Neoliberalism is a political model that has risen to dominance in late twentieth and early twenty-first century America. This dissertation argues that the last fifty years of policy making in the western economic world has created a society that is decaying like the one depicted in Breaking Bad. At a financial, governmental, and familial level, neoliberalism, and its movement towards privatisation of all aspects of civilisation, has embedded itself in American society. Vince Gilligan, who created Breaking Bad, presents neoliberalism as a failure in capitalist policy making, led by figures such as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher (fig 1) which has led to the dehumanisation of the working class. The storyline across five seasons depicts the full extent of neoliberalism’s failure through its financial monopoly for a minutiae of society and economic hardship for the majority. These societal constraints create opportunists like Walter White (fig 2), who break free of regulation and utilise their skillset for financial means and in doing so are depicted as anti-heroes. Neoliberalism is an idea that can be described as an extreme form of capitalism with it favouring free market capitalism, privatisation, deregulation, and a decrease in government spending. Many of the neoliberal ideas had been prevalent in the nineteenth century but had fallen into decline following the second world war but reappeared in the late twentieth century. In this dissertation I shall predominantly focus on Breaking Bad (2008-2013) which ran on AMC. The protagonist, Walter White, is the personification of the central economic model used in the western world today, neoliberalism.
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