Dark Matters

Abstract

Vince Gilligan’s cable television series Breaking Bad has garnered critical praise for its complex and sometimes contradictory views of drug trading, criminality, and the blurry line between good and evil. In particular, critics have celebrated the originality of its main character, Walter White, whose transformation from a dowdy high school chemistry teacher into a methamphetamine “cook” and kingpin is charted over the course of the series. However, Breaking Bad is strikingly unoriginal in its treatment of the Latino characters who serve as the main antagonists to Walter and his protégé, Jesse. This essay argues that Breaking Bad must be read from a Latino studies perspective to understand it in relation to the “threat narrative” that permeates media representations of Latinos. The essay first locates the series within a mini-genre of cable television that might be called “suburban crime dramas,” a set of texts that place unassuming white protagonists in contact—and usually conflict—with nonwhite denizens of a criminal underworld. Second, it provides a close reading of Breaking Bad’s key Latino characters, arguing that the characters Tuco Salamanca and Gus Fring provide contrasting insights into the dominant culture’s views of latinidad.