Today’s Albuquerque Journal featured an op ed by Joline Gutierrez Krueger in her UpFront editorial that pined for the tv show Breaking Bad. In the article Ms Krueger made statements like these:
Sure, “The Walking Dead,” which has taken over the Sunday night time slot inhabited by “Breaking Bad” on AMC, draws more viewers – 16.1 million for its season premiere as compared with “Breaking Bad’s” finale of more than 10 million.
But the buzz is down. And “Dead” hasn’t done for Senoia, Ga., where the show is filmed, what “Bad” did for Albuquerque, because I’m pretty sure being portrayed as the meth capital of the world is more desirable than being portrayed as a city overrun with zombies.
Which – and I might as well put the caveat here – is not to say that “Breaking Bad” in any way glorified or trivialized meth addiction. If anything, the show exposed the brutal underbelly of the drug culture, the greed, the grotesque hubris of a mind gone completely wrong. Anyone who says otherwise simply doesn’t know the show.
I am not one to isolate a particular television program and lay at it’s feet all of societies ills. That is not my intention here either. However, we can use popular entertainment as a barometer of where our society falls on the scales of history.
Breaking Bad did not influence the morality of our society. Instead, entertainment reflects the society it originates from. At the same time entertainment creates a feedback loop and it amplifies the part of society that it imitates.
What “Bad” really did for Albuquerque and New Mexico is expose who we are. Entertainment and politicians both arise from among the people. We discover who we are by what amuses us and who we elect.
The fact that America and the world were so enraptured by a school teacher selling meth and the world it exposed us to, should awaken us from our self absorbed worlds and work toward changing our society starting with ourselves.
Who are we? Jesus stated that this is the condemnation, that men loved the darkness more than the light. We should desire to walk in the light as He is in the light and encourage others to join us.
