It's because film is a visual medium, and in these movies the protagonist always looks cool. He may be doing terrible things, but he's wearing hip clothes and driving a gorgeous car while he does them. The visual language is all screaming "this guy's great!", and it ends up overwhelming the message the story is trying to tell.
If you want to know what most people will think of a character in a movie, watch the movie with the sound off.
I also think having that a big part of it is that at least the characters had a high point, even if they paid the price.
Like Jordan Belfort eventually loses his wife and access to his kid in The Wolf of Wall Street. But that can happen to any Joe on the street anyway, and he didn't get to have drug fueled orgies like Jordan did. Walter White descends into chaos and death in the pursuit of using his singular skills. But before he dies he leaves an enormous amount of money to secure his family's security forever and he get to experience a moment of pure fulfillment, working for himself, achieving at the outermost limits of his abilities. Joe Sixpack can get cancer and leave his family a pile of debt after spending his life working middle management at a life insurance firm, achieving no self-actualization and leaving his family in financial destitution.
These programs think that they are portraying some sort of cautionary tale by saying "Look this person got to have everything, but then they lost it all due to the method with which they acquired it", without realizing that the common man on the street could do everything by the book and above board and still find themselves losing everything and in the same spot as the characters in these shows, and they didn't even get to have fun along the way!
I don't know. My biggest frustration in season one was "why the hell doesn't Walt have life insurance if his family depends so much on his income?!" I bet Joe Six-pack working middle management at a life insurance firm has some form of life insurance, so his family is still financially fine without anyone having to resort to cooking meth.
It happened with books too: See "Liar’s Poker", by Michael Lewis. He says that he wrote it "so that fewer idealistic college kids would dream of working on Wall Street. ... Somehow that message failed to come across ... They'd read my book as a how-to manual."
I’m increasingly suspicious of the idea that humans are independent and rational, because so much humam behaviour can be explained as uncomplicated animal mimicry.
I wonder what that says about people. I remember being extremely impressed/infatuated with Matt Damon's character in The Talented Mr. Ripley when I was 18 or 19. So impressionable I was!
Maybe it says they have a innate ability to not simply do as they are told. Instead they gather in lots of details from the movies and books, but don't necessarily trust the spin put on them.
I don't know if it's a matter of the protagonist looking cool. When Breaking Bad was on the air, I had a surprising number of friends who identified with Walter White. He did not look cool, he did not act cool, and the writers of the show did everything in their power to communicate "This man is a moral monster and a horror of a human being." Yet some people that I otherwise respected still identified with him. They would get angry at Skyler White for leaving her husband, as if the mother of a new baby should stay loyal to a drug dealing serial killer.
The interesting realisation for me about Walter White came when I started watching the season through for a second time.
But first... SPOILER ALERT!
I mean the first time around I had some sympathy for the guy - he was a disappointed and somewhat embittered middle aged man still trying to do his best to support his family, and then he's given this crappy cancer diagnosis. I felt bad for him. Fair to say that by the time he just lets Jesse's girlfriend, Jane, choke to death on her own vomit whilst unconscious I'd entirely lost that and felt nothing but loathing for the character (which isn't to say I didn't enjoy the show, or think he was a great character).
But what I realised on revisiting the show a couple of years later is that Walter White didn't break bad. He was bad from the very beginning. I mean look at the way he interacts with people in the early episodes of season 1: he's largely an asshole. The only thing that changes is that, initially because he's driven to, he becomes much more comfortable with manifesting his assholery overtly.
> Fair to say that by the time he just lets Jesse's girlfriend, Jane, choke to death on her own vomit whilst unconscious I'd entirely lost that and felt nothing but loathing for the character
> But what I realised on revisiting the show a couple of years later is that Walter White didn't break bad. He was bad from the very beginning.
Jesse's girlfriend got him hooked on heroin. Jesse was on a downward spiral and would surely die thanks to her continued interference. Walter saw the toxicity of both the drugs and the relationship and did Jesse a cruel but necessary kindness by letting her asphyxiate. It wasn't ethical, it wasn't humane, but it served a greater purpose (even if it was so Walter wouldn't be without an assistant).
He did far worse deeds for less grounded reasons as the series went on; there are better examples to choose from to make a case of villainy. If anything, what changes through the series is his disconnectedness from everything he was fighting for. As he lost his son's respect, his wife, his family, and his friend, his world became significantly more introverted and he was willing to tolerate greater and greater amounts of collateral damage in the interest of his own survival (since he had nothing left to care about but himself until the ending).
It's a great show, and I agree with a lot of what you're saying.
> Jesse's girlfriend got him hooked on heroin. Jesse was on a downward spiral and would surely die thanks to her continued interference.
Jesse was on a downward spiral, yes, but the other two points are less clear. They might be true from Walt's perspective.
> Walter saw the toxicity of both the drugs and the relationship and did Jesse a cruel but necessary kindness by letting her asphyxiate. It wasn't ethical, it wasn't humane, but it served a greater purpose (even if it was so Walter wouldn't be without an assistant).
It's impossible to tell how much Walt's letting Jane die / killing Jane had to do with helping Jesse. I think it's clearer Walt killed Jane to keep control over Jesse and to protect himself. And that worked out pretty well, for a while. Jane didn't fear Walt, and she knew too much about him for Walt's comfort and safety. So he let her die / killed her.
> He did far worse deeds for less grounded reasons as the series went on; there are better examples to choose from to make a case of villainy.
This is true. For me, Jane's death caused a major nosedive in sympathy for Walt. Definitely previous things he did were villainous and later things even more so. But there was something about Jane's death. A big step down in his descent.
I think that's right. I recently heard someone argue "Power doesn't corrupt, but rather it reveals who you really are." I think that applies to Walter White. He was morally corrupt from the start, but that became more obvious as he gained money/power.
I think it was Michael Irvin who said something similar when he was talking about how people say, "Money CAN buy you happiness." He said no, it just makes you more of what you already are.
If you're a huge asshole before you got rich, now you're just a rich asshole. If you're an empathetic, kind person, before you got rich, now you're just a rich, kind person. He also lamented society benefits more from the latter than the former for obvious reasons.
Very much. I watched the show for the first time by "binging" the first four seasons, just ahead of the season 5 premiere, so I went in already having heard all the buzz about the showing being "Mr. Chips to Scarface." By episode 2 or 3 I was already thinking he was always Scarface.
I saw Walter in the beginning as someone who had no control of their life (even in his choice of how to die/reject treatment).
He slowly gains this confidence and control. He goes from being talked down to and ignored to being powerful (though at massive cost), but there's something appealing to that story of taking control. There's also an element of masculinity tied up in this too - when he stomps on the bully's leg in the clothing store early on. I think it's just being the alpha monkey.
Skyler was pretty controlling and self-righteous, I found her to be a pretty unlikable character. She cheats on Walt primarily to hurt him and she was also hypocritical, breaking the law for Ted when it suited her and helping with the money laundering without taking accountability for anything.
Walt at least (early on) started with the goal of raising money to leave his family - though this obviously mutates pretty quickly.
the writers of the show did everything in their
power to communicate "This man is a moral monster
and a horror of a human being."
No they didn't. No they didn't. No they didn't.
The qualifiers of his moral character only took on darker notes toward the end of the series, near the fifth and sixth season. But remained justifiable, within the context of the fatalistic continuity of the series, where characters are left with limited options, granted the hand they are dealt.
Throughout the rest of the series, Walter White is as laughable as any petulant straight man in a comedic duo (e.g. the Hardy role of Laurel and Hardy, Larry Appleton from Perfect Strangers, the Moe of the 3 stooges), while Jesse Pinkman plays the foil.
As a comedic duo, the two are rendered harmless, and thus, any morality is diffused by the beat of each joke, within the care free scope of a goof. It's all gallows humor, with a wink, shrug and a nod that everyone's hands were tied, so just go with the flow and enjoy the ride.
In the case of Walter White, I think it's a slightly different phenomenon: the wish-fulfillment fantasy of the tortured genius who is allowed to be a snarky misanthrope because he's so brilliant. There have been a whole bunch of (usually male) protagonists like this, especially recently: Walter White, Don Draper, Dr. House, Rick Sanchez... I'm sure you can fill in plenty more examples.
> He did not look cool, he did not act cool, and the writers of the show did everything in their power to communicate "This man is a moral monster and a horror of a human being." Yet some people that I otherwise respected still identified with him.
That's because nobody starts watching from the later seasons, they start watching from season one. In the beginning, Walter White is an overqualified for his work, struggling to support his family on a meager teacher's salary, and then a cancer diagnosis kicks in. Everybody identifies with him because most of us feel like we struggle with unfulfilling work and with money issues, and then the cancer diagnosis is the cherry on top - how can you judge somebody who's put in that position? Who will leave his wife saddled with debt and put in charge of raising her kids alone?
Breaking Bad reminds us that in human psychology, first impressions have outsize influence over our perceptions of other people. Battered women stay with their husbands because they still see the caring individual their husbands were when they were first dating, and hold onto hope that somewhere, their husband is still that person; if their husbands were originally abusive in the first set of dates they never would have stuck around.
I think a big part is the emotions surrounding the combined feeling of thinking you're smarter than the rest while being stuck at a lower station in life. Unfairness compounded by the one thinking they're smarter so it's even more unfair. 'I'm smarter than this guy, why is he rich'
It's very easy to fall into this mindset and I think a lot of people identified.
Oh that really depends on which season. The brilliance of that story was how he evolved into the moral monster from someone who was morally unassailable. Could it happen to you? To me? What are our limits, and where is the tipping point of no return once we start down the path?
I think he had tons of charisma and that is why people like him. Most people like actors who are the strong, silent type with good looks. That's why that type is in almost every action movie and TV show.
I don't think it's just the visual element. I mean Scarface looks pretty terrible by the end of the movie, and people idolize him. I suspect it's more that stories are now told purely for short-term entertainment value. We don't focus on the substance of the story or the moral, we focus on the kind of clips that end up in a trailer. You see similar trends in popular literature too.
>I mean Scarface looks pretty terrible by the end of the movie, and people idolize him.
You got the wrong idea. I don't think anyone idolizes Tony. It's a great movie and Tony is a great character and Scarface tells an interesting story, not because the protagonist made himself rich. Same as Godfather, I like it and I like them not because they are rich, but it was because they made interesting choices. Let's talk about Scarlett in Gone with the wind -- was she rich? Was she poor?
Recently, I listened to Shit Town and it gave me an everlasting impression on me. The main character in the story was a very poor man. I liked him -- not because he is poor either, but because he is interesting.
Who cares about whether the character is rich or poor, the character's background is merely a medium to tell the story. Being very rich or poor or desperate is just a convenient choice to get the story flowing because the characters in such extreme circumstances tend to have interesting experiences and choices.
>You got the wrong idea. I don't think anyone idolizes Tony.
If you'd like I can provide a short list of rap songs about selling drugs which contain lyrics positively representing scarface/Tony. People idolize him. He's a self made man who took what he wanted. He's betrayed in the end, but plenty of people look at that as the actions of outside actors and not the consequences of his behavior. I'm not going to go into possible alternative analysis for Tony's character/the events of the movie in which he's a heroic figure betrayed by Sosa and the government (which can also be viewed as a bad guy in drug culture), but it's there.
TL;dr- There are people who aspire to be Tony, understanding full well that Heavy Weighs the Crown.
I do wonder, though - do people want to be Tony end-to-end, or do they just like the middle and think it wouldn't end that way for them? Even a visceral, horrid ending is easy to downplay when it's just on a screen.
I mean, what does Jay-Z have to say about Montana? Fuck Sosa, this Hova this is real life // This is what the ending of Scarface should feel like. Because he's better than Tony, and he's going to make it all work.
There are definitely people who idolize the Achilles bit, living gloriously and briefly, but I feel like the most common reason people celebrate that is that they get to downplay the messy ending.
Sorry, I think I expressed what I meant the wrong way. Not that no one idolizes Tony. What I meant was not all the people who liked him and liked the movie idolize him. I liked the movie not because he was rich or someone to be idolized.
>but plenty of people look at that as the actions of outside actors and not the consequences of his behavior.
That's the recipe for a great story/a great movie: The great moment in storytelling is when the viewer/reader starts to see the world as the protagonist sees it. The viewer stopped caring about whether the protagonist was objectively right or wrong/moral or immoral, the viewer starts caring more about whether what they did given the situation make sense or not.
That is - given the situation, could/would you have done the same? The answer for me in the cases of Tony Montana, Scarlett O'Hara, Michael Corleone were a really convincing yes.
Yeah, I've always found idolising scarface a little strange. Likewise, I find it odd when people go around wearing t-shirts with Che Guevara's face on them: I mean, the guy's allegedly a mass murderer. Kind of an odd hero to pick, right?
There are some of those names who killed civilians in bulk, and some who killed enemy soldiers — and most people would hold that there is a moral difference.
Did Washington kill civilians? He was a slave owner. Not sure mass murderer is on the money like it is for Stalin and Mao. Don’t know enough about Che.
During the Revolutionary War both sides committed a number of acts that would be recognized as war crimes today. Washington destroyed Iroquois villages, true, but keep in mind that the Iroquois supporting the Loyalists were outright scalping and murdering civilians. I think you would find little argument that destruction of property, while a bad thing, is a lesser crime than actual murder. Nobody played clean in that war.
the problem lies deeper than film. america at its core is obsessed with wealth, and it's always been this way. the ethics of how the wealth is acquired and spent matters very little. we idolize drug dealers, mobsters, serial bank robbers, bookies, counterfeiters, etc.
There are many movies and shows that promote those positive values. Marvel superhero movies, children movies, movies like Marshall. Films and documentaries that critique consumerism or society. TED talks, YouTube channels like The School of Life, even blogs like Brainpickings.
I see a lot of comments reading into this with convoluted explanations when it's simply that tv/film is an escapist medium and most people 'live vicariously' through the main protagonist or the character(s) they relate with the most.
>He may be doing terrible things, but he's wearing hip clothes and driving a gorgeous car while he does them.
You think they're terrible. Ascribing to everyone the same moral code and then reasoning why they might ignore it seems like a poor basis for reasoning? To me it's about understanding what metrics really matter to people
Kind of like how people want to look like Rambo too. They don't care about the moral consequences of their hero's villainous actions- they just want muscles and guns.
The original Rambo is actually surprisingly nuanced and, well, non-Rambo-like. It's the sequels that cemented the word as a synonym for mindless slaughter.
Such movies should not show the person until the very end, just a series of shorts of the victims lifes becoming worser by one phone call. Absence of moral should be depicted as the absence of a person and decency it is.
To be fair, he also managed to get expiry dates put on milk which may very well in the long run have saved many more lives than was lost because of him.
If you want to know what most people will think of a character in a movie, watch the movie with the sound off.