Modern Cowboy/Western

The archetype of the cowboy and the western plays out in unconventional ways in many modern books, films, and television shows. A good example that casts to cowboy as both a good guy and an outlaw is Breaking Bad. The show ran 5 seasons from 2008 to 2013 and tells the story of a man who is desperate to make sure his family is taken care of after he is gone. Walter White is a high school chemistry teacher, husband, and father to a teenage son with cerebral palsy and a newborn daughter when he is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. He discovers his health insurance will not cover treatment and embarks on a misguided trek to treat his illness and provide for his family's future by amassing wealth quicky, using a skill he has taught for years: Chemistry. With the help of a former student, Jesse Pinkman, and insider knowledge from his brother-in-law (a DEA agent), he evades the authorities and becomes the kingpin of crystal meth. It's a story of good vs evil and challenges the viewer's morality.

Set in Albuquerque, New Mexico this series is sometimes coined a neo-western. The series has 2 distinctly different settings. There is the wild west which is represented by several desert scenes: cooking in the RV and meetings with dangerous characters. The show also largely takes place inside of civilization in the city. This series has 2 distinctly different cowboys. Walter is an unconventional cowboy. He is both the hero and the anti-hero. An almost invisible man, in the beginning, transforms into a powerful figure, a family man that is also an outlaw. In contrast, you also see him transform and age, becoming more fragile and frail as his cancer progresses. The other cowboy character in the series is Hank Schrader. Hank is a man's man, a devoted, albeit brash, husband; the hero special agent who is cleaning up Albequerque by getting the meth off the streets.

There are numerous ways to connect this series back to the video. Lance talks about the mythos of the cowboy. Both Walt and Hank display "the cultural values of what it means to be a man." Aspects of them are both idealized. Walt and hank both have an insatiable desire to provide for and protect their families. They are both men who bring order: Hank as a law enforcement agent and Walt in his quest to get rid of the "bad guys", the murderous thugs that control the meth market and sell an inferior product. They both have many of the attributes of the cowboy: white, male, masculine, self-reliant, and both dealing with foreign threats: Hank within his dangerous role as a special DEA agent, and Walt in his rise to kingpin, defeating the dealers and powerful organizations in the drug world. Breaking Bad fits the genre of a western in numerous ways. They face external threats in the form of gangs and drug lords from Mexico. Walt also "stakes new territory" several times throughout the series, defeating and removing obstacles in his way. A powerful connection from the video is a bit that describes an attribute of a western is "civilizations ways are not useful or relevant." Walt feels as though the way things are supposed to work has failed him and his family. He's been the good man but the only way to survive is to "break bad."