Abstract
Julia Leyda focuses on the sitcom Arrested Development and the ground-breaking drama Breaking Bad. Both shows portray the moral and ethical laxity—in the business world and in US-American society and the family—that would later be invoked as the fulcrum of popular understanding of the economic crisis. However, both also depict the commonplace neoliberal appeals to self-improvement and individual responsibility that provided justification for the risky financial behavior that fueled the housing boom and ultimately brought down the economy. Leyda examines the ways in which the material and emotional spaces of the home were opened up to public scrutiny during the early years of the millennium, revealing the ways in which financialization had begun to permeate televised domestic spaces in the USA.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Bibliography
Aalbers, Manuel. 2008. The Financialization of Home and the Mortgage Market Crisis. Competition and Change 12(2): 148–66. Print.
Allon, Fiona. 2010. Speculating on Everyday Life: The Cultural Economy of the Quotidian. Journal of Communication Inquiry 34(4): 366–81. Print.
“As Seen on TV!”. 2014. Crochetime. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 July 2014.
Becker, Jo, Sheryl Gay Stolberg, and Stephen Labaton. 2008. Bush Drive for Home Ownership Fueled Housing Bubble. New York Times. The New York Times Company, December 21. Web. 20 December 2013.
Béland, Daniel. 2007. Neo-Liberalism and Social Policy: The Politics of Ownership. Policy Studies 28(2): 91–107. Print.
Bivens, Josh. 2011. Failure by Design: The Story behind America’s Broken Economy. Ithaca: ILR-Cornell University Press. Print.
Calomiris, Charles, and Stephen Haber. 2014. Fragile by Design: The Political Origins of Banking Crises and Scarce Credit. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Print.
Chan, Sewell. 2011. Financial Crisis was Avoidable, Inquiry Finds.” New York Times. The New York Times Company, January 25. Web. 3 October 2014.
De Vogli, Roberto. 2013. Progress or Collapse: The Crises of Market Greed. New York: Routledge. Ebook.
Farrell, Greg. 2010. Crash of the Titans: Greed, Hubris, the Fall of Merrill Lynch, and the Near-Collapse of Bank of America. New York: Random House-Crown Business. Ebook.
Fox, Julia R., Glory Koloen, and Volkan Sahin. 2007. No Joke: A Comparison of Substance in The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Broadcast Network Television Coverage of the Presidential Election Campaign. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 51(2): 213–27. Print.
Hanan, Joshua. 2010. Home is Where the Capital Is: The Culture of Real Estate in an Era of Control Societies. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 7(2): 176–201. Print.
Hayes, Chris. 2012. Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy. New York: Random House. E-book.
Hayward, Mark. 2010. The Economic Crisis and After: Recovery, Reconstruction, and Cultural Studies. Cultural Studies 24(3): 283–94. Web. 20 March 2013.
Illouz, Eva. 2007. Cold Intimacies: The Making of Emotional Capitalism. Cambridge: Polity. Ebook.
Langley, Paul. 2007. Uncertain Subjects of Anglo-American Financialization. Cultural Critique 65: 67–91. Print.
Leyda, Julia. forthcoming. Breaking Bad: A Recessionary Western. In Violence and Open Spaces: The Subversion of Boundaries and the Transformation of the Western Genre., eds. Stefanie Müller, Katja Sarkowsky, and Christa Buschendorf. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter.
Lotz, Amanda. 2008. The Television Will Be Revolutionized. New York: New York University Press. Print.
———. 2014. Cable Guys: Television and American Masculinity. New York: New York University Press. E-book.
Martin, Randy. 2010. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Economies of Parable. Cultural Studies 24(3): 418–30. Web. 15 March 2013.
McClennen, Sophia. 2011. Colbert’s America: Satire and Democracy. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan. Print.
Mills, Brett. 2009. The Sitcom. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Print.
Mittell, Jason. 2006. Narrative Complexity in Contemporary American Television. Velvet Light Trap 58: 29–40. Print.
Morgenson, Gretchen, and Joshua Rosner. 2011. Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon. New York: Times. Print.
Newman, Michael Z., and Elana Levine. 2012. Legitimating Television: Media Convergence and Social Status. New York: Routledge. Print.
Piketty, Thomas. 2014. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. E-book.
President Calls for Expanding Opportunities to Home Ownership. 2002. George W. Bush The White House Archives. N.p., June 17. Web. 7 April 2013.
Psychology of Bad Times Fuels Consumer Cutbacks. 2008. Pew Research Center for People and the Press. Pew Research Center, December 11. Web. 12 July 2014.
Saegert, Susan, Desiree Fields, and Kimberly Libman. 2009. Deflating the Dream: Radical Risk and the Neoliberalization of Homeownership. Journal of Urban Affairs 31(3): 297–217. Print.
Stiglitz, Joseph. 2010. Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy. New York: Norton. Print.
Thompson, Ethan. 2007. Comedy Verité? The Observational Documentary Meets the Televisual Sitcom. Velvet Light Trap 60: 63–72. Web. EBSCO Academic Premier. 11 May 2013.
Acknowledgments
This chapter originated as a conference presentation entitled “‘It’s Not a Trick, Michael!’: Complexity, the Housing Bubble, and Arrested Development,” delivered on May 23, 2013, at the Nordic Association for American Studies Conference, held at Karlstad University, Sweden. The Breaking Bad section draws on the arguments developed in a series of conference presentations in June 2013 (in Erlangen, Germany; Leicester, England; and Freiburg, Germany) on Breaking Bad, which has been expanded and revised into an article entitled “Breaking Bad: A Recessionary Western” (see below). I am grateful for brainstorming and manuscript comments from Joshua Dale, Bo Ekelund, Sarah Goodrum, Richard Martin, David Maynard, Christopher Shore, and Marie Thorsten. Special thanks are also due to Sieglinde Lemke and Wibke Schniedermann for their thorough and insightful editorial suggestions.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2016 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Leyda, J. (2016). The Financialization of Domestic Space in Arrested Development and Breaking Bad . In: Lemke, S., Schniedermann, W. (eds) Class Divisions in Serial Television. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59449-5_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59449-5_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-59448-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-59449-5
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)