"Elephants are VERY BIG. Motor cars go quickly"

The title of this post is a line from one of the most enjoyable artistic manifestos of the early years of the 20th century. There were a lot of manifestos flying around in those days, as creative people broke free of the dowdy shackles of the Victorian age in a variety of nutty ways. Scores of -isms shouted their founding principles, usually relishing just how anti-establishment and avant garde they were. 

It didn't take long for these passionate whatever-ists to turn on each other in their lust for idols to smash, and the line above happens to be the Vorticists' snide parody of the Futurists in their perfectly-named but short-lived publication BLAST. (Don't worry, this mini-lecture on artistic modernism is almost over.) The Futurists wanted to blow up the stuffy-old-museum conception of art and tended to write rhapsodically about driving really fast in cars and embracing the thrills of new technology. The Vorticists distinguished themselves from the Futurists mainly by advocating blowing everything up, including the Futurists.

So why am I detailing this century-old modernist smackdown? 

The Vorticists' derision of the worship of extreme things echoed in my mind today as I finally got around to trying out Breaking Bad. For those who don't know, it's an AMC series that's a darling of television critics. Since that description fits another series I love, Mad Men, I've been meaning to get my hands on the Season 1 DVDs and give it a shot. After the first episode, I put the disc in its little sleeve, put that in the red envelope, and took it down to the mailbox.

Before anyone gets defensive, let me say that my reaction wasn't based on the merits of the show. It does what it sets out to do pretty well, as far as I can tell. The problem lies with me--specifically, with my allergy to extremism. As I get older, I find I have less and less interest in watching things that are supposed to be compelling because of their grand scale, extraordinary intensity, or extremity of situation. Thousands and thousands of detailed computer-generated warriors are nice and all, but spectacle doesn't stir me. Characters in the utmost far-out stressful situations with swelling orchestral emotional cues just feels like overkill. If the creators of a cultural product are trying to push a particular button in my brain, I'd much prefer they do it with an artful touch instead of a sledgehammer. 

Here's why Breaking Bad tripped my circuit breaker: the premise is that a brilliant scientist somehow finds himself working as an unappreciated high school chemistry teacher (all right so far) while also working a second job at a car wash (not too far-fetched) as he turns fifty (fine) surrounded by a bunch of bozos led by his blustery meathead brother-in-law drug enforcement officer (OK, we get that his life is bad), and then he finds out he has inoperable lung cancer despite never having smoked (that just feels like piling on), so he decides to start manufacturing crystal meth (why not?) with the assistance of a rascally former student of his who gets him into a situation in which he is driving a meth lab/RV through a wildfire in the New Mexico desert with no pants on as he tries to avoid being killed by other drug dealers (I'm speechless). Oh, and his wife literally tracks her online auction sales while half-heartedly initiating sex with him on his birthday. And she's pregnant. And their teenage son has cerebral palsy, which draws the mockery of the locals. And I'm probably forgetting something else the writers have heaped on this poor guy just so we know how awful his life is so we can justify to ourselves his decision to go into the meth business.

With all of these conditions as the starting point for this character, there is literally nothing he can do in the show that can connect with me on a human level any more. His situation is so over-the-top that it's cartoonish, which is not what I want out of a drama. How much more interesting would it have been if he decided to start making meth because he felt like life had cheated him in just one of those ways? Preferably one of the smaller tribulations. His choice has less meaning because of the extremity of his problems.  

Maybe I'm an outlier, but I feel like real human life is interesting enough without amplifying things so much that our receptors get flooded. That's part of what makes Mad Men work so well: it sharpens our focus to the point that we find meaning in seemingly insignificant details and happenstances of the world they create. Sure, there will be a runaway lawnmower in the office every once in a while, but a shared glance or a spilled milkshake actually carries more power for the viewer than a shower of blood.   

I know it's easier to guarantee an emotional reaction from an audience if you blow their doors off, but the kind of reaction you're likely to get is outsized as well. The degree of difficulty in getting people to sympathize with someone plagued by troubles at a Job-like level is not very high, and that sympathy doesn't seem to add up to much to me because it's so obvious and loses any fine-tuned connection with the humanity of the viewer. 

Elephants are very big indeed, but we don't need something to be the size of an elephant to be able to be interested in it.