Neo-liberalism’s economic-rational individualism is conflated with aggressive, hyper-masculine behavior in the series.[4] Neo-liberalism, with its prime concentration on promoting aggressive individualism and self-interest, does not leave much space for non-aggressive emotions, like compassion and humility, nor for socially-directed actions such as charity, working for social and economic justice, and community-building. Neo-liberalism’s focus on the primacy of self-care and entrepreneurship make it easier to attain support for cutting social services and public programs that do not directly support or promote the self-interests of the economic-rational individual.
The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) agents are also characterized by their aggressive and hyper-masculine behavior. With their male-bonding and masculine bravado, the DEA agents are social counterparts to the drug kingpins and dealers they are investigating. Similar to Eric Beck’s description of the social structures of The Wire, both groups are circumscribed within the bounds of neoliberal capitalism (Beck). While the drug dealers are filling a demand within an illegitimate market, the agents are busy protecting the legitimate market economy and society. The DEA agents’ aggressive behavior is best epitomized by Walt’s gregarious brother-in-law, DEA Supervisor Agent Hank Schrader. At Walt’s birthday party, Hank repeatedly berates Walt’s masculinity. In the episode “Grilled” (3/15/09), Hank boasts about a drug raid explicitly tying his sexual virility to his actions. During an intervention orchestrated by Skyler to persuade Walt to undergo treatment for his cancer, Hank is only able to relate to Walt’s situation through lame sports metaphors about winning and losing.
Beneath Hank’s tough, immodest exterior lies a deep undercurrent of emotional vulnerability. When Hank goes on a DEA stakeout in Mexico, he spots a tortoise with Tortuga’s, a drug informant, severed head attached to it. The words “HOLA DEA” are painted on the shell. To his colleagues’ amusement, Hank edges away in disgust. Seconds later, the tortoise explodes killing several of the DEA El Paso agents. Hank’s near-death experience shakes him to the core. Later, when Hank is asked to work again with the El Paso Office as part of a promotion, he begins having anxiety attacks. He makes excuses to his boss about not leaving claiming that he is pursuing new leads on a big drug case. Hank’s boss decides to give the promotion to Hank’s partner Gomez (Steven Quezada). Marie, Hank’s wife, begs him to share his feelings about Gomez taking the promotion Hank was offered. Marie tells him that after his near-death experience, it is no wonder he does not want to return to El Paso. Refusing to acknowledge any concern about Mexico, Hank exclaims that he is staying in Albuquerque is to pursue critical leads in the Heisenberg[5] (Walt’s strange drug alias) investigation.
NEO-LIBERALISM, THE BORDER, AND RACIALIZED DRUG POLICY
The U.S.-Mexico border has long been the setting for America’s longest war—the drug war. The first instance of the border drug wars began in 1969 when the Nixon Administration enacted “Operation Intercept,” which led to the shutting down the border with Mexico. The operation did little to decrease the supply of drugs coming across the border and was only successful at exposing the economic interdependence of U.S.-Mexico border communities. In the early 1980s, the Reagan administration launched its massive “War on Drugs.” The central goal of the war was to block the tide of cocaine coming into the United States through the Caribbean from Columbia. The Columbians countered by finding an alternative route into the United States through the large, open border with Mexico. In Mexico, the Columbians found a willing partner in Miguel Felix Gallardo, a well-known drug smuggler who consolidated many of the small-time drug smugglers in the 1960s and 1970s into a single operation and controlled much of the illegal drug trade on the border. Internal organizational conflicts in Mexico eventually led to the formation of the modern drug cartel. Mexico’s four major drug cartels have the financial and technical resources to match and even out-maneuver American and Mexican law enforcement. Tony Payan (2006) maintains that the war on drugs and neo-liberal free trade policies, like NAFTA, have only strengthened the positions of the cartels. NAFTA has allowed the cartels to use the millions of border truck crossings to effectively smuggle and distribute their drugs throughout the continental United States. Almost two decades later, NAFTA’s promise to help Mexico build a viable, middle-class never happened. Migration out of Mexico has doubled and because of a tight labor market, wages have been stagnant on both sides of the border (Payan).
The 1980s “War on Drugs” was not justified. Since marijuana and cocaine use actually declined in the late 1970s and the “supply-reduction approach” to drug use had a long history of failure in the United States, there was no rational reason for Reagan’s escalated drug war. Reagan’s neoliberal drug policies and their enforcement ended up disproportionally targeting African Americans living in economically depressed neighborhoods in large urban centers. The policies reinforced fears and concerns among Americans about the city’s “underclass,” who are believed to be socially and morally mired in an endless cycle of drug abuse, poverty, and welfare dependency. Because these areas were already dense in police presence, it was easier to spot drug trafficking and it was easier to make arrests and convictions of young drug suspects who did not have the financial and legal resources to fight their convictions. These areas were deemed easier to patrol and make arrests than the city’s high-rise apartments or the outlying suburban communities (Wacquant).
The history and growth of U.S. drug prohibition laws is intimately linked to particular ethnic and racial groups. The first drug prohibition law, the Opium Exclusion Act of 1909, banned the importation of opium for smoking, but not for medicinal uses. Congress, in making the act, argued that the importation of opium for non-medicinal consumption as part of a Chinese plan to weaken America. Later, African Americans were closely identified with cocaine use and cocaine possession was criminalized because southern politicians feared that African American “cocaine users might become oblivious of their prescribed bounds and attack white society” (Schneider 1998, 434). Congress also criminalized marijuana possession based on the fears that it was primarily being used by Mexican immigrants and it served as “a source of crime and deviant behavior.” Cathy Schneider (1998) argues that the most passionate support for U.S. drug prohibition laws has been based on the fears associated with a particular drug’s effect on a specific minority group. For instance, Latino/a Americans living in the Southwest were believed to be drawn to violent behavior by smoking marijuana (Schneider). Breaking Bad reinforces the association between Latino/a Americans, illegal drug use, drug trafficking, and violent behavior. In the episode “A No-Rough-Stuff-Type Deal” (3/9/08), for example, Tuco snorts a sample of Walt’s meth to test its potency, and then, without much provocation, viciously beats one of his own men nearly to death. Also, Tuco’s Mexican “cousins” are a pair of cold-blooded, cartel assassins who cut off Tortuga’s head with a machete and murder a half dozen of their fellow Mexicans who recently crossed the U.S.-Mexico border.
4
I am not arguing that neo-liberalism has specific gendered qualities, but rather that its focus on aggressive individualism and distrust of the social are traits normally associated with western masculinity. The institutional shift the welfare state to the neoliberal state can also be understood in gendered terms. Wacquant, in
5
The “Heisenberg” reference in