Narco-Capitalist Macbeths in TV Series: Shakespeare’s Archive in The Wire (David Simon, 2002–2008) and Breaking Bad (Vince Gilligan, 2008–2013)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14198/raei.2024.40.10Keywords:
narco-capitalism, archive, Macbeth, reenactment, trace, sources, source text, Adaptation, transmediaAbstract
I will tackle serial appropriations of Shakespeare’s Macbeth in The Wire (David Simon, 2002–2008) and Breaking Bad (Vince Gilligan, 2008–2013). Both complex TV series recast Macbeth in the context of narcocapitalism. Rather than constituting an alternative to mainstream capitalism, narco-capitalism maintains the American and global socioeconomic orders as depicted in both series. Paying attention to what will be defined as Shakespeare’s archive, it will be shown that traces from Macbeth are reactivated in The Wire and Breaking Bad. Shakespeare’s archive is formed by traces of Shakespeare’s dramatic and narrative sources, quartos, folios, later editions and adaptations. This corpus displays verbal and non-verbal features of Shakespeare’s oeuvre. Taken together, traces and reenactments of Shakespeare highlight the multifarious and competing ways in which Shakespearean appropriations sail through the depth and length of complex TV. To illustrate this, I will use archive theory, transmedia theory and narcocapitalism as lenses of analysis. This framework helps explain archival strategies employed for Shakespearean appropriation within the social context of both series. The results reveal that Shakespeare’s archive in both works leads to an ambivalent ethical assessment of the potentialities of narco-capitalism.
Funding
This article is one of the outputs of the Research Project "CIRCE: Early Modern European Theater on Screen" (CIGE/2021/086), financed by Conserlleria d'Innovació, Universitats i Ocupació of the Generalitat Valenciana. It was written during a research stay at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (April–June 2022). Acknowledgements are owed to Arturo Mora-Rioja, Reto Winckler and Ben Alexander for their feedback on the manuscript Additionally, this publication is inscribed within Research Project "Archivos en transición: Memorias colectivas y usos subalternos" (programa MSCA-RISE de la Unión Europea, acciones Marie Skłodowska-Curie, ref. 872299).References
Albanese, Denise. 2010. Extramural Shakespeare. New York, Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230112940
Balló, Jordi and Xavier Pérez. 2015. El mundo, un escenario (Shakespeare: el guionista invisible). Translated by Carlos Losilla. Barcelona: Editorial Anagrama S.A.
Bronfen, Elisabeth. 2020. Serial Shakespeare (An Infinite Variety of Appropriations in American TV Drama). Manchester: Manchester University Press. https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526142320
Buchanan, Judith. "Collaboration with the Dead, Playing the Shakespeare Archive; or, How to Avoid Being Pushed from Our Stools." In Cronin, MagShamráin and Preuschoff 2020, 233-267. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25161-1
Bullough, Geoffrey (ed.). 1973. Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare: Volume 7: Major Tragedies. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. New York: Columbia University Press.
Bullough, Geoffrey. 1973. "Macbeth (Introduction)." In Bullough 1973, 423-469.
Cantor, Paul (ed.). 2019. Pop Culture and the Dark Side of the American Dream (Con Men, Gangsters, Drug Lords, and Zombies). Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky. https://doi.org/10.5810/kentucky/9780813177304.001.0001
Cantor, Paul. 2019. "The Macbeth of Meth: Breaking Bad and the Tragedy of Walter White." In Cantor 2019, 88-132. https://doi.org/10.5810/kentucky/9780813177304.003.0005
Carroll, William C. 2021. Adapting Macbeth: A Cultural History. London, New York, New Delhi, Sydney: Bloomsbury Publishings Plc.
Carroll, William C. 2013. "Fleance in the Final Scene of Macbeth: The Return of the Oppressed." In Hatchuel, Vienne-Guerrin and Bladen, 261-278.
Cartelli, Thomas. 2019. Reenacting Shakespeare in the Shakespeare Aftermath (The Intermedial Turn and Turn to Embodiment). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-40482-4
Carrión, Jorge. 2011. Teleshakespeare. Madrid: Errata Naturae.
Cascajosa-Virino, Concepción. 2016. La cultura de las series. Barcelona: Laertes S.L. Ediciones.
Chisum, Jeffrey. 2019. "The Macbeth of the American West: Tragedy, Genre and Landscape in Breaking Bad." Critical Studies in Television 14(4): 415-428. https://doi.org/10.1177/1749602019872655
Colby, Roger. 2013. "Five Reasons Why Breaking Bad is Macbeth." WritingIsHardWork. https://writingishardwork.wordpress.com/2013/08/26/5-reasons-why-breakingbad-is-macbeth/ [Accessed online on July 4, 2022].
Cronin, Bernadette, Rachel MagShamráin and Nikolai Preuschoff, eds. 2020. Adaptation Considered as a Collaborative Art: Adaptation in Theatre Performance. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25161-1
Dean, Paul. 1999. "Murderous Repetition: Macbeth as Eco Chamber." English Studies 80(3): 216-223. https://doi.org/10.1080/00138389908599178
Desmet, Christy, Sujata Iyengar and Miriam Jacobson (eds.). 2020. The Routledge Handbook of Shakespeare and Global Appropriation. London, New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315168968
Downey, Roger. "Shakespeare in the City." Seattle Weekly, February 8, 2007, https://www.seattleweekly.com/arts/shakespeare-in-the-city/
Elleström, Lars. (2019). Transmedial Narration (Narratives and Stories in Different Media). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01294-6
Falconer, Rachel. (2005) 2007. Hell in Contemporary Literature (Western Descent Narratives Since 1945). Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP. https://doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9780748617630.001.0001
Fader, Jamie J. 2019. ""The Game Ain't What It Used to Be": Drug Sellers' Perceptions of the Modern Day Underground and Legal Markets." Journal of Drug Issues 49(1): 57-73. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022042618803057
Fernie, Ewan. 2017. Shakespeare for Freedom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Foucault, Michel. [1969] 2002. Archaeology of Knowledge. Translated by A. M. Sheridan Smith. London and New York: Routledge Classics.
Fox, Michael David. ""Like a Poor Player"-Audience Emotional Response, Nonrepresentational Performance and the Staging of Suffering in Macbeth." In Moschovakis 2013, 208-223.
French, Tom. 2012. "The Wire's Top 7 Characters." Den of Geek. https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/the-wires-top-7-characters/ [Accessed online on June 2, 2022].
Galey, Alan. 2014. The Shakespearean Archive (Experiments in New Media from the Renaissance to Postmodernity). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139629201
Greenhalgh, Susanne. "Televisual Adaptation of Shakespeare in a Multi-Platform Age." In Henderson and O'Neill 2022, 246-270. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350110335.ch-2.10
Guneratne, Anthony. 2016. "The Greatest Shakespeare Film Never Made: Textualities, Authorship, and Archives." Shakespeare Bulletin, 34(3): 391-412. https://doi.org/10.1353/shb.2016.0033
Harris, Jonathan Gil. 2007. "The Smell of "Macbeth"." Shakespeare Quarterly 58(4): 465-486. 10.1353/shq.2007.0062. https://doi.org/10.1353/shq.2007.0062
Hatchuel, Sarah, Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin and Victoria Bladen (eds.). 2013. Shakespeare on Screen: Macbeth. Mont-Saint-Aignan Cedex: Presses Universitaires de Rouen et du Havre.
Henderson, Diana E. and Stephen O'Neill (eds.). The Arden Research Handbook of Shakespeare and Adaptation. London, New York: Oxford, New Delhi, Sydney: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
Hillier, Russell M. 2021. "The Significance of Dunsinane in Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Ireland, George Buchanan's Rerum Scoticarum Historia, and Shakespeare's Macbeth." A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes, and Reviews 34(2): 105-110. https://doi.org/10.1080/0895769X.2019.1647823
Hodgdon, Barbara. 2016. Shakespeare, Performance and the Archive. London, New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203144459
Kinney, Arthur F. 2006. Shakespeare and Cognition (Aristotle's Legacy and Shakespearean Drama). New York, London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203960165
Kroonenberg, Salomon. (2011) 2013. Why Hell Stinks of Sulfur (Mythology and Geology of the Underworld). Translated by Andy Brown. London: Reaktion Books.
Marchitello, Howard. 2013. "Speed and the Problem of Real Time in Macbeth." Shakespeare Quarterly 64(4): 425-448. https://doi.org/10.1353/shq.2013.0059
Mittell, Jason. 2009. Complex TV (The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling). New York and London: New York University Press, 2015. https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9780814744963.001.0001
Moschovakis, Nick (ed.). 2013. Macbeth (New Critical Essays). Oxon: Routledge.
Pittman, L. Monique. "Resisting History and Atoning for Racial Privilege: Shakespeare's Henriad in HBO's The Wire." In Desmet, Iyengar and Jacobson 2020, 378-387. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315168968-34
Rovit, Earl H. 1960. "The American Concept of Home." The American Scholar 29(4): 521-530.
Ruiter, David (ed.). 2020. The Arden Research Handbook of Shakespeare and Social Justice. London, New York, Oxford, New Delhi, Sydney: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350140394
Ruiter, David. 2020. "This is Real Life: Shakespeare and Social Justice as a Field of Play." In Ruiter 2020, 1-24. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350140394.ch-00I
Schreyer, Kurt. 2010. ""Here's a Knocking Indeed!": Macbeth and the Harrowing of Hell." The Upstart Crow, 29: 26-43. https://doi.org/10.7591/9780801455100-010
Shakespeare, William. 1623. Macbeth (The Arden Shakespeare) (Third Edition), edited by Sandra Clark and Pamela Mason. London, New Delhi, New York, Sydney: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2015.
Shakespeare, William. 1623. The Tempest (The New Cambridge Shakespeare), edited by David Lindley. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2013.
Simon, David. 1991. Homicide (A Year in the Streets of Baltimore). Edinburgh, London, New York, Melbourne: Canongate. E-Pub.
Stuart, Sarah Clarke. 2011. Literary Lost (Viewing Television Through the Lens of Literature). London: The Continuum International Publishing Book.
Sutter, Laurence de. 2018. Narcocapitalism. Translated by Barnaby Norman. Cambridge and Medford: Polity Press. uFaerieStories. n.d. "Breaking Bad's 'Fly' episode has a strong connection to Shakespeare's Macbeth." r/FanTheories, https://www.reddit.com/r/FanTheories/comments/2oe95g/breaking_bads_fly_episode_has_a_strong_connection/ [Accessed online on July 25, 2022].
VanDerWerff, Emily. 2018. "Breaking Bad Became One of the Best TV Shows Ever by Borrowing a Trick from Shakespeare," Vox, https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/1/20/16910760/breaking-bad-10th-anniversary-birthdaystructure [Accessed online on August 27, 2022].
Wald, Christina. Shakespeare's Serial Returns in Complex TV. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46851-4
Wickham, Glynne. 1966. "Hell-Castle and Its Door-Keeper." Shakespeare Survey 19: 68-74). https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521064325.007
Wilson, Jeffrey. 2021. Shakespeare and Game of Thrones. London, New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003039662
Downloads
Statistics
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Víctor Huertas
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
