad guys' are simply more interesting to watch than 'good guys'. Good guys are dull, and television has spent decades telling anemic and improbable stories about heroes triumphing over villains.
By contrast the character arc of an ordinary person (like us) sinking deeper into questionable activities and behaviours, becoming trapped by his choices is just more compelling and inherently dramatic. Welsh actor Anthony Hopkins once described the show as a Shakespearean or Jacobean tragedy. This is not a new narrative convention (Macbeth, Richard III, Titus Andronicus).
That said, its not a show I particularly enjoyed, I never got past season three or four. I tend to lose patience with most long-form TV; I prefer stories that reach their conclusion in a tighter, more contained form.
Breaking Bad ended 12 years ago. Will we be learning that someone is appalled by The Sopranos next (it ended in 2007)?
The anti-hero has been a fixture in "modern cinema" for decades. A fixture in literature far longer. It's difficult to take such "what's wrong with people these days?" complaints seriously.
That's the crazy part.
He is freed, and with this freedom he chooses to turn himself into an even more pathetic man.
But it tells us something about the modern zeitgeist that we apparently feel that it's better to be a petty criminal who ruins lives for a living, than to be a father who works an honest job to support his disabled child.
I understand that this is the way the series is deliberately framed, and most people just go along with it without ever looking at the picture critically, but it's just so hopelessly confused I can't help but wonder what gives rise to media like this.
As you may have read, this example is given as a vivid illustration. The topic I touched on concerns not the series but a cultural phenomenon.
Quoting Leontiskos
Yes. I wanted to mention Joker, too. It's truly a phenomenon. Just like "Perfume."
For me, the earliest such example was Nabokov with "Lolita." There you have it, page after page of aestheticization of pedophilia. A striking example of how, using literary talent, you can vividly and thoroughly describe the feelings of sick people. I didn't finish reading it at the time because I couldn't take it anymore after page 10.
But what a storm of emotion and criticism this work provoked at the time! If the author's goal was to make a name for himself, he achieved it.
The idea for this post arose from a conversation about a local TV series centered around the justice system: it meticulously depicts abuses of power by law enforcement officers, a judge masturbating under his robes, and bribes, bribes, bribes.
Of course, in the end, as the genre dictates, justice is restored, but again, it's not because of the officials' vices, but simply because of accidents or technical errors.
And I'm talking about a disconnect here. A kind of cultural fracture: you won't be punished for your vices, but for an accident you miscalculated. So, it doesn't matter how bad you are; what matters is how sensible and prudent you are.
And the second point. This series (produced by order of the government) also carries a hidden message: "This is how it is here, be prepared, know that this is how it is here." This seems to remove any questions or demands on the authorities, as represented by the average person. You may disagree, but you know what you're dealing with.
Many countries around the world ban smoking in films and on TV. By anyone, whether villains or heroes. Frankly, I approve of this. Although it is censorship. After all, by simply showing the undesirable behavior itself, you're essentially saying, "What's the big deal? Everyone does it."
Thereby showing the emptiness and potential manipulativeness of aestheticization, since Humbert is not the author's mouthpiece.
I agree with you. In "Lolita," the aestheticization of evil (page after page of beautiful descriptions) doesn't lead to "redemption" or normalization, as in BB, but rather emphasizes its emptiness. But that was only the beginning of the genre.
:up:
That would depend on whether there is karmic retribution, in which case one's mortality would not be freeing at all. A lot of modern culture is fundamentally nihilist - nothing matters in the end, right? We'll all end up dead. ( I didn't end up watching Breaking Bad, although it had a reputation as a cracking drama, and many other streamers I have watched are equally nihilistic in that sense).
And as you may have noted, my observation was that your concern over this "cultural phenomenon" is hackneyed.
The world has changed forever for me now.
Quoting BitconnectCarlos
:100: If anything, watching BB tells us that we wouldn't want to be like Walter White, even if we didn't care about the misery of producing a drug that ruins lives. These kinds of series present a picture of the antihero entering a kind of hell of life threatening entanglements, which just serves to reinforce why it is wrong even from a standpoint of pure self-interest. He puts those he loves in serious danger which is unforgivable.
Another weird one is Red Dead Redemption II. Arthur, protagonist, lives a life of impossible gang associated crime, one murder after another to acquire wealth, whether taking bounties or committing murder for a few bucks. We are complicit as the one playing, choosing honor or dishonor. By the end, no one in history could've committed such a long series of depraved acts and live to tell about it and yet we somehow have empathy for the guy as he comes around to realize his great mistake. There is some feeling of innocence about such characters, as if they are not self-created, but merely the condition of life's happenstance.
The tragedy, self-destruction of the antihero, perhaps with the realization of their mistake if they go do it all over is what makes the progression of such stories morally satisfying. To see them live happily ever after is what would make it more repugnant to our moral sensitivities.
Quoting Astorre
Quoting Astorre
I actually majored in literature, but I never understood such formulations.
Speaking of the audience as "we", or how "a viewer" understands or interprets this or that. Or claims about the author's intention (without actually asking the author anything). Or what a text does or doesn't do.
Can you, for example, cite an actual passage from "Lolita" that emphasizes the emptiness of the aestheticization of evil?
And where is the "redemption" or normalization of evil in "Breaking Bad"? Can you quote an actual text from there to this effect?
I find that often, when people interpret a text, they often externalize their feelings and ideas in regard to the text, and assume a type of supremacy over the text and objectivity. As in, "This isn't just how I see the text, this is how it really is, this is what it really says." An often, they cannot actually support their interpretation with actual citations from the text.
In the end, so much of what counts for "reading literature" actually has to do with internalizing and strengthening a particular ideology and value system. The individual books or films etc. are just means for that.
For example, many books or films are characterized by critics and intellectuals as being "anti-war". And yet in the book itself, there may not be a single sentence to that effect. Yet culturally, we are often expected to read it that way.
Quoting Astorre
It's been an ongoing trend to demote morality to the domain of mere "feelings" or "emotions". Psychology has a lot to do with it, with its emphasis on "dealing with emotions". For such psychology, the problem isn't that you were wrongfully terminated from your job; it's that you feel sad or angry about it.
Perhaps @Count Timothy von Icarus can say something more about this.
A worthy critique and an interesting comment. You're bringing me back down to earth, saying that statements require empirical support. Moreover, the approach I used to interpret them may indicate a cognitive errorI could have easily imagined something and selected facts to support it.
Your criticism is valid.
At the same time, I'd like to justify myself a bit. The point is that, as I believe, art is, first and foremost, about feelings. In interpreting BB, in this case, I've applied a new lens. That is, I've proposed not an accumulation of empirical data about the phenomenon, but a rethinking of its very foundation. Is this speculative? Perhaps. But that's also a way of philosophizing.
Returning to the comment itselfyou criticize the lack of empiricism in your statements. But my statement is at the level of rethinking the idea of ??interpretation. Is this prohibited?
I had a thread on this a while back, although the essay it focused on had some serious issues with trying to cram the issue into a Marxist framing (which works for some aspects, but not for others)
You raise an interesting question because not every "drug lord" story, much less every story that fetishizes evil, ends up with a "just" ending. Some end with the anti-hero being successful (e.g., Hannibal, Peaky Blinders). Hence, I don't really think "atonement" is the general emphasis here. I think it has more to do with the celebration of the "unconquerable will" and the freedom embodied in criminal transgression.
Hence, I still agree with you 100% here:
Quoting Astorre
Exactly. And it is an instrumentalized reason that allows one to do this. The question of what reason says one ought to do is often deferred, sometimes indefinitely, although as you note, sometimes there is a redemptive "crisis point," as when Walter has to save Jesse.
Anyhow, I think such endings often play more of a role of showing how the character has ultimately decided to brave "real stakes and dangers," as well as providing a sort of convenient plot element for closing a series/film with pathos, rather than any sort of moral lesson (i.e., "crime doesn't pay"). Redemption is sometimes in the mix (Pulp Fiction... sort of), but not always (e.g., not in Scarface or Goodfellas really). Either way, the anti-hero who dies or is finally imprisoned is often presented like Icarus. They flew too close to the sun, but we can also say "at least they flew! At least they tried!"
Also, it's sort of a trope in some modernist literature and literary analysis that it is precisely the inevitability of defeat, and the impossibility of "total victory" that lends "struggle" its meaning, and this often seems to be part of the idea as well. (You even see this reading of Homer too, although I take it that the key insight Homer gives us is actually that [I]even[/I] immortality cannot make the meaningless meaningful, not that finitude grants meaning to the otherwise meaningless).
Quoting Astorre
Right, sometimes you'll see the claim that "morally grey" characters are a helpful addition to modern art. I don't think this is quite right. Aeneas is morally grey and ultimately fails to live up to the principles he is supposed to embody. David is morally grey; he commits adultery and then covers it up with murder and is condemned by the prophet Nathan. I think the real difference is a sort of perspectivism that justifies such characters. The David Story (Samuel - early I Kings) is incredibly rich, but it doesn't ask us to see the Bathsheba incident in a way that "justifies David in his own eyes."
Well, there is good and bad here. No doubt, the modern novel has led to psychological portraits with more depth. I think a problem though is that perspectivism as a narrative tool can often bleed into perspectivism as a sort of philosophy (and this is bad when it is not intentional, but something an author or audience feels they cannot avoid). The way this tends to play out IMHO is that authors need to keep conjuring up ever more wicked and sadistic villains in order to project some semblance of moral order onto their plots (certainly something you see in A Game of Thrones).The irony here is that the need to introduce super sadistic, over the top evil villains ends up sort of bowdlerizing the plot in the same way a more sanitized story would.
And yet people ultimately do end up idolizing him, although perhaps not quite as much as Tony Montana (Scarface), Thomas Shelby (The Peaky Blinders), etc. The drug lord anti-hero is a sort of trope at this point.
You make a very important point; Walter is a relatable, but also somewhat pathetic figure. Weeds had a somewhat similar thread with a "single mom turned crime lord." Walter, through ambition and a shedding of social niceties, transcends this pathetic, "beta male" mentality and moves into a space of limitless ambition, or as he puts it, the pursuit of "empire." I think this goes along with our society's fetishization of acquisitiveness (pleonexia is now pretty much a virtue instead of a vice, we are to never be satisfied, always striving for more, maintaining our grindset mindset, etc.). Yet at a deeper level I think this has to do with the fear in our culture, particularly among men, of degenerating into a bovine consumer, a castrated subhuman who no longer receives or [I]deserves[/I] recognition (thymos). This thread in modern life was aptly diagnosed by Fukuyama in The End of History and the Last Man for instance . Yet, whatever else the drug lord is, they aren't one of Nietzsche's "Last Men." Walter's story is partially the tale of a man transcending Last Manhood through crime. The point isn't so much the crime, as this transcending motion.
But this also intersects with the particularly capitalist elevation of fortitude when wed to ambition and acquisitiveness. Mark Fisher gets at part of this when he analyzes the notion of "keeping it real" in gangster rap culture. To "keep it real" is to cease being a dupe and beta, to no longer pretend that the old morality of piety, temperance, humility, etc. has any real purchase. It is to be "real" in precisely the way liberalism says man *really* is, i.e., as an atomized self-interested utility maximizer driven on by irrational bodily and thymotic appetites. This is all anyone *really* ever was; the "old morality" was variously a duplicitous trick played on the masses by the elites, and the clergy's own twisted will to power coming out in the will to dominate themselves and others through religion. Walter White and other similar characters shed their connection to custom and desire for safety, and so overcome mediocrity and the omnipresent ill of bourgeois boredom and self-hatred.
You can see this in the cut throat competition of "reality TV" as well. They often seem to try to cast people who will gladly play up the "win at all cost" psychopath role.
Quoting Leontiskos
Yes, but I think the Joker, Tyler Durden of Fight Club, and other similar characters play to a slightly different ethos. The Joker burns all the money he receives in the Dark Knight. He isn't pursuing meglothymia through a sort of "capitalism by other means," but is turning against society itself (often to point out its own fraudulence). He is beyond the need for recognition. There is a bit of "divine madness" there ("holy fools" also shunned custom to engage in social commentary, although obviously in a very different way). I think these sorts of characters are extremely relevant to the appeal of "trolling" mentioned in the other thread on that topic.
For instance, when the Joker gives two boats, one full of regular citizens, one full of prisoners, the power to blow each other up in the Dark Knight, and then threatens to kill everyone if one side won't murder the other, the whole point is that he is exposing the "real" human being that lies beneath the niceties of the "old morality" (or something like that).
Hannibal Lecter is also a good example here because his total shedding of custom and ability to endure suffering turn him into a superhuman of sorts.
Unfortunately, R. Scott Bakker's work isn't that popular (which I sort of get, he isn't for everyone) and I think only @180Proof has read him here, but he is (perhaps unintentionally) a great example here. He is an eliminativist who has a fairly negative view of humanity, and he engages in a trope across his books where there will be a sort of anti-hero/villain character who becomes superhuman through recognizing and accepting the truth of eliminativism and mechanism, and then using this insight to manipulate others (and to manipulate himself through technology and technique). The idea is that, if one realizes that custom is ultimately groundless, it can become just another tool for mastery. Likewise, the body and soul become tools. Everything can be instrumentalized and bent towards the achievement of one's goals; and wed to a potent enough intellect, this combination is unbeatable.
But Bakker is very interesting because, despite this seeming voluntarism (a voluntarism that emerges from his prizing of intellect, but an intellect reduced to a tool), he has in some ways a more ancient, and thick, notion of freedom as involving self-mastery, self-government, and self-knowledge. I suppose Hannibal partially embodies these traits too, although in a way that isn't as fully thought out.
The problem though is that, as these notions are taken to their limit, and you get characters that are ever more superhuman in intellect, cunning, self-control, etc., and ever more beyond/above all custom and morality, they actually start to become incoherent, because there is no reason why someone, so liberated, should want to do one thing instead of any other. Realistically, they might as well decide to sit down until they expire from exposure. This can happen with the Joker in some forms too, which is why he needs his insanity to keep him moving.
Nussbaum talks about something somewhat similar re the ways in which athletic competition would cease to be meaningful, rewarding, or interesting if man transcended his physical limitations to a large enough degree. It's a keen diagnosis, although I am not sure if the solution quite hits its mark. It does not seem necessarily problematic for man to transcend some elements of his being, such that his past desires seem trivial; this is only problematic if there is not a parallel deeping of higher desires (which is exactly what the Platonists and Christians say there is, and attest to this experience, so the criticism fails to be decisive even in its own terms).
Drug lords might be showing the raw potential for 'active nihilism' and breaking bad (from the herd), but without self-mastery or higher vision, they're reacting rather than creating.
Sure, and the interesting question arises: If evil is privative, why does our culture find it so fascinating? Presumably value is being found in the distortion that is evil because one sympathizes in various ways, or because one has experienced the same desire for overreacting.
Are you simply saying that some stories explore complex moral problems and that the outcomes are unsatisfying from your moral perspective?
Quoting Astorre
Isnt Breaking Bad kind of old-fashioned storytelling? Crime doesn't pay. In real life, the bad guy might well succeed with little cost to themselves or their families. And sometimes they even become president.
Youve identified ideas like retribution and the moral justification of atrocities. Wasnt Breaking Bad really about a man who made a moral choice that led him to a point of no return and the loss of everything? To me it was a more nuanced way to provide a standard say no to drugs and dont commit crime message.
From an aesthetic or dramatic perspective, the show plays off a fish out of water story, where desperate situations lead to desperate choices and profound personal transformations. People find these matters compelling viewing.
Heres my question for you: should Breaking Bad have been made, or is it glamorising immoral behavior?
That prompted me to think of Scarface. Tony has a code which has him look like a victim of his conscience in one place but the agent of his demise when betraying innocence in other places. It is like the magical protection Macbeth believes in.
W White is more like a Faust who becomes more aware of the exchange he has made as time goes by and is without illusion at the end.
But as you say, a morality play.
A very interesting essay that covers the same issues that I tried to cover here in a much deeper and more subtle way.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I think you won't disagree that the Joker from "The Dark Knight" and the Joker from "Joker" are completely different stories. The first Joker is a villain who demonstratively tries to expose the true nature of modern society, while the second is simply a mentally ill and misunderstood character who decides to do what he wants.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
So, it turns out that there's no (or we don't know) ontological justification for such behavior, making it impossible? If I understand you correctly, that's an intriguing idea.
Essentially, in your essay, as I noted above, you've already identified all the problems I'd like to address. The only layer I could add (and it's, of course, the most speculative) is the question: what if the "engineers of our world (state; society)" are deliberately using the techniques we've discussed to aestheticize evil for their own purposes?
Quoting Tom Storm
Don't you think this has become the norm for us today? Success is already the highest good. In pursuing success, sacrifices can be made, as long as they are acceptable. This is called "collateral damage." For many contemporaries, this has evolved into a willingness to do any dirty work, as long as it is paid fairly.
Quoting Tom Storm
Not at all. Here, in the past, and in the future, I'm not trying to moralize. I'm not trying to teach the right way, but rather to examine phenomena through different lenses and test whether these methods work.
No. I think it is important to separate entertainment from what most people do.
I'm afraid that this is true only for a small part of society capable of self-reflection.
It's not about neighborhoods or local differencespeople everywhere are subject to the same influences, especially in the age of global media. My point isn't really that viewers don't understand the difference between good and evil or confuse entertainment with reality in the literal sense. I'm talking about a more subtle, subconscious level of behavioral normalization.
Take your example of the difference between screen and real life: yes, most people won't start cooking meth after watching Breaking Bad. But the show (and others like it) introduces into cultural discourse the idea that morality isn't absolute, but a matter of risk calculation. As I've written before, the message is: "If you're smart, prudent, and creative enough, you can bend the ruleslaw, ethics, societyand prosper until chance intervenes."
It's similar to the smoking example: the question "Should I smoke or not?" doesn't even arise if you've never seen anyone smoking and didn't know it was possible. Media expands the "horizon of the possible": they don't force us to directly emulate evil, but they sow the seeds of doubt"What if I, too, could do anything if I outsmarted the system?" Ultimately, this shifts society's moral boundaries: instead of "This is wrong," we more often think, "This is risky, but if I don't get caught..." And this isn't about "bad" people, but about how culture shapes our questions and choices.
The horizon of the possible has truly expanded. In the 90s, a person who wanted money and respect had three culturally approved paths: education ? career, sports/show business, or honest business. Today, a 16-year-old from any suburb has five to seven paths in mind, and two of them are "gray internet schemes" and "crypto scams/dropshipping/onlyfans." He doesn't consider this evilhe considers it the fourth and fifth elevators to the top, simply demonstrated by Netflix and TikTok.
The main trick isn't glorifying evil, but removing shame.
Walter White shows that shame is for suckers. Once shame dies, morality turns into a simple risk calculation. That's why the phrase "if you're smart enough, you can do anything" isn't an exaggeration; it's the precise formula for a new moral code.
What does BB do that Shakespeare or Hollywood or Bret Easton Ellis havent done?
They showed a madman and warned: "Don't be like him."
B.B. shows a madman and whispers: "Be like him, only smarterand everything will be fine."
I sincerely sympathize with your way of thinking. Moreover, I assure you that I hold similar views regarding such shows.
The problem is probably something else: I read a few naive books and decided I could philosophize. Don't take the latest town madman seriously.
It likely has to do with the desirable and associative aspects of autonomic sympathetic arousal. It's like asking why folks enjoy watching scary, suspenseful movies, or going on carnival rides, or jumping off mountains or airplanes in wingsuits.
Evil is arousing, as it entails signs of what is threatening. It arouses a kind of moral/physical activation, to engage to quell the threat, resolve by giving license for us to punish, to feel outrage, or to get away due to danger. To watch a transgression take place quickens the heart, even if its kind of benign. Imagine playing a game and witnessing someone cheat in front of your eyes, or someone drinking the self serve milk at Starbucks as you are waiting behind them to use it.
Not only is evil privative, good is privative, perhaps even moreso, insofar as we deny and constrain ourselves to satisfy arbitrary moral codes. "I'm playing by all the rules and some asshole gets and leg up and goes unpunished by their transgression." Evil might explode out of the agony of kinds of oppression, as a reaction to moral demands, whether legitimate/reasonable or not.
We should also remember that the pressure to provide plays a role in Walt's decision. He's got Jr.'s college to pay for. And we should not forget that he's in the business ofempire.
Quoting Wayfarer
True, but he does attempt to maintain Judeo-Christian moral standards, at least early in the show. It's seemingly not possible once you're in Walt's line of work, as the show portrays it. Walt's initial motivation is a mix of money and ego, but his family is not well off in the beginning.
i don't think the emphasis is really "shallow ideas" though from the creator's perspective, but just raw and persistent anxiety over the family finances and Walter's cancer. Fairly relatable from a modern american POV, even though as I pointed out before, an extreme exaggeration. I do think they did a pretty remarkable job in creating a sense of anxiety in the show that sets the audience up to accept Walter's incredibly immoral/destructive actions.
[quote="AstQuoting Astorre
This is fairly well put: Breaking Bad was so successful since they mastered the art of climax and cinematic extremes.
Shame-based morality has a limited scope and use. It's only natural that people at some point wish to transcend it and base their morality in some other principle.
When a person's morality is based mostly or exclusively on shame, their sense of right and wrong can collapse when they find themselves surrounded by people who don't feel shame. Which is another reason why it's important to base one's morality in something other than shame.
For reference, it can also help to view morality in terms of moral development, as per one of the main theories of moral development, Kohlberg's: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kohlberg%27s_stages_of_moral_development
Arguably, some fictional characters sometimes exhibit stage 6 of moral development.
In my opinion, modern people have almost forgotten what it's like to "feel shame." Films, books, and philosophers merely document its absence. Perhaps the times are now inappropriate, and shame as a tool is no longer necessary, as it is irrational by nature.
I once had occasion to criticize Kohlberg. The ideas at the time were roughly as follows: the approach is "Western-centric," ignoring, for example, the ethic of care as the foundation of community. In Asia or the East, people may be at stages 3 or 4, while stages 5 or 6 would be completely unacceptable for these societies. Renouncing family for the sake of universal values ??in Asia is far from ideal.
The second point is this attempt to objectify ethics (cognitivism and logic); its post-conventional level assumes that the highest morality is a cold calculation of universal principles. Whereas a person can be characterized by "choice under uncertainty," for example, when you simply emotionally decide to act. For objectivists, this is a flaw (imperfection). Religion suggests that "bad" choices are not a human error, but part of its "sinful" nature that must be overcome.
You might be interested in this long review from several years ago, The Strange Persistence of Guilt
He doesn't get them hooked on meth. He is supplying a product that there is a demand for.This could be easily seen as an amoral act. There is an awful lot of nuance between your statement and mine. (I don't necessarily endorse the statement I made.)
Is this your paper? Is there a discussion on this forum?
Shame is irrational? Perhaps once it is cut off from a traditional metaphysical framework.
That's a strange thing to say, given that in much of Asia, there are Dharmic religions, in which renouncing family "for the sake of universal values" is regarded highly (such as becoming a monk in a Buddhist country) or normal (like the vanaprastha and sannyasa stages in the asrama system).
Kohlberg himself posited a possible seventh stage where he linked religion with moral reasoning.
And yet unless one is born and raised into a religion, one must calculate, most coldly, before one can join a religion. You're speaking from the privilege of someone who was born and raised into a religion.
Oh, one might very well apply nuance, but at that point I would start doubting their capacity for sound judgement.
The intent was to make money so as to gain resources necessary for survival. Let's not pretend your existence was not brought about by selfishness and immoral acts committed by those who came before you. You're literally the spawn of immorality, in a way, we all are. Nothing you do or say will ever change the reality of your existence. This world is not, especially back then, a black and white calm theater of two types of people: those who are decent and worthy of life, and those who are terrible people who inflict suffering for no other reason than to do so. That's a rose-colored glasses type of delusion.
If a government allows a subject to have a child without ensuring they are aware of all the reasonable dangers in this world, that government is at fault. But. They'll be called "tyrannical" or "authoritarian" just for trying to protect the well-being of human life by making the tough decision of who can reproduce and who should not right at the moment. If we say "oh freedom" and let people do whatever they want (as it is currently) we blame the parent for not educating the child as to how to avoid things that are dangerous. Some people have addictive tendencies. This is an indisputably and universally intrinsically negative and disfavored quality over those who can consume an otherwise addictive product that may lead to permanent harm if not used in moderation.
So, all relevant factors considered, what do you do? We have three options. Option 1 is to force government to ensure only those permitted and granted to reproduce do so while others are punished and ultimately disallowed from reproducing freely. Option 2 is to make examples out of parents who raise kids that end up not listening to rational and reasonable warnings and things to avoid that are hazardous. Option 3 is to commit eugenics and ensure people who are prone to addictive tendencies are not born and do not result in those like them being born. Take your pick. Whichever you choose, you'll have more people than you can take at once against you. So. Time to re-frame one's argumentand of courseapproach.
I don't necessarily agree with the implied sentiments the average person making the hypothetical argument seriously and outside of the context of philosophy would most likely hold, of course. That said, I doubt anything conveyed is less than truthful as far as real world solutions and cause and effect is concerned.
Speak for yourself.
I bear responsibility for my own actions, and not for those of others.
Sob stories about how drug dealers/traffickers came to be, I don't buy either. Base greed is the principal motivator - people looking to score a quick buck at the expense of someone else.
If you want to look for victims, why look beyond the often-vulnerable people who fall prey to drug addiction and are then ruthlessly exploited? Dealers and traffickers are not victims, they're utter scum.
And no, it's not the government's fault that they lack a moral compass. It's no one else's fault but their own.
It's rather odd you apparently don't believe people ought to take moral responsibility for their own actions, but instead expect the government to take action? The modern mindworm at play, I suppose.
That's not the point. There would be no "you", period, were it not for immorality. Therefore you have no non-hypocritical position to hold as far as judging others for their own. Human history is a smorgasbord of cruelty, indifference, and suffering inflicted on those who bore no crime other than being not as strong as somebody else.
You're in a position to not be killed (ie. to survive) solely and exclusively by acts of immorality, because those before you did so so that you wouldn't have to. They're dead. They can't be "arrested" or judged. Whereas you, can. We ignore things that happened a long time ago for no other reason than it happened a long time ago. This is not a reliable foundation of morality.
There is nothing odd but your assumption as to what it is I believe seeing as I have said nothing about myself personally other than what applies to all living human beings.
It's not that serious. It's a discussion about facts and the philosophical nature of said facts. Don't take it so personally.
I agree on a fundamental level that the supply of meth is a bad thing but life isn't as simple for some. People end up doing things that others would consider reprehensible but when put in less comfortable position in life would consider doing bad stuff to survive or even prosper.
I doubt we have the same idea of what immorality entails, but even so it doesn't follow that judging the actions of others is somehow inherently hypocritical.
Hypocrisy is to chastise others for moral infringements you yourself are guilty of.
It has nothing to do with what my ancestors did or didn't do without my asking.
Quoting Malcolm Parry
Stealing a loaf of bread is something I would consider "doing something bad in order to survive".
The narcotics scene on the other hand runs purely on ego and greed, as do the majority of criminal circuits. Just like a rapist or a murderer, they know what they're doing is wrong but do it anyway, and I would rank drug dealers and traffickers among rapists and murderers in terms of how inexcusable their actions are.
I wrote about this before, in another thread, but I'll repeat it here since you brought it up.
Deciding how someone lives carries with it the responsibility for the consequences. Let's say I'm someone in authority over you, and I command you (and the rest of my subordinates): "You must all bow to God number 32, and you will be happy." You begin praying according to my instructions, time passes, and happiness doesn't come. Then you come back to me (with a pitchfork) and ask: "Hey, where's our happiness?"
If I were a wise ruler, I would have foreseen this in advance and told you: "You are free to do whatever you want!" That would relieve me of all responsibility. Basically, this is what the world has come to: the ruler grants such a degree of freedom that only the bare minimum is required of them.
Now a little about the starting point. Modern culture, including popular TV series, assumes that the world is not divided into black and white. Morality is good, but what about it if we don't do everything morally? How are we supposed to live then? What are we supposed to eat, for example? I especially want to ask this of those who attribute the existence of consciousness/soul to plants or animals, which, therefore, cannot be killed today.
You've hit the nail on the head: modern culture gives us the opportunity to rethink everything. Actually, that's exactly what I wanted to say: be morally gray, because you determine your own destiny.
But has the time come when we (humanity) are ready to admit this?
Won't this usher in a "moral decline" we can't even imagine?
There's a fine line here. Rogues are people who break the rules and thus evoke sympathy (something like Jack Sparrow). They remain within the rules themselves. The current conversation isn't about morally black (bad) people, but about morally gray people. That is, those who live entirely outside the good/bad paradigm. The phenomenon I'm talking about has a somewhat different nature. These heroes seem bad, but they are a reflection of usthey're just like us, with everyday problems. And we no longer know whether they're bad or not, or whether we can justify them (because we're all a bit like Walter White).
I think life is more complicated for many people than you do. Which is fine. I'm not going to change your mind, so there is little point in bothering.
I can assure you none of you would be pleading for nuance if you had had a single experience of the pitiless malevolence with which such individuals operate.
These people ruin lives, communities, entire societies for petty monetary gain. They deserve no sympathy nor quarter.