Visual Language

Here are a few posters and images from one of my favorite shows, Breaking Bad. The show is about a chemistry teacher who finds out that he has lung cancer. Walter has a teenage son and his wife is pregnant and wants to make some money for his family before he dies, so he decides to team up with a former failure student and cook drugs. This show is intense and shows that right and wrong isn't black and white. There is always means behind any action, good or bad.
First of all, the title sends out a very direct message. "Breaking bad", meaning that the character is discards morality for the sake of his family's financial stability. The way the words are also put together with the element chart, showing that this show is about a science/chemist teacher. This how is very intense, so most images and posters found have a seriousness to it. For example all the faces in the second image have serious faces: no one is smiling. The last image is the first season's cover. He is wearing just underwear and a dress shirt. A gas mask is on the floor and he is holding a gun. A van is the background with smoke coming out of it and it looks like he is in the middle of nowhere. This image seems strange because you may wonder why he isn't wearing any pants? To me, this shows that he doesn't care what he is wearing- he has more important things to worry about, and him holding the gun makes it look like he has nothing to lose. The combination of the gas mask and the van are hints of producing drugs. The first image contains him and his partner sitting on beach chairs in the middle of the desert, wearing plastic suits and gas masks. There are bags of drugs on the floor and they are looking behind them, again with serious faces. In this image, they are looking behind them and have their faces as if something is going on. In this show, things are always going bad, so their faces portrait that aspect of the show. Their suits of course show that they have produced drugs and the evidence is right under the character on the right (the main character, Walter). It's also interesting that the drugs and money are under him only, showing that this mere chemistry teacher is in charge.
These images are viewed depending on how the viewer perceives them. This also depends if the viewer has seen the show or not. Integration of some symbols of science/chemistry in the text is used.