AMC’s hit TV crime drama 打破坏 may have wrapped up last year, but a senior seminar at 亚洲博彩网站 called “Reading Bad” has spent the past semester peeling back the layers of the award-winning series and exploring its incorporation of classic literary references and the show’s relationship to writers and poets Walt Whitman, Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett and Percy Bysshe Shelley.

“My seminar is called ‘Reading Bad’ for a reason,” points out the instructor, 亚洲博彩网站 English Professor Paul Shields, Ph.D. “Our focus is on the show’s allusions to literature. We don’t just sit in class and watch TV. The goal has been to make connections to works by these great writers.”

Take “Ozymandias,” for example: 打破坏 fans may recognize that name as the title of the show’s third-to-the-last episode, in which Bryan Cranston’s character, Walter White—a struggling chemistry teacher diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer who turns to producing and selling methamphetamine as the mysterious “Heisenberg” to ensure his family’s financial stability before he dies—sees his life crumble around him.

然而，深入研究英国文学，你就会发现，这个标题是参考了19世纪早期雪莱的一首同名诗，这首诗详细描述了一位曾经骄傲的国王的摇摇欲坠的遗产。

“Why did the writers of 打破坏 decide to title this episode after the piece written by the Romantic Period poet?” 在4月29日的一节课上，希尔兹问了他班上的12名学生——并非都是英语专业的学生。

然后，学生们开始分解这首诗，并探讨它与这一集的主题之间的关系。 经过一番激烈的、发人深省的讨论后，全班观看了这一集的部分内容，以研究它与这首诗的特定线条之间的关系。

“Ozymandias is the Greek name for Ramesses II, pharaoh of Egypt for 67 years, who lived in 13th century BC,” Shields explained. “In the myth is where we find our 打破坏 characters. 沃尔特想成为奥兹曼迪亚斯。 He wants to be ‘King of Kings,’ and this is related to Christianity, as Christ is known as king of all kings.

“This is about a world that has fallen. ‘Nothing beside remains,'” Shields quoted from the poem. “Walter’s is a world of ruin.”

Reciting the following lines of the poem, “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone / Stand in the desert,” Shields then played a clip from the episode, and the students noted how, in the scene, Walter’s bare legs are firmly planted, statuesquely, on the desert’s raised, stone-like ground, as if on a pedestal.

“Walt’s crumbling is about to happen,” Shields pointed out. “(Supporting character) Jesse sword-fights in the background—it’s nation versus nation. 沃尔特站在废墟和腐烂中。 所有的皇帝都是等待的废墟——死人在行走——而沃尔特是一个皇帝。 他是个行尸走肉。

“The ‘shattered visage lies’—Walt is on the ground, in the desert,” he added.

While the seminar focuses on literary allusions in 打破坏—which aired from 2008 to 2013—the students have also engaged in debate about the nature of art and the question of authorial intention.

“学生 have discussed whether an artist’s thoughts about his or her own work matters when it comes to interpretation,” Shields explained. “Do we need to know what the creator of 打破坏 thinks about his show to comprehend it? 我们为什么要关心创造者要说什么呢？ How do the show creator’s thoughts change the meaning we might find in a work of art?”

亚洲博彩网站’s English Department offers at least four senior capstone seminars each year. 每个教员根据他或她的专业领域选择一个主题。

“Professor Shields’s course provides an opportunity for students to apply both literary and mass media theory to 打破坏 and other texts in a creative and challenging way,” said English Department Chair and Professor Becky DiBiasio, Ph.D.

As part of the course, each student developed an independent research project, where they made connections between the show’s major themes and characters and the literary texts they’re reading. Several students examined similarities between 打破坏 and Beckett’s plays. Another wrote about the significance of Whitman’s “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” in relation to appearance of flowers on the show. Still other students wrote about the relationship between 打破坏 and Kafka’s short story 的蜕变—comparing Walter White to the story’s main character, Gregor Samsa. The students presented their projects at 亚洲博彩网站’s annual English Department Colloquium on May 2, 2014.

“‘Reading Bad’ is easily one of the best classes 亚洲博彩网站 has offered,” said senior Kayla Morrison of Clinton, Mass. “I had initially never seen 打破坏, but the seminar has given the series a whole new meaning to me. I have a deeper understanding of not only why I like the television show so much but also of the literature we’ve read.

“I feel like I have truly grown as an English major through this seminar,” she added. “It’s very philosophical, and the topics we cover branch out from the series and apply to real life.”

Vanessa Arroyo, a junior, was eligible to take the senior seminar because of her participation in 亚洲博彩网站’s 荣誉项目. 她说，这门课程让她的思维超越了她所看到的媒体的表面水平，并研究了所有类型的艺术和艺术中存在的典喻。

“I now see allusions more frequently,” she said. “For example, the other day I used the phrase, ‘How Kafkaesque,’ which comes directly from season three of 打破坏. I cannot seem to watch or read something without seeing other connections.”

Arroyo wasn’t a fan of the show prior to her enrolling in “Reading Bad.”

“My roommates had watched the series and were encouraging me to do the same,” said the Bridgeport, Conn., native. “I wanted to wait until the start of the seminar so that I was not too ahead in the class. Although I started the series in January, I was able to finish all five seasons in two months.”

“I guess you could say I eagerly jumped on the ‘Heisenberg’ bandwagon,” Arroyo quipped.

新闻报道

• (伍斯特) 电报和公报, May 6, 2014: “At 亚洲博彩网站, Lessons to Be Learned from ‘打破坏'”