Breaking Bad and Media Illiteracy

Is it ironic to complain about media illiteracy by defending media illiteracy? "The main character is likable and relatable but he does bad things, therefore it's reasonable to assume the author is saying those things are okay." This is like a child's understanding of literature.

This is how Walter White sees himself, not how anyone who consumes media with a remotely critical eye should see him. Walt is cowardly, weak, pathetic, and so full of himself he's incapable of recognizing his own limitations. He repeatedly bites off more than he can chew and only survives due to his intelligence and dumb luck. Along the way he loses his family, his best friend, his surrogate son, his dignity, and eventually the "money, power, and respect/fear" that he sacrificed everything for.

Darth Vader is maybe the coolest character in movie history. He looks awesome, he has an awesome voice, he dominates the scene every time he's on screen. Yet he's obviously fucking evil; clearly "looking cool" doesn't excuse any sin or personal suffering. Also like Darth Vader, Walter White gives his life to save his "son" by eliminating an evil even greater than himself. There is catharsis in seeing these Nazi bastards get they deserve, but these are redemptive acts for fallen characters, not a glorification of their badassery.

Similarly this would be an inappropriate time to rub the audience's face in these characters' failures. They've already lost their power and dignity, reduced to cringing, pathetic figures barely able to walk, facing the end of their miserable lives.

It's also odd to complain about media tricking the audience into misinterpreting it as saying the protagonist is cool and good while misinterpreting the protagonist's victims as unsympathetic. You don't even have to like Skyler. What about the terrible paths down which Walt's actions send Hank and Jesse, the two most sympathetic characters on the show? What about the horrific domestic violence that plays out in front of Walt's children? What about the pathetic wretch Walt is reduced to at the end, having lost the money for which he sacrificed his family and the family for which he sacrificed his soul? This is all part of the story, not just the parts in the middle where Walt does something cool.

"I am the one who knocks" is a badass line but it's all bluster. Heisenberg is just the hat.

 

The humans win in Starship Troopers! They have cool spaceships and cool space guns and cool costumes (some of which look like Nazi SS officers, weird coincidence)! Therefore the humans are right and good! The bugs are ugly monsters, therefore they are bad!

Interpretations like this are a result of media illiteracy, not an excuse for it. There's no sin in misunderstanding a text, but such fundamental misunderstandings of such straightforward allegory indicate a flaw in reader analysis, not the author making their villains too cool.

"I agree that people are bad at understanding media, and here are some examples that confirm people are bad at understanding media, but it's the media's fault for not being stupid and obvious enough."

If straightforward narratives like Breaking Bad and Dune are too nuanced and complex for their own good, exactly what media can the reader ever be blamed for misinterpreting? Marvel movies? The fucking Star Wars sequels? Or maybe Star Trek: Picard, in which Pulitzer Prize- and Academy Award-winning writers took the humanist ethos of Gene Roddenberry’s vision for a utopian future free from bigotry and told a story about how it’s good to fear and hate people who are different from you? 

In today’s Golden Age of Media, anything’s possible!

Nothing happens and no one learns anything.

 

The Cuckoo's Cry 

By Caroline Overington

Narrated by Aimee Horne 

 

This book takes place during a COVID-19 lockdown and is about as interesting as being stuck in one. It wants to be a slow-burn suspense thriller but in reality it’s just slow. For the first four hours people just sit around inside their houses or talk to each other on Skype. There’s a very slight mystery hook but it’s left mostly undeveloped until the climax, when the book becomes an action scene from a daytime soap opera. Instead of being on the edge of their seat, the reader just feels the mild curiosity one has when watching a Lifetime drama.

The book makes some overtures of being about isolation and society’s neglect of the elderly but these are just passing observations and ultimately the book has nothing to say about them. In the end most of the characters are exactly where they began, with no lessons learned and no changes made. This would be all right if the book was making a point, but instead it just makes everything that happened feel pointless. The majority of the story is just dull and full of references to life during COVID that already feel dated a year later, then it abruptly changes from dull to nihilistic and mean-spirited without any apparent meaning or intention. It’s like you took the aforementioned Lifetime movie and tacked on the ending from American Psycho: “This confession has meant nothing.”
 

I only finished this book because I got it for free; if I had paid for it I would have returned it.

 

Overall: 1 out of 5 stars

Performance: 3 out of 5 stars
Story: 1 out of 5 stars

Alan Wake – The Complete Experience

 

In celebration of Remedy Entertainment's announcement of the upcoming Alan Wake remaster, here is a post enumerating every item in the Alan Wake expanded universe and where to get them.

First is the prequel web series Bright Falls, which takes place immediately before Alan Wake in both chronological and release order. It takes place between August 25 and August 31, 2010.

(Bright Falls can also be viewed in its original format of six individually titled episodes.)

Next is Alan Wake itself. The remaster, set to be released in fall of 2021, will include the base game as well as the two subsequent DLC Specials, The Signal and The Writer. Alan Wake takes place from September 1 to September 14, 2010.

An optional companion piece to the game is the Alan Wake novelization by Rick Burroughs. A faithful retelling of the original story (the two Specials are not incorporated), it also includes unique scenes and character insights not found in the game.

The official music video for Poets of the Fall's song "War" features original live-action footage of Alan Wake during the course of his adventures.

Next are the graphic novels Psycho Thriller and Night Springs. Officially available only as bonus content for the current PC version, it's unknown if they will be included with the remaster. These stories take place during the second half of Alan Wake, on September 13, 2010.

The Alan Wake Files, an in-universe chronicle of the history of Bright Falls and Alan's writing career, is available as a physical book with the Xbox 360 Collector's Edition or as a PDF with the PC version. It takes place in 2011, the year after the game.

The official strategy guide from Prima Games, Alan Wake: Official Survival Guide is written in the style of an in-universe document and contains unique lore not found elsewhere. The Author's Foreword is dated May 13 of the year following the game.

 

Throughout Alan Wake, the player can find and watch several episodes of a Twilight Zone-inspired fictional TV series called Night Springs. Three additional episodes were scripted and shot but did not appear in the game.

The next major narrative installment is Alan Wake's American Nightmare, a spinoff/pseudo-sequel/dream sequence (?) only available on digital platforms. It takes place in 2012, two years after the events of Alan Wake.

Next is This House of Dreams, an ARG blog set in the world of Alan Wake and featuring the first appearance of the town of Ordinary, which plays a major role in Remedy's game Control. This House of Dreams takes place from February 22 to July 29, 2012.

Remedy's 2016 game Quantum Break includes a viewable in-game video featuring Alan Wake, titled "Return." It takes place five years after the events of the original game.

Finally, Remedy's most recent game, Control, is set in the world of Alan Wake and features many allusions to its story and lore. The second of its two DLCs, AWE, is fully centered around Alan Wake. The events of Control begin on October 29, 2019.

a. Expansion 1: The Foundation
b. Expansion 2: AWE
• PlayStation 4 exclusive content

i. Dr. Yoshimi Tokui's Guided Imagery Experience side mission
ii. Astral Dive Suit
iii. Tactical Response Gear
iv. Urban Response Gear
v. Dr. Tokui Tapes

With any luck, the next entry on this list will finally be, at long last, Alan Wake 2.

 

Kung Fu (1972) starring David Carradine is a great and anti-racist show

I don’t understand this need to hawk your cheap wares by tearing down the foundation you stood on to make them. Yeah they cast a white guy as a half-white, half-Chinese character 50 years ago, in a different time with different standards. But the supporting cast was Asian American, the most memorable characters who delivered the most famous lines. Virtually every Asian American actor working at the time appeared on the show at some point. Their culture and heritage were never treated as objects of mockery.

The show wasn’t racist; it featured racism, and condemned it. Caine was an immigrant looking for belonging in a country that didn’t want him, and the anti-Asian bigotry he encountered in his travels was always shown for the ugly thing it was.

Yes, Bruce Lee could have done the fight scenes better, but the fight scenes weren’t the point. The show preached non-violence and the preciousness of life; Caine mourned for everyone he couldn’t save because he recognized the value in each of them, even those blinded by hate.

It was a great show with a diverse cast and a powerful message, so it’s disheartening to see it used as a sacrificial lamb to prop up this CW revenge drama whose common DNA apparently includes the name, the inciting incident, and nothing else.

Talk about an insensitive 50-year-old casting decision all you like, the show’s most embarrassing legacy will still be the lead actor accidentally choking himself to death while rubbing one out. Maybe that’s the wrong this new version is supposed to fix!

How the Borg Were Ruined

Does anyone else remember how, when the Borg were first introduced in “Q Who,” they didn’t “assimilate” people? You see a baby Borg in a dresser drawer, implying that the Borg produce their own offspring (viewed through the lens of modern Borg lore, it makes no sense for them to assimilate an infant).

According to Riker, “From the look of it the Borg are born as biological life form. It seems that almost immediately after birth they begin artificial implants. Apparently the Borg have developed the technology to link artificial intelligence directly into the humanoid brain.”

Q describes them as “the ultimate user. They're unlike any threat your Federation has ever faced. They're not interested in political conquest, wealth, or power as you know it. They're simply interested in your ship, its technology. They've identified it as something they can consume.”

In “The Best of Both Worlds,” Commander Shelby says, “I thought they weren't interested in human life forms, only our technology,” and Picard remarks, “Their priorities seem to have changed.”

So it’s established in “Q Who” and “The Best of Both Worlds” that the Borg only assimilate technology, they are generally indifferent to organic races (they repeatedly ignore away teams that beam aboard their ships), and their sudden interest in humanity is a change in their standard MO. The creation of Locutus, a human absorbed into the collective to allow the Borg to better communicate with other races, seemed to be a first-time thing. Locutus starts talking about how the Borg will assimilate the Klingons and the Federation and improve everyone’s quality of life, but the previous dialogue about the Borg’s priorities indicates that this new mission, to assimilate organic life, is something the Borg haven’t done before.

So how do we get from that to the modern conception of the Borg, which are literally just techno-zombies who infect anyone they come in contact with with a “virus” that transforms them into a drone and have been doing this to other races, including humans, for decades?

I want to say that this is all from First Contact dumbing down the concept for a mass-appeal horror/action movie, but “I, Borg” had already muddied the waters a little bit. I don’t think Hugh was intended to be an individual who had been previously assimilated by the Borg and regained his identity when brought aboard the Enterprise; rather he was born a Borg, because the Borg were originally introduced as an actual literal species, and the episode dealt with him experiencing the concepts of identity and individuality for the first time. But Guinan also says that the Borg tried to assimilate her species. In “Q Who” she said that the Borg attacked her people and destroyed their cities, forcing them into exile and scattering them across the galaxy, so this is a retcon and also seems to contradict “The Best of Both Worlds.”

So although it’s a good episode and the Borg were still a credible threat, it seems like “I, Borg” was actually the start of their rapid decline, as it’s the source of the idea that the Borg’s defining MO is just going around assimilating other races, when that was previously described as a new change in tactics.

I have no memory of anything that happened in “Descent,” but then after that of course you had First Contact take the Borg-as-plague idea to the absurd extreme and depict them as literal zombies, not to mention ruining the idea of the collective by introducing the Borg Queen.

So take post-“Best of Both Worlds” TNG’s idea that the Borg have always been assimilating people, First Contact’s ideas that the collective is paradoxically controlled by an individual and the Borg apparently don’t exist as a sexually reproducing species but an assortment of assimilated individuals from various species, and the natural villain decay of a long-running antagonist and you can begin to understand how Voyager drove whatever menace they had left into the ground.

That said, Seven of Nine’s family’s assimilation years before Locutus was supposed to mark the start of the Borg’s interest in organic races may have been the final nail in the coffin of early-TNG Borg lore, but at least she was a great character whose Borg heritage provided several interesting storylines. The Borg weren’t completely ruined until Picard had an entire cube stop working and its crew go into a coma because they assimilated a lady who was really sad.