Reading Six Feet Under: TV to Die For (27 page)

© the authors

Nathaniel Samuel Fisher, 1943–2000

I’m dead right here. At first he looks aghast

(I’m naked, playing cards), but phasmophobia goes: my
eminence
is more flowered shirt than
grise
, the drollery of death much more my gist.

He rifles through my double life and fast

finds out the self I hid in things I chose:

I’m dead right here.

‘We’ll deal you in next hand’: the son I lost,

who turned his back in an unfilial freeze,

now looks askance. It’s high time to disclose

about death’s afterlife and life’s less boring past.

I’m dead right here.

We’re in a kind of touch. I’m his consultant ghost, an apparition that appears to him at ease,

but dry bravado’s just the way I pose:

the bus I’m on has fares that really cost.

This time it’s personal, buddy boy’s harassed:

dead meat, a cheap old box, black crows.

I’m dead right here.

The news from Limbo is that nothing’s missed,

but he won’t know, till it’s his turn. The breeze of death blacks out life’s foolish cameos,

the garbage can of vanities laughs last:

I’m dead right here.

Peter Wilson

149

twelve

Fisher’s sons: brotherly

JOANNA

love and the spaces of

DI

male intimacy in
Six Feet

MATTIA

Under

Introducing the Fisher Boys

The ‘Pilot’ episode (1:1) of
Six Feet Under
contrasts two ways of expressing emotion through the conflict of its central protagonists, brothers Nate and David Fisher. At the burial of their father, Nathaniel, the elder complains that his family’s grief is ‘like surgery

– clean, antiseptic, business’. Refusing to use the ridiculous ‘salt shaker’ filled with dirt, Nate thrusts his hand into the soil that will soon swallow his father. He passionately expresses his feelings – he wants people to see just how ‘fucked up and shitty’ he feels about the death of the father he barely knew. Younger brother David, however, stands solemn and unmoved, as if officiating a stranger’s funeral. He resists Nate’s fervour, insisting that restraint is the proper way to deal with grief: calmly, quietly and without public eruptions of emotion.

From the beginning, the Fisher brothers are positioned on opposite sides of an emotional abyss. Their different engagement with the emotional realm and their conflicting responses to the burial of their father establishes the distance existing between them. How that abyss is negotiated and breached is the central question of this chapter. On the surface, David appears uptight, closed and in control of his emotional life. In contrast, Nate is introduced as 150

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sensitive and psychologically open. The chasm between them has developed over many years in the context of family tensions, personal resentments and unspoken anger; what we observe across the series is a resolution of what keeps the brothers apart.

This chapter argues that the intimacy which develops between Nate and David is central to the ways in which
Six Feet Under
represents the inner lives of its characters. In particular, its first season focuses on the ties that bind fathers to sons, and brothers together.

While the Fisher boys initially deal with tensions that have been building for years, they move beyond hostilities in favour of brotherly love. This chapter will trace the ways in which the brothers move from distance and secrecy to closeness and openness, from detachment and anger to self-disclosure and intimacy. This process is facilitated by their proximity to women and the feminised space in which they live and work: the funeral home. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick notes that the space in which men bond affects the form and expression that bonding takes (1985: 1). And here the Fisher and Sons Funeral Home is a space that encourages sensitivity and compassion – both a public and a private space, where carefully demarcated borders between the feminine and masculine collapse. Here public rituals and personal pain collide. Faced daily with the vulnerabilities of others, Nate and David’s intimacy takes root within this un-conventional gendered space.

Nate and David’s bonding is predicated on a reversal of the conventional expectations attached to heterosexual and homosexual masculinities. Straight Nate is the sexually promiscuous and ir-responsible one. A free spirit, he is represented from the outset as commitment-phobic. Gay David, on the other hand, is emotionally restrained but capable of making traditional choices and sticking with them. He is committed to family, work and God – all those things that are idealised as the province of the heterosexual male. While he is in a relationship with Keith Charles, David struggles to share his inner life with him.

The ideal American man is one in total control of his emotions: stoic, silent, disengaged and not prone to moments of self-disclosure. As Milette Shamir and Jennifer Travis explain (2002:1), the old truisms about masculinity persist: ‘White, heterosexual, middle-class, Protestant, northern, urban…it connotes total control of emotions, that it mandates emotional inexpressivity, that it entraps 151

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SIX FEET UNDER

in emotional isolation, that boys, in short, don’t cry.’ Hegemonic masculinity is produced in opposition to the feminine world of emotions. Sharon Bird goes further, to suggest that male bonds centre on an unspoken pact between men to emotionally detach themselves from other men, to compete with one another, and to sexually objectify women (1996: 122). Emotional detachment, or the refusal of intimacy between men is necessary to maintain a stable border between the heterosexual and homoerotic – a border always under pressure when men appear to be ‘too close’. Further, self-disclosure is often perceived to be a sign of weakness that undermines the competitive nature of male bonds.

Male bonding is a key component to quintessential American generic forms, like the Western or gangster film. Furthermore, the buddy narrative reinforces dominant meanings of masculinity.

Television too is a productive site through which to trace similar gender imperatives. Writing about American TV’s representation of male bonds, Lynn Spangler suggests that television ‘plays a role in our notions of what it is like, or what it should be like, to be male and female, including how each gender behaves in relationships’ (1992: 93). Although we have long seen men bond on disparate programmes from
Bonanza
to
The Andy Griffith Show
, Spangler notes that, throughout American TV history, it was taken for granted that audiences simply ‘understood’ what men were feeling without them ever saying anything (100–101). Male bonds are forged around shared activities, not shared emotions. In contrast, women build ties around vulnerability and openness. As Drury Sherrod explains:

‘Women seem to look for intimate confidantes, while men seek partners for adventure’ (1987: 217). Spangler points to the highly acclaimed drama,
thirtysomething
, as an important shift in images of vulnerable men. The relationship between Michael Steadman (Ken Olin) and his brother, Brad (Danton Stone), is a precursor to Nate and David’s own negotiation of the gulf existing between brothers with differing expectations of family ties. Although reversing the loyal son remaining at home (David)/ returning prodigal son (Nate), Michael and Brad must deal with burning resentments and long-standing difficulties existing between them as they come to terms with their father’s sudden death and arrange the family business.

Because the narrative focuses on two brothers,
Six Feet Under
resolves traditional homoerotic tensions arising from close male 152

FISHER’S SONS

friendships. The bond that ultimately develops between the Fisher boys is striking for the depth of its disclosure and the ease with which they come to communicate. If masculinity as we know it equals emotional restraint above all else,
Six Feet Under
works against this ethos. Here, boys
do
cry – often. Released from traditional constraints, we are treated to an innovative representation of how intimacy between two men grows. Other contemporary representations of brotherly love, like those on
Frasier
and
Everybody
Loves Raymond
, routinely engage with emotional intimacy by virtue of family. But the comedic form contains the difficult emotional terrain, as brothers deal with ‘serious’ family issues like divorce and ageing parents by diffusing complex emotional pain/disappointments through smart one-liners. Of these,
Raymond
is notable for constructing a strong bond between brothers Ray (Ray Romano) and Robert Barone (Brad Garrett) that is loving while mired in petty jealousies and resentments stretching back to childhood. Such a relationship has a dialogue with
Six Feet Under
’s own complex bonds.

Six Feet Under
’s absent patriarch contests the conventions of American television repeatedly constructed around a version of the nuclear family in which patriarchal authority is reinforced. The new

‘head’ of the family is the widow Ruth, and in varying times of crisis this position is shared between her and the brothers. In many ways, this nuanced reconfiguration liberates
Six Feet Under
from a narrative that places various masculinities in constant competition with each other. Instead, we see the real complexities of blood relationships; while there is love, there is also jealousy, guilt, isolation and dependence. Revealing the centrality of sibling ties to a family’s emotional life – also evident in the complex bond between Brenda and Billy Chenowith –
Six Feet Under
surpasses any representation of television brotherhood before it.

In Place of Anger

Nate and David are at odds over more than the family business. Peter Krause suggests: ‘Nate and David grew up discovering the world together … Nate’s leaving home at seventeen created a sense of abandonment in David’ (Kilday 2002: 43). Similarly, Michael C.

Hall suggests that David has a deep wound: ‘Growing up, Nate was 153

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SIX FEET UNDER

probably the more serious one, David was a lot more animated. And then Nate left and David changed’ (45). Throughout season one, we are treated to images from Super 8 home movies of the brothers as young boys. These images open a romanticised window to the past – a tenderness missing from Nate and David’s initial reunion, but one that the brothers attempt to reclaim.

The abyss between Nate and David is also a result of who they are as men. In ‘Knock, Knock’ (1:13), David tells Ruth that Nate has always distinguished himself by his frankness. Nate is willing to expose his flaws. David, on the other hand, keeps his vulnerabilities – like his sexuality – hidden; he is on a private journey of self-acceptance.

At his father’s viewing (‘Pilot’, 1:1), David incurs Keith’s wrath:

‘What is this? We can fuck each other, but I can’t be a shoulder to cry on?’ David’s fear of weakness is an effect of well-rehearsed family roles. As he tells Keith during this crisis: ‘I’ll be the strong one, the stable one, the dependable one. Because that’s what I do. Everyone else around me will fall apart because that’s what they do.’ When David
does
fall apart, it is in the privacy of Keith’s apartment – a secret space that allows his public façade to go on.

Nate’s openness encourages others to open up around him.

When he considers returning to Seattle, Nathaniel’s ghost reminds him: ‘You have a gift. You can help people’ (‘The Foot’, 1:3). Later Brenda concurs: ‘You channel other people’s pain’ (‘Familia’, 1:4).

Telling Adele Swanson (Tracy Middendorf) that she can use the

‘Titan’ coffin for her late husband’s viewing, despite the fact that she can no longer pay for it and regardless of his forthcoming cremation, Nate reveals how he operates according to his heart, not his head (‘The Will’, 1:2). His compassion is tangible from their first meeting.

She cries inconsolably, and Nate’s ability to instinctively reach out is contrasted with David’s detached professionalism. Where David silently pushes the tissue box towards her, Nate does not hesitate to physically bridge the distance between them: he gets up and puts a comforting arm around her.

The family business is a point of contention between Nate and David. ‘The Will’ brings such contestation to the fore, whereby long-buried resentments, disappointments and frustrations come to the surface. When it is revealed that their father has left the family business in equal parts to his sons, Nate is bemused and David feels angry and betrayed. Without a father to attack for this slight, David 154

FISHER’S SONS

tells Nate: ‘Thanks for making it so clear to me that my choice to dedicate myself to this business and to this family was really stupid.

Because, apparently, I would have been rewarded just the same for wasting my life.’ Thinking Nate is his enemy, David is too wounded to accept his brother’s offer of help and fraternity.

But the will also facilitates the healing of emotional wounds. As their dead father explains, ‘It’s Fisher and Sons. That’s got to continue.’