Walt’s moral and psychological maladies assume a distinct physical form. Earlier, on the same day as his birthday party, he collapses washing cars at the car wash. On the way to the hospital, Walt asks the ambulance attendant to let him out because he has terrible health insurance. Walt learns that he has inoperable, advanced stage lung cancer. Despite Susan Sontag’s (2001) admonition to not perceive of physical illness in metaphoric terms, one cannot help but think that Walt’s body is revolving against his systemic passivity and inability to assert his will in his life. Sontag argues that cancer has become the predominant disease metaphor in our culture. It is considered a disease of repression, or inhibited passion. The cancer sufferer characteristically suppresses emotion, which after many years emerges from the unconscious self as malignant growth (Sontag). Metaphorically, one could say that Walt’s body is revolting against his repressive nature and lifestyle, and a last warning to change his life. Cancer, of course, is associated with death and is disturbing to its victims because it reminds them that their death is imminent.
NEOLIBERALISM, CRIMINALITY, AND ENTREPRENEURISM
Classical liberalism and the welfare state era conceived of crime as an aberrant event that can only be resolved through the proper functioning and direct intervention of such social institutions as the family, education, and job opportunities. The criminal was a social deviant who diverged established social norms. The welfare state believed that crime can only be reduced through state intervention and the criminal can be socially rehabilitated to fit back into normal society. In contrast, neoliberal criminology disassociates itself from any social, psychological, and biological explanations of crime and criminal behavior (Lemke 2001). Crime is viewed as a routine event committed by persons who make a particular choice among many choices. Neoliberal criminologists believe the crime can occur anywhere and can never be completely eliminated. The only ways to reduce crime is through individual vigilance, surveillance, penal disincentives, and proper zoning in potential high crime areas (Herbert and Brown 2006).
Under neoliberal criminology, the criminal is not a product of a psychological disorder or a genetic defect but rather is a typical person. The criminal is a rational-economic actor who contemplates and calculates the risks and the rewards of his actions. Crime is no longer a deviant activity outside the mainstream market, but is rather one market among others. Neoliberal penal theory controls and regulates the market for crime by increasing the costs or penalties of committing crime and accepts the fact that crime cannot completely be eliminated from society (Lemke). Examples of neoliberal penal reforms include mandatory imprisonment sentences, such as the “Three Strikes and You’re Out” law, to the popular “Zero Tolerance” school policies for students caught with any weapon (Wacquant 2009; Ismaili 2003). Loic Wacquant (2009) asserts that the neoliberal turn in penal theory with its strict penal categories, practices and policies have led to the formation of a “grand penal state” in the United States. For the past twenty-five years, the prison population has increased fivefold and now encompasses seven million Americans which corresponds to one adult male in twenty and one black man in three. Wacquant argues that the rise of a penal state in the United States is not a respond to the rise of crime, which remained constant in the time period, but rather is a response to the social dislocations caused by the decline of the welfare state and the insecurities associated with low wage labor for citizens trapped at the bottom of a polarizing class structure (xiv-xv).
At the center of neo-liberalism’s conception of subjectivity is the concept of self-care or the accepted premise that each person is responsible for him or herself. Individuals must assume responsibility for their well-being and personal development in a market-driven society. The individual must take responsibility for his or her well-being and development. Thomas Lemke (2001), examining Foucault’s lectures on the discourses of neoliberal governmentality, says that neoliberal forms of government do not necessarily lead to the state assuming a reduced role in social life. In fact, the state devises new strategies for leading and controlling individuals without being responsible for them. Neoliberal governments function to produce self-governing individuals while shifting the responsibility for such social risks as illness, unemployment, crime and poverty, and social life in general into the domain of personal self-care (Lemke).
Under neoliberal subjectivity, labor is not perceived as an abstract element purchased on the market and attached to the production of a specific commodity, but rather as “human capital” that is inextricably tied to the individual worker. For neoliberals, labor is a subjective choice among many other activities for people to choose from in their daily lives. In choosing labor, a person is conceived as an entrepreneur who invests his human capital to produce an income to finance his interest in other activities for his personal development and pleasure. Lemke refers to neo-liberalism’s focus on the caring of the self and producing a surplus-value of capital as “entrepreneurism” (197-99) Neo-liberalism seeks to construct practical subjects whose moral quality consists of their ability to rationally assess the costs and benefits of any particular action among alternative acts. Neo-liberalism promotes individuals to conceive of themselves as entrepreneurs in every facet of their lives (Lemke). Within this scenario, crime is just another activity among many to choose from and a criminal entrepreneur can be seen as a person who invests his human capital to produce a surplus-value of capital to partake in his or her personal interests.
The criminal serves as an imaginary figure for revenge fantasies in neo-liberalism. Jodi Dean (2008) theorizes that the criminal stands in for the unpredictable risk and intolerable loss within neo-liberalism’s “free trade fantasy” of the market as a place where “everyone wins.” Because the criminal is less a person than an image of horrifying loss and deprivation, he must be punished and society must be protected from his presence. I do, however, argue that the neoliberal criminal serves a much more complicated role than representing the horror of losing in the market (Dean). The criminal entrepreneur who builds a criminal empire from the ground up serves as a fantasy figure of American capitalism. The classic Hollywood gangster of the 1930s exemplifies a twisted version of the traditional Horatio Alger American success story. This character is traditionally a newly landed immigrant from “Old Europe” who comes to America to socially advance himself through hard work, perseverance, love of family, and a willingness to break the law and profit from areas outside the legitimate bounds of society. Hollywood’s movie gangsters are “neoliberal America’s poster-children” because they express the American success myth of self-improvement with minimal state involvement and liberated from the moral prudence and self-restraints associated with American Puritanism (McCalmont). The gangster readily takes what he wants from others, whether through extortion or hostile takeover, exemplifies capital accumulation in its most primitive form. The cinematic gangster reminds us that self-interest and avarice reside in the heart of modern capitalism.