Breaking Bad’s even worse Latino stereotypes
(Disclaimer: I am not of any significant Hispanic heritage. I do not wish to speak on behalf of anyone, these are just my observations from this one episode and my evaluations of the things I saw. Also, hopefully this is current enough, my long-submitted viewing guide was not rejected after all.)
The critically acclaimed television show Breaking Bad is set primarily in Albuquerque, New Mexico. While this may seem like a redundant detail, it is actually significant because of the focus of the show and the characters the viewer comes into contact with. As Walter White, or “Walt,” blindly stumbles his way into the illegal meth dealing business as a chemistry teacher and middle-aged father, he comes across quite a few Hispanic people in the business. Needless to say, how they are portrayed is less than savory. In the first episode of Breaking Bad, a visible norm that is enforced is the stereotype that Hispanic people are mainly violent gangsters with few exceptions, and are mostly belittled and spoken about in derogatory terms.
When Walt is invited to see a drug bust by his police officer in-law Hank, they are waiting in the car with Hank’s partner Steve Gomez, who happens to be of Hispanic heritage. Hank and Steve bet on the culprit of the drug bust being a “beaner,” a slur that comes from the fact that many Mexican dishes feature beans. Hank asks if the person the police caught is of “Latino persuasion,” and does so with a heavy and forced accent on the word “Latino.” While what he is saying is not stopped by his partner, showing that Latino people aren’t always bothered by these kinds of phrases, these remarks can still be hurtful. Heck, the fact that Hank was willing to bet money on the person they were about to arrest being Hispanic even tells a lot about Hank’s inner-beliefs, including that a great many Hispanics are drug dealers, which sadly may very well be the case in that area. Regardless, these remarks and generalizations do not paint a positive picture of the ethnicity at all.
When the drug bust is happening, an intimidating Hispanic man with large tattoos named Emilio Koyama is seen bopping his head to gangster rap while working on producing drugs is cuffed and taken away. Later, Walt and Pinkman, a former chemistry student of his turned meth dealer, introduces him to his distributor, another intimidating hispanic man also with a constant furrowed brow named “Krazy-8”. In his opening scene, he is training a very large and aggressive dog to attack people. Later on, the viewer finds out that Emilio is related to Krazy-8 and was bailed out by him. The two are furious with Pinkman and Walt in the story and begin threatening them with guns and tie Pinkman up. Walt tricks them into inhaling deadly phosphate gas, and they go unconscious, firing at Walt in vain. In nearly every scene these two are in, they are committing some kind of violent act or are frowning, showing a very 2D portrayal and narrow look at the average Hispanic man in New Mexico. Although Gomez being a police officer helps balance out the perspective somewhat, he does not contribute enough lines or much screen time compared to the two Hispanic drug dealers we see in the episode. Ultimately, this episode just serves to reinforce the association of Hispanic men with gangs and violent crime that is seen in many other recent shows and contributes to mean world syndrome, or the irrational fear of violence, caused by television.
I view this portrayal, while action-packed and not all negative (with Gomez being a police officer), still as a harmful and belittling generalization that does not give much hope for an aspiring adolescent of this ethnicity. As this is the first episode I have viewed, I should hope that perhaps Steve Gomez gets in more on the drug-busting and can provide a positive role model of what a Hispanic young adult can achieve.