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Intimate Objects: Post-Network Television and the Object-Oriented Aesthetics of Breaking Bad

As described by Edward Branigan, a point-of-view shot is one in which “the camera assumes the position of a subject in order to show us what the subject sees.” But what happens when the subject in question is an object? As this essay suggests, some of the most innovative camera shots utilized throughout the critically acclaimed American television drama Breaking Bad are “point-of-view” shots from the “perspective” of everyday objects. In a shot that appears multiple times on the program, the camera and viewer are located within a refrigerator, “looking out” through the open door at the show’s main protagonist, Walter White. In addition to this more common example, which can be seen in a variety of television commercials as well, Breaking Bad also positions its viewers inside stoves, “looking up” through lit burners; inside ATM’s and other electronic devices; and even inside toilets, “looking up” at a character through toilet water. In such shots, viewers are presumably “seeing” as a refrigerator, stove, ATM, or toilet does. While there are many aesthetic techniques worthy of analysis in this program, which saw its primary cinematographer, Michael Slovis, win five Emmy nominations for outstanding cinematography, the object-oriented point-of-view shots I discuss raise especially interesting questions about contemporary television. On one hand, these shots are extremely intimate, offering viewers access to the show’s characters in moments of privacy, secrecy, and vulnerability. In one toilet-centered point-of-view shot discussed below, we see Walt in a “face-to-face” form of direct address as he vomits in his toilet—sick from chemotherapy. As this and similar shots suggest, mundane objects—our toilets, stove tops, and cell phones—“see” us in some of our most private moments, including and especially when we are alone. But even as such shots give us a direct and personal view of the characters they depict, they also occlude that view, in this case through a blurry membrane of toilet water. Seeing as and through objects in this manner also blurs issues of subject and object as they are typically presented in television and cinema. While we look at Walt in this moment of