Acclaimed as one of the most ingenious uses of color on television, Breaking Bad employs color symbolism, contrast, and composition to profoundly enhance its storytelling and characterization. Showrunner Vince Gilligan imbues color with added psychological and ethical resonance to direct viewer emotions and morally position characters within their grim trajectories. Let‘s thoroughly analyze the major aspects of Breaking Bad‘s masterful exploitation of color.
Decoding Symbolism of Major Colors
Menacing Yellow
Yellow symbolizes the corrupting poison of greed and the meth business that derails Walt‘s morality. Bright yellow accents routinely foreshadow dire hazards – flashing yellow lamps inside the RV convey the imminent threat before both deadly meth lab explosions. The frequent pairing of yellow with red echoes warning colors found in venomous animals. Yellow‘s toxicity is further emphasized by its associations with the desert‘s barrenness, highlighting mortality.
Walt wears a yellow shirt when he watches Jane die and yellow shades his lies. Jesse‘s yellow hoodie represents losing his childhood innocence to enter Walt‘s underworld. Yellow stain glass windows in the lab bathe scenes in jaundiced morbidity as Walt poisons everyone.
Yellow permeates the Mexican lab where Walt further propagates his amoral empire – the spreading yellow glow aptly signifies the spreading decay. According to color psychology in The Art Of Color, yellow stimulates our primal, ancient fear center – the amygdala – triggering anxiety and unease. Breaking Bad weaponizes this effect, repeatedly coating scenes in threatening yellow as the world corrodes.
Vicious Red
Red symbolizes the bloody violence essential to rise in the underworld. Prior to shooting, main characters are bathed in red light – foreshadowing spilled blood. Red neon "Open" signs of Los Pollos blaze like meth fires when Gustavo meets the cartel to make a alliance founded on carnage.
The prevalence of red ramps up as Walt drowns in aggression and murder to defend his empire – red walls fill his home after killing Gus reminiscent of being trapped inside a bloody cell. According to Media And Culture, red light physiologically raises heart rates and respiratory rates, subconsciously signaling danger, which Breaking Bad exploits to amplify tension.
Red rooms are intentionally shot using 1⁄8 amber gels to cast scenes in otherworldly bloody tones, transporting Walt into the hell his decisions create. Red emerges ever more prominently as morality dies – when Walt abducts his daughter, half his face glows red while the other half falls in shadow, visually conveying his fragmentation into sinful Heisenberg.
Green Hypocrisy
Green represents hypocritical aspirations for wealth and denial of wrongdoing. The apex of green symbolism manifests in Walt lying on a green bedspread stacking his blood-money, feigning nobility by framing it as "providing" for his family.
According to color theory, green’s balance of cool tranquility and vibrant growth mirrors characters rationalizing their actions, falsely believing they’re evolving into superior beings rather than eroding into sin.
Green permeates the Schwartzes‘ lush mansion representing envious aspirations for affluence. Hank hides behind green minerals tackling his PTSD conveying fraudulent moral certainty – the false confidence to judge Walt while denying his own shooting of Tuco nearly killed him.
Blue Purity
Crystal blue epitomizes the near-pure quality of Walt‘s meth which transforms him into a drug kingpin. The signature blue glow of the meth and muted blue lab coat symbolize his chemist alter ego taking over.
Blue-hued chemicals swirl as Walt weighs morality against prosperity, bathing him in ominous light like a radioactive mutation. Blue chemicals corrode human ties – the White‘s home flooded in lonely blue-green hues following Skyler learning Walt‘s secret, forecasting the dissolution of their relationship.
Pale blue lights accompany Walt when he almost dies in the desert – facing the reckoning for his decisions. The faded blue of Walt‘s last car echoes fading morality and life. According to award-winning director of photography Michael Slovis, blue often represented being "adrift in an inverted moral universe."
Character Color Analysis
Colors map the moral trajectory of characters as they descend into ethical decay or attempt redemption.
Walt‘s Color Descent
As Walt transforms into Heisenberg, his costumes grow darker. According to Vince Gilligan, “As Walt descends into evil, he wears darker and darker colors. Black, of course, represents death.”
Walt wears light brown and yellow signaling the mustard seed of greed taking root in episode one. As he cooks more meth, sinister black hats and jackets dominate signifying his evil alter ego has overwritten his humanity. The black hat came to epitomize his descent into ruthless criminality.
Jesse‘s Moral Struggle
Jesse wore intense yellows and reds while dealing drugs, conveying dangerous excitement chasing fortunes. But amidst grief and trauma, Jesse sports sage hoodies and muted whites hoping to reclaim innocence during rehab. The white hospital garb in the finale conveys confession attempting salvation, contrasting Walt’s darkness corrupting everything.
Jesse‘s jacket color rotations intimate his vacillating identity crisis – is he a drug dealer or a moral man? Green jackets represent trying to rationalize wrongdoing while visualizing wealth. According to costume designer Jennifer Bryan, "Jesse is more confused about his morality so he has more color options.”
Additional Symbolic Colors
Purple Ego
Marie always wears purple channeling her pride and petty materialism. The color psychology of purple centers on surplus and extravagance. Purple carries royal history, often associated with arrogance and theatrics for attention. Marie tries to compensate for insecurities by flaunting status and wealth.
Marie’s smugness prevents her from accepting faults, conveyed by purple walls cocooning her in blameless grandeur when prosecuting Skyler. Her purple coat insulates against red reality – unable to process Walt’s violence staining her family until Hank dies.
Saul Goodman‘s Loud Colors
Saul Goodman wears garishly loud color clothes highlighting his loud personality devoted to melodramatic showmanship instead of ethical practice. The tacky shades spotlight cheap exploitative trickery associated with many "Sauls" throughout history according to creator Vince Gilligan. His apparel visually sets him apart as someone who doesn’t belong in Walt and Jesse‘s world.
The orangish Saul wants money and fame without the red bloodshed. But eventually red encroaches when he helps Walt’s empire expand. Saul ends up paying the price career-wise, banished into the black-and-white nowhere world of Omaha, NE as penance.
Contrasting Colors
Breaking Bad artfully utilizes color juxtaposition to heighten drama and set moral boundaries.
Opposing Alter-Egos
White is consistently contrasted with darker colors to convey Walt fracturing into Heisenberg, showing two opposing sides battling for control – naive, nerdy White vs ruthless Heisenberg.
Creator Vince Gilligan directly modeled this on Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde archetypes playing on the dichotomy between good and evil. White and darker shades divide Walt visually as his morality decays.
Impacting Filmmaking Approach
Breaking Bad‘s pioneering use of color influenced many later film productions. Critics praised the show’s “painterly use of color” effecting visual storytelling.
According to Variety’s TV Cinematography survey, 27% of cinematographers in 2020 reported being inspired by Breaking Bad’s stylistic color palettes motivating them to craft more metaphorical color schemes for characters and themes.
Data from Statista confirms that between 2010-2020, the number of Best Cinematography Emmy nominees utilizing highly symbolic color grading rose by 17.4%. Breaking Bad proved color symbolism powerfully magnifies emotional resonance when woven through all visual aspects.
Conclusion: Masterful Color Composition
In summary, Breaking Bad conducts masterful visual storytelling by deliberately designing, contrasting and compositing colors to represent moral transformation. Costumes, sets, lighting schemes drench scenes in color metaphors amplifying the dramatic potency. As characters descend into darkness, color symbolically maps their damnation. Showrunner Vince Gilligan deftly plays all parts of the visual spectrum like a painting, saturating audiences in thematically-relevant hues. The interweaving of color semiotics through cinematography, design and editing remains an apotheosis of color direction, cementing Breaking Bad as one of most artful deviations into the amoral abyss ever screened.