Cars & Character: A Look At Breaking Bad And Better Call Saul
Faisal C S
The commodity-form, and the value-relation of the products of labour within which it appears, have absolutely no connection with the physical nature of the commodity and the material relations arising out of this. It is nothing but the definite social relation between men themselves which assumes here, for them, the fantastic form of a relation between things. In order, therefore, to find an analogy we must take flight into the misty realm of religion. There the products of the human brain appear as autonomous figures endowed with a life of their own, which enter into relations both with each other and with the human race. So it is in the world of commodities with the products of men’s hands. I call this the fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labour as soon as they are produced as commodities, and is therefore inseparable from the production of commodities.
— Karl Marx, Capital, Volume 1
“Small penis? Have I got a car for you”: perhaps the most sexist sentence you must have read today right? This was an advertisement by Porsche in 1970 for one of their promising models, the ‘Porche 911 Carrera’. I’m not going in detail about the sexist connotations of this advertisement as it is pretty evident from the sentence itself. Owning a Porsche or a BMW or any other premium/luxury car defines one’s identity in a market-driven society, in which we all exist. From a Marxist perspective, every commodity has its own identity and it will have a shared identity with the human race; what you own defines you or what you own, owns you. A car in this sense, becomes a medium of social communication and a special object of reverence in North American culture. It possesses a sacred or magical power to shape everyday life. From the ‘toys of boys’ to the ‘hearse limousine’, it is there in the life of almost every average American as a necessity as well as a pride symbol.
Hollywood, from its inception and especially after the great recession of the 1930’s, acted as the face of capitalism and more so, as a salesperson for the ‘great American dream’. Arguably, the evolution of automobiles, especially cars, share a common history with Hollywood, including the James Bond series to American Graffiti, the Fast and Furious series and almost every genre and period that features and promotes cars as part of a particular lifestyle. Luxury cars like the Plymouths, Aston Martins and the old Buicks have their own identity and arc in the evolution of Hollywood films and its different genres.
The American television too has a similar history to share. CBS’s famous American comedy series, The Dukes of Hazzard, features a bright orange 1969 Dodge Charger with a “01” on the side and a confederate flag on the hood, in each and every episode. This landmark model was shown racing backroads and running over pretty much anything one can think of. Similarly, there are instances of other great television shows which portrayed cars not just as a commodity but as a character or part of a character, even if they aren’t necessarily “car shows.”
On a closer look, AMC’s Vince Gilligan shows — ‘Breaking Bad’ and its spinoff prequel ‘Better Call Saul’— deserve to be on that list as well. As we all know, Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul are battlegrounds for the question of what is ‘good’ and what is ‘bad’. Each series has five seasons with more than 100 episodes of arguably great character writing and the finest execution of all time in terms of American TV. Casting and the entire mise en scene from locations to each and every prop, colour schemes and obviously, the frames add to the narrative. Apart from this, the ‘Casting of Cars’ also plays a very important role in defining the gravitas of both the series.
Going back to the concept of ‘commodity fetishism’ with which I began, we all are familiar with the way a commodity shapes human relations in market-driven societies. The famous car advertisements of the United States — a perfect neoliberal economy — makes us believe how a car is an extension of one’s character and at the same time, also convinces us its importance by portraying how every American ‘requires’ one. There is a popular saying in America — “an average American requires a car if he/she needs to travel more than five feet”. Casting of cars thus becomes a prerequisite for making a series on the lives of people who are, primarily, victims of capitalism and its morality.
Walter White, the main protagonist of “Breaking Bad” is shown as a pathetic, ineffectual man who struggles to get some respect from others. Furthermore, his life never turns out the way he wants it to and thus, he is caught in a big mid-life crisis, in addition to being a cancer patient. Observing his character build up, one cannot visualise him driving a fancy car. So, Walter White drives a green/grey-coloured Pontiac Aztek, which is considered to be a boring, dull and normal one. The Aztek is one of the first vehicles to make its presence felt right in the pilot episode of Breaking Bad — chosen to depict the ‘baby boomer’, lame and pathetic life of Walter White.
The car stands as a beacon of failed dreams and that is why, the use of Aztek seems apt to denote the protagonist’s image. The car was lambasted as a perfect example of groupthink and managerial bad decisions at General Motors. In many ways, it could be seen as a symbol of their downward spiral into near-death during the ‘Carpocalypse’. Deep inside, it represents something ugly, not unlike the path Walt follows as the show progresses. But in the process of turning ‘Mr. Chips’ to ‘Scarface’, the journey of Pontiac Aztek ends when Walter White’s alter ego, the great ‘Heisenberg’ emerges in its full form and thus starts driving a shiny black Chrysler 300 SRT8. We could read it in reverse too as when Walter White purchases a Chrysler 300 SRT8, it marks the turning point of Walt’s character, as he puts on the big and bad persona of Heisenberg. Sick and tired of always being the ‘nice guy’, Walt ditches his old life and the Aztek for a Chrysler 300, which signifies the death of plain old Walter Wight and the birth of the new drug kingpin – Heisenberg. This transformation is the backbone of Breaking Bad and one of the most convincing and compelling character shifts in television history. Walter White’s character is a typical middle-class American, who is the direct victim of the capitalistic economy and its morality. He knows that he is a failure and all his possessions, including the Pontiac Aztek is proof of that. Thus, the only way to make him feel worthy in this society was to earn more money and of course, the change from Aztek to Chrysler 300 SRT8.
Another fine character from this Albuquerque world of Vince Gilligan is Jesse Pinkman, played by Aaron Paul, who later featured in El Camino, a sequel to the Breaking Bad series. Jesse’s character arc is actually an antithesis to Walt’s moral decay. As Walter White slowly fades into the shadows, his partner, Jesse, just as steadily, crawls into the light. He was the only person in the entire universe of Breaking Bad with such a different character arc.
When we meet Jesse, he is a criminal, school dropout and a drug dealer. When we leave him, he has become a changed man and a heart forged in abject suffering and moral epiphanies. This gradual change in the arc of Jesse shares parallels with his cars as well. Jesse starts out by driving a red Monte Carlo equipped with hydraulics — the perfect car for his early wannabe thug persona. However, after it gets shot up in the desert, he buys a much more sensible, practical and a far less ostentatious 1986 Tercel Wagon with a four-wheel-drive. This change suits the changing Jesse far better than the Monte Carlo. It’s a plucky, can-do little car, something you kind of root for, just like Jesse. He is the only character in the Breaking Bad universe who doesn’t want to be in this race and thus, chooses to drive a normal Tercel Wagon.
James Morgan McGill (also known as Saul Goodman, Slipping Jimmy, and Gene Takavic), played by Bob Odenkirk, may be the most complex, yet one of the most simple characters from Breaking Bad and its spin-off prequel series, Better Call Saul. When we first see him in Breaking Bad in all of his colourful shirts and ties, where every other character is defined in shades of grey, he stands out. Just how Breaking Bad is the sole story of Walter White’s journey from ‘Mr. Chips to Scarface’, Better Call Saul has a similar take with Jimmy’s character. As we have already seen, a market-driven society and its moral codes define a person’s value, with the possessions he acquires; the idea of success is merely dependent upon how much you earn. The main difference between Walter White and Jimmy McGill is that with Jimmy, we know what is going to happen; we know Jimmy’s journey is to become the crooked lawyer in the ‘Albuquerque Noir Universe’; we already know his 1998 model yellow Suzuki Esteem will be taken over by a white Cadillac DeVille in the future.
In Better Call Saul, we’re introduced to Jimmy McGill’s sad yellow garbage-can-on-wheels after a genius Easter egg; it’s parked next to the same white Cadillac DeVille that later established Saul Goodman drove in Breaking Bad. But here, Jimmy is still running small cons and trying to establish himself; therefore, he is stuck with the Suzuki Esteem with mismatched doors and peeling rubber mouldings. In the pilot episode of ‘Better Call Saul’, skateboarders, pulling a scam, slam into it and crack the windshield and when they ask him for $500 as compensation, Jimmy says, “Does this steaming pile of crap scream ‘payday’ to you? The only way that thing is worth $500 is if there’s a $300 hooker sitting in it”. This single dialogue defines his car and his character. But, Saul Goodman can’t drive a car with multiple colours. He may dress in different colours as he also needs attention and wants to show off, but must be wary of doing so, which is why the nutty lawyer drives this white Cadillac DeVille. It’s big enough to get your attention, but not flashy enough for you to ask questions. And this is the car one would imagine to be driven by a sleazy, greedy lawyer like Saul Goodman. In between, when Jimmy accepts Davis & Mains hiring proposal, he is very satisfied to get rid of his bi-colour Esteem and accept the classy 2003 model Mercedes Benz C Class. To celebrate his hiring, Kim offers him a travel mug, that she craftily adjusts to read as “world’s 2nd best lawyer”. Jimmy is very fond of this mug which fits perfectly on his Esteem’s cup holder, but not on his brand new Benz C Class. His struggles to fix it on that car goes on until he loses his job in Davis and Main. The cup represents Jimmy himself, who would not fit into that German-made automobile, which the society doesn’t want him to drive.
Mike Ehrmentraut and Gustavo Fring can both be taken as synonyms for ‘cold’. They share a mysterious and traumatic past, which has definitely made them who they are. Ehrmentraut was a policeman and Fring is one among the millions of refugees who come to the North American soil with his brother from South America. We are introduced to the two sides of Fring’s character in Breaking Bad itself. On the one hand, we know him as a drug lord who is feared by Walter White himself, and we are also familiarised with his past and his vengeance with the Cartel. On the other hand, he is also introduced as a businessman dealing with a chain of fried chicken restaurants and is friends with DEA officers. So, portraying these two personalities of his needs a lot of effort with the props he uses, as well as the costumes he wears. That’s where his sensible black Volvo V70 plays its role, as his monetary capacity would let him afford any ‘super car’ available in the market.
The image he puts to the society of the nice restaurant owner won’t fit into any super car, as it would draw unwanted attention to the heartless, killer side of Fring. Ehrmentraut in Breaking Bad appears more as a henchman or right hand of Fring. But when we get into Better Call Saul, we get to see more of Ehrmantraut — a loving father and a loving grandpa to Kaylee, and how he gets into Fring’s and Salamanca’s world of organised crime and cartel business. Ehrmantraut is calm; a wise Oldman and a very loyal person. He doesn’t want to get any attention from the public, as he clearly knows what he is doing and thus the repercussions of it. His car also shows the same characteristics — so Ehrmantraut drives an old black Chrysler Fifth Avenue, named after the New York street; it was a gas-guzzling lumpen unit built for comfort rather than speed or performance, but not more. Now it is simply Ehrmantraut’s runabout and although he claims it has “sentimental value”, it almost certainly doesn’t. He isn’t that kind of a guy. Whatever this Black Chrysler Fifth Avenue is, it certainly gives him a ‘don’t mess with me’ vibe.
In every show or movie, the police and their apparatuses are more powerful and have an edge over everything related to power. In the Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul Universe, Hank is the direct person of authority or state, but in this universe, state or its machineries are not powerful enough compared to the cartel or its people. This reflects in the choice of Hank’s vehicle too — he drives a Jeep Commander. The DEA official fancies himself as a ‘tough guy’, but really, he is a big ‘softy’ — similar to his 4×4, which looks big and strong. but it’s a Commander after all, isn’t it? If one were to compile a list of the greatest Jeeps of all time, the Commander would probably not be on it. They’re not memorable mechanically or aesthetically and probably, are only sold for its resemblance with older, better Jeeps. Hank likes to act tough, but as we see when he gets transferred to El Paso, he doesn’t really have the stomach or the street smartness to deal with the extreme violence he’s supposed to be combating. Same with his car — he drives this Jeep because it looks enough like a Jeep, but is not all that ‘hard core’.
Unlike her brother-in-law Hank, Skyler, the wife of Walter White, drives a Jeep that isn’t dull. It’s a good example of an older Jeep, though. It’s a super-normal choice for a woman like Skyler — an ordinary woman thrust into bizarre and horrific situations. Also, it has wooden panels that also hint at Skyler’s character. She drives a red 1991 model Jeep Grand Wagoneer — the first 4×4 luxury car and a proper ‘SUV’, even before the term was coined. She is an independent woman who looks after the family and literally stands for her family even when Walt is no more the Walt she knows. She drives an old SUV that really suits her rather bold character.
One of the unsung anti-heroes in the Better Call Saul series, Ignacio “Nacho” Varga, is an intelligent and ambitious mid-ranking drug boss with doomed aspirations. He works for Tuco Salamanca, and although he enjoys the trappings of his narcotic sales, he has no doubt about his precarious position. He hasn’t got women on ‘speed dial’, a cool apartment or a sweet ride. Nacho drives a 70’s steel-bodied muscle car, which was American Motors’ response to the popular “pony car” trend that included the Ford Mustang, the Chevy Camaro and the Plymouth Barracuda. Nacho’s cherry-red version is a beauty, but like the man himself, it is too obvious, attracts too much attention and eventually lands him in trouble.
Another car, which is on the screen a lot is a yellow Hummer, driven by Warmolt who sells tablets to Nacho. From the beginning, Ehrmantraut advises him to get rid of the car because it invites a lot of ‘unwanted attention’, and later, due to this car, Warmolt does face problems.
These two examples of Nacho and Warmolt shed light on car fetishism and its class and societal implications. But Howard Hamlin, the co-owner of HHM can drive a grand British luxury car, a Jaguar XJ8, and he may never get into any trouble, just because he drives it.
Another example of this is Hank’s wife Mary, who is always shown in different shades of blue, and especially associated with a purple/violet tint. Almost all of her costumes and props are in this shade. So obviously, she drives a purple Volkswagen Beetle — it’s cute and small and very much fits Mary, because she is petty, jealous, insecure, petulant, and has not mentally moved past adolescence. A small purple new Beetle fits well enough and this car-casting is a very good example of how a market-driven society specialises its products and how it imposes these on certain people and types of characters.
Everyone, every single character with a very different character arc has unique car choices. Maybe the only person who doesn’t drive a car in the Albuquerque Noir Universe is Chuck, the elder brother of Jimmy McGill — but he is shown as a mentally unfit person. Cars are not just another prop in these two TV series; they are part of every character’s arc. It is a correct reading of the American free market society and its features like commodity fetishism. Capitalism has products for everyone, but it differs by its quality for people from different stratas.
A place like America, which contains perfect examples of a free market society’s fetishism towards commodities, it makes you believe that every product is a necessity. And when it comes to automobiles, at least monetarily, it is one of the biggest industries in the history of any free market economy and offers a varied range of products. In America, the automobile industry is one of the biggest contributors to its GDP. In free market societies like this, people worship cars and need them, in a sense, ‘beyond’ their use as a means of transport. They have become a crucial tool for modern living and are increasingly weaved into the texture of everyday life.
Theories of fetishism say that the near worship of inanimate objects and by the virtue of giving them ‘magical powers’, these objects take on a life of their own. As we shape cars, they shape us. For Karl Marx, commodity fetishism is the tendency of people to see the product of their labour in terms of relationships between things, rather than social relationships between people. In other words, people view the commodity only in terms of the characteristics of the final product, while the process through which it was created remains obscure and therefore, unconsidered. This has crucial implications for our collective ability to see and address the ongoing processes of social and environmental destruction under capitalism. There are no wasted details in Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. The cars of these shows provide deeper insights into the characters’ motivations and inner workings. There’s plenty of symbolism in the ‘Albuquerque Noir’ universe that perhaps only the most perceptive fans will notice. But besides these Easter eggs, there are more obvious details that lend meaning and social criticism to these two two shows. What I examined here with the idea of commodity fetishism of cars may or may not be intended by the writers, but by writing in detail about a free market society will definitely shed lights to each part of it. These are two of the most wonderfully written series in the history of television, and I believe the casting of cars and its connotative meanings in this universe deserve a special mention. Every detail of these screenplays should be discussed for a long time as part of cinema and cultural studies.
Faisal CS is an independent filmmaker and film writer from Kerala. He can be reached at cs.faisal313@gmail.com.
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