I personally really liked our lecture today. The lecture hit a lot of wonderful points not only about geek culture, but pop culture in general. In my blog post I'll be talking about something that has almost been a universal hit in pop culture and that is the behemoth entitled, "Breaking Bad." Now if you haven't watched Breaking Bad then you've probably already had a mob of people yell at you for not treating yourself to this televised treasure. Breaking Bad follows Walter White, a chemistry teacher who has been diagnosed with lung cancer. He turns to making meth with a former student to secure his families finances after his death. Throughout the show you meet a wide array of despicable characters including psychotic drug lords, hit men, and even douche-bag cops. However, even in the midst these morally corrupted characters it seems that the most hated character is Walter's wife, Skyler.
Skyler White was indeed sometimes a hard character to deal with, but I never understood the complete and utter hatred towards her. Throughout the first season Skyler has no idea that Walt is transforming himself into a meth king pin. She was dealing with her own families struggle. Not only was her family having a hard time with money, but her husband had a cancer and her son was born with cerebral palsy. Oh, and she was pregnant. I'd say she had a pretty full plate. A lot of complaints attributed to Skyler is that she's just a "nagging bitch wife."
It's funny that people could defend Walt's actions in the first season by saying he's doing it for his family. Maybe Skyler was being a hard-ass wife because that was HER way of saving her family. Even after she finally catches Walt in his own lies, and finds out he cooks meth she is hated even more because of her distance towards Walt. When she helps him deal with his mass amount of wealth she was seen as someone who was bragging him down. Kind of funny that this type of attitude wasn't attributed to Jesse Pinkman, who was also just as naggy and the same ball of destruction that Skyler was seen as.
I think that the reason Skyler was so demonized was because she defied the typical complacent wife. Not to mention she was one of the most rational characters on the show. Generally speaking people hate the rational characters in media, because of how they are grounded in reality more then other characters. You hate Skyler White so much, because most if you were in that situation you would most likely be Skyler White.
If you can't tell by my post I really loved Skyler, and I think that she transcends "strong female character." Skyler is complicated, strong, a mother, emotional, and wrong a lot of the time. However, this doesn't make her a shit character. It makes her the best foil to Walt and one of the great antagonists of the show. I'm going to end my post with a quote from tumblr user MadLori, which I think rounds out our lecture about women in media and relates to Skyler White.
"Screw writing “strong” women. Write interesting women. Write well-rounded women. Write complicated women. Write a woman who kicks ass, write a woman who cowers in a corner. Write a woman who’s desperate for a husband. Write a woman who doesn’t need a man. Write women who cry, women who rant, women who are shy, women who don’t take no shit, women who need validation and women who don’t care what anybody thinks. THEY ARE ALL OKAY, and all those things could exist in THE SAME WOMAN. Women shouldn’t be valued because we are strong, or kick-ass, but because we are people. So don’t focus on writing characters who are strong. Write characters who are people."
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