Random Act of Flyness S1E5

***note the following scene is a collage of multiple video clips from various time and spaces. The time is added below if you want to see the actual video

Woman Reporter: Do you have any advice for a young girl moving to Hollywood?
Woman on Red Carpet: If Harvey Weinstein invites you to a party in the Four Seasons, don't go
[Laugh Track]
Brie Larson: And the Oscar goes to Casey Affleck

Terence: The liberal bastions of Hollywood and Silicon Valley have been revealed as a little more than a stag party

No one is safe from a white man with a gun or a bomb. Racist-raping tyrants are in possession of nuclear weapons in America, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and North Korea.

It's a character flaw that they are blind to themselves and the characters they create.

Breaking Bad as a cultural phenomenon peaked in 2013.

Bryan Cranston: There's a lot of people who can relate to this character

Terence: I've been thinking. Does (beep) get elected president without the existence of Walter White?

Let's backtrack a little bit

America's first box office hit came in 1915 with Birth of a Nation. The Civil War and Reconstruction epic was a Ku Klux Klan recruiting tool, and the first motion picture to screen at the White House.

Movies and television are propaganda. It's no coincidence the Cold War gave rise to the action hero or that Hollywood set the table for an affable, non-threatening black president.

Morgan Freedman as President: Our society will continue. Work will go on. You will pay your bills.

Terence: Can I read you a quote from Flight Club?

"Men I see in Fight Club are the strongest and smartest men that ever lived. An entire generation pumping gas and waiting tables, slaves with white collars. We all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaire and movie gods and rock stars. But we won't, and we're slowly learning that fact, and we're very very pissed off."

Now think about that quote in the context of what happened in Charlottesville. The alt-right's term "snowflake," which roughly translated means a white man who's been emasculated, was coined in the book Fight Club.

Now, could Fight Club have inspired the alt-right? Let me explain what we mean by "inspire."

The White Devil also known as the anti-hero, is an archetypal character trope. White Devils are white men and women thrust into situations in which they are surrounded by other white characters, who do not possess their preternatural level of genius of skill. The wrinkle is that the White Devil is his or her own antagonist. Often, some embodiment of their Jungian shadow consistently pervades their life and relationships.

The power that this shadow generates is the key source of the White Devils' exceptional technical genius.

The White Devils' narrative function is to win in the battle against his or her shadow self, and make sure the dark energy that their shadow self generates is used for good.

It's a character flaw that they are blind to themselves in the characters they create. The heroes and protagonists of their literature and films reek of the same oversight. An uncharacteristic value that they solve, but instantly deepen and broaden their perspective. This was the flaw they worshiped.

Question. Have you thought about what makes these characters compelling? Why them? Why their stories?

Why them? Is it because white people are the best at everything? Not only the best cops, but also the best drug dealers?

I ask because Breaking Bad is a show about a guy who has the American dream. But when his mortality is threatened, he has to turn to a life of crime. In order to survive, he has to tap into a rage that's always been there, just below the surface. In doing so, he embraces his Jungian shadow, and goes from impotent to virile.

Clearly the surname "White" is symbolic of this archetypal pathology, but what degree is Breaking Bad intentionally about white men's pathological fragility? To what degree is this show intentionally inspiring white men to re-establish their social and cultural dominance? Given the aforementioned, did Walter White intentionally inspire the popular resurgence of the alt right?

That said, the alt-right is not new or phenomenal in any way. So given that stasis, why do these characters persist?

They persist because the White Devil archetype in contemporary film and television functions as yet another display of white male dominance and social power, by framing the Jungian shadow as a source of white male cultural and social centrality.

It's function is to peacock. To put on display a shadow-fueled virility and acumen. The desired effect is for the melanated masses to hesitate before challenging white supremacy. Their hope is that, in any moment of resistance, no matter how big or small, they, us, we will remember that the white person or institution they are resisting has a devil inside them, an amoral devil that will not concede defeat under any circumstances.