Telepistemology of the Closet; or, The Queer Politics of Six Feet Under

Despite the constant vigilance of its PR department and the continual updating of its onscreen images and graphics, HBO has not bothered to change the slogan for its original series: "it's not TV, it's HBO." But with the addition of Alan Ball's Six Feet Under to the lineup, it becomes difficult to tell which is more annoying: the relentless repetition of the slogan or the fact that the more they say it, the more true it appears to be. As with the mafia violence of The Sopranos and the graphic sexual language (much more graphic than the sex itself) of Sex and the City, Six Feet Under has its own share of content that would simply never appear on network television. This forbidden subject matter takes the form, mostly, of naked dead people, some of whom speak. While setting the show in a funeral home, and weaving each of the opening episode's numerous plots in and around death and funerals, certainly makes Six Feet Under unique (and often rather surreal), what makes the show both pathbreaking vis-a-vis network television and politically significant for the purposes of my reading here is its subtle, sophisticated, and deft approach to the subject matter of identity and sexuality. I will argue that in its first season, Six Feet Under both promises and begins to provide its viewers with something never before seen on television: an illustration and illumination of the process of forming both gay and straight sexual identities in the face of societal heteronormativ- ity- a demonstration that entails shining a light on the inner workings of the closet.1 The Television and the Closet To anyone who follows portrayals of lesbians and gays on television, my thesis may seem to be a bit behind the times. It would appear to many that the closet door has already been thrown wide open by recent offerings on primetime television, a door that was already cracked by primetime shows such as Soap and Dynasty. These show broke ground in television for gay themes and characters, ground that has been developed somewhat over the past decade (Atkinson). Indeed, one only has to look at the current television listings to see NBC's hit Will and Grace winning not only audiences but Emmy awards. Eric McCormack leads the cast, playing Will, a gay but also successful, reasonable, and mature Manhattan lawyer- officially described as "likable, handsome and charming" (NBC, "About the Show"). He is paired with Jack, his "outrageous" (read flaming) comic sidekick.2 Or, if mildly gaythemed situation comedy seems too tame or just not political enough, tune to Showtime to see the self-styled controversial ("No Limits" is Showtime's new slogan) Queer as Folk. Here, literally everyone is gay, every episode's theme is a "gay theme," and no viewer of any episode can doubt the veracity of the "graphic sexual content" warning before each episode.3 I have no need or intention to offer critiques of these shows. Instead, I suggest that perhaps they say less about what Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick has called the "epistemology of the closet" than we might first think. Sedgwick's point of departure lies in the simple fact that for almost all gay people, the closet constitutes the most salient feature of their social lives. This is the case whether someone is "in" or "out" of the closet. AU gay people, no matter how openly out they are, will eventually find themselves in the closet with someone who is close to them- either personally, professionally, or economically (Sedgwick 68). But we are not, Sedgwick warns us, to conclude from these facts that the closet proves significant merely for gay people. On the contrary, Sedgwick provocatively suggests "that the epistemology of the closet has... been... inexhaustibly productive of modern Western culture and history at large" (68). This is a bold claim. Sedgwick begins to back it up not with more sweeping rhetoric, but by way of example. She tells the story of the teacher in Montgomery County, Maryland who was removed from his teaching position in 1973 when the Board of Education discovered he was gay; when he gave statements to the media, the Board fired him. …