Breaking Bad, Making Good: Notes on a Televisual Tourist Industry

Abstract

This article explores emerging intersections between the consumption of mediated popular culture and the real and imagined topographies within which those representations are framed. Through an examination of the 'televisual tourism' centred around the successful TV series Breaking Bad, we scrutinise the multiple modes of sensorial and embodied travel experience enjoyed by fans of the show as they consume their way around the show's sites, scenes, and tastes in the city of Albuquerque . This exploitation of media textuality through fan tourism is, we suggest, centred upon a carefully managed commodification of crime, criminality and transgression.

Conceptualising on-screen tourism destination development

“…These projected signs convey symbolic representations that constitute texts of a larger social order and are constantly reinterpreted, expressing meta-commentaries in the public discourse about the nature and conditions of the social world (Goffman, 1959; Turner, 1974). For example, the compelling storyline of the globally popular television series Breaking Bad (2008–2013) about a high-school teacher who becomes a drug producer to pay for his cancer treatment, coupled with the distinctive New Mexican landscape portrayed in the series, has attracted large numbers of fans to a darker image of Albuquerque as a drug production/consumption capital (Tzanelli and Yar, 2016). Another case is the village of Júzcar in Spain with a population of just 250, which was chosen by the production company Sony’s advertising agency as the setting for the release of The Smurfs movie (2011).…”

The Greek Fandom of Turkish Soap Operas and the Tourism Industry: Traveling through Borders, Realities, and Identities

“…Film tourism is a growing phenomenon not only due to the growth of the entertainment industry but also the increase of international traveling (Hudson and Ritchie). As a result, scholarly literature on the topic keeps growing as more and more social scientists attempt to address the impact of popular culture on tourism (e.g., Iwashita; Tzanelli and Yar; Alina Tănăsescu; Nick Couldry). In this context, many studies across different countries have examined the motivations of film tourists, the impact of film tourism on local communities, and the importance of films in nation branding.…”

Unpopular Culture: Ecological Dissonance and Sustainable Futures in Media‐Induced Tourism

“…Nevertheless, these technocultures do not exist in harmony. For example, although the local Albuquerque culture has now embraced the faux criminal world of the Breaking Bad (2008–13) TV series by producing its own simulated narcotics in local sweet shops, featuring location bus tours, and also pursuing its administrative insertion into the digital artscenes of New York (with exhibitions inspired by the series), it simultaneously struggles to eradicate its widespread damaging image as a criminal hotspot with no refined taste to display to consumers (Tzanelli and Yar). The role of popular culture in its tangible and intangible forms is instructive here, as is also the case with the forms of populism that circulate across different sites it claims as its playgrounds (narcotics, criminal traffic, and adventure tourism).…”