The war on drugs is equally a ground war fought in economically poor communities of color as it is a media war where the pop culture landscape becomes the battlefield. While U.S. foreign policy exerts ongoing conflict internationally under the guise of eliminating drug production, the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) manipulate domestic public opinion through media messaging. For evidence of this we need not look further than the This is your brain on drugs anti-drug onslaught of the 80′s. Even Nancy Reagan understood, wars are won in hearts and minds.
A lot has changed since the “Just Say No” era. Drug use and abuse is no longer a sensationalist taboo. With shows like Intervention and Celebrity Rehab it’s almost commonplace, if not a tad mundane. And although these recovery shows actually highlight the negative aspects of drug economies, namely addiction, shows like Weeds and Breaking Bad portray regular middle-American protagonists adopting the drug trade as a viable and long-term means of self-employment complete with high returns, adventure and intrigue.
Take Walter Hartwell White, our mild mannered disillusioned high school chemistry teacher, the lead character of the AMC drama Breaking Bad. Down to his prototypical surname White is televisions every man. After discovering a diagnosis of terminal lung cancer he becomes intent on securing his family’s financial future, especially in light of his wife’s late-term pregnancy and his sons Cerebral Palsy. In light of these circumstances Walter turns to drug dealing.
Played by actor Bryan Cranston, who became a household face playing the father in Malcolm in the Middle, this character eschews our stereotypes of the hard-nosed drug-dealing criminal. Walter White morally deteriorates as the series progresses but the spiral is steady and sympathetic. The audience follows along with him on his decline, until we too are wondering how we became embroiled in all of this deception and murder.
The title of the show takes its literal meaning from the Southern colloquialism, which refers to the point where someone has taken a turn off the path of the straight and narrow. A fine metaphor for a show that chronicles a bizarro television drug culture where it’s the white man who must succumb to his dark impulses. Walter White teams up with his former student Jesse Pinkman who are both highly skilled chemists, both white men in a fantasy world where they have no future, lack privilege, and run out of options outside of drug dealing. In this universe of opposites Jesse and his young, middle-class, white friends are the constant targets of law enforcement and gang violence. Jesse’s friend Badger is arrested while selling meth in a sting operation and his other friend Combo is killed by a rival gang for selling meth on their territory.
It’s men of color that wield the bank rolls and the power and it is the rag-tag white man that struggles to play the game. Walter does this by working his connection with kingpin Gus Fring, a Black Puerto Rican man who is willing to pay $1.2 million for 38 pounds of Walter and Jesse’s distinguished blue meth. He later offers to pay Walter $3 million and provide a state-of-the-art production facility for three months of his services. Walter has officially made it and now his audience lives vicariously through his testosterone fueled rampage, bracing ourselves for the end.
We similarly have followed Nancy Botwin, the bread-winning mother of Weeds, from humble beginnings as a haphazard pot slinger to the cutthroat pusher of season seven who has by now become involved in numerous deaths and served a prison sentence. Criminal activity is the norm rather than the exception. When she is faced with an economic challenge, such as raising money to support her youngest private school bills, we can practically envision her flipping through her mental Rolodex of illicit pay dirt. Botwin’s default is to lie, cheat, embezzle, manipulate or blackmail her way to get whatever it is she needs. She cuts a deal with the Securities and Exchange Commission to spy on her love interest, the CEO of the company she works at so that she can get out of the halfway house she is confined to. She maintains an affair with her ex cellmate so that she can control her and then deceives her about plans of escaping away together to get rid of her. She unscrupulously discards people, relationships and the law in favor of her self-interest, which is now only precariously related to that of her family.
But it wasn’t always this way. When she first got into the game she was often an unwitting or coerced accomplice. She struggles to find her position in a world dominated mostly by men of color who she intermittently fears, loves and lusts. There is Conrad, her Black Adonis, her partner in crime with whom she shares an attraction that defies the boundaries of their cultural divide – him from the hood and her from the suburbs on the brighter, whiter side of the tracks. Conrad goes as far as to go against the word of of his aunt-matriarch Heylia, who forbids him to work with the white devil, and he puts his life on the line for her when he urges her to flee and save herself when danger looms.
Conrad is not the only colored man who is hopelessly drawn to protecting to this damsel in distress at the expense of their own interests. When Nancy makes the mistake of selling in her rivals college campus territory and he confronts her in-person, Alejandro is powerless to her quirky white woman wiles. Rather than putting her out of business they have sex in an alley and then he is emasculated by his passion for her to the point where he sends her gifts and provides protection for her operation by beating up campus security.
She is recently widowed and looking for love, incredulously finding it amongst the poor men of color that she fraternizes with in the drug trade. She is also at the helm of a quirky family navigating cookie-cutter suburban life that is all style and no substance. Her nemesis is Celia Hodes, the quintessential suburban bitch, the head of the PTA, the queen bee of judgment. We are rooting for Nancy to overtake Celia using whatever means necessary; Nancy’s victory is our own imagined victory against the conformity of suburban life, which strangles like a vice.
On Weeds the anomie of suburbia is taken to its logical extreme. Nancy endures the ostracism of the PTA wives even as her son falls victim to post-mortem mental illness. The kids at school call him “Strange Shane”, he draws pictures and makes videos depicting violence, he becomes prone to talking to himself. On top of all the confusion of keeping up with the demands of her professional and family life, when she does manage to gain a meaningful connection in the context of a romantic relationship, it’s not long before she discovers that her new lover is a DEA agent. Nothing comes easy to Nancy Botwin in love, family or business. We at home can relate.
The formula of housewife or schoolteacher cum drug dealer works because middle Americans can see themselves in the characters in the beginning. As the anti-hero’s ethics become more murky and the circumstances become more sensational they can imagine that this is how they too would operate in this seedy underbelly world, this mysterious and compelling world that they are denied access to.
Harmless fantasy for idle minds in the midst of an economic recession. More and more families are feeling the squeeze of keeping up with the Jones as Nancy does or paying healthcare bills as Walter does. The popularity of each show is best understood as an escape from the everyday. The everyday lacks big payoffs and steep turns in events. These days the everydays involve scaling back and becoming accustomed to austerity.
In watching these shows white America can think of how lucky Nancy Botwin and Walter White are in gaining entry into this colorful world. But even more so, how lucky these poor coloreds are that they are able to hustle to maintain their glamorous lifestyles untouched by the dips in the NASDAQ. And the good people of America who watch the shows intently know what they are doing is wrong. They know that it’s wrong to idealize the grey market that undermines the value of their honest hard work.
But it’s just a show and that makes it not real. This is prime-time television, it’s apolitical, these people don’t exist. Especially if we turn a blind eye when we see them outside of the television screen.
