I have argued elsewhere (Wilson) that confessional television talk shows represent an enactment of grotesque realism through which the fragility of self in the postindustrial age can be thought through. In such shows confessional practice enables the exploration of the grime, grind, and debris of daily life in close up. I would argue that, likewise, Ruth’s confessions—in the florist shop as well as at her husband’s funeral—articulate a grotesque realism, as risky performances through which profound issues affecting self and identity are rehearsed in dramatic form. Ruth’s risk-taking, or stunting, here precipitates the turning point in her relationship with Robbie within the narrative of Six Feet Under. The intimacy engendered by the disclosure allows each character the possibility of renewal through this more open relationship. Stunting provokes an ambivalent response, however, simultaneously attracting ridicule and admiration. Thus this episode also represents a risk in terms of audience response. “A Private Life” does end with David coming out to his mother. Although we do not expect a conventional narrative turn that would see the mother and son in some mutually affirming embrace—and indeed, this does not happen—there is nonetheless an expectation of a narrative movement toward closure in which this incident leads to a catharsis for David, a release from his torment of secrecy. But this does not happen either. Rather, Ruth remains isolated from her son while David is prostrate, locked in the agonies of self-revulsion and despairing in his aloneness. While David’s struggle to reconcile his homosexuality with the social homophobia that threatens him physically and psychically is powerfully drawn, it is a subject already known to television audiences. Ruth’s disclosure is more transgressive because it dramatizes a less familiar form of coming out.
What we see are the difficulties of working through sexual identity in constricted normative spaces and the possibilities opened up through a grotesque performance. Although her unruly behavior speaks to the messiness of everyday life, it is not the raucous noise produced by Patsy and Edina in Absolutely Fabulous (Arthurs; Kirkham and Skeggs). The high-octane level of hedonism that functions as the narrative fulcrum of Ab Fab operates as a comical commentary on the respective excesses of the 1960s and 1980s cultures. Nonetheless, while Patsy and Edina transgress boundaries of propriety, theirs is a one-dimensional representation of unruliness that does not necessarily challenge existing social norms. Ruth Fisher has a depth and complexity attributed to her character that arises from the juxtaposition of her sedate demeanour and attitude of continuing maternal concern with a resolve to move beyond the inner life that the domestic space represents, to exhume certain aspects of her psyche. Although this exhumation begins at her husband’s funeral with her confession of adultery, the “adventure” of self-exploration continues throughout the series with the development of her sense of sexual selfhood. Other aspects of Ruth’s personality are revealed—to her and to us—through this experimentation; we see new sides of Ruth through her playful friendship with Bettina, her near-fetishistic pleasure in Arthur’s handkerchiefs, and her sustained effort to engage with her children through the intimate, messy and awkward aspects of lived experience. This juxtaposition of stunting—sexual and otherwise—and maternal care gives her character a powerful three-dimensionality as she breaches the official discourse of motherhood with embarrassing but intimate revelations of her inner life. In rendering the middle-aged woman visible in this way, Six Feet Under produces the “critical disorientation of habitual ways of seeing” that Robin Nelson calls for in television drama. Ruth presents us with a critical perspective within which the dramatic representation of older women opens up the possibility of re-evaluating social and familial relations more generally.
Works Cited
Arthurs, Jane and Jean Grimshaw, eds. Women’s Bodies: Discipline and Transgression. New York: Cassell, 1999.
Dentith, Simon. Bakhtinian Thought: An Introductory Reader. London: Routledge, 1995.
Ellis, John. Seeing Things. London: Routledge, 2000.
Kirkham, Pat and Beverley Skeggs. “Absolutely Fabulous: Absolutely Feminist?” In Geraghty, C. and D. Lusted, eds., The Television Studies Book. London: Arnold, 1998.
Nelson, Robin. TV Drama in Transition: Forms, Values, and Cultural Change. Basingstock, UK: MacMillan, 1997.Russo, Mary. The Female Grotesque: Risk, Excess, and Modernity. London: Routledge, 1995.
Six Feet Under. Created by Alan Ball. HBO. 2002–.
Tullock, John. Television Drama: Agency, Audience, and Myth. London: Routledge, 1990.
Wilson, Sherryl. Oprah, Celebrity, and Formations of Self. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave, 2003.
