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"Anatomising Embodiment and Organisation Theory" explores the
relationship between the human body and the development of social
theory about organizations and organizing. The science of anatomy
is taken as a pattern for knowledge both of the human body and/or
organizations, and the twin symbols of dissection--the scalpel and
the mirror--are used to understand the production of knowledge
about organizations.
"I am not in danger ...I am the danger." With those words, Breaking
Bad's Walter White solidified himself as TV's greatest antihero.
Wanna Cook? explores the most critically lauded series on
television with analyses of the individual episodes and ongoing
storylines. From details like stark settings, intricate camerawork,
and jarring music to the larger themes, including the roles of
violence, place, self-change, legal ethics, and fan reactions, this
companion book is perfect for those diehards who have watched the
Emmy Award - winning series multiple times as well as for new
viewers. Wanna Cook? elucidates without spoiling, and illuminates
without nit-picking. A must have for any fan's collection. Excerpt.
(c) Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. From Wanna Cook's
Episode Guide 1.01 Pilot/Breaking Bad Original air date: January
20, 2008 Written and directed by: Vince Gilligan "I prefer to see
[chemistry] as the study of change ...that's all of life, right?
It's the constant, it's the cycle. It's solution - dissolution,
just over and over and over. It is growth, then decay, then -
transformation! It is fascinating, really." - Walter White We meet
Walter White, Jesse Pinkman, and Walt's family. Walt is poleaxed by
some tragic news. With nothing to lose, Walt decides to try to make
one big score, and damn the consequences. For that, however, he
needs the help of Jesse Pinkman, a former student of Walt's turned
loser meth cook and drug dealer. From the moment you see those
khakis float down out of a perfectly blue desert sky, you know that
you're watching a show like nothing else on television. The hard
beauty and stillness of the American Southwest is shattered by a
wildly careening RV driven by a pasty white guy with a developing
paunch wearing only a gas mask and tighty-whities. What the hell?
Like all pilots, this one is primarily exposition, but unlike most,
the exposition is beautifully handled as the simple background of
Walter's life. The use of a long flashback as the body of the
episode works well, in no small part due to Bryan Cranston's
brilliant performance in the opening, which gives us a Walter White
so obviously, desperately out of his element that we immediately
wonder how this guy wound up pantsless in the desert and apparently
determined to commit suicide-by-cop. After the opening credits, the
audience is taken on an intimate tour of Walt's life. Again,
Cranston sells it perfectly. The viewer is presented with a
middle-aged man facing the back half of his life from the
perspective of an early brilliance and promise that has somehow
imploded into a barely-making-ends-meet existence as a high school
chemistry teacher. He has to work a lousy second job to support his
pregnant wife and disabled teenage son and still can't afford to
buy a hot water heater. Executive producer and series creator Vince
Gilligan, along with the cast and crew (Gilligan & Co.), take
the audience through this day in the life of Walt, and it's just
one little humiliation after another. The only time Walt's eyes
sparkle in the first half of the episode is when he is giving his
introductory lecture to his chemistry class. Here Walt transcends
his lower-middle-class life in an almost poetic outpouring of
passion for this incredible science. Of course, even that brief joy
is crushed by the arrogant insolence of the archetypal high school
jackass who stays just far enough inside the line that Walt can't
do a damn thing about him. So this is Walt and his life, as sad
sack as you can get, with no real prospects of improvement, a
brother-in-law who thinks he's a wuss, and a wife who doesn't even
pay attention during birthday sex. Until everything changes. The
sociologist and criminologist Lonnie Athens would likely classify
Walt's cancer diagnosis as the beginning of a "dramatic self
change," brought on by something so traumatic that a person's self
- the very thoughts, ideas, and ways of understanding and
interacting with the world - is shattered, or "fragmented," and in
order to survive, the person must begin to replace that old self,
those old ideas, with an entirely new worldview. (Athens and his
theories are discussed much more fully in the previous essay, but
since we warned you not to read that if you don't want to risk
spoilage, the basic - and spoiler-free - parts are mentioned here.)
Breaking Bad gives us this fragmentation beautifully. Note how from
the viewer's perspective Walt is upside down as he is moved into
the MRI machine, a motif smoothly repeated in the next scene with
Walt's reflection in the top of the doctor's desk. Most
discombobulating of all, however, is the consultation with the
doctor. At first totally voiceless behind the tinnitus-like ambient
soundtrack and faceless except for his chin and lips, the doctor
and the news he is imparting are made unreal, out of place, and
alien. As for Walt, in an exquisite touch of emotional realism, all
he can focus on is the mustard stain on the doctor's lab coat. How
many of us, confronted with such tragic news, have likewise found
our attention focused, randomly, illogically, on some similar
mundanity of life? It is from this shattered self that Walt begins
to operate and things that would have been completely out of the
question for pre-cancer Walt are now actual possibilities - things
like finding a big score before he dies by making and selling pure
crystal meth. Remember that Walt is a truly brilliant chemist, and
knows full well what crystal meth is and what it does to people who
use it. He may not know exactly what he's getting into, but he
knows what he is doing. Enter Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul, best known
previously for his role on Big Love), a skinny white-boy gangster
wannabe, who under the name "Cap'n Cook" makes a living cooking and
selling meth. He's also an ex-student of Walt's, and after being
recognized by his former teacher during a drug bust, Walt has all
the leverage he needs to coerce Jesse into helping him. Why does he
need him? Because, as Walt says, "you know the business, and I know
the chemistry." Symbolizing just how far beyond his old life Walt
is moving, he and Jesse park their battered RV/meth lab in the
desert outside of Albuquerque, far from the city and any signs of
human life. All that is there is a rough dirt road and a "cow
house" in the distance. The desert is a place without memory, a
place outside of things, where secrets can be kept, and meth can be
cooked. This is where Walt lives now. It is in this desert space
that Walt becomes a killer, albeit in self defense. Ironically, the
one thing that Walt views as holding the keys to the secret of life
- chemistry - becomes the means to end lives. Walt, a father,
teacher, and an integral part of an extended family - in other
words, an agent of life and growth - has now become a meth cook,
using chemical weapons to kill his enemies. Walter White has become
an agent of death. The transformation is just beginning, but
already Skyler (Anna Gunn, previously known for her roles on The
Practice and Deadwood) is having some trouble recognizing her
husband: "Walt? Is that you?" LAB NOTES Highlight: Jesse to Walt:
"Man, some straight like you - giant stick up his ass all of a
sudden at age what? Sixty? He's just going to break bad?" Did You
Notice: This episode has the first (but not the last!) appearance
of Walt's excuse that he's doing everything for his family. There's
an award on the wall in Walt's house commemorating his
contributions to work that was awarded the Nobel Prize back in
1985. The man's not a slouch when it comes to chemistry, so what's
happened since then? At Walt's surprise birthday party, Walt is
very awkward when he handles Hank's gun. Speaking of Hank (Dean
Norris, whose other roles were in the TV series Medium, and the
movies Total Recall, and Little Miss Sunshine), he waits until the
school bus has left the neighborhood before ordering his team into
the meth lab, showing what a good and careful cop he is. Maybe it's
just us, but J.P. Wynne High School (where Walt teaches chemistry)
seems to have the most well-equipped high school chemistry lab in
the country. As Walt receives his diagnosis, the doctor's voice and
all other sounds are drowned out by a kind of numbing ringing,
signifying a kind of psychic overload that prevents Walt from being
fully engaged with the external world. This effect will be used
again several times throughout the series. Walt literally launders
his money to dry it out, foreshadowing what's to come. Shooting Up:
Thanks to John Toll, who served as cinematographer for the first
season of Breaking Bad, the show has one of the most distinctive
opening shots ever. Just watch those empty khaki pants flutter
across a clear sky. Breaking Bad loves certain camera angles and
this section is where we'll point out some of the shots that make
the show stand out. Look at that taped non-confession Walt makes
for his family when he thinks the cops are coming for him. We're
used to watching recordings of characters - shows are filmed (or
taped), but here, we're watching him recording himself on tape.
Who's the real Walt? Title: Many pilot episodes share the name with
the title of the show and Breaking Bad's pilot is no exception.
Vince Gilligan, who grew up in Farmville, Virginia, has stated that
"breaking bad" is a Southernism for going off the straight and
narrow. When you bend a stick until it breaks, the stick usually
breaks cleanly. But sometimes, sticks (and men) break bad. You can
wind up in the hospital with a splinter in your eye, or you can
wind up in Walter White's world. Either way, it's no kind of good.
Interesting Facts: Show creator Vince Gilligan's early educational
experience was at J. P. Wynne Campus School in Farmville, Virginia.
He recycled the name for the high school in Breaking Bad. SPECIAL
INGREDIENTS What Is Crystal Meth, Anyway? While there is some
evidence that methamphetamine can be found naturally in several
species of acacia plants, commercial meth making involves
chemistry, not agriculture. The history of the drug dates back to
1893 when Japanese chemist Nagai Nagayoshi first synthesized the
substance from ephedrine. The name "methamphetamine...
Joss Whedon once identified himself as an 'angry, hard-line
atheist' who is nevertheless 'fascinated by the concept of
devotion.' While organized religion seems to hold no satisfactory
answers for Whedon, his dedication to exploring the meanings of
faith and belief can be seen in many of the characters he has
created for such works as ""Buffy the Vampire Slayer"", ""Angel"",
""Firefly"", ""Serenity"", and ""Fray"". This work examines a
variety of Whedon's characters and discusses what can be learned
from their struggles and discoveries regarding religion and
belief.Part One focuses on the characters' search for purpose,
revealing how Dawn, Spike, and Angel attempt to define the meaning
of their lives in ""Buffy the Vampire Slayer"" and its spin-off,
""Angel"". Part Two focuses on family, examining the unconventional
family dynamic in Whedon's comic book miniseries Fray and
television series ""Firefly"".Part Three centers around the concept
of redemption, using Angel's Doyle, Firefly's Malcolm Reynolds and
Shepherd Book, and Buffy's Faith Lehane to examine the characters'
search for salvation and their own acceptance of their past
actions. Finally, Part Four focuses on the harmful potential of
religious zealotry, revealing the negative aspects of absolute
belief through Firefly's River and Buffy's Caleb. A primary source
guide follows the main text, providing the writer, director, and
air date of each television episode, along with publication data
for Whedon's print works, including the inpublication ""Season 8""
comic books for ""Buffy the Vampire Slayer"".
Anatomising Embodiment and Organisation Theory explores the
relationship between the human body and the development of social
theory about organisations and organising. The science of anatomy
is taken as a pattern for knowledge both of the human body and/or
organisations, and the twin symbols of dissection - the scalpel and
the mirror - are used to understand the production of knowledge
about organisations.
Black LGBT Health in the United States: The Intersection of Race,
Gender, and Sexual Orientation focuses on the mental, physical, and
spiritual aspects of health, and considers both risk and resiliency
factors for the Black LGBT population. Contributors to this
collection intimately understand the associations between health
and intersectional anti-Black racism, heterosexism, homonegativity,
biphobia, transphobia, and social class. This collection fills a
gap in current scholarship by providing information about an array
of health issues like cancer, juvenile incarceration, and
depression that affect all subpopulations of Black LGBT people,
especially Black bisexual-identified women, Black
bisexual-identified men, and Black transgender men. This book is
recommended for readers interested in psychology, health, gender
studies, race studies, social work, and sociology.
Black LGBT Health in the United States: The Intersection of Race,
Gender, and Sexual Orientation focuses on the mental, physical, and
spiritual aspects of health, and considers both risk and resiliency
factors for the Black LGBT population. Contributors to this
collection intimately understand the associations between health
and intersectional anti-Black racism, heterosexism, homonegativity,
biphobia, transphobia, and social class. This collection fills a
gap in current scholarship by providing information about an array
of health issues like cancer, juvenile incarceration, and
depression that affect all subpopulations of Black LGBT people,
especially Black bisexual-identified women, Black
bisexual-identified men, and Black transgender men. This book is
recommended for readers interested in psychology, health, gender
studies, race studies, social work, and sociology.
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