![]() ![]() ![]() Brenda, on the other hand, actively resists trying to become her mother, Margaret Chenowith. Nate truly does become Nathaniel Jnr in the end, proving just as inadequate a husband and father, underlined by the fact that his last act before going to his deathbed is to cheat on his wife. The big contrast between Nate and Brenda is in now they attempt to or resist becoming their same-sex parent. David is criminalised and physically abused for taking what he wants, while Federico’s bumbling naive attempt to be like Nate is disastrous for his marriage. Nate takes sex where he finds it, and while this easy sexuality will eventually be implicated in his downfall, no other character is allowed to have the same sexual success. David has to work hard for success in family life and his business life, but social norms allow Nate to simply have these things even though he resents all of them. In his personal life Nate also beats David without trying, claiming fatherhood and marriage (twice) Nate cares for neither but they come to him easily, almost accidentally, enabled by social norms and laws that support his role as partriach. Nate beats David at every turn: he takes the freedom (from the family business) which David craved, then walks back into the business as his equal (despite a lack of experience or qualification) and in doing so he annuls the years of life that David has invested into the funeral home. Nate’s role as a villain is complex but pervasive as he smothers other characters through performing his role as patriarch. Claire is the first character to recognise and accept David’s sexuality she is our witness whenever a character steps away from the confines of the funeral home and secret pasts are revealed, being present at Mya’s conception in Seattle and when her mother reconnects with her youth at the party in the canyon Nate’s death is experienced most vividly through Claire, and she is the frst to understand Lisa’s fate. Most notably, the finale of the show is seen entirely through Claire’s eyes, but her role as an observer of events is a consistent theme throughout the show. There are a number of points in the storywhere we see key truths revealed through Claire’s eyes. Within this reading, we will consider Claire Fisher, the youngest Fisher child, to be the true protagonist of the show. In the new stable world we see all other characters have changed, and grown, through their experiences with Nate – death aside Nate has not grown through the events, he has simply become more compromised and damaged more and more people. Read as a classic Hollywood narrative with Nate as a villain, the disruption to the stable world is Nate’s arrival the new equilibrium can only happen when he’s dead. We will now consider an alternative reading of Six Feet Under – while you may prefer your own reading, we feel that this explanation of the show is more effective than the “Nate as hero” reading as it overcomes the moment of Nate’s death while unifying the story to themes within the show other than death. In the final season, Six Feet Under presents a moment of crisis for this reading with Nate’s death, leaving the obvious reading of the show short of a hero for some four episodes the death of Nate is where the producers show their hand, revealing the need for the audience to find a new story to explain Six Feet Under. We must soon regard Nate as a flawed anti-hero, but his influence becomes increasingly corrupting on those around him until we find ourselves asking “is Nate the villain of Six Feet Under?”. But this reading becomes increasingly problematic as the series progresses. Thrown back into a family business which he has no real aptitude for, he physically grapples with death just as the Fisher family must emotionally grapple with Nathaniel’s passing. In Nate the producers give us an archetypal male hero – he is the uncompromising, good looking, sexually succesful (and heterosexual) lead played by a named star as an audience we would tend to understand Nate to be our key protagonist. Into this structure the series opens with the death of the Fisher family patriarch – the enigmatic Nathaniel – which forces Nate to reconnect with the family business he tried to escape. The funeral parlour setting frames the story of each episode and frames the story arc. Six Feet Under constantly invites us to consider death as a way of life. Six Feet Under is a simple narrative complicated by three red herrings: Nathaniel Jr. ![]() The following is a spoiler laden essay on Six Feet Under, co written with Jon Hickman (and also available on his blog). ![]()
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