Kafkaesque
One Day Bleeding Into The Next
M. D. Kwak
SEASON 3 OF BREAKING BAD is one of my favourite seasons of one of the greatest television shows of all time. Beyond its stunning visuals, and riveting writing and cinematography that makes each episode a masterclass in dramatic storytelling, the show’s dialogue is its own literary composition. It exudes grandiosity yet remains brutally honest. It effortlessly weaves in drama and tension whilst teasing out a modern strain of ennui and psychological deterioration that has come to subsume its broken subjects.
The title of its ninth episode, Kafkaesque, draws from a scene where Jesse speaks to his rehab support group.
Jesse: One day pretty much bleeds into the next. Been working a lot. Got a job.
Group Leader: A job is good.
Jesse: It’s in the Laundromat. It’s totally corporate.
Group Leader: Sounds kinda Kafkaesque.
Jesse: Yeah. Totally Kafkaesque.
The term Kafkaesque has entered our vernacular to describe the mind-numbing process of navigating endless labyrinths of bureaucracy and administrative pointlessness. Franz Kafka’s stories are considered great, not because they describe a human condition profoundly unique but because they identify and grapple with the most mundanely common things in a profoundly cathartic way. In The Trial, the Kafkaesque lies in the omnipotent judiciary system, seemingly more concerned with its self-preservation and unstoppable momentum towards the condemnation of the individual, than, paradoxically, the pursuit of justice with which its teleological foundation was premised upon. In the modern industrial age, the Kafkaesque has evolved to become the machinery of capitalism – how it has cauterised man’s soul and deconstructed the human body so that we may be cogs which endlessly turn the gears of an unfeeling capitalist machine.
But Kafka’s tragicomic, and dare I say, modern-day mythological stories, don’t merely concern themselves with what these systems of arbitrary power are, but the reactions of the individuals caught up in them. Because the Kafkaesque isn’t created by these systems acting in isolation. Rather, it has everything to do with the individuals who stare down this endless abyss of the absurd, paralysed by indecision and tortured by the cruel apathy of an uncaring system.
Their struggle and what it represents, is everything.
Jesse, even though he has probably never read Kafka in his life, is totally right. His frustrations are most definitely real. His grievances are genuine. It is totally Kafkaesque.
But he’s also lying.
It’s later revealed that Jesse, frustrated by the various quotas and restrictions imposed by the responsibilities of his new cooking job, is taking the leftovers of his lab-produced methamphetamine and attempting to sell it to his fellow rehab support group members.
He knows that drug addiction and criminality have wreaked havoc upon his life and killed his loved ones, but none of that matters. Jesse chooses to remain in this destructive cycle. His decision to prey upon the most vulnerable highlights his own selfishness but also his self-destructive tendencies, which keep him shackled in the Kafkaesque prison – a gaol he has paradoxically begun to even feel comfortable in. Comfortable, not because it has been good for him, but because it’s what he’s been inside of for so long. The fact that Jesse sees no other choice but to inflict his own suffering upon others and endure inevitable tragedy is what is truly absurd – Kafkaesque even.
It’s not the absurdity of bureaucracy alone, but the irony of the subject’s circular reasoning in reaction to it that truly characterises the Kafkaesque. In many of Kafka’s stories, his characters attempt to fight against the oppression of the system. But the most absurd, and sadly most human characteristic, is for the oppressed to become the gears of the very system that oppresses them. To become the slave master of their slave-like existence. The tyrant that denies their own freedom. One knows that the Kafkaesque machination has won at the point at which it has vanquished human sensibility, when it has destroyed the human spirit that longs for freedom and order and meaning, when the system becomes self-reinforcing and self-perpetuating off the backs of broken individuals who see no alternative but to remain within it and endure its numbing malaise.