In the realm of toxic masculinity power fantasies there is no room for a woman who acts kind of like a normal person.
The show was written to make you root for Walt and dislike Skylar because of that, but is she really that unlikeable if you step back and look at her actions and motivations?
Edit: Sorry for being terse and using charged language in this comment.
I’m a fan of Breaking Bad. I wasn’t trying to put it down or to say that people disliker Skyler because she’s a woman.
Sorry, I should have said that Skyler, the character, did nothing to deserve being disliked. The show was rigged to make you dislike her, in the sense that the storytelling was solely through Walt’s eyes, even in scenes he wasn’t present for.
But I didn’t say that. Vince Gilligan, creator of the show, said it.
I also called it a “power fantasy.” The show’s pitch was to show a man turning himself from “Mr. Chips to Scarface.” It’s not a criticism, I loved the show. It took the power fantasy tropes and subverted them frequently. But at its heart that’s what it is.
If you’re upset that I said that it was about toxic masculinity, then I apologize. That was reductive of me. It explores hegemonic masculinity through the power fantasy trope, and it can be interpreted as either a celebration of or criticism of toxic masculinity depending on how you approach it.
Plenty of more well reasoned people than I could hope to be have written in depth on the subject. Someone even wrote a book in the subject.
If you were reacting to thinking I was putting the show down, which I wasn’t intending to do, then my bad. I could have worded it better. I was trying to make the point that it’s both intentional to not like Skyler, and also the obvious wrong take to not like her.
My whole point was that her motivations and actions are reasonable and she is mostly in the right (ie she is “good” not evil), but her character’s mannerisms are still extremely hate-able.
It’s not about acting like a normal person and it’s certainly not about being a woman.
I hear what you are saying, and while I don’t fully agree that she’s inherently unlikable, I understand why you’re saying that you find her to be so. I mostly was asking you to question your assumptions on it, and I used some charged up language that wasn’t meant as a knock at the show.
To elaborate, what I meant was that the show exaggerates her mannerisms to give Walt motivation rather than to create a fully fleshed out character. She’s not a woman, but a symbol of how men have become emasculated by their wives’ “wearing the pants” in the family. At least early on she’s not much more than a framing device and justification for Walt’s decisions.
She grows as a character, and ends up having more agency, but only in the confines of Walt’s domination of their lives with his selfishly motivated, and traditionally toxic masculine, choices.
And I don’t think you meant it this way, but you can’t really easily separate disliking her from being a woman. I don’t mean to imply that you dislike her because she’s a woman, but that her character’s role is to be a controlling wife. It’s an inherently gendered character that relies heavily on preconceptions of what a woman should and shouldn’t be in a relationship with a man who is a main character in a story.
I think it’s telling that she is considered unlikable enough to even warrant discussing in a show where the main character is a multi-murderer monster who destroyed the lives of everyone he loved, and the main villains include nazis, cartels, lawyers and corporate shills.
That, for anyone, she’s the most hated character on the show is enough for me to take a minute and question my assumptions on her, at least. So I thought it was worth pushing back on your comment asking you, and others reading, to do the same.
The characters role is to be a controlling spouse. If Walt was gay married to a man who behaved the same way Skyler does, they would be just as frustrating to watch on screen. It’s not inherently gendered, you’re putting that on it.
She isn’t a controlling spouse, she’s a controlling housewife in an exaggerated disappointing version of a post-nuclear American family.
The show states over and over again that Walt believes a man provides for his family… a necessarily and pointedly gendered role that is central to his entire character’s motivations. Skyler’s nagging is framed exactly in relation to his perceived shortcomings with respect to this gendered expectation.
In a gay relationship you don’t tend to just mirror straight relationships but the bottom replaces the women, or something. So you can’t just conjure Skyler as a dude and make it make any sense as a family.
When there are two or more men coming together, usually they all have their own separate careers and plans for life. There is no template gay relationships have to build off of, and having children is way more difficult and complicated. We have to define everything for ourselves.
None of the tropes that are foundations of Breaking Bad work if you swap the genders of the characters. If walt were a woman nothing she does would make sense to the audience and the treatment from her annoyed husband would be absolute nonsense. Why would he expect her to provide for the family? Why would he expect her to man up? Etc?
In the realm of toxic masculinity power fantasies there is no room for a woman who acts kind of like a normal person.
The show was written to make you root for Walt and dislike Skylar because of that, but is she really that unlikeable if you step back and look at her actions and motivations?
Edit: Sorry for being terse and using charged language in this comment.
I’m a fan of Breaking Bad. I wasn’t trying to put it down or to say that people disliker Skyler because she’s a woman.
Upthread I clarified things a bit, hopefully.
This the kind of surface level interpretation that makes me question people’s ability to reason.
Edit: I was being harsh, ignore me lol
Sorry, I should have said that Skyler, the character, did nothing to deserve being disliked. The show was rigged to make you dislike her, in the sense that the storytelling was solely through Walt’s eyes, even in scenes he wasn’t present for.
But I didn’t say that. Vince Gilligan, creator of the show, said it.
https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/breaking-bad-vince-gilligan-skyler-white-sexist-backlash-1234754425/
I also called it a “power fantasy.” The show’s pitch was to show a man turning himself from “Mr. Chips to Scarface.” It’s not a criticism, I loved the show. It took the power fantasy tropes and subverted them frequently. But at its heart that’s what it is.
If you’re upset that I said that it was about toxic masculinity, then I apologize. That was reductive of me. It explores hegemonic masculinity through the power fantasy trope, and it can be interpreted as either a celebration of or criticism of toxic masculinity depending on how you approach it.
Plenty of more well reasoned people than I could hope to be have written in depth on the subject. Someone even wrote a book in the subject.
If you were reacting to thinking I was putting the show down, which I wasn’t intending to do, then my bad. I could have worded it better. I was trying to make the point that it’s both intentional to not like Skyler, and also the obvious wrong take to not like her.
Alright I love this, thank you! And I apologize for reacting strongly
My whole point was that her motivations and actions are reasonable and she is mostly in the right (ie she is “good” not evil), but her character’s mannerisms are still extremely hate-able.
It’s not about acting like a normal person and it’s certainly not about being a woman.
I hear what you are saying, and while I don’t fully agree that she’s inherently unlikable, I understand why you’re saying that you find her to be so. I mostly was asking you to question your assumptions on it, and I used some charged up language that wasn’t meant as a knock at the show.
To elaborate, what I meant was that the show exaggerates her mannerisms to give Walt motivation rather than to create a fully fleshed out character. She’s not a woman, but a symbol of how men have become emasculated by their wives’ “wearing the pants” in the family. At least early on she’s not much more than a framing device and justification for Walt’s decisions.
She grows as a character, and ends up having more agency, but only in the confines of Walt’s domination of their lives with his selfishly motivated, and traditionally toxic masculine, choices.
And I don’t think you meant it this way, but you can’t really easily separate disliking her from being a woman. I don’t mean to imply that you dislike her because she’s a woman, but that her character’s role is to be a controlling wife. It’s an inherently gendered character that relies heavily on preconceptions of what a woman should and shouldn’t be in a relationship with a man who is a main character in a story.
I think it’s telling that she is considered unlikable enough to even warrant discussing in a show where the main character is a multi-murderer monster who destroyed the lives of everyone he loved, and the main villains include nazis, cartels, lawyers and corporate shills.
That, for anyone, she’s the most hated character on the show is enough for me to take a minute and question my assumptions on her, at least. So I thought it was worth pushing back on your comment asking you, and others reading, to do the same.
The characters role is to be a controlling spouse. If Walt was gay married to a man who behaved the same way Skyler does, they would be just as frustrating to watch on screen. It’s not inherently gendered, you’re putting that on it.
She isn’t a controlling spouse, she’s a controlling housewife in an exaggerated disappointing version of a post-nuclear American family.
The show states over and over again that Walt believes a man provides for his family… a necessarily and pointedly gendered role that is central to his entire character’s motivations. Skyler’s nagging is framed exactly in relation to his perceived shortcomings with respect to this gendered expectation.
In a gay relationship you don’t tend to just mirror straight relationships but the bottom replaces the women, or something. So you can’t just conjure Skyler as a dude and make it make any sense as a family.
When there are two or more men coming together, usually they all have their own separate careers and plans for life. There is no template gay relationships have to build off of, and having children is way more difficult and complicated. We have to define everything for ourselves.
None of the tropes that are foundations of Breaking Bad work if you swap the genders of the characters. If walt were a woman nothing she does would make sense to the audience and the treatment from her annoyed husband would be absolute nonsense. Why would he expect her to provide for the family? Why would he expect her to man up? Etc?