Ray Carney, Walter White, Breaking Bad, etc

I read something by Ray Carney. I probably misunderstood it.

He complains about subjectivity in film.

http://people.bu.edu/rcarney/acad/forms.shtml

The idea is that, in general, we see things through the eyes of the protagonist, what their goals and intentions are.

I suppose that's the reason we can watch Dirty Harry without thinking, "My God! Clint Eastwood is a monster!" The reason we watch romantic comedies without thinking, "He's a stalker! That poor girl needs to get a restraining order and a can of pepper spray!"

I think you sort of got a hint of this in the movie Election. We never quite saw the narrator, the teacher, as the innocent victim he thought he was. When his actions come to light, he tells us that nobody remembered all the good things he did, and we wonder what he's referring to.

And now...and now...

And now we have Breaking Bad.

There were a couple of points in recent episodes where subjective intentions didn't count for anything. There was the scene of Walt lying in the crawl space, Skyler having just told him that she gave the money to her former boss.

We understand why she did it. But lying there in the crawl space, all Walter knows is that she gave a vast amount of his money, made at tremendous personal risk, to her former lover.

Earlier in that scene, we see Walt getting into a fight with Jesse. Jesse says accusingly that Walt brought his DEA agent brother-in-law to their lab! Which is sort of true. We understand why Walt did it. We understand what he was doing, but how would Jesse or Gus know?

I don't know what Walter's appeal was. I guess he only killed bad people, at least at first.

There was a case in 2010. A high school teacher named Valerie Elizabeth “Liz” Parrish was arrested for producing methamphetamine. She was trying to raise money to get her boyfriend out of jail. More recently, a school in West Virginia was closed down when traces of meth were found throughout the building. The principal and a teacher were arrested.

When we hear this, do we think that maybe these meth-producing teachers might be like that nice Walter White we see on TV?