A Nakedness Rejected: Inverting Paradigms of Sovereignty between 'Breaking Bad' and 'Macbeth'

Abstract

The present essay traces the intertextual relationship between Breaking Bad and Macbeth looking at two main areas of structural correspondence. The first one consists in issues of rhythm, pace, and textual overlapping, with regard to which specific attention is given to scenes from the TV series that echo moments in the Shakespearean tragedy. The second area of analysis is constituted by the focus both works bring on the question of sovereign power. Through the lens offered by Agamben’s theory of the perturbing similarities between the structural positioning of the sovereign and the homo sacer at the margin of the law, the article looks at Macbeth’s and Walter White’s respective parabolas as attempts to attain sovereign power, while at the same time rejecting the inevitable implications such positioning brings with it.