From Mr. Chips to Scarface, or Racial Capitalism in Breaking Bad

Jason Read via University of Minnesota Press
“What is more, in its mode of production, Breaking Bad benefits from contexts of racialized low wage labor. One of the poorest states in the union, New Mexico has in recent years instituted various incentives to attract capital investment, including from Hollywood filmmakers and TV producers. In an effort to compete with runaway film locations outside the U.S., New Mexico offers filmmakers substantial tax rebates. While the aim of such incentives is to generate jobs, many of them will of course be low wage jobs, and low labor costs remain a major attraction of New Mexico for investors. As a strategy of development, New Mexican film incentives have recalled recent contexts where poor countries of the global south could only attract IMF and World Bank loans if they made cuts in tax-supported social spending. More recently, New Mexico has passed the “Breaking Bad” bill that increases tax rebates so the state can better compete with other U.S. states in the context of contemporary austerity measures. By all accounts the cast and crew of Breaking Bad have been good guests in New Mexico, hiring local talent and even donating costumes to a local homeless shelter, but individual acts of charity do not change the structural fact that racialized low wage labor is a significant part of the appeal to Hollywood.”
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