If It Barks Like a Dog, Is It a Bitch?

I’m not going to lie: I’m just not feeling the writing today, and I had the most difficult time staying focused on the episodes. I was up pretty late last night, and (excuse the candor) today my period sucker-punched me like it is Mike Tyson circa 1987 and I'm Robin Givens. I don’t want to bend, walk, lie down, breathe, talk, or move in anyway. Yes, I feel bitchy, and yes, I could probably take someone’s head clean off with my bare hands for one of Coffee and Chocolate’s sea salt dark chocolate-covered caramels. The three episodes today had certain moments, but nothing that made any one of them better than the other two. Since I’m feeling sort of bitchy, I suppose I will focus on Brenda. 

What I’ll never understand is how many Six Feet Under fans really dislike Brenda. I remember talking with my friend Sarah Campbell about the series in Fall 2006 after I had watched all five seasons. Everyone I knew who watched 6FU identified with Claire, and as I recall Sarah was in the Claire camp...although now that I think about it, she may have been a huge Nate person. Anyway, what I do recall is that when I told her I was a Brenda person, Sarah looked confused. I remember her asking me why I liked Brenda. I told her that I identified with Brenda because her sense of purpose, boundaries, ethics, and humor were so very akin to my own. I’d had real-life conversations with people precisely the same as those Brenda had on the show; I’d even said phrases Brenda said. After a brief silence Sarah said, “But Brenda’s such a bitch,” and she stared at me as if to say she thought I was a nicer person than Brenda.

No, I’m not. However, I do not think Brenda is unkind. She does so many kind things in the series that I feel are overlooked because so many people focus on Brenda’s behavior, behavior American culture has deemed unbecoming in women. 

First, Brenda is highly intelligent. The character’s IQ is stated to be 15 points higher than mine (and yet I still cannot beat that stupid pins-in-the-triangle game at Cracker Barrel). It has been my experience that smart women are seen as a threat by many men and even more women. Moreover, where I feel Brenda and I are most similar is that we are both hyper-critical. I have to admit, I have lost friendships over my ability to be critical, an ability I see as a blessing. The potential problem with being critical is that many people do not understand the difference between criticism and judgement. 

There is a substantial difference between criticism and judgement. What stands out to me is that other people I know who are as critical as I am are also the least judgmental people I know in the world. Hyper-critical people do not equate another person’s worth or value with isolated actions or words or lifestyles; to do so would clearly be making a judgement about another individual, and that is just not how I roll. I don’t care who fucks whom or what they say or how else they behave. 

To judge is to find value in, or perhaps to devalue, an object. Criticism is to study, evaluate, and interpret a person’s work based on a set of principles, standards, and social trends that can determine how and why the observed subject takes shape, its cultural significance, and its ability to withstand the test of time. Criticism offers as its product a critique, which gives the person something to build and grow from. Judgement offers a verdict, and a verdict (desirable or not) takes the power out of the object’s hands. There is nothing in judgement that allows the object the opportunity for growth. 

Here’s where I think the honest breakdown is on this debate: People do not always appreciate sincere criticism because it means they may still have unfinished work to do on whatever is being critiqued. Also, many people have a difficult time sifting through criticism and taking what they need from it in order to move on and grow into someone wiser...even wise enough to recognize that not all criticism matters. The trick to criticism is having faith in the principles of interpersonal knowledge sharing. In fact, I believe oftentimes people unconsciously prefer being judged to being criticized, because in judgement there is a (perhaps unearned) sense of closure and finality. 

Brenda is critical, not judgmental. She has a line of criticism in Episode 8, an observation so astute it ends a moment of tension between her brother Billy and Nate. Billy is over-intellectualizing the death of a six year old boy who accidentally shot himself in the face. Nate posits a more emotional analysis of the death of this young child whose funeral is being planned at Fisher and Sons Funeral Home. In the midst of this argument Brenda very calmly interjects: “Do you know what I find interesting? If you lose a spouse, you're called a widow or a widower. If you're a child and you lose your parents, then you're an orphan. But what's the word to describe a parent who loses a child? I guess that's just too fucking awful to even have a name.” This is a prime example of how Brenda can take a subject and critique it. Seriously, go back and look at the definition I offered up above. That’s exactly what she’s doing here. 

More than anything else, I think Brenda’s ability to be critical directly affects her establishment of emotional boundaries. There is this fantastic sequence in the same episode where, after Nate fails the first try on his funeral director’s exam, Brenda takes him out window shopping at other funeral homes, to see how others do the job. After two visits--the first with a guy cluelessly merchandising after Brenda fabricates this hysterical story of her parents being killed in a helicopter crash, and a second one where the funeral director feigns concern to swindle them out of money--Brenda enters the third location, leaving Nate alone with this director long enough to disguise herself as a terminal cancer patient planning her own funeral. It’s a move that pushes Nate over an emotional cliff. Brenda never strays from her act. Nate loses his temper and exits, which only serves to validate Brenda’s means. Back in the van, Nate accuses Brenda of playing head games with him. Brenda apologizes but points out to Nate that he is, in fact, entering an undertaking where he will have to deal with every aspect of death on a daily basis. She tells him this is odd to her because he has such a fear of dying. Nate rationalizes, saying everyone fears death; Brenda says she doesn’t. 

Nate then becomes judgmental and tells Brenda that sane people fear death. Brenda uses her humor to defuse the situation, by barking like a dog as she had as a child in the biographical case study Charlotte Light and Dark, but it is clearly a moment of Nate projecting his judgement and fear-based opinions onto Brenda. In my opinion, he is being unfair, and yet more people find Brenda’s actions more offensive than Nate’s actions. That is difficult for me to understand. To me, being upset over Brenda’s actions is like asking for an ice cream cone with bubble gum flavored ice cream and then getting pissed off when the ice cream is blue instead of pink. It still tastes like fucking bubble gum. What is the freaking problem? You asked for bubble gum, and you got bubble gum. Nate was fine going into the first two funeral homes and losing an imaginary uncle and imaginary parents, but an imaginary wife was too much for him. It’s hypocrisy at a gut level. But I’ve always felt Nate is a bit of a hypocrite, because of his bizarre love/hate relationship with his own need to be helpful to others. Then again, as I warned in my opening paragraph, maybe I’m just being a bitch?