Breaking Bad is the cult series that marked the transition from the 2000s to the 2010s. Although much has already been written about this masterful work by Vince Gilligan, not everything has been said about the richness of its photography. The color yellow plays a fascinating role.
Read: interview with color historian Michel Pastoureau on his new book Yellow in our April issue, pre-order here.
It's one of the best series on any platform, according to numerous well-known and recognized rankings. One of the most popular, needless to say; the numbers speak for themselves. But one of the most accomplished, this may seem subjective... It is: any judgment of taste is first and foremost the judgment of a subject, and is therefore relative to a subject - in other words, it is a judgment of taste. subjective. BUT this judgment relates to an object, which has objective characteristics. The subjective and the objective are not mutually exclusive; on the contrary, they enrich each other. And what riches, precisely, can be found in Breaking Bad without even looking for them; by simply watching the series, for a start.
A quick reminder of the plot
By way of background, this American series directed by Vince Gilligan, who made his name as a screenwriter for the series X-Files, features an overqualified chemist, Walter White, who learns one day that he has cancer. As a result, he decides to start trafficking methamphetamine to save enough money for his family's future. Breaking Bad, tells the story of how an exemplary family man becomes a monster. A loser poignant, that you begin to love and end up loving to hate.
Not to mention a series of twists and turns whose writing is worthy of the best. thrillers, The strength of this series lies in the complexity not only of the main protagonist, but of all the other characters as well. Almost no one escapes a certain moral ambivalence, a balancing act between a luminous facet and a darker one. In short, Walter is not so white But that's everyone's lot. Society is made up exclusively of ’gray souls«, to use the expression coined by author Philippe Claudel for the title of a novel.
Walter Yellow
This play on words - a real play on words, i.e. one that makes sense - on the surname of the chemist Walter is not so insignificant. In reality, colors have their own importance. If they're full of symbols in our everyday lives, colors are chosen with particular care in the series Breaking Bad. Benjamin Campion has reported some very interesting facts about black, red, green, blue, orange and even pink in his article «The colors of Breaking Bad» hosted by LeMonde.fr. But, strangely enough, the color yellow doesn't appear in his paper! And yet, yellow has meanings that are classically attributed to it and that directly echo the series, starting with its main character, Walter White.
As color historian Michel Pastoureau reminds us in his book Yellow. History of a color, Yellow has long been associated with illness. Our vocabulary is overflowing with expressions such as «jaundice», «yellowish» and even «jaundiced» - no offense intended. A disease that refers to Walter's cancer. Yellow is the color of urine, and of yellow bile, the mood of anger and linked to the liver. A mood of violence, too, very present in Breaking Bad and the actions of characters such as Walter. Similarly, when yellow is seen in a positive light, it is historically associated with gold, and therefore with pecuniary fortune. Finally, etymology tells us about the linguistic intimacy between yellow and betrayal. Both words come from felon. And without giving away too much of the synopsis, everyone will have understood that such stories are all about betrayal.
Yellow, the world is yellow
«Stone, the world is stoned», we heard in Starmania, Michel Berger's rock opera. It's not Breaking Bad which is an exception. But above all, in this fictional universe, the world is yellow! Green, also present in the series and holding its symbols, is the color par excellence of nature. But perhaps it's because there's very little nature, if not arid, in the series, that its environment has a clear yellow dominance in its colorations. This chromatic ambience is anchored in concrete things: the desert earth, the blinding sun, the ungrateful vegetation; but also the camper van, the laboratory suits, the logo of the Los Pollos Hermanos restaurant chain, the clothes of its director Gustavo Gus (without getting too autistic, isn't the «G» a deeply yellow letter?) and his collaborators.
This omnipresence of yellow as a fundamental element of the world tells us something about the meaning of the series. If it's not the usual green of trees and fields that has been chosen to evoke the landscape, it's because the environment is not designed to be gentle from the camera's point of view. The world is harsh, cruel. And it's not going too far into philosophical interpretations to see in it the omnipotence of the sun as the star of day and life. A harsh life that always ends in extinction. Like the sun, which often sets in the shots of Breaking Bad. Death stalks Walter White, whose declining existence will bring him down perhaps even faster than his illness. Yellow, that's how Breaking Bad. A color that continually brings us back to tragedy.
Write to the author: jonas.follonier@leregardlibre.com
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