Reading Six Feet Under: TV to Die For (19 page)

Gelatine comes from horses’ hooves. Hence the global slavery of animals’ (‘Driving Mr Mossback’, 2:4).

While it may poke fun, however,
Six Feet Under
does not, like its HBO cousin
The Sopranos
, stage the psycho-babble only to dismiss it in an orgy of bloody ‘self-actualisation’. Rather, it views the culture’s obsession with self-help as an almost irrepressible by-product of middle-class American anxieties surrounding success, fear and narcissism. From its beginnings in Puritan New England, self-help 95

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has fed America’s notorious sense of optimism by suggesting that a desire for success is completely natural and attainable – if you only work for it. The early Puritans published tracts like Samuel Hardy’s
Guide to Heaven
(1673), which argued that heaven’s gates were open to those who abided by certain values, namely ‘work, diligence, and thrift’ (Starker 1989: 13–14). And one of the country’s founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, was the Dr Phil McGraw of his time, earning a place in history for his practical guides on how to boost one’s social standing and pocketbook. Always a middle-class phenomenon, self-help in the centuries to come gave way to countless functional guides on how to achieve concrete success (be it earning $10 million or losing 10 lbs), as well as to theories of self-actualisation and wish fulfilment that encouraged people to cloak such crass materialism in a vague spiritual power (think The Plan or its real-life equivalents, est and The Forum) (Starker 1989). This unbridled optimism informs the old adage that America is a country not of ‘haves and have nots,’ but of ‘haves and will haves’ (Glassner 1999: xviii).

Whether through hard work, ruthless stock deals, herbal supplements, chants or what you will, you are the architect of your life.

Given that Dr Spock’s classic book
Baby and Child Care
(1946) is ‘ranked second only to the Bible in its popularity with Americans’, self-help today is still far more than a pastime, and much more like an American religion (Starker 1989: 4). Indeed, six months before
Six Feet Under
premiered,
Newsweek
magazine dubbed this ‘the Age of Oprah’. With her ‘gratitude journals’, ‘finding your spirit’ segments, and 22 million weekly viewers, Oprah (complete with a television show, magazine and book club) exemplifies the enormity and power of this national addiction (Clemetson 2001).

Whether you are struggling with those last 15 lbs, or a presidential hopeful out for the precious female vote, she’s your ‘girlfrin’, as she might put it.

That is not to say that Americans, like the characters on the series, are never sceptical of self-help. Part business creed, part sex manual, part psychotherapy, part diet plan, part ticket to spiritual enlightenment, self-help is America’s high school prom queen, equally adored and reviled. Like Ruth, who writes a letter to her dead mother forgiving her ‘for all the terrible things she did to me’, (‘The Plan’, 2:3) but then responds to Claire’s assertion that growing up in a funeral home made her family freaks by saying ‘oh, boohoo’ (‘An 96

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Open Book’, 1:5), Americans are often suspicious that their best friends might really be big frauds. Consequently, while the Atkins low-carb diet is the latest fad (again), Mr Atkins himself is being posthumously scrutinised for being overweight on his deathbed (
People
2004). And the three daytime divas of self-improvement –

Martha Stewart, Rosie O’Donnell and even Oprah – have all been in high-profile trials responding to charges that they are loud-mouthed, controlling liars, if not worse.

Six Feet Under
puts this national love-hate relationship on the couch – mimicking it and, at its best, diagnosing it with severe (to say the least) success hang-ups and anxiety problems. In doing so, it attempts to analyse the ironies inherent in self-help, and, con-sequently, American views of success, individualism and power. If I am really in control of my life, why so many experts? Must I confess to being powerless before I can gain that control? Is my life living up to the American Dream? Is that a valid question, or a narcissistic one? And, if my main objective is to help myself, what do I do with others? In asking these questions, the series performs the logic of self-help, both its silly and seductive sides. The Plan, after all, is to self-help what Kroehner is to the funeral business. Repairing her shingles often leaves Ruth in shackles. But, on the other hand, hearing her hammer away at her family – ‘fuck my lousy parents … my selfish bohemian sister and her fucking bliss…my legless grandmother…my dead husband and my lousy children and their nasty little secrets’ –

is cathartic for Ruth and her viewers (‘The Plan’, 2:3). So, what do we make of our times when all this supposed nonsense actually works?

‘I suffer from that American thing, big-time – always looking around for someone better,’ Aaron Buchbinder (Glenn Fitzgerald) tells Nate shortly before he dies at 26 of pancreatic cancer (‘I’ll Take You’, 2:12). While Nate assures him it is not too late to connect with someone, Aaron brushes him off. A drive for success, a diagnosis of it as a problem, and yet an inability to escape the desire for someone,
something
, better, is both the primary force driving self-help America and the central plot of
Six Feet Under
. Nearly all the characters suffer from this ‘American thing’ – from David’s vision of sending out ‘Ben and David’ Christmas cards, to Keith’s frustration with his meaningless security job, to Claire’s art school, to Rico’s insecurity about providing his family a good, middle-class life. Nate, however, breaks the mould. He spends most of the third season second-97

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guessing his decision to marry Lisa. In ‘The Trap’ (3:5) – and in classic self-help fashion – he envisages himself in his better life, speeding around in his car, completely carefree, smoking, even listening to – no joke – a song about being ‘not dead yet’. When he awakes he is outside, sneaking a smoke.

As these examples suggest, the meaning of ‘success’ is not always easy to define. ‘I came out of the closet … I’m in a committed relationship,’ David tells Father Jack. ‘So, I don’t know, shouldn’t my life be better?’ (‘Twilight’, 3:12). The fear of having missed opportunities, or let other lives pass you by, often contributes to the show’s melancholy tone. ‘I got pregnant the first time I’d ever had sex. It changed my life for ever,’ Ruth tells Claire, confessing also that she ‘used to’ wonder how life would have been different (‘Everyone Leaves’, 3:10). Most revealing, this perpetual longing only gets worse as things seem to get better – as if American optimism is propped up only by a fear of falling. It is after Vanessa and Rico become solidly middle class, with a house, an inheritance and a partnership with Fisher and Sons, that Vanessa becomes clinically depressed. And during Lisa’s cringe-inducing massage session with Brenda, she breaks down into tears, saying that her ‘life has never been so good’ (‘Tears, Bones and Desire’, 3:8).

Interestingly, it was this sort of unqualified, general anxiety that contributed to the rise of the self-help market in America.

Much of the ‘success literature’ of the late nineteenth century, Steven Starker in his book
Oracle at the Supermarket: The American
Preoccupation with Self-Help Books
(1989) suggests, was in response to a growing sense that ‘America had become too civilized, too complicated, too loud and too fast; it challenged and exceeded the nervous capabilities of many of its citizens … [indeed] increased democracy and liberty in America burdened citizens with too many difficult choices’ (33). The result was an array of ‘lesser nervous afflictions’, many of which we see on the series like ‘anxiety, tension, headache, insomnia … alcohol abuse, and simple unhappiness’ (32).

Living the American Dream – whatever it may be – is stressful; so much so that a German physician visiting the country at the time called the ‘new’ disease ‘Americanitis’ (34).

Anxiety still plagues Americans today. According to Barry Glassner, author of
The Culture of Fear
(1999), Americans are more uptight than ever – particularly about the idea that their life may 98

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end before they really had a chance to live it. Citing a study that calculated the number of supposed illnesses affecting Americans –

from heart disease (59 million) to migraines (53 million) – Glassner concludes that it was ‘determined that 543 million Americans are seriously sick – a shocking number in a nation of 266 million inhabitants’ (Glassner 1999: xii). One of the more ironic elements of self-help is that, while it professes to free you from anxiety (with titles such as
How to Achieve Security, Confidence and Peace; How to
Avoid Stress Before it Kills You
; and
How to Beat Death
), it often induces it (Starker 1989: 2). In the pilot, Ruth worries about ‘death traps’ like smoking and reminds Nathaniel, seconds before his fatal crash, to take his blood pressure medicine (1:1). And even Keith’s partner (Eric Bruskotter) in the police force spouts new age jargon when he warns Keith that ‘you keep everything bottled up inside you.

That’s not good. That creates cancer’ (‘The Invisible Woman’, 2:5).

Similarly, characters frequently substitute ‘security’ for ‘happiness’.

‘I loved that you were a cop,’ David tells Keith (‘I’m Sorry, I’m Lost’, 3:13). ‘The thought of being with you made me feel safe. Though I can’t imagine what I thought I needed protection from.’

Though the characters frequently spout self-help jargon, like many Americans, they still remain highly suspicious of the genre. Nate is grateful that with Lisa, unlike his previous girlfriends, he doesn’t have to walk through a ‘minefield of her childhood’, dotted with signs reading ‘Caution: unexplored daddy issues everywhere’ (‘Making Love Work’, 3:6). And Claire’s scepticism is forever jammed in high gear. ‘I wish that, just once, people wouldn’t act like the clichés that they are’ (‘The Foot’, 1:3). But Brenda, who regularly calls self-help on its narcissistic and herd-like tendencies, is the most cynical. She has an allergic reaction to Nate’s assumption that she’s writing a memoir, ‘the story of your fucked-up childhood, but from your point of view’ (‘The Invisible Woman’, 2:5); and, while writing her novel, the words ‘All you do is observe yourself’ appear on the screen.

Later, she envisages her therapist Dr Michaelson (Kim Myers), recommended by Melissa (Kellie Waymire) to help her overcome her ‘sex addiction’, saying: ‘You don’t need any help. You’ve clearly evolved beyond the need for therapy. I’m actually in awe of you.

Because I’d be fucking strangers like a truck-store whore on crack if I wasn’t so inhibited by my pathetic Judeo-Christian upbringing’

(‘The Secret’, 2:10). Among other things, Brenda confronts here a 99

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central paradox of self-help. If having sex with multiple men makes her happy, why should she be anxious about it? Nate is in a similar situation. Although his marriage is stifling, he feels obligated to enjoy the sense of safe success that it is supposed to provide. So, he wonders rightly, is happiness in America simply complacency masquerading as achievement?

Despite these concerns, self-help still manages to seduce.

Hence Olivier, the self-help maestro extraordinaire, who encourages his captive audience of art students to listen to themselves and their hearts above all, but to do so while hanging on his every word and running his errands. Claire eventually calls Olivier on his contradictions, but not before he woos her and her boyfriend. Even disbelieving Brenda joins a 12-step programme and
almost
confesses to being powerless and living life as if it were just ‘one long hot fuck with God’ (‘The Last Time’, 2:13). And in the fourth season, she decides to become a therapist, in a ‘if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em’

move. At other times, the ability to choose or not choose to live a life without maxims is in doubt. ‘I always thought by being gay I’d avoid fucking my mother,’ Keith tells couples counsellor Frank Muehler (Arye Gross). ‘But I guess that’s not the case’ (‘You Never Know’, 3:2). You can critique it but you cannot escape it. Self-help is who we are.

A more complex – and important – question than whether the characters succumb to self-help is whether the show’s creators do.

To a certain extent, all the psycho-babble seems to make the writers more nauseous than Claire at a high school pep rally. For one thing, they often portray self-help as purely market-driven. ‘People’ll want to read that!’ Nate says of Brenda’s tell-all non-memoir (‘The Invisible Woman’, 2:5). In the next episode, Sarah, Ruth’s bohemian sister, treats tarragon that she buys from the high-end coffee shop Dean and DeLuca as though it were a herbal supplement from the gods.

‘[They] have these fantastic spices in test tubes – very mad scientist!’

she boasts to Ruth (‘In Place of Anger’, 2:6). The writers are also not above taking easy shots at self-help in all its silly, self-righteous glory. Lisa’s boss Carol (Catherine O’Hara) swims naked to feel like a ‘warrior’ (‘Perfect Circles’, 3:1), and must eat cake in a ‘safe white place’ (‘The Eye Inside’, 3:3). In couples therapy, Keith and David learn to share their feelings about
everything
. ‘Okay, I [felt] shamed,’

David tells Keith while making dinner, ‘when you said I already 100

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added pepper’ (‘Perfect Circles’, 3:1). Finally, the show’s creators frequently suggest that self-help is simply a cliché, even a cliché of a cliché. ‘The death of romance in a regimented artificial world –

lovely,’ says Sarah of what she thinks is art created by Claire (but is, instead, something Claire rescued from the rubbish), because it takes a new age drama queen to know one (‘In Place of Anger’, 2:6).

Yet the characters are not the only walking, talking, self-hating clichés around. For all their jabs, the show’s creators have given
Six
Feet Under
a rather derivative form as well, particularly in its adoption of soap opera tropes. Alan Ball, the show’s creator, has called it