Abstract
Metadiegetic songs in film and television series, by drawing attention to themselves and playing with cinematic conventions, engage the spectator in what I call complicit identification with the filmmaker’s perspective, therefore appealing primarily to their cinephilia and critical sense. The moral ambiguity of the characters in Breaking Bad suggests that the process of identification is unavoidably shifting and unstable, so that metadiegetic songs intervene by offering the spectator a temporary way out from this process. Interrupting the diegesis, they allow for a dispassionate look at the weaknesses of the characters. This chapter explores the peculiar use of sound, music and silence in Breaking Bad, focusing on their formal and semantic interdependence. It first considers Dave Porter’s original score, reminiscent of Ry Cooder’s works and western soundtracks, and its role in the construction of a spare soundscape adequate to the setting. It proceeds with an inspection of the use of songs and how this opens the setting to alternative interpretations. Then it analyzes more in detail narrative songs and their role in preventing both assimilating and affiliating identification while favoring a detached, critical position towards the fictional events and the characters. The narcocorrido song “Negro y Azul”, performed in the diegesis by the (real) Mexican band Los Cuates De Sinaloa (Season 2, Episode 7), will be used as a case study to illustrate the functions of metadiegetic songs.