The Television World of Pushing Daisies: Critical Essays on the Bryan Fuller Series

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The Television World of Pushing Daisies

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The Television World of Pushing Daisies Critical Essays on the Bryan Fuller Series Edited by ALISSA BURGER

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina, and London

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The television world of Pushing daisies : critical essays on the Byan Fuller series / edited by Alissa Burger. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7864-6148-6 softcover : 50# alkaline paper ¡. Pushing daisies (Television program) PN¡992.77.P87T45 20¡¡ 384.55' 32 — dc22 BRITISH LIBRARY

I. Burger, Alissa. 20¡¡00352¡

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© 20¡¡ Alissa Burger. All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. On the cover: The cast of the television series Pushing Daisies, 2007 (ABC/Photofest) Manufactured in the United States of America

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Box 6¡¡, Je›erson, North Carolina 28640 www.mcfarlandpub.com

Table of Contents Introduction ALISSA BURGER

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Part One: Television, Difference, and Pushing Daisies 1. Spectacular Collision/Collusion: Genre, “Quality,” and Contemporary Drama LORNA JOWETT 2. Pushing Daisies Away: Community Through Isolation MATT DAUPHIN 3. Often Invisible: Disability in Pushing Daisies CHRISTINE GARBETT

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Part Two: Philosophy and Pushing Daisies 4. Consuming Grief and Eating Pie LAURA ANH WILLIAMS 5. “Neophobic Ned Needs Neoteny”: Neuroses and Child’s Play ANN-GEE LEE 6. “Here Lies Dwight, Here Lies His Gun. He Was Bad, Now He’s Done”: On Justice and Schadenfreude CHRISTINE ANGELA KNOOP 7. “It’s a Destiny Thing — Enjoy It!”: Free Will and Determinism in Bryan Fuller’s Series PATRICK GILL v

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Table of Contents

Part Three: Gender and Pushing Daisies 8. The Queer, Quirky World of Pushing Daisies DANIEL FARR 9. Sweet Talk in The Pie Hole: Language, Intimacy, and Public Space TARA K. PARMITER 10. Fashion, Femininity, and the 1950s: Costume and Identity Negotiation in Pushing Daisies ALISSA BURGER About the Contributors Index

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Introduction ALISSA BURGER

Bryan Fuller’s work has been familiar to fans of the off beat and quirky for years, and his television series have a strong tradition of being celebrated by loyal viewers and cultural critics, though struggling to find a wide popular audience. Dead Like Me aired on Showtime for two seasons (2003– 2004) and was created by Fuller, though he left the show after less than a season.1 Wonderfalls, which Fuller co-created with Todd Holland, aired on FOX for only four episodes in 2004, though a total of thirteen episodes were made and released on DVD in 2005.2 With these shows cancelled before their time, as many critics and viewers continue to argue, dedicated fans of Fuller’s signature style were thrilled when his series Pushing Daisies premiered in 2007, optimistic in the hope that this time would be different, that Fuller’s eccentric and zany characters, settings, and worlds would enchant a wider audience, and that Pushing Daisies would stretch into multiple seasons, allowing a Fuller series to finally come to full fruition. However, like the critically lauded fan favorites Wonderfalls and Dead Like Me, this was not to be the case with Pushing Daisies, which was cancelled after only two seasons, once again leaving fans wanting more. Pushing Daisies follows the adventures of Ned (Lee Pace), a piemaker with the supernatural ability to wake the dead, though this skill comes with its own limitations and caveats: Ned can touch a dead being and bring it back to life, but he can only keep a person or animal “alive again” for one minute; any more than sixty seconds and another living thing in the immediate vicinity must die in its place. Ned discovers this ability as a child, when he inadvertently makes his mother “alive again,” an act which results in the death of Charles Charles, the father of Ned’s neighbor and 1

Introduction

childhood crush, Charlotte “Chuck” Charles (Anna Friel), before Ned’s mother dies a second time. As an adult, Ned channels his energy into baking pies and running his restaurant, The Pie Hole, with the help of vivacious waitress Olive Snook (Kristin Chenoweth). In addition, he solves murders with private investigator Emerson Cod (Chi McBride), with Ned waking murder victims to ask them about their deaths and touching them dead once more, allowing Emerson to solve the crime and collect the reward. Ned’s life is predictable and tightly controlled, if a bit unconventional, until the murder victim in question is Charlotte Charles, who Ned is unable to bring himself to touch a second time. Thus returned to life indefinitely, Ned and Chuck begin a romantic relationship, Chuck joins Ned and Emerson in their crime solving, and Ned’s life becomes increasingly more chaotic, though Ned himself begins embracing the life that he himself has been missing out on through his self-imposed isolation. Surrounded by a cast of quirky peripheral characters, such as Chuck’s aunts Lily and Vivian (Swoozie Kurtz and Ellen Greene), Ned and Chuck wake the dead, settle old secrets, hide Chuck’s “alive again” status from her grieving aunts and the wider world, and become ever closer to one another though, by necessity, they can never again touch. The style of Pushing Daisies is as unique as its plot and cast of characters, blending the contemporary and midcentury American nostalgia through the visual coding of place, cars, and clothes, among other elements. The world of Pushing Daisies blends reality with the whimsy of fairy tale and fantasy. The Pie Hole is literally shaped like a pie, with an overhanging crust of an awning and even the potentially macabre scenes of murder and other crimes blend humor and over-the-top stylization with the whodunit of the murder mystery: the Dandy Lion car company costumes its models as human-sized flowers, with fluffy caps and eye makeup complete with petals,3 while the headquarters for Betty’s Bees is composed of hexagonal honeycomb patterns, from clothing and furniture to the walls and the architecture itself.4 The camera angles employed by Fuller and crew also lend Pushing Daisies a signature, cinematic style that was arguably unlike anything previously seen on television. William Powloski and the visual effects crew created an entire “self-contained world, somewhere between a comic book and a fairy tale, a little nostalgic and bursting with color,” creating a series full of unique and over-the-top settings, including the 2

Introduction (Burger)

Sound of Music-inspired convent to which Olive flees in the second season and the literal big top of a traveling circus.5 The cinematography through which this world is viewed is also one of a kind, with the expected medium and close-up shots common in television across genres supplemented with long shots, showing huge expanses of cityscape or the field of daisies through which young Ned and his dog Digby run at the beginning of the pilot episode; in addition, the series also utilized unique camera perspectives, such as a direct overhead shot of Olive Snook dancing on The Pie Hole’s green checkerboard-patterned floor as she pours her heart out in a stirring rendition of “Hopelessly Devoted to You.”6 In addition to a wider variety of cinematic shots, Pushing Daisies is also distinguished by the use of stunning and unexpected instances of camera movement: a transition from The Pie Hole to the apartments above that takes readers outside, up, and around the corner of the building in one fluid motion, rather than cutting directly from one scene to another or following in the footsteps of our characters; a sky to close up zoom on the face of Olive Snook as she spins with arms outstretched in a green field in a clear homage to The Sound of Music; a disembodied camera zooming through the multiple sites of the Pushing Daisies world at the conclusion of the series finale, taking readers on an omniscient and untethered whirlwind tour. The singularity of Pushing Daisies also frees the show to participate in and negotiate a wide range of genre influences, combining elements of murder mystery, hard-boiled detective drama, romantic comedy, and stylized fantasy. In addition, the combination of multiple genres and the series’ approach of blurring the lines between fantasy and reality also allows Pushing Daisies to ally itself with the musical genre, with Broadway alums Chenoweth and Greene occasionally breaking into spontaneous song, including Chenoweth’s rendition of The Bangles’ “Eternal Flame,”7 Greene’s “Morning Has Broken,”8 and the two of them in duet on They Might Be Giants’ “Birdhouse in Your Soul.”9 The combination of colorful characters, genre blending, cinematic innovation, and the dual investment in the realms of both the real and the fantastical make Pushing Daisies unlike anything else on television. Pushing Daisies was generally well-received by critics, including Tim Goodman of the San Francisco Chronicle’s review, which referred to the series as “a gloriously visual fairy tale full of saturated colors and whimsical 3

Introduction

stories, the kind of romantic comedy/whodunit that should, by rights, captivate a nation starved for quirkiness and delight.”10 Emmy voters apparently agreed and in 2009, the series received several nominations and four wins, for art direction, makeup, and costumes,11 as well as an Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Comedy award for Kristin Chenoweth.12 Many viewers were captivated and the series developed a relatively small, though devoted, base of fans. However, like Fuller’s previous shows, Pushing Daisies did not immediately attract a wide, general audience, and though it seemed to have the promise to potentially do so, midway through its first season, just after the completion of the ninth episode, the Hollywood Writer’s Guild of America (WGA) went on strike, halting the production of all further shows until the fall season of 2008.13 While ABC picked up the series for a second season, much to fans’ relief, the resulting ten-month hiatus certainly contributed to the show’s continuing with a niche fanbase, rather than garnering larger popular support. In addition, with three episodes left in the second season, ABC suspended broadcasting of Pushing Daisies, with over five months passing between the majority of the second season episodes and the final three episodes of the series, whose production in the meantime remained in limbo, leaving faithful fans frantic and preventing the series once again from gaining a wider popular audience through the unpredictable broadcasting schedule. Pushing Daisies did not make it to a third season, though advance notice that the show would not be returning allowed Fuller to create a poetic, though determinedly open-ended, conclusion for the final episode. As the narrator relates in the series’ final moments, “events occurred that are not, were not, and should never be considered an ending.” This claim is especially resonant in an era when fans are beginning to have increasing power in having their voices heard, with shows like Family Guy,14 Jericho,15 and Futurama16 brought back from cancellation in large part through fan support and activism. Fan outcry over the cancellation of Joss Whedon’s series Firefly, which ran for one season (2002–2003) and aired on FOX, also resulted in the production and release of a feature film, Serenity (2005), which continued to develop the stories of the series’ main characters. Fuller’s prematurely cancelled series have not been outside the scope of this fan support movement. Five years after the cancellation of Dead Like Me, the show returned, in a manner of speaking, with the characters and 4

Introduction (Burger)

plots picked up once again in a direct to DVD film Dead Like Me: Life After Death (2009). While fans of Wonderfalls were similarly outspoken, their goals differed somewhat, in their desire to get the series released on DVD, including the nine unaired episodes, and to urge other networks to pick up the show as well. They succeeded in their first goal, with the complete series released on DVD in 2005; while their second initiative failed to convince a network to contract new episodes of the show, it has since been aired on cable channels in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada through syndication and more often, due to the limited number of total episodes, as a special event screening.17 Pushing Daisies fans rallied around the series, petitioning ABC to bring the series back for a third season. The series’ main fan site, ThePie maker.com, extolled viewers to convince friends to watch the final episodes to demonstrate a measurably growing audience, write letters to the network, and send daisies or flower seeds (“they’re light and therefore cheap to ship”) to ABC in support of the show.18 While this fan support did not prevent Pushing Daisies from being cancelled, it is not yet entirely gone and certainly not forgotten. Rumors have swirled surrounding a Fullercreated Pushing Daisies comic book series since the cancellation of the television series, with the currently anticipated configuration being a 12-issue miniseries through DC, which “will tie up loose ends left by Pushing Daisies untimely demise as the characters deal with a flash flood that empties bodies from a nearby cemetery,” with a darker tone than the television series.19 So Pushing Daisies, it seems, is far from dead. Echoing the sentiments of fans and critics disappointed to see this quirky show go, this collection and its contributors highlight the cultural and critical significance of Pushing Daisies. The collection is divided into three main sections; however, a consideration of the series’ stylistics and a critical perspective are a common thread which unites all of the essays and the collection as a whole. Pushing Daisies is a series which exists within the larger context of difference, both in its relation to other contemporary television offerings and within the series itself, and the theme of television, difference, and Pushing Daisies is addressed in the first section (Chapters 1 to 3). Lorna Jowett’s essay addresses the show’s genre hybridity; Matt Dauphin discusses community and isolation within the series, through the ways in which the characters’ difference positions them as together yet 5

Introduction

alone; and Christine Garbett considers difference through the discourse of disability established in Pushing Daisies. Part Two (Chapters 4 to 7) situates Pushing Daisies within larger philosophical discourses: Laura Anh Williams positions the series within Freud’s theory of melancholia, AnnGee Lee discusses the role of biological and psychological neoteny, Christine Angela Knoop discusses the link between Schadenfreude and justice engaged by the series, and Patrick Gill addresses the conflict between free will and predeterminism in Pushing Daisies, within the context of Fuller’s larger body of work, including Wonderfalls and Dead Like Me. The essays in Part Three (Chapters 8 to 10) address the role of gender within this series: Daniel Farr presents a queer interpretation of Pushing Daisies, Tara K. Parmiter addresses issues of language, intimacy, and public space in establishing gendered relationships within the series, and I consider the design and significance of femininity and the series’ award-winning costumes. On their own and as a whole, the essays in this collection work to highlight the unique nature and cultural significance of Fuller’s Pushing Daisies. In an era of television dominated by reality programming and genre-specific scripted shows, Pushing Daisies distinguished itself, however briefly, as a one of a kind series. Pushing Daisies may be gone from the airwaves, but for fans, critics, and cultural scholars, the show, its quirky characters, distinctive dialogue, and conversation with its surrounding culture will not be forgotten, as we wait to see what the future holds for Ned, Chuck, and the world of Pushing Daisies.

Notes 1. Fuller is listed as executive producer for the first five episodes of the series and as a consulting producer for the first nine (“Bryan Fuller,” Internet Movie Database. 2010. Web. 8 October 2010). 2. “Save Wonderfalls.” 6 June 2005. Web. 8 October 2010. 3. Epsiode 1.2, “Dummy.” 4. Episode 2.1, “Bzzzzzzzzz!” 5. William Powloski, “Pushing the Limits on Pushing Daisies.” Creative Cow Magazine (Visual Effects Issue). 21 July 2009. Web. 8 October 2010. 6. “Dummy.” 7. Episode 2.8, “Comfort Food.” 8. Episode 1.7, “Smell of Success.”

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Introduction (Burger) 9. Episode 1.4, “Pigeon.” 10. “Quirky New Drama to Good to be Pushing Daisies.” The San Francisco Chronicle. 3 October 2007. Web. 8 October 2010. 11. “Pushing Daisies Wins Big at Creative Arts Emmys.” ThePiemaker.com. 12 September 2009. Web. 11 October 2010. 12. “Kristin Chenoweth Wins an Emmy!!!” ThePiemaker.com. 20 September 2010. Web. 11 October 2010. 13. Oscar Dahl, “Pushing Daisies and the Writer’s Strike.” BuddyTV.com. 7 November 2007. Web. 8 October 2010. 14. FOX, 1999–2003, 2005–present. 15. CBS, 2006–2008. 16. FOX 1999–2003, Comedy Central, 2010–present. In its return, Futurama also changed networks, from FOX during its first four seasons to Comedy Central, its current broadcasting channel. 17. “Save Wonderfalls.” 18. “Save Pushing Daisies ... Let’s Do This!!” ThePiemaker.com. 30 October 2008. Web. 8 October 2010. 19. Kevin Melrose, “Bryan Fuller Has Started Writing Pushing Daisies Comic.” Comic Book Resources. 15 January 2010. Web. 8 October 2010.

Works Cited “Bryan Fuller.” Internet Movie Database. 2010. Web. 8 October 2010. Dahl, Oscar. “Pushing Daisies and the Writer’s Strike.” BuddyTV.com. 7 November 2007. Web. 8 October 2010. Goodman, Tim. “Quirky New Drama Too Good to be ‘Pushing Daisies.’” The San Francisco Chronicle. 3 October 2007. Web. 8 October 2010. “Kristin Chenoweth Wins an Emmy!!!” ThePiemaker.com. 20 September 2010. Web. 11 October 2010. Melrose, Kevin. “Bryan Fuller Has Started Writing Pushing Daisies Comic.” Comic Book Resources. 15 January 2010. Web. 8 October 2010. Powloski, William. “Pushing the Limits on Pushing Daisies.” Creative Cow Magazine (Visual Effects Issue). 21 July 2009. Web. 8 October 2010. Pushing Daisies: The Complete First Season. Created by Bryan Fuller. Perf. Lee Pace, Anna Friel, Chi McBride, Kristin Chenoweth. ABC, 2007–2008. DVD. Warner Home Video, 2007. Pushing Daisies: The Complete Second Season. Created by Bryan Fuller. Perf. Lee Pace, Anna Friel, Chi McBride, Kristin Chenoweth. ABC, 2008–2009. DVD. Warner Home Video, 2009. “Pushing Daisies Wins Big at Creative Arts Emmys.” ThePiemaker.com. 12 September 2009. Web. 11 October 2010. “Save Pushing Daisies ... Let’s Do This!!” ThePiemaker.com. 30 October 2008. Web. 8 October 2010. “Save Wonderfalls.” 6 June 2005. Web. 8 October 2010.

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PART ONE

Television, Difference, and Pushing Daisies


1

Spectacular Collision/Collusion Genre, “Quality,” and Contemporary Television Drama LORNA JOWETT

For several decades television scholars have noted that genre hybridity is a characteristic of “quality” television drama. Applying “quality” as a categorization or description (a genre in itself ) rather than a judgment about value, Robert J. Thompson and subsequent scholars argue that combining genres is an integral part of what makes quality television drama both recognizable and appealing to both critics and viewers. Quality, Thompson observes, “creates a new genre by mixing old ones”1 and recently it seems that we can hardy talk about clear genre distinctions at all. Like much contemporary television drama, Pushing Daisies liberally mixes genre influences, from crime drama, to horror, to romantic comedy, to advertising, transforming the conventions of each through their juxtaposition with other, apparently dissimilar, elements. In some cases, such as Dexter,2 genre hybridity achieves a seamlessness that enables the show to transcend genre. In others, the genre influences are perceived as colliding rather than fusing, warring with each other rather than merging into a coherent whole, and leading to early cancellation. More than one academic analysis of Twin Peaks3 suggests that it failed because once the murder of Laura Palmer was solved viewers, seeing the show primarily as a whodunit, stopped watching. Marc Dolan suggests that “To the extent that the series transgressed the rules of its genre, it was 11

Part One: Television, Difference, and Pushing Daisies

inferior television; but to the extent that it conformed to and reinvented those rules, it was television at its best.”4 Both Twin Peaks and Pushing Daisies mobilize genre visually, offering a high level of visual distinctiveness as part of their style. At one time television was, by its very nature, considered to be predictable and inoffensive. Visual distinctiveness has become another marker of quality and an essential tool in marketing a show, yet even now, there are limits to what television will accept. The short-lived Firefly (2002–2003), for instance, combined iconic images from both science fiction and the Western, confusing the question of how to sell it and to whom, despite praise from fans and critics. Pushing Daisies exhibits a variety of genre influences on different levels, and this essay examines how these operate in terms of narrative, character, visual style, and, implicitly, theme. Stuart Levine notes, for example, that Pushing Daisies “looks and feels like an anomaly in a TV landscape crowded with cops, doctors and lawyers,” its high level of visuality and refusal to settle on one set of genre conventions causing it to stand out from other (genre) television.5 On the one hand, it fuses multiple genres into an original drama that is a natural development of current trends in television. On the other, arguably, conflicting codes and conventions collide, pushing the show into excesses that cannot be sustained in commercial network television. Despite the recent popularity of fantasy fictions of all kinds,6 the function, the style, and the conjunction of fantasy with other genres have not typically operated as they do in Pushing Daisies. Both television and various fantastic genres (from science fiction to horror) have “developed a system/genre of alternative worlds that tolerated and expected both visual flourishes — special effects, graphics, acute cinematography and editing — and narrative embellishments — time travel, diegetic masquerades, and out of body experiences.”7 Thus, for instance, Catherine Johnson suggests that The X-Files “combines stories of detection and investigation with the iconography and narratives of the science-fiction and horror genres.... The series therefore signals its distinctiveness in part through its generic hybridity.”8 It could be said that Pushing Daisies combines stories of detection and investigation with distinctively fantastic iconography and tropes, but these are not iconography or tropes commonly associated with television fantasy. The heightened visual style of Pushing Daisies goes beyond the 12

1. Spectacular Collision/Collusion ( Jowett)

usual fantasy fare on television, bringing comparisons with the films of Tim Burton.9 Creator Bryan Fuller describes the show as a forensic fairytale (Hartinger attributes this description to network ABC)10 and Burton’s recognizable stylized gothic is the closest reference point for many, perhaps because most other contemporary versions of the gothic, fantasy, or horror are, relatively speaking, more firmly located in television conventions of realism, as with the washed out, small-town America setting of many Supernatural episodes (2005-present). Often such shows demonstrate how fantasy interrupts or invades realism; Pushing Daisies rejects realism as verisimilitude, signaled by the heightened nature of everything from color to language. Fuller cites Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s 2001 film Amélie as a key influence and notes that the show aims to imitate “really aesthetically charged movies.”11 Thompson argues that quality television aspires to realism,12 and the often symbolic or allegorical nature of the fantastic means that fantasy television need not lose this marker, delivering emotional realism in terms of character, for instance. The other side of the argument, of course, is that fantasy is escapism; it deliberately attempts to transport its audience to a world far removed from our own reality. In more general terms, as Richard Dyer argued in the 1970s, this escapist function is attributed to entertainment in general and is one of the reasons cultural critics often try to maintain a distinction between art and entertainment. In “Entertainment and Utopia” (originally published in 1977), Dyer takes the musical as his main example but many of the characteristics he identifies could be applied to other fantastic genres, and his discussion of the inherent contradiction in musicals between realism and fantasy can also be constructively applied to Pushing Daisies. Pushing Daisies, as self-conscious television (and self-consciousness is another characteristic that Thompson identifies in quality),13 uses its genre influences to achieve a reconciliation of opposites, or at least a productive tension. Taken individually, its elements are familiar but the conjunction of influences and genres makes the effect startlingly distinctive. Analyzing crime drama/film noir and romantic comedy/musical as two strands (though there are more) it becomes clear that the show combines these elements in ways that make the most of their characteristics and the collision of apparently disparate elements. 13


Crime drama is often seen to be one of the most realistic forms on television, as Douglas Snauffer argues: In many ways, crime dramas, whether they’ve focused on uniformed police officers or private investigators, have more closely mirrored actual society than any other genre. Situation comedies ... usually offered an ultra-idealized vision of family life, and westerns ... presented larger-than-life heroes whose lives hinged on being the fastest draw with the sharpest aim. Crime dramas, however, reflected and continue to reflect our societal mores in the most focused and honest way possible.14

The fantasy elements of Pushing Daisies, often presented via romantic comedy and musical conventions, appear to compete constantly with this realism. The dystopian pessimism of hard-boiled detective fictions and film noir sits alongside the upbeat utopian optimism of the comedy and musical. Dyer points to the backstage musical’s inherent contradiction “between the heavily representational and verisimilitudinous (pointing to the way the world is, drawing on the audience’s concrete experience of the world) and the heavily non-representational and ‘unreal’ (pointing to how things could be better),”15 yet the musical remains a coherent genre, readily accepted and understood by audiences. In Pushing Daisies the apparently disparate elements (crime/realism and romance/fantasy) might seem to collide violently, with little chance of forming a seamless whole. Yet, on closer examination, the two strands are woven tightly together: both fantasy and realism contribute to building the heightened world of the show and the elements collude as well as colliding.

Narrative: “The Facts Were These...” In visual media the camera often operates as a third person narrator: it can be seen as objective, although it may both direct our attention and lead us to judgment. Of course, the tension between first person narrative and individual point of view, and third person narration of “reality” has often been exploited. Citizen Kane (1941) is a much-discussed example that uses different points of view to expose the impossibility of ever really knowing the truth about someone. Subsequent films noirs use first person voice-over narration, frequently to introduce and often comment on flashback narratives: a voice in the present narrates past events, perhaps, as J. 14


P. Telotte suggests, evoking a struggle for control over the story,16 and certainly suggesting how the “story” is constructed out of those events. Similarly, FBI agent Dana Scully’s reports, often delivered as first person voice-over at the close of an episode of television’s The X-Files (1993– 2002), present a version of scientific objectivity at the same time as verifying some of the unexplained events we have seen in the episode, thus encapsulating competing narrative perspectives. Pushing Daisies’ narrator and “his” narrative voice are among the show’s most distinctive features. They draw on film noir and on other conventions in cinema and television. Yet while some television drama uses narrative voice, usually voice-over, here the narrator is fully omniscient, a detached Voice of God, not a character (as in film noir, or Dexter, for example).17 This accentuates the fairy tale element of the show, foregrounding the fantastic, especially since the narration is sometimes in rhyme,18 at the same time as raising some interesting challenges to narrative realism, opening up all kinds of questions about realism and reliability of narrative. The best-known narrative voice of the film noir is the world-weary first person detective himself, yet Pushing Daisies detaches the voice-over narration from its private investigator, Emerson Cod. The narrator here seemingly exists outside of the story he is telling as an all-seeing commentator who knows far more than any character, and occasionally shares this knowledge with the viewer. While this omniscient style might suggest an authoritative version of events — as the repeated phrase “The facts were these” suggests — it both sustains and challenges forms of realism. On the one hand, the insistence on “facts” as well as the constant fascination with listing numbers, especially ages (“At this very moment, young Ned was 9 years, 34 weeks, 12 hours and 54 minutes old,” we are told in a typical prologue to a flashback during “The Fun in Funeral”19) mimics a rational or scientific approach. But on the other hand, arguably, the authority of objective narrative is used to validate fantasy elements. The calm acceptance of protagonist Ned’s power to revive the dead by the narrator lends it the semblance of “fact” without ever explaining how it might be possible.20 Further, more often than not Ned’s power does not help solve the mystery,21 which is instead achieved by more mundane detective work. Although private investigator Emerson tells Ned, “[t]he truth ain’t like puppies, a bunch of ’em running around, you pick your favorite,” con15


cluding firmly that there is “one truth,”22 at various points the “facts” that might form this “one truth” are brought into question by the narrative and narration. In “Robbing Hood,” suspect Rob launches into an explanation of his innocence, beginning with the familiar words, “The facts were these,” and then continuing, “These were the facts.”23 To have a character speak this phrase, rather than the narrator, draws attention to the way both versions (first or third person narrative) are constructions or perspectives rather than “facts.” Finally, during “The Norwegians” the narrator tells us “the facts were not these” as the lying nature of faked forensic evidence becomes apparent, exposing the gullible nature of those (the Norwegians) who put all their faith in such “details” when, after some manipulation, “the story they told was a lie.”24 Later in the same episode the narrator states, “The facts, as Emerson Cod knew them and Vivian did not, were these” drawing our attention again to the variable and subjective nature of “facts.” The facts are always malleable, told however their narrator (omniscient third person, or character) chooses. J. P. Telotte notes that “even the darkest noir visions of American culture reserve a stable position from which to speak”25 but Pushing Daisies seems to take this to such an extreme that it raises the very instability it might appear to erase. Pushing Daisies also uses another strategy from noir that Telotte identifies. “Given unsettling subjects, these films minimized their disturbing impact by encoding these subjects in a narrative tradition of problem resolution,” he observes.26 Pushing Daisies allows detection to structure its episode narrative in fairly conventional fashion (the crime of the week is solved) while, again conventionally for contemporary television drama, relationships between its characters structure long-term narrative arcs. Television drama, especially “quality” drama, has increasingly adopted serial narrative structure (Thompson characterizes this as “memory”27), thought often in conjunction with episodic narratives. Snauffer suggests that in crime drama the use of serial narrative and season arcs add to realism, whether in terms of romance (“Now ... romance could evolve more slowly and realistically, over the course of many episodes, even a season”28) or action (here he mentions injuries sustained in the field and the subsequent healing process). This becomes almost a necessary feature as viewers “increasingly demanded more realism as the 1990s progressed.”29 Long term character arcs certainly can be seen to contribute some emotional/tem16


poral realism to Pushing Daisies, despite its apparent rejection of realism in terms of style. Crime fictions recover the past to reconstruct and solve crimes (as the flashback narratives of noir indicate), and while this happens in Pushing Daisies, here the past also builds character development through backstory. Cases might sometimes be solved by fantasy (Ned’s power to revive the dead so they can speak), but the crimes themselves arise from “realistic” human motivations and appetites, such as greed or jealousy. The focus on appetite is highlighted by Ned’s job as proprietor of The Pie Hole: the camera often dwells on the pies, and characters are frequently filmed eating and enjoying them while discussing cases or relationship problems. Visually and thematically, desire and consumption are foregrounded and links between crime and relationship narratives forged. However, although appetite may be a cause of crime, the show also demonstrates that food (appetite) can offer comfort and community, as when The Pie Hole becomes the venue for a gathering of friendless Frescort users30 or when young Ned feeds the homesick boys at his boarding school.31 Discussing how he was influenced by Amélie, Fuller observes that “[r]eally sad things happen in it ... but you never get bogged down in the sadness. Like Daisies, it’s really about human kindnesses”32 and this reconciliation of the threat of crime and the comfort and community of romance/comedy through treatment of appetite enables a similar dynamic. While Pushing Daisies may be described as a fairy tale, it is far from a simplistic moral fable. Rather, it follows contemporary television in painting many shades of grey, a more realistic representation shared also with noir, where good and evil are not readily apparent and the private investigator follows his own code rather than conventional morality. Therefore, the resolutions of the crime stories that make up individual Pushing Daisies episodes do not always provide a black and white answer and the brightly colored sets and costumes disguise these morally complex shades of grey. Criminals are (mostly) brought to justice, but some dubious characters turn out to be basically good people (like the one-armed prisoner Lefty Lem33 or the “kidnappers” of young Olive Snook).34 In such cases, the protagonists combine to aid their escape or are in sympathy with their romantic aspirations or affections, again transforming the alienation of crime into the cooperative work towards a happy ending of comedy and romance. 17


Character: “Say my name” Throughout the show the protagonist, Ned, proprietor of The Pie Hole, is often referred to simply as “the piemaker,” his childhood sweetheart and revived murder victim Charlotte Charles as “the girl named Chuck” (or in season one, “Lonely Tourist Charlotte Charles”), and Emerson Cod as “the Private Eye.” Labeling the characters in this way accentuates the lack of conventional realism, demonstrating that these characters are or could be simply functions, as in a fairytale or myth. The names themselves suggest the heightened world of fantasy: Emerson Cod joins the sublime and the mundane, Pie Hole waitress Olive’s surname, Snook, sounds slightly absurd, while Charlotte’s father is, with repetition that might be comic, called Charles Charles. Despite his designation as “the private eye,” however, Emerson provides “realism” in terms of his (real world?) perspective. He knows about Ned’s supernatural and unexplained power and exploits it for material gain, partly because the real world would never believe it (in this sense the fantasy must maintain a “real” world against which it is contrasted). Emerson, like other private investigators, is in it for the money, and his pragmatic attitude is frequently used to deflate the mood when it verges on sentimentality or schmaltzy romance. Moreover, his profession demonstrates that while the world of Pushing Daisies might seem bright and saccharine sweet, it regularly features crime, violence and death. His is the voice of cynicism that counteracts Ned and Chuck’s more rosy-tinted view of the world, as when Emerson and Chuck visit Ned in prison.35 At the end of their visit Ned and Chuck romantically press their hands to either side of the glass that separates them but Emerson observes, “[i]t’s a broad generalisation, but my guess is an attractive man who makes pies for a living shouldn’t spend even a short amount of time in prison.” Lost in a fantasy of togetherness, Chuck simply responds, “Huh?” The language and attitude of dystopian crime drama contrasts the upbeat utopian optimism of romantic comedy, and both are saved from becoming overwhelming as a consistent tone. The viewer is free to enjoy both Emerson’s down-to-earth and sarcastic puncturing of daydreams, as well as the fantasy of community and happy endings provided by romance and comedy. If Emerson is the cynic, Olive remains an idealist — her unrequited 18


love for Ned positioning her as even more of a romantic (in the fantasy sense) than Chuck, the girl Ned brought back to life out of love.36 Like Emerson, Olive also mediates between the real and the fantastic: though she seems to signify fantasy, her character is grounded in the real, and she is rarely assigned a function or description, like the other characters. Her fascination with Ned ensures that she remains close to the action, yet she never finds out about the supernatural aspect of their work (in investigation, or in The Pie Hole, where Ned uses rotten fruit by bringing it back to life). Moreover, while Olive might thus seem to be a character unaware of the fantastic, the “real” world she inhabits is not exactly fixed in realism. Her musical numbers further establish her character’s relation to the fantastic, bringing a further genre influence to bear. The musical is another fantasy genre and one which directly inflects Pushing Daisies’ use of spectacle, romance, community and utopianism. In “Comfort Food,” which tells the story of Ned and Olive’s attempt to win the county Comfort Food Cook Off competition, the award ceremony segues into Olive’s fantasy of Ned, delivered via a musical rendition of “Eternal Flame” by The Bangles. The number unfolds according to the conventions of the musical, but when Olive sings “Say my name,” she is interrupted by Ned, appearing on set and saying, “It’s Chuck,” to which, confused, she replies, “It’s Olive,” until he explains he has to leave to look for Chuck. At the next chorus, Ned appears again on cue, this time saying, more appropriately if no less prosaically, “Olive,” before congratulating her on their win. This ruptures both the continuity of the number (naturalism) and the fantasy of the musical, as the “real” world narrative impinges on the “fantasy” spectacle of the number and halts it, a reversal of the usual scenario, where narrative flow is generally supposed to be halted by the spectacle of the number. Both Emerson and Olive, film noir and the musical, function to enhance the heightened visual style of the show. Film noir may deal in the mean streets and gritty reality of crime and corruption, yet noir’s impact is derived from style and iconography too. Noir spaces and images, while more brightly colored than is traditional,37 feature alongside vividly realized gothic and fairytale images and spaces,38 and musical numbers. The general level of visual excess in the show, and in all these genres, blends apparently disjunctive styles together, directly in “Bad Habits” when Olive hires Emerson to investigate a death at the convent, triggering a film noir plot on a 19


set directly referencing The Sound of Music (1965). These styles are also unified by thematic means, that is, by the transformation of alienation into community, pessimistic realism into fantastic optimism, and vice versa. As Telotte notes, the criminal is outside the law, yet the very boundaries maintained by law and law enforcement establish the possibility of being outside those boundaries.39 In Pushing Daisies, both fantasy and crime genre elements center on outsider characters. Fantasy and the gothic often deal in alienation and marginality, featuring liminal characters. Ned’s strange power and Chuck’s status as a “dead girl” certainly present them as liminal, while Emerson’s profession sets him apart from institutional law enforcement and allows him more leeway in his operation (talking to dead people, for instance). Each main character is revealed to be lonely in their personal life too: Ned was abandoned by his father after his mother’s death, Emerson is looking for his long-lost daughter, Chuck cannot present herself to her only surviving relatives, her aunts (or as later revealed, her aunt and her mother) for fear of exposing Ned’s secret, and Olive had a loveless childhood and suffers unrequited affection for Ned. According to Chi McBride, who plays Emerson, it is this very alienation that proves the characters’ humanity: “they see the world through something other than conventional wisdom or conventional behavior but still are capable of loving and being loved.”40 That is, the characters start out being alienated and alone, but are transformed into a community, a “family,” as Ned tells Chuck and Olive in “Dim Sum Lose Some.” All of these character histories provide material for ongoing narratives and drama and add another layer to the show’s use of time. Each episode contains a flashback: a reconstruction of the crime of the week, a scene from a main character’s past, or both, which is usually the case. The series finale draws attention to this once more, in typically self-conscious fashion. Just at the point of a traumatic emotional separation, Charlotte’s mother and aunt, Lily and Vivian, discover that she is alive after all. The narrator intones, “At that very moment, time stopped, as it is wont to do when present, past and future collide, when one’s existence ceases to be measured in days, hours, and minutes, but instead in the immeasurable quantity of life events ...” and this leads into wrapping up each character’s story.41 Character and narrative, as in much quality and contemporary television drama, are now closely intertwined and Pushing Daisies, contrasting the 20


alienation and iconography of noir with the spectacle and community of romantic comedy and the musical, makes use of both.

Visual Style: A Storybook Come to Life Series like Twin Peaks and its successors (such as The X-Files) blazed the trail for mixing genres to produce not just a new form of narrative but also new iconographies and distinctive visual styles. The shooting style and color palette of Twin Peaks was set by creator David Lynch at the show’s outset, and he oversaw the processing to ensure correct replication of the desired color tones.42 Such shows thus often garner praise for the creative vision of their “authors” in terms of style as well as in terms of innovation in narrative or character. Of the two oft-cited comparators for Pushing Daisies’ visual style, Amélie can be criticized for being too saccharine, the films of Tim Burton for being too preoccupied with production design and static set pieces. As longer-form serial drama, Pushing Daisies is able to negotiate both potential problems. Watching the first episode, I am sure I was not the only viewer to wonder how the show could sustain this fantasy world without it becoming cloying or tedious, yet scenes such as Ned and Chuck’s dance of avoidance, viewed from above as they move around each other with perfect choreography, never touching (since this would render Chuck dead again) but still romantically connected,43 convince us otherwise. The sweetness of romance is offset by the fact that the couple can never properly touch; spectacle remains in the foreground but has dynamism and movement, and is integrated with narrative development. Iconography is an integral part of Pushing Daisies and its visual excesses are part of its balancing of contradictory elements. Partly because this is television, not cinema, the supposed opposition between spectacle and narrative (surface and depth, as many value-laden comments imply) also does not quite hold up. Michele Pierson points out that cinema studies debates about visual excess have often focused on effects and “film theorists have assumed that spectacle elicits an emotionally regressive, primarily sensory response from spectators or ... they have assumed that spectacle draws attention to itself as a self-conscious mode of visual display that is 21


recognized in these terms by spectators themselves.”44 In either case, foregrounding spectacle usually draws critical comment because it moves away from the more literary elements of media, such as narrative, character, and thematic concerns. Yet in “Entertainment and Utopia” Dyer suggested that the musical made use of “non-representational signs — color, texture, movement, rhythm, melody, camerawork” and that these were an integral part of its affective sensibility45 and its lyricism.46 The effect of these non-representational signs arises partly because they are in tension with other, more realistic (or representational) elements, as also found in Pushing Daisies. Frequently, quality television drama negotiates this tension by providing realism within fantasy, and Matthew Pateman describes how a show like Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2004) “plays with the codes and conventions of realism so that it can further explore the possibilities of its own artifice both in terms of the imagined world of Sunnydale and its environs and also in terms of the production techniques employed to represent this world,” arguing that “it provides the veneer of a realistic technique in order that this formal pastiche can elaborate and bolster the emotional, thematic and narrative concerns.” 47 In contrast, Pushing Daisies rejects even a “veneer” of realism in its visual and linguistic style. Thus although “the ever-increasing ability of television to offer plausible alternative realities enhanced by sfx and cgi spectacle”48 definitely exists, sidelining the “plausible” aspect of alternative realities can have its own impact. “We decided it should feel somewhere between Amelie and a Tim Burton film — something big, bright and bigger than life,” says cinematographer Michael Weaver of the show.49 Television’s very visuality, its literal rendering of story and description, makes it an ideal medium for developing an alternative fantasy aesthetic that is not aiming for verisimilitude. Jan Johnson-Smith notes that American science fiction television often features “an inversion of ... the ‘mundane’ ... through the foregrounding of the background — psychological, physical, or geographical.”50 Thus Levine comments, “All the creatives involved in its inception, including production designer Michael Wylie, felt that striking imagery was vitally important in making Daisies’ paranormal themes palpable,” but this “palpability” has a rather different effect than the naturalization of fantastic elements found in science fiction. While in science fiction an aesthetic of realism is often employed to 22


make the alien and fantastic appear scientifically plausible, materially real (every hair created with CGI), and thus naturalistic, here the dominant aesthetic is of the fairy tale, the complete fantasy. Wylie explains, “My goal was a storybook come to life. I wanted everything to look almost like an illustration,” achieved partly through “conflicting patterns in different colors.”51 This produces a further contradiction or tension, alluded to in Wylie’s choice of the description “conflicting.” As Dyer described the musical, spectacle functions in two, apparently opposite directions, in terms of its effect: “spectacle as materialism and metaphysics (that is, on the one hand, the sets, costumes, etc., are tactile, sensuous, physically exhilarating, but on the other hand, are associated with fairyland, magic, the by-definition immaterial).”52 Again, Pushing Daisies fits this description. Its fantasy aesthetic presents us with delicious, sensually appealing but slightly unreallooking pies, costumes, and sets. Its style yokes together aspects of realism (and a CGI rhino does feature in “Window Dressed to Kill”) and elements of fantasy (the hexagonal design of almost every prop related to Betty’s Bees in “Bzzzzzzzzz!” being an obvious example), and the show is highly self-conscious about how both realism and fantasy are conveyed and the effects such strategies have. Other shows that adopted a similar genre mix to Pushing Daisies, such as Moonlighting (1985–89, drawing on detective shows and ’40s screwball comedy) and The Singing Detective (1986, mixing the private investigator of pulp fiction and film noir with sitcom and the musical) are both selfconscious and non-naturalistic, continually breaking the frame of naturalistic realism. Pushing Daisies, as noted, to an extent adheres to continuities that build and maintain its fantasy world. However, many formal features of visual media are simultaneously employed to draw attention to the show’s aesthetic and further enhance the notion of a fantasy far removed from realist conventions. The increasing use of novelty wipes in the editing of season two (stage curtains in “Oh Oh Oh ... It’s Magic,” a ringing bell in “Robbing Hood”) suggests a move towards a more non-naturalistic style, as do a variety of other devices. The use of theatrical sets/ backdrops (for instance, during the prison break in “Window Dressed to Kill”), the tolling bell that covers the nun’s loud profanities in “Bad Habits,” Charlotte’s wink to camera in “Dim Sum Lose Some,” and a suddenly animated photograph in “Bitter Sweets” all serve the same purpose. 23


The use of the cut-out frame or zoom (where part of the picture is masked, usually providing a round “hole” through which the image is viewed), for a contemporary audience, similarly breaks the fourth wall of naturalistic realism, but this device additionally invokes an older style or language, of film and visual storytelling. Costume and mise-en-scène further suggest that Pushing Daisies is unfixed in time. “In the context of the Gothic drama,” argues Helen Wheatley in a discussion of Twin Peaks, “this historical indeterminacy can be understood as an uncanny device,”53 that is, as supporting the fantasy elements. Moreover, in the case of Twin Peaks and Pushing Daisies, an unfixed temporal setting enables a flexible intertextuality in terms of visual references and genre influences (not just ’40s noir, romantic comedy and musical but anything from Hitchcock’s The Birds [1963] in “Bitter Sweets” or recent action movies in “Dim Sum Lose Some” and “Kerplunk”). While Dyer notes that in some musicals a historical (or pseudo-historical) setting is used to suggest “that utopia is implicit in the world of the narrative as well as in the world of the numbers,” a kind of pointing back to a golden age,54 Pushing Daisies’ retro style invokes dystopian noir in equal measure with utopian musical and romance, its seriality continually setting one off against the other. Since Pushing Daisies is “a significantly heightened world,” the dialogue is also “slightly heightened ... because it’s more fun to say” and characters “just speak in a more witty, wonderful, dazzling way” that matches the overall aesthetic.55 This linguistic aesthetic also combines influences from both dystopian noir (Emerson’s private eye quips) and various forms of fantasy, utopian and otherwise.

“Dim Sum, Lose Some”? Early cancellation now happens to many innovative shows irrespective of critical acclaim and respectable audience figures, and Pushing Daisies, with its heightened visual and linguistic style and its odd genre collision was never going to last as long as one of its forerunners, Moonlighting, which managed four years to Daisies’ two. Praised for originality at the time, Moonlighting was eclipsed by the more radical experimentation of Twin Peaks and while Twin Peaks continues to attract critical interest, guar24


anteeing its place in television history, its decline and cancellation are part of that narrative. Overall, the apparently mismatched genre influences of crime and romantic comedy in Pushing Daisies form a kind of feedback loop in which each constantly refers back to or reflects on the other. It often seems, though this is not necessarily the case, that utopian optimism wins out over dystopian pessimism. In fact, this may be one reason for the show’s cancellation. Its formal characteristics identify it as quality television drama, and at times, there is too much art for it to be enjoyed simply as entertainment. But conversely there is perhaps too much entertainment (spectacle) in the show for it to be considered art. Dyer argues that in some musicals, “the non-realist presentation of the numbers makes it very hard to take this solution seriously. It is ‘just’ escape, ‘merely’ utopian.”56 Pushing Daisies’ emphasis on both spectacle and “frivolous” romance and comedy, makes it hard to take seriously, despite its complex formal and thematic feedback loop of intertextual and inter-genre influences.

Chapter Notes 1. Robert J. Thompson, Television’s Second Golden Age. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1996: 15. 2. Showtime, 2006-present. 3. ABC, 1990–1991. 4. Marc Dolan, “The Peaks and Valleys of Serial Creativity,” in Full of Secrets: Critical Approaches to Twin Peaks, ed. David Lavery. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1995: 451. 5. Stuart Levine, “Michael Weaver: 10 Cinematographers to Watch.” Variety online. 31 October 2007. Web. 1 December 2009. 6. Fantasy has become highly marketable in cinema, in popular novels, and in comics, as well as on television, and a range of fantasy elements include gothic horror, magic, and superheroes. 7. Caldwell in Jan Johnson-Smith, American Science Fiction Television: Star Trek, Stargate and Beyond. London: I.B. Tauris, 2004: 66. 8. Catherine Johnson, Telefantasy. London: BFI, 2005: 99. 9. Michael Weaver, director of photography, mentions Burton as an influence in Stuart Levine, “Michael Weaver: 10 Cinematographers to Watch,” Variety online, 2007, and the season one DVD quotes a comparison with Burton from British weekend newspaper The Observer. Web. 1 December 2009. 10. Brent Hartinger, “What Would’ve happened on Pushing Daisies If It Hadn’t Been Cancelled?” The Torch online, 2009. Web. 1 December 2009. 11. Fuller in “The Master Pie Maker.” Pushing Daisies: The Complete Second Season. DVD (Warner Bros. 2009).

25

Part One: Television, Difference, and Pushing Daisies 12. Thompson, Television’s Second Golden Age: 15. 13. Ibid. 14. Douglas Snauffer, Crime Television. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006: 1. 15. Richard Dyer, Only Entertainment. London/New York: Routledge, 1992: 9. 16. J. P. Telotte, Voices in the Dark: The Narrative Patterns of Film Noir. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1989: 15. 17. An authoritative and anonymous narrative voice is often nicknamed or referred to as a Voice of God narrator. 18. As in the opening of episode 1.5, “Girth,” when the narrator tells us: “The season was autumn, his first year away / Young Ned is at boarding school, the times are not gay / Tucked away in her lair, dark, dank and cool / Stood the Postmistress of the Longborough School. / Every week, young Ned would hope for a letter / Some contact from home to make it all better,” and goes on to reveal more of Ned’s family history. 19. Episode 1.3, “The Fun in Funeral.” 20. Fuller has stated (in Hartinger) that he never wanted to explain Ned’s power as this would reduce its hold, the fascination is in the fantasy as mysterious, in other words, and Ned himself states (in “Girth”) that he does not believe in magic. 21. Episode 1.6, “Bitches.” 22. Episode 1.8, “Comfort Food.” 23. Episode 2.7, “Robbing Hood.” 24. Episode 2.10, “The Norwegians.” 25. Telotte, 21. 26. Telotte, 156. 27. Thompson, 14. 28. Snauffer, 159. 29. Ibid. 30. Episode 2.4, “Frescorts.” 31. “Comfort Food.” 32. Fuller in Shawna Malcolm “Pushing Daisies’ Secrets: How the Storybook Came to Life,” TV Guide online. Web. 1 December 2009. 33. Episode 1.4, “Pigeon.” 34. Episode 2.11, “Window Dressed to Kill.” 35. “Comfort Food.” 36. Arguably, Ned returns Chuck’s life as part of his business arrangement with Emerson, but he allows her to stay alive out of love. 37. Episode 2.5, “Dim Sum, Lose Some.” 38. Such as the convent in Episode 2.3, “Bad Habits,”or the graveyard in Episode 2.6, “Oh Oh Oh ... It’s Magic.” 39. Telotte, 195. 40. In “The Master Pie Maker.” 41. Episode 2.13, “Kerplunk.” 42. Helen Wheatley, Gothic Television. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006: 164. 43. In Episode 2.1, “Bzzzzzzzzz!” 44. Michele Pierson, Special Effects: Still In Search of Wonder. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002: 8. 45. Dyer, 18. 46. Ibid., 33.

26

1. Spectacular Collision/Collusion ( Jowett) 47. Matthew Pateman, The Aesthetics of Culture in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006: 111. 48. Johnson-Smith, 153. 49. Weaver in Levine, “Michael Weaver: 10 Cinematographers to Watch.” 50. Johnson-Smith, 4. 51. Wylie in Shawna Malcolm, “Pushing Daisies’ Secrets.” 52. Dyer, 28. 53. Wheatley, 170. 54. Dyer, 29. 55. “The Master Pie Maker.” 56. Dyer , 26.

Works Cited Dolan, Marc. “The Peaks and Valleys of Serial Creativity: What Happened to/on Twin Peaks.” Full of Secrets: Critical Approaches to Twin Peaks. Edited by David Lavery. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1995: 30–50. Dyer, Richard. Only Entertainment. London/New York: Routledge, 1992. Hartinger, Brent. “What Would’ve happened on Pushing Daisies If It Hadn’t Been Cancelled?” The Torch online. 21 June 2009. Web. Accessed 1 December 2009. Johnson, Catherine. Telefantasy. London: BFI, 2005. Johnson-Smith, Jan. American Science Fiction Television: Star Trek, Stargate and Beyond. London: I.B. Tauris, 2004. Levine, Stuart. “Michael Weaver: 10 Cinematographers to Watch.” Variety online. 31 October 2007. Web. Accessed 1 December 2009. Malcolm, Shawna. “Pushing Daisies’ Secrets: How the Storybook Came to Life.” TV Guide online. Web. Accessed 1 December 2009. “The Master Pie Maker: Inside the Mind of Creator Bryan Fuller.” Pushing Daisies: The Complete Second Season. DVD Warner Home Video, 2009. Pateman, Matthew. The Aesthetics of Culture in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006. Pierson, Michele. Special Effects: Still In Search of Wonder. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. Pushing Daisies: The Complete First Season. Created by Bryan Fuller. Perf. Lee Pace, Anna Friel, Chi McBride, Kristin Chenoweth. ABC, 2007–2008. DVD. Warner Home Video, 2007. Pushing Daisies: The Complete Second Season. Created by Bryan Fuller. Perf. Lee Pace, Anna Friel, Chi McBride, Kristin Chenoweth. ABC, 2008–2009. DVD. Warner Home Video, 2009. Snauffer, Douglas. Crime Television. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006. Telotte, J. P. Voices in the Dark: The Narrative Patterns of Film Noir. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1989. Thompson, Robert J. Television’s Second Golden Age: From Hill Street Blues to E.R. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1996. Wheatley, Helen. Gothic Television. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006.

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2

Pushing Daisies Away Community Through Isolation MATT DAUPHIN

Within writer and producer Bryan Fuller’s most popular works, such as Wonderfalls, Dead Like Me, and Pushing Daisies, there exists a pattern of isolation among characters, one that often acts as a primary influence of character interaction. Extending even to the formation of communities, these trends in isolation help forge collectives of emotionally and physically isolated people who would, perhaps, otherwise be unable to foster such closeness with those for whom interpersonal connections are not so difficult. This is especially true of Fuller’s latest series, Pushing Daisies. As is typical of Fuller’s works, exceedingly disparate people find themselves thrust into situations of prolonged collaboration. For instance, the seemingly incompatible trio of cheerful Chuck, embittered Emerson, and numinous Ned works together to solve crimes with the help of Ned’s persnickety ability to raise the dead. Despite their vastly different personalities, they are able to project a group identity. What is remarkable about this tenuous allegiance is the defining characteristic of isolation that permeates nearly every member of the cast. Each of the main characters in the series is at least partially defined by his or her inability to fully integrate with the world outside Ned’s restaurant. Though most characters present themselves as normally adaptive members of society, holding down jobs and having few qualms about talking to strangers, there is some chief emotional or physical barrier that remains firmly in place separating them from comfortable societal integration or community. The end result is a lack of integration into a communal body, the substitute for which is forged within the walls of the restaurant where 28

2. Pushing Daisies Away (Dauphin)

they gather, The Pie Hole. Surprisingly, the accumulation of several such communally impaired people seems to create a functional pseudo-community, a group that satisfies the need for communal belonging without requiring the characters to abandon their isolationist quirks. While Pushing Daisies, taking a very whimsical tone as a whole, presents isolation as something that can be overcome with patience and understanding (and, in some cases, regular doses of homeopathic mood enhancers1), it does not shy from presenting the difficulties associated with the struggle toward interpersonal connection. Indeed, the difficulties in finding companionship faced by each character are highlighted, bringing them to the attention of the audience in the course of their eradication. Through a fairy tale fantasy we find the removal of loneliness and isolation, which further complicates the apparent signification of the series. While an initial reading of these themes may imply that even the strangest, most awkward and lonely among us can find friendship and community, it seems that the attainment of such friendship will necessarily and inevitably erase the strangeness that made finding friends so difficult. In this way, groups of exiles and nonconformists produce communities of conformists. Though you may be surly and unpleasant, there is a friend for you — and through the miracle of friendship, soon you will no longer be surly and unpleasant. To better understand this paradoxical message, further inquiry into the process by which an isolationist becomes a member of a group is necessary. The Pie Hole serves as a gathering place for those who have, in essence, nowhere else to gather. The informal investigators’ guild that takes shape within its walls projects an identity of professional competence and personal discord, owing this attribution to the dysfunctional members that comprise it. Cheerful and churlish, outgoing and odd, the different characters of the cast find that opportunity and necessity drive them to interact in a way contrary to their personal inclinations. What, then, is the true element that holds them together? The answer lies, perhaps, not in what attracts these characters to each other, but in what repulses them from everyone else. Julia Kristeva 2 describes a preconscious3 process of identification through which an individual externalizes an internal sensation of fear. Emotions are projected onto an object or concept so strongly that they 29


come to redefine the object. Eventually, the object both repulses her and creates a fascination that inexorably draws her closer. This process of abjection is, perhaps, most pronounced in the “abjection of self,” whereby the very essence of one’s being becomes both anathema and succor.4 The abject and the abjected are one and the same, in a sense, because the individual is able to define herself in opposition to another force, or an “other.” Abjection in this sense is most clearly seen in objects of cultural repulsion, as the collective disdain for such things as a corpse or bodily filth help to illuminate the greater, more personal rejection that is abjection. Though there is a hatred and a repugnance, there is simultaneously a fascination, an inexorable draw toward the object. It is this push-pull balance that is at the heart of abjection. When this process turns inward, toward the self, fears and insecurities project outward toward that which helps the individual define herself: I know who I am because I know who I am not; thus, a clear concept of the other helps identify the self. When I identify within myself something that I wish to discard, however, I can only do so by pushing it outside of myself. The darkness inside of me is worthy of fear, but I cannot accept that it is me; thus, I push it away. It is possible, in this moment, to place an entire group of people, or perhaps even the notion of a group, within the context of that which I cannot accept. I cannot, however, fully destroy the link that I have forged between myself and that which has become abject for me. While I am repulsed, I am always anchored to that moment of abjection. Ironically, though I have unknowingly begun this process in order to clearly define the border between myself and the other, I have blurred the boundaries I sought to create. Kristeva identifies the power that the abject has to repulse as a compensation for the collapse of the border whose creation was attempted. 5 In the case of abjection to a corpse, for instance, there would be no powerful repulsion if the individual did not recognize the inherent mortality that the corpse signifies within himself. It is the attempt to identify the self as free from mortality and the concurrent fear that this is not possible that makes a corpse so abhorrent, but it is the intrinsic knowledge that mortality is inevitably linked to the self that makes it worthy of fascination. This is not simply horror, but, to paraphrase Kristeva, a horror from within.6 Externalizing this horror is reassuring, but fleeting, for there will 30


always be a draw for the individual back toward the unity of abject and abjected out of which these emotions sprung. Analysis of Pushing Daisies reveals a form of this abjection, not to isolation, but to community itself. Each character displays an inability to exist within society to varying degrees, forcing them to find alternatives. The Pie Hole itself is an orifice that can take in and protect, interiorize and externalize through eating and consumption, as well as the process of enunciation and often fragile attempts to communicate. Though most of the main characters interact with the world at large, it is seldom without reserve or hesitation. This hesitation is not mere reluctance, but is more a moment of pure abhorrence, of externalized revulsion. For Ned, the prospect of integrating himself into a community, with its concurrent risk of rejection and judgment, prompts him to remain insular; it is too frightening to risk personal attachments.7 To apply the theory of abjection, community and belonging have become the objects of fear or repulsion, but community is not without its own allure. The characters come to function as surrogates for one another for the communal interaction they cannot have. The role of community, then, becomes increasingly important to understand. Collectivity is a driving force of human development. The need to congregate, to collaborate, to commune, drives humanity at a basic, if not primal, level. There is an element within community, regardless of specific instance, that draws individuals together with the force of compulsion. Anarchy is shunned by the regulated state as the total dissolution of community, though communism is equally feared by independent communities. This suggests a necessary balance between an individual identity and a group identity, without which normal interaction ceases to function. To speak too strongly in favor of individuality is to speak of the death of a community. As Jean-Luc Nancy puts it, “[t]he individual is merely the residue of the experience of the dissolution of community.”8 If the individual arises out of the death of community, this heavily implies a primacy of community, a previous communal existence that we strive to recreate in our social meanderings. It is this connection to the past, perhaps, that gives community its power to connect to the future; without a communal body, the products of the individual are temporary, but placed within the context of a group with which to share, learn, entrust, and inherit, there 31


is a sense of immortality achieved. Nancy even goes so far as to imply that community, perhaps not as we daily imagine it, but as its essence impels it to be, is the path toward absolute immanence, the divine.9 Such a powerful force cannot be fully expelled from the human consciousness if it is indeed an intrinsic part of humanity. Whether or not it is, is not certain. It is possible that community is a constructed myth, a fairy tale invented out of something more real: an understanding of individuality and loneliness. How, then, can we understand loneliness without knowing its antithesis? Whether we were first lonely and banded together, or first together and grew apart, there remains a strong drive toward collectivity. In order to contextualize the processes of isolation and community formation at play within the series, it is important to explore in-depth the characterization of each main figure. The series primarily revolves around the mononymous10 Ned, Charlotte “Chuck” Charles, and Emerson Cod, although important supporting cast members such as Olive Snook and Vivian and Lily Charles feature prominently in the communities of isolation formed within the series. Each character’s form of isolation is unique and allows for a different interpretation of the creation of communal dysfunction. Ned, the series’ main protagonist, displays the most outlandish method of isolation. His supernatural ability to return the dead to life through touch and the strict rules that come with it result in a lifelong aversion to physical contact.11 By minimizing his physical proximity to others, he is able to avoid moments of terror, vulnerability and rejection. This eventually translates into an emotional isolation as well, discouraging him from forming close attachments to people. His affection for Chuck, however, acts as a powerful catalyst that allows him to gradually loosen his tight-knit control over his world and allow others in. It is while he is struggling with his affection for and simultaneous need not to be with Chuck that he first begins to acknowledge feelings for his employee, Olive Snook.12 Though Olive loves Ned, it is only when his barriers start to come down (as a result of Chuck’s influence) that he is able to see Olive as anything more than an employee.13 The power to overcome his seclusion, then, rests largely in the hands of Chuck. Chuck serves as the main figure determined to warp the boundaries that separate each character from the community at large. Her appearance 32


in the series presents an opportunity for her to make up for a life defined by hermitage with her agoraphobic aunts, though she is also confined by the need to keep her true identity a secret. Brought back from the dead by Ned, Chuck is granted a second chance at life, provided she treat her new gift carefully. Lies, disguises and subterfuge effectively isolate her from the world beyond The Pie Hole, forcing her to seek communal ties with the rest of the dysfunctional cast members. Ironically, though she spent much of her life removed from the world, she is perhaps the one character most aware of the dysfunctions of the main characters’ group and the one most able to bring it to a point of change. Although Chuck is isolated, it is against her wishes; because of this, she is not representative of abjection to community, but is instead paraded as the means to overcome the isolation it evokes in others. In this manner, she serves as the embodiment of the human drive toward functional community. In this, we begin to see the necessity of community and the lengths to which those to whom it has been denied will go to (re)create it. Her companions, however, resist her efforts, as what she proposes threatens to thrust them into contact with the thing they both fear and desire. Emerson Cod, especially, resists her attempts to expose him to communal intimacy. Private eye and all-around cynic, Emerson chooses to remove himself from the general flow of human connectivity by striking an outwardly unpleasant demeanor and refusing, to some degree, the intimacy necessary for friendship. This choice stands in stark contrast to many of the other characters, for whom seclusion seems more of an unintentional outgrowth of physical or emotional circumstances. Though his surliness is prompted, at least in part, by a long separation from his child and a bitter breakup,14 he maintains a purposefully pessimistic attitude that serves to protect him from the emotions of others. To bare himself so completely to another person risks exposing him to a moment of abjection, as to be so vulnerable is both compelling and repugnant to such a degree that he cannot bear the sensation. The combination of his intentional demeanor and Chuck’s resolve to strengthen the group’s cohesion leads to tension, though it, too, softens under persistent and cheerful pressure. The sum effect is that no form of isolation, intentional or not, seems immune to the power of persuasion. 33


Olive Snook, Vivian Charles and Lily Charles round out the main cast, and the perpetual themes of isolation and closeness, with their own idiosyncratic expressions of separation. Physical proximity once again becomes a major role in their interactions, helping to materialize the sometimes more ephemeral isolation evidenced by the leading trio. Olive’s unrequited love for Ned is sublimated with physical affection for his dog, expressing an intimacy of touch from which Ned is permanently barred.15 Conversely, her mental breakdown over the burden of secrets (secrets that, ironically, serve as major factors in the isolation of other characters) causes her to retreat to a nunnery,16 a physical isolation as drastic as the decadeslong hermitage of the Charles sisters.17 In their decision to physically remove themselves from the general population, these three women exemplify the degree to which the other characters in the show are emotionally and socially removed. What is most important, however, is their eventual emergence from such isolation, which suggests that solitude is transient and surmountable. Olive returns from the nunnery following the death of her only friend there and over the course of the series the Charles sisters make a gradual transition back into the real world. Paradoxically, however, they each primarily begin to interact, not with the general population, but with the dysfunctional group. Even as Chuck draws Emerson and Ned closer toward embracing the intimacy of community, they primarily confine their interaction to the dysfunctional group as well. This stunted socialization severely undermines the “transient” nature of their isolation and a new implication emerges: what makes a person unfit for inclusion in mainstream society is not a removable element. It is, instead, an essential trait that can only be modified to allow interaction with others who are socially fragmented. This intrinsic quality of isolation is the central element that seems to define the story of Pushing Daisies. As all characters, to some extent, display some permutation of this isolation, it cries out for definition. I posit that it is not a thing; there is no gene, no sickness, no inherent element of biology or psychology at play. Rather, it is a process manifesting itself according to the specific nature of the character. In this, it bears resemblance to a moment of abjection, insofar as community itself becomes abjected for each character in a manner that causes them to shun interpersonal connections and simultaneously crave them. Their specific manifestations, 34


however, bar them from realizing their desire toward traditional community and instead prompt them to create a pseudo-community wherein they can express their flaws and weaknesses freely. The dysfunction that drives them becomes a cohesive element, allowing for understanding and integration in a way not readily understood in mainstream socialization. What is curious is the constant struggle of Chuck, more than any other character, to disrupt this community of isolation in the hopes of rejoining the world at large, though she is herself unable to join it. Her attempts to “fix” the problems that plague her companions seek to instill a greater sense of socialization in the socially inept and are partially successful throughout the series.18 It is to be understood, then, that the overriding message seems to be that this process of abjection can be reversed or even “cured,” for it is certainly presented as a malady. Its solution lies, not through critical inquiry into its origin, but through persistent and attentive behavioral modification. This concept, though perhaps falsely optimistic and overly simplistic, embodies the desire to establish an identity that will operate fully within functional communities. Considering the origin of this process of abjection, the determination of self through “othering,” how can a solution be found? Is there, in fact, a solution? The presence of a solution denotes a problem and it is only through the construction of social norms that the inability to interact with a given social group is considered problematic. By not placing a negative connotation on the isolated and the lonely, their construction of self as separate becomes merely a noticeable difference, rather than a definable problem. If, however, the social construction of isolation as negative is to be taken as holy writ, as Pushing Daisies seems to insist, it remains that the process through which community itself becomes abjected cannot so simply be undone. If the reason for such pronounced separation is indeed so strong, only an understanding of its origin allows for a chance to redefine the self, not in opposition to the other, but in conjunction with it. By recognizing how the other came to be so repulsive and alluring, the individual has the opportunity to determine, consciously and without hesitation, whether to reject or embrace this outlook. Patience, coy looks, and a repertoire of witty banter, though entertaining to watch, do not succeed particularly well at the task of healing deep and long-standing emotional scars — no matter how much we might wish they would. 35


The series makes a significant turn during its second season concerning the way the characters are able to interact with one another and the world beyond their dysfunctional group. The story attempts, not to derail its initial message of a community of isolation, but to highlight its secondary message, that which concerns the ability to overcome loneliness and social estrangement. Romances, reunions and social triumphs bombard the characters with the chance for positive interaction on such a scale that their previous failures are virtually forgotten. Unfortunately for the characters of Pushing Daisies, these failures are only replaced with further inadequacies, rather than legitimate successes. Following Olive’s return from the nunnery to The Pie Hole, she initially displays an acceptance of Ned and Chuck’s relationship, though this is later revealed to be denial.19 Her inability to accept the reality of her relationship is expressed in the fantasy life she concocts in letters to old friends, though the exposure and subsequent destruction of this fantasy allows her to finally move past her obsession with Ned.20 This is hailed as an important mark of progress in Olive’s ability to love and seek interaction in the world, though she immediately trounces any true progress by attaching herself to Randy Mann (David Arquette), an emotionally isolated, socially awkward taxidermist who once had to pay for friendship.21 Even though Olive has supposedly come to realize the importance of her emotional and romantic choices, her decision to embrace another social outcast further highlights her inability to fully integrate with the socially competent. She accepts happiness with Randy as a consolation, initially attempting to use him to “rebound” from her love for Ned, but passion does not seem to drive her.22 Rather, her ability to deny reality to herself and her extreme longing for companionship seem to imply that she is willing to accept even a facsimile of a relationship and the comforts of belonging to any community rather than face full isolation. Her frustration at not feeling like a full member of the group of “Pie Holers” reaches a critical point several times, eventually prompting her to found her own restaurant at the series’ conclusion, Randy in tow.23 This seems surprising, considering that Emerson offered her a chance to become an official member of his investigation agency.24 Given this, it seems her retreat, again more pronounced than most of the other characters’ reactions to the frustrations of their social problems, represents an inability to coexist with the dysfunctional outcasts. 36


Considering the show’s implied message that it is possible to stop being an outcast if only you can change whatever is “wrong” with you, Olive’s final departure from the group strongly implies that she has made such a positive change. Her ability to find love, real or not, impels her to leave behind those who have not yet conquered their own social inadequacy. The dysfunctional group manages to project a group identity only when it is comprised of isolated individuals. Considering that Olive’s isolation was chiefly rooted in an inability to accept the realities of her romantic longing and a related fear of being unimportant, the eventual attainment of her goals signals that must no longer rely on the dysfunctional group for communal interaction.25 To take this message at face value is to believe that Olive is a fully functional member of society; finding reciprocal love has made her whole. This would be more convincing had her relationship with Randy been given time to develop to a believable degree within the confines of the series, or had there been more reflection on why she chooses to abandon The Pie Hole.26 Corroboration for this trend of problematic happy endings is seen once again in the Charles sisters who, like Olive, provide a clear physical manifestation of the internal workings of the other characters. Following their reemergence into the public sphere, long-buried secrets between the sisters finally come to light and prompt a fracture in their lifelong unity.27 Although Vivian is ready to end her relationship with her sister over the deception, the revelation that Chuck is still alive seems to magically soothe her wounds and the sisters orchestrate two successful world tours for their swimming act. Again, the audience of Pushing Daisies is bombarded with the message that simply fixing the root problem, either intentionally or not, sincerely or in passing, allows for a radical transformation of personality that jettisons the character out of the dysfunctional group and firmly back into society as a whole. Because the lie over Chuck’s origin was at the heart of Lily’s isolation, and Vivian’s social phobias were merely exacerbated by Lily’s, the destruction of the secret equates the destruction of isolation. This chain of events reiterates what the show seems to be saying from the very first episode: there is no defect of personality so severe that love, patience, and understanding cannot overcome it. Even criminals can be cast in a sympathetic light, so long as they possess these fundamental qualities. “Lefty” (Dash Minok), an escaped convict 37


who leads the cast on a chase to discover lost diamonds and lost love, is met with sympathy because of his (mutual) affection for a woman. 28 “Burly” Bruce Carter, while still incarcerated for the murder he commits, is portrayed sympathetically because his violent action arose out of deep loneliness and a desire for love.29 Rob Wright, cat burglar and philanthropist, is able to earn Chuck’s trust, despite his thievery, because of his motivations; he steals, not for personal gain, but to help the less fortunate, and thus displays the redemptive qualities promoted by the series.30 Though legal justice is enacted against all three criminals, it is their motivational innocence that is upheld. So long as the main characters can recognize in these criminals a desire to interact with and care for others, they are allowed to empathize with people they would otherwise condemn. What, then, happens to characters whose isolationist root is buried too deeply to be so callously removed? Ned, more than any other character, fully embodies abjection to community. For Ned, the act of opening his world to include Chuck, difficult as it is, pales in comparison to the fear that she might not be content to remain fully enclosed in that world. As noted above, Chuck’s isolation is against her will and as the series progresses she becomes more adept at pushing the boundaries of her cage and exploring the world beyond it.31 Rather than fully conquering his isolationist tendencies, Ned reveals through his dependency on Chuck that he has merely shifted his boundaries, transforming what was once a comfort zone meant only to include himself into a slightly larger, tenuous sphere that allows for the inclusion of others without threatening his general isolation. With the necromantic resurrection of Chuck’s father, however, Ned feels his hold on Chuck weaken and it brings with it the full force of abjection.32 He is at once repulsed by the idea of enlarging his community and simultaneously attracted to the prospect of approaching normalcy through the addition of a father figure for Chuck. Conversation between Chuck and Ned hinges on this critical point, as their assessment of their unique situation is couched within terms of imagined banality; they are no different than any other young couple, plagued by parental disapproval. Considering this degree of ambivalence between isolation and community, how can the show’s message be effective in its application to Ned? In short, it isn’t. Ned reveals that his obsession with maintaining 38


Chuck’s secret, thereby prolonging her exclusivity to Ned’s world, is based on selfishness.33 What is at the root of Ned’s isolation is a refusal to accept the terms of societal interaction, through fear, jealousy, insecurity, and an inability to fully relate to others. He only displays comfort and security when interacting with other isolates, suggesting that he simply is not capable of anything else. This is exemplified in his ideal outcome: he wants nothing more than to grow old with Chuck (although, admittedly, he would prefer being able to touch her). While Olive wants recognition and societal inclusion and the Charles sisters seek to return to their fans and the accompanying acclaim, Ned is content to remain in a dysfunctional realm of pseudo-isolation. Chuck’s persistence in prodding at Ned’s boundaries merely heightens his ability to interact with other societal outcasts; he remains firmly at odds with representatives of the community.34 Thus, while Olive and the Charles sisters display a (perhaps falsely) optimistic ability to transcend their isolation, Ned is unable to separate himself from his opposition to community. He has too deeply tied his definition of himself to being at odds with others. Despite failing with its main character, the series continually promulgates its message of social inclusion. Even when it has the opportunity to highlight the virtues of isolation, it does so only as a means to eventual communal interaction.35 This is a fracture in the dual message presented by the series: isolation is deeply rooted within a person and allows for the formation of communities through that isolation, yet it can (and should) be removed in most cases. It is the second half of this message that seems most poorly evidenced within the series, as few characters make believable, sustained transformations of the kind implied by the fairy tale presentation and the series of happy endings assigned to the cast. Not even familial ties are capable of shocking the characters out of their isolationist tendencies.36 Ultimately, it is the expression of a group identity, despite every indication that these individuals are incapable of communal interaction, which most significantly defines the series. These characters echo dysfunctional members of our society, contextualized within a message of hope. To believe the message of Pushing Daisies, community can exist in any form; no one is an island — or rather, no island is isolated, but rather exists in a close-knit archipelago. More poignantly, there seems to be a push toward the belief that these aggregate islands of individuals can be reunited with 39


the mainland of societal community if only the right tools can be found. In this manner, the show’s creators seek to resolve the disparity between the abjection of community, its manifestation in isolation, and the power of the individual to overcome adversity in the face of upholding societal norms. Whether or not its message is successful is difficult to determine, as the unique nature of the problem addressed seems to defy a unified solution. What is certain, however, is the necessity to explore communities within our own lives in order to determine their true functional or dysfunctional nature. Only by such examination can we identify our true nature, as definition through identification of the “other” depends on a clear understanding of exactly where we end and the other begins.

Chapter Notes 1. Episode 1.3, “The Fun in Funeral.” Chuck begins baking pies with moodenhancers and secretly sending them to her aunts as an attempt to help them deal with their grief over her death and gain the courage to overcome their social phobias. 2. When I use abjection via Kristeva, it is with the understanding that my reading of it transgresses traditional psychoanalytic understandings of abjection. Rather than assuming that any object or notion is always-already abject, which depends heavily on a stable and universal concept of the Real, I believe that because of cultural construction and indoctrination, it is instead (or perhaps also) useful to read it as an individual process. 3. By which I mean unintentional, not initially recognized, but fully integrated in the mind of the individual. 4. Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Translated by Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982: 5–6. 5. Kristeva, 53–54. 6. Ibid. 7. Episode 1.1, “Pie-Lette”; Episode 1.8, “Bitter Sweets”; Episode 2.2, “Circus Circus”; and Episode 2.10, “The Norwegians.” Ned’s attempts as a child to make friends, often by using his power, leads to ostracization, rejection, and resentment. He soon stops trying (Episode 2.7, “Robbing Hood,” and Episode 2.8, “Comfort Food”). Whatever successes he does achieve in making friends are eclipsed by his failures. 8. Jean-Luc Nancy, The Inoperative Community. Ed. Peter Connor. Trans. By Petter Connor, Lisa Garbaus, Michael Holland, and Simona Sawhney. Minneapolis: University Minnesota Press, 1991: 3. 9. Nancy, 6, 10. 10. Meaning “having one name;” although every other character in the series is given a full name, Ned is only ever known as either “Ned,” “Young Ned,” or “The Piemaker.” This is especially notable, as the narrator frequently refers to characters by their full names, even if the audience is very familiar with them; it suggests a further degree of insularity on Ned’s part, that even his last name is kept from the audience.

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2. Pushing Daisies Away (Dauphin) 11. “Pie-Lette.” Ned’s mysterious gift comes with very detailed rules, which he learns through trial and error. 12. Due to the rules of his ability, if Ned touches Chuck again, she will die; as a result, they are forced to find substitutes for physical affection, a situation which is not always satisfying. 13. Episode 1.4, “Pigeon”; Episode 2.10, “The Norwegians”; Episode 2.11, “Window Dressed to Kill.” Following an impromptu kiss, Ned experiences sexual dreams about Olive, but does not act on these feelings. He later admits that he has considered these feelings, but is unwilling to accept the normal relationship he could have with Olive over the dysfunctional one he can maintain with Chuck. 14. Episode 1.9, “Corpsicle”; Episode 2.2, “Circus Circus”; Episode 2.12, “Water and Power.” 15. “Pie-Lette”; Episode 1.2, “Dummy.” Olive frequently takes care of Digby, given Ned’s adventures with Emerson. She lavishes attention on the dog, but thinks he is neurotic due to Ned’s lack of physical contact. 16. Episode 2.1, “Bzzzzzzz!”; “Circus Circus”; Episode 2.3, “Bad Habits.” 17. “Pie-Lette.” Due to lifelong “personality disorders” and “social phobias,” the sisters became shut-ins following their retirement as the synchronized swimming duo, the Darling Mermaid Darlings. 18. In Episode 1.7, “Smell of Success,” Chuck convinces Ned to expand his menu, thus breaking his routine, while her aunts, Vivian and Lily Charles, eventually return to the pool, after repeated encouragement from Olive and regular doses of Chuck’s pies; in “Bzzzzzzz!” Vivian and Lily begin to make regular trips away from their home, usually in search of pie and companionship. 19. Episode 2.4, “Frescorts”; “The Norwegians.” 20. “Window Dressed to Kill.” 21. “Frescorts.” 22. “Water and Power.” 23. “Bzzzzzzz!”; “The Norwegians”; and Episode 2.13, “Kerplunk.” 24. Episode 2.9, “The Legend of Merle McQuoddy.” 25. Ibid. 26. The show’s cancellation does not allow for full development of new elements introduced into the plot in the second season, prompting the speculation that the epilogue of “Kerplunk” may not reflect fully rational endings for the series’ characters. 27. “Kerplunk.” Vivian finally finds out that Lily slept with Vivian’s fiancé, Charles Charles, and secretly had his child, Chuck. Lily fled to a nunnery — the same one to which Olive briefly retreats — and gave birth to Chuck, then lied about the ordeal for thirty years. Lily’s self-disgust over the deception is largely to blame for her inability to interact with others and, as a result, her transformation into a shut-in. 28. “Pigeon.” 29. Episode 1.8, “Bitter Sweets.” 30. Episode 2.7, “Robbing Hood.” 31. “Bzzzzzz!”; “Frescorts”; “Window Dressed to Kill.” 32. “Episode 2.8, “Comfort Food”; “The Legend of Merle McQuoddy.” Chuck tricks Ned into keeping her father alive, which mandates a new adjustment in their relationship. Though Ned is eventually willing to accept Charles Charles into his life, Charles requires that Ned abandon his relationship with Chuck. Chuck even considers

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Part One: Television, Difference, and Pushing Daisies running away with her father at his request, though she eventually chooses to remain with Ned — a choice that prompts her father to abandon her. 33. “Kerplunk.” 34. “Bitter Sweets”; “Comfort Food.” Ned’s social estrangement is well highlighted by his inability to relate to other food-based entrepreneurs. His awkward interaction with other business owners seems to surpass mere business rivalry and approach the level of a social impairment. Only in the pursuit of his investigative hobbies does he earn the goodwill of others beyond his dysfunctional group. 35. “Frescorts.” After having paid for friendship and still failing to develop attractive social qualities, Randy admits to Ned that in order to be with other people, he must first learn to be comfortable for being alone. While superficially positive, this message undercuts the virtue of accepting isolation by promoting an end result of socialization. 36. Episode 2.6, “Oh Oh Oh ... It’s Magic”; “The Legend of Merle McQuoddy”; “Water and Power.”

Works Cited Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Translated by Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982. Nancy, Jean-Luc. The Inoperative Community. Edited by Peter Connor. Translated by Peter Connor, Lisa Garbus, Michael Holland, and Simona Sawhney. Vol. 76 of Theory and History of Literature, edited by Wlad Godzich and Jochen Schulte-Sasse. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991. Pushing Daisies: The Complete First Season. Created by Bryan Fuller. Perf. Lee Pace, Anna Friel, Chi McBride, Kristin Chenoweth. ABC, 2007–2008. DVD. Warner Home Video, 2007. Pushing Daisies: The Complete Second Season. Created by Bryan Fuller. Perf. Lee Pace, Anna Friel, Chi McBride, Kristin Chenoweth. ABC, 2008–2009. DVD. Warner Home Video, 2009.

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3

Often Invisible Disability in Pushing Daisies CHRISTINE GARBETT

As other pieces in this collection suggest, Bryan Fuller’s Pushing Daisies offers a whimsical world full of unique characters that offers the viewer an interesting perspective on society not often seen in other television shows. One element that Fuller brings to the limelight is the issue of disability, especially in the first season where every episode introduces a form of it, from Lem’s (Dash Minok) missing arm and Elsita’s ( Jayma Mays) prosthetic leg1 to Lily and Vivian’s depression being addressed by Chuck baking homeopathic mood enhancers into pies.2 While the physical disabilities are noticeable and easily seen, other disabilities, like those of Lily and Vivian, are less so. When addressing the main characters, Ned and Chuck, their disabilities are easily ignored. However, disability in the series as visible and somewhat acceptable, an element of society that is generally forced, or desired, by the majority to remain invisible, is noteworthy.

Contextualizing Disability To begin, one must understand the social and political implications of such a move on the part of Fuller. Michel Foucault tells us the ways in which “status, privilege and affiliation” were understood in the past have been replaced with other means of “classification, hierarchization and the distribution of rank” reflecting what society considers the “norm.”3 While the term “norm” generally refers to average or the middle, a value system exists that prefers a positive, above average quality rather the same quality 43


being merely average. Of note here is that the quality is positive, such as intelligence, rather than negative, such as weight, keeping in mind that these qualities are determined as positive or negative by the dominant power holders in society. In addition, despite the fact that ours is a country that professes to believe in equality, Foucault reminds us that “[i]t is easy to understand how the power of the norm functions within a system of formal equality, since within a homogeneity that is the rule, the norm introduces, as a useful imperative and as a result of measurement, all the shading of individual differences.”4 It is in these differences, determined by rank and measure, that disability lies. Because society ranks and measures according to norms, disability is considered a societal issue, seen in the series in Ned’s self-imposed isolation. In Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body, Lennard J. Davis explains, “[a]s a term [disability] is more broadly used to indicate any lack of ability —fiscal, physical, mental, legal, and so on.”5 While this notion may be based on the idea that adding “dis-” to a word indicates lack, on the whole, the majority of people within the Pushing Daisies world do not view disability in this manner. For example, Betty Bee is treated for claustrophobia,6 and while most people would not regard a phobia as a form of disability, by definition it is. A hierarchy exists amongst abilities that place people with disabilities along a continuum. Physical, or visible, disabilities are the least acceptable and have traditionally been hidden from society’s view. Davis explains the reason for physical disabilities’ invisibility. He states: Disability is a specular moment. The power of the gaze to control, limit, and patrol the disabled person is brought to the fore. Accompanying the gaze are a welter of powerful emotional responses. These responses can include horror, fear, pity, compassion, and avoidance.7

The public emergence of a person with a physical disability opens that person to scrutiny and rejection of others in her or his vicinity. Others feel the right to judge due to the social construction of disability as “abnormal” and the non-disabled, or temporarily able-bodied, as the “norm.” In agreement with Davis’ explanation that people with disabilities have largely been made invisible by society, Simi Linton states, “[a] host of factors have typically screened us [people with disabilities] from public view.... The public has gotten so used to these screens that as we are now emerging, upping the ante on the demands for a truly inclusive society, 44

3. Often Invisible (Garbett)

we disrupt the social order.”8 The emergence of people with disabilities within Pushing Daisies, such as when Lem’s prosthetic arm comes off,9 causes others to react as Davis explains, ranging from pity to horror, partly in response to the difference, but also in response to the non-disableds’ own more fortunate happenstance being made visible. Nonetheless, Linton indicates that people with disabilities are making their presence known: We are everywhere these days, wheeling and loping down the street, tapping our canes, sucking on our breathing tubes, following our guide dogs, puffing and sipping on the mouth sticks that propel our motorized chairs ....We are all bound together ... by the social and political circumstances that have forged us as a group.10

The social circumstances are based on the norm, or what is considered “normal,” which seem to be agreed upon but never fully articulated and are dependent upon the “abnormal” to understand, making us reliant upon a variety of techniques, institutions, and experts in order to rank and measure as well as supervise and correct, such as when Chuck is trying to help her aunts deal with their depression, even though it is the result of grief. The circumstances also account for the spectators’ reactions, and according to Davis: Repulsion is the learned response on an individual level that is carried out on a societal level in actions such as incarceration, institutionalization, segregation, discrimination, marginalization, and so on. Thus, the ‘normal,’ ‘natural’ response to a person with disabilities is in reality a socially conditioned, politically generated response.11

Basically, some predetermined notion marks a person as disabled and then elicits negative responses from others nearby, which accounts for institutions specially equipped for those who are disabled in order to keep them out of society’s view. Even as the social circumstances rely on the dichotomous relationship between abnormal and normal, the political circumstances are equally convoluted. Davis continues to explain, “[a]fter all, the body is political. Its form and function have been the site of powerful control and management.”12 The reality of the body as a political site as one which has been demonstrated, and demonstrated against becomes clear when we look at issues of racism, sexism, and other means for ranking and measuring based on visible aspects. Davis asserts: 45

Part One: Television, Difference, and Pushing Daisies While many progressive intellectuals have stepped forward to decry racism, sexism, and class bias, it has not occurred to most of them that the very foundations on which their information systems are built, their very practices of reading and writing, seeing, thinking, and moving are themselves laden with assumptions about hearing, deafness, blindness, normalcy, paraplegia, and ability and disability in general.13

The daily lives of most people are absent of disability, something which goes unacknowledged and remains invisible, especially when mild forms of mental illness like depression or phobias tend not to be considered disabilities even while, by definition, they are. The confrontation of the disabled body becomes political because “[a]n able body is the body of a citizen; deformed, deafened, amputated, obese, female, perverse, crippled, maimed, blinded bodies do not make up the body politic.”14 The body politic is whole, normal, male, and widely visible; it is not “devalued and considered a burden or problem.”15 The “normal” citizen is a contributor — not a dependent — even though people with disabilities are contributing as workers, employers, taxpayers, and so forth. Until statistics were developed, the “norm” never existed. People with disabilities prior to that time may not have been treated well, but they were part of society’s fabric. Today, the normalizing gaze of the able-bodied deems people with disabilities inadequate and lacking, not a part of, but rather, apart from society. Yet the normalizing gaze and resulting negative reaction is that of the spectator who can generally see the physical disability despite the fact that many disabilities remain invisible: learning, mental, emotional. Davis discusses the label “disability” and what it means to be disabled. As he explains, “[t]he category ‘disability’ begins to break down when one scrutinizes who make up the disabled ... disability is not a static category but one which expands and contracts to include ‘normal’ people as well.”16 Among these “normal” people who make up the disabled populace are the female and deviant as well as Ned and Chuck, due to the invisible nature of their disabilities. Ned’s ability to bring the dead back to life is an abnormality that separates him from others. The separation is clearly demonstrated by Emerson Cod’s reluctance to be too close to Ned when he brings the dead back to life, which will be discussed further below. When “invisible” disabilities become visible, the reaction of others remains the same, 46


ranging from pity to horror. The reaction is due in part to the fact that “[t]he term ‘disability,’ as it is commonly and professionally used, is an absolute category without a level or threshold. One is either disabled or not.”17 With this absolute in mind, however, there is a disconnect because the spectator is claiming a position of normality that may or may not exist and places the other in a position of being abnormal even though seemingly “normal” people can fit into the realm of the disabled, especially when lacking in terms of fiscal or legal abilities.

A Bold Move Whether intentional or not, by utilizing disability as a norm in the series, Fuller lays bare the social and political circumstances of disability. The reactions of the characters to one another and to others with disabilities underscore the social aspect of the normalizing gaze and the political aspect of the able-bodied citizen. The most significant examples are seen in the episode entitled “Pigeon.” In this episode, Ned chases Lem out the Pie Hole backdoor, grabbing Lem’s arm. However, Lem gets away because his arm comes off. Ned’s reaction is that of the able-bodied person in that he is startled and somewhat horrified to be holding Lem’s arm. His reaction is further demonstrated when he asks Chuck, “Is this the hand you were holding?” His voice holds a hint of sarcasm, implying she would not know the difference between flesh and wood. Likewise, Olive later reacts in revulsion when Elsita pulls up her skirt to reveal a wooden leg. In both Ned and Olive’s reactions, they demonstrate society’s normalizing gaze when encountering the disabled body and the dominant position of the ablebodied citizen looking upon someone who is different. While minor characters with disabilities are not unusual on television, in movies, or in novels,18 having main characters who are disabled is somewhat unique. Davis explains the reason for this lack in his discussion of the novel, in which “the very structures on which the novel rests tend to be normative, ideologically emphasizing the universal quality of the central character whose normativity encourages us to identify with him or her.”19 The characters, Ned and Chuck, are central to Pushing Daisies, yet each is a person with an invisible disability as defined previously. Ned touches 47


dead people and things and brings them back to life, which is abnormal and causes him to isolate himself for fear of discovery and what he may do with his strange ability. At the same time, Chuck is legally dead and does not occupy the role or have the rights of the average citizen. She has no legal identity as a citizen, which makes her disabled. These two characters present a view of disability that is unique due to the fact that the very nature of their disabilities is invisible and accepted by the viewing audience. For Ned it is an ability that disables him from a “normal” life because he fears what will happen. Ned’s ability comes into play when Emerson Cod inadvertently witnesses him accidentally bring a man to life then touch him again to restore his death. With The Pie Hole in financial trouble, Ned feels the need to join Emerson in solving murders in return for financial remuneration, forming an odd, though productive, partnership.20 While not typically considered a disability, Ned’s financial status as lacking forces him to utilize an ability that no one else has. This ability is abnormal, and as such, marks Ned as disabled in a more profound way than his financial difficulties, which are reversed due to working with Emerson. While his financial disability may be under control, his ability to bring people back to life is viewed through a normalizing gaze by Emerson, establishing it as abnormal and something that causes the same reaction as a person with physical disabilities entering the public sphere. Emerson believes that the ability is abnormal and looks upon Ned with some level of repulsion, even though the abnormal ability allows financial gain for himself as well as Ned. At first, Emerson refuses to be in the room with Ned when he brings the dead back to life. That changes after Chuck’s arrival, but it takes Emerson a while to be willing to stand near Ned when he touches a dead body. Emerson exhibits the normalizing gaze of society upon seeing something that is largely different. For Ned, bringing dead people and things back to life is normal; however, his ability is not a social norm and is, therefore, considered abnormal and a disability. Again, this is unusual for a primary character because viewers cannot relate, for the most part, to the isolation that Ned feels due to his ability. Ned’s isolation is also self-imposed, unlike most people with disabilities who are ostracized by the normalizing gaze of others, so viewers again may have difficulty identifying with him. Identifying with his isolation in general may be easy, as many people often 48


feel isolated due to the desire to be close to others, but identifying with the reason for the isolation, a fear of what will happen, is difficult because most people do not have abilities that mark them as abnormal. While the abnormal does not always indicate disability, the part of abnormal that demonstrates a lack of some ability does point toward disability. In Ned’s case, his lack of social relationships, even though selfimposed, and inability to touch the ones he loves most, Digby (his childhood dog) and Chuck, makes him a person with a disability. The fear of what may happen in front of others is a form of phobia that has cut him off from the others around him. His (dis)ability to raise the dead and then send them back into that state also demonstrates a form of lack because he does not have complete control. There are consequences for leaving someone or something alive, and once alive, there is the lack of ability to ever touch again without resulting in death once more, which Ned would never desire for Chuck or Digby. Nevertheless, Chuck is technically dead. The fact that Ned brought her back to life does nothing to fix the issue of her legal death and puts her in the realm of disability from both a legal standpoint and a political one. Being legally dead means that Chuck cannot do many of the things that able-bodied or “normal” people take for granted. For example, she cannot hold a job because her social security number would have her listed as dead. In addition, her death made the news, so she risks people recognizing her as the dead girl from the cruise. “Dead Girl” is what Emerson actually calls her with the same revulsion in his tone as is evident in his face when Ned brings someone back from the dead. This revulsion is his reaction to her status as living dead or disabled. Along with the legal lack that Chuck demonstrates, she is also lacking politically because she is no longer part of the body of recognized citizens. Only those with able, living bodies make up the body politic; therefore, Chuck’s death marks her outside of the body politic due to her legal status. She is dead and can no longer perform the duties of citizenship from a legal standpoint. While she seems “normal,” her lack of citizenship creates a situation where she cannot see her aunts or live life the way most people can, such as working or being with the man she loves who also loves her. At the end of the series, she does go to her aunts and reveals herself and her continued existence to them. How her aunts deal with Chuck’s reap49


pearance in their lives would have been an interesting twist to her status if the series had not been scheduled for cancellation at the end of the second season. Again, having a main character who people cannot necessarily relate to is something rarely done. For instance, NBC aired the show Raines (2007) about an LAPD detective who partners with manifestations of the dead in order to solve their murders, similar to Ned’s waking the dead. The show, a midseason release, only lasted five weeks and was not continued. Viewers like characters who are relatable, which means that characters should be “normal” or somewhat average in some way, and seeing manifestations of dead people is not relatable. Similarly, Chuck is not a character people can relate to except perhaps through how she feels about the people in her life, such as her aunts, and how she takes care of them even from afar, baking homeopathic mood enhancers into pies for them.21 She’s caring, which makes her likeable, though not necessarily relatable. In addition to her status as a dead person, her relationship with Ned is that of a disabled love match where neither can touch the other without drastic results. This lack of being able to touch is what makes Olive mirror Emerson’s revulsion as she watches Chuck and Ned form a loving attachment that excludes any physical contact, an abnormal aspect of what is typically considered a romantic relationship. While she would like to have Ned for herself, her reaction to his and Chuck’s relationship is rational and demonstrates once again that normalizing gaze that requires people in love to show some form of physical contact. People need some type of physical connection to other people, which makes Ned and Chuck’s relationship a disabled one from Olive’s able-bodied perspective. Having this disabled relationship as a central theme in the show, Fuller challenges viewers to take on a new perspective of love and what it means to be in love. The two main characters love each other but can never touch. They use proxies many times throughout the series to hold hands22 and to hug.23 They even use their own hands as substitutes for those of the other, when they hold their own hands together and pretend one is that of the other person.24 Another way they try to work around their disabled relationship is to utilize barriers, such as cling wrap to kiss25 and gloves to hold hands.26 The utilization of other people and instruments to simulate actual touch demonstrates the need or desire to actually be 50


physically together for the two main characters. Viewers watch, waiting for there to be some way the two can actually touch. However, the way Ned’s ability is established makes that impossible, and viewers are offered a different view of a relationship to consider. Ned and Chuck move around each other and are careful to avoid physical contact, as do Digby and Ned. Nevertheless, when Chuck moves out of the apartment and into her own space, there is a bittersweet twist to their relationship. No longer do they need to be careful in the confines of a small apartment, but they are apart from one another, isolated. The need for isolation is a recurring theme that is discussed in another chapter of this collection27 and rightfully so, because the isolation of the main characters from one another, whether by choice, living apart, or due to their inability to physically touch, maintains that part of their relationship which is lacking or abnormal, even though Chuck keeps trying to find ways in which they are “normal.” To establish their normativity, Chuck tells Ned, “We’re an ‘us’ with special circumstances.”28 While they are an “us” and they do have special circumstances, the need to find ways in which they are normal or “just like everyone else” belies how she truly feels about their relationship and demonstrates a desperation on her part to not feel or believe that she or their relationship is abnormal. Nevertheless, their relationship without physical contact, unless utilizing a barrier or proxy, and her status as a dead person reinforces the reality of their situation and her as being abnormal and disabled. Again, the normalizing gaze of the world around them places them in a position of being viewed with disbelief, pity, revulsion, and so forth. Despite the fact that their individual qualities relegate them to the category of disabled, Ned and Chuck appear to be “normal.” Yet, the social and political circumstances in which they find themselves mark them as disabled with invisible disabilities that are not readily apparent to the casual observer. Much like the aunts’ depression, Ned and Chuck’s disabilities keep them from leading what the average person would consider a “normal” life. Bringing disability into the public view in this manner makes Pushing Daisies a revolutionary series. Rather than hide those traits that would be considered abnormal and better left invisible, Fuller makes them very visible and challenges the normalizing gaze and its conditioned response of repulsion and horror. 51


Chapter Notes 1. Episode 1.4, “Pigeon.” 2. Episode 1.3, “The Fun in Funeral.” 3. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage, 1995: 184. 4. Ibid. 5. Lennard J. Davis, Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body. New York: Verso, 1995: xiii. 6. In Episode 2.1, “Bzzzzzzzzz!” 7. Davis, 12. 8. Simi Linton, Claiming Disability: Knowledge and Identity. New York: New York University Press, 1998: 3. 9. “Pigeon.” 10. Linton, 4. 11. Davis, 13. 12. Davis, 71. 13. Davis, 4–5. 14. Davis, 71–72. 15. Linton, 22. 16. Linton, xv. 17. Davis, 1. 18. Examples of minor characters include Artie in the television show Glee (FOX, 2009-present), who is in a wheelchair; Thad Stone in the movie The Family Stone (2005), who is deaf; and Tiny Tim in Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (1843), who walks with a crutch. 19. Davis, 41. 20. Episode 1.1, “Pie-Lette.” 21. “The Fun in Funeral.” 22. Chuck holds Lem’s hand and pretends he’s Ned in “Pigeon.” 23. Ned makes Emerson give Chuck a hug and tells her it’s from him in “Pie-Lette.” 24. “Pie-Lette.” 25. “The Fun in Funeral.” 26. “Pigeon.” 27. See Matt Dauphin, “Pushing Daisies Away: Community Through Isolation.” 28. Episode 1.6, “Bitches.”

Works Cited Davis, Lennard J. Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body. New York: Verso, 1995. Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol. Mineola, NY: Dover, 1991 (1843). The Family Stone. Dir. Thomas Bezucha. Perf. Sarah Jessica Parker, Luke Wilson, Tyrone Giordano. 20th Century-Fox, 2005. Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage, 1995.

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3. Often Invisible (Garbett) Glee. Created by Ryan Murphy. Perf. Lea Michele, Matthew Morrison, Jane Lynch, Kevin McHale. FOX, 2009-present. Linton, Simi. Claiming Disability: Knowledge and Identity. New York: New York University Press, 1998. Pushing Daisies: The Complete First Season. Created by Bryan Fuller. Perf. Lee Pace, Anna Friel, Chi McBride, Kristin Chenoweth. ABC, 2007–2008. DVD. Warner Home Video, 2007. Pushing Daisies: The Complete Second Season. Created by Bryan Fuller. Perf. Lee Pace, Anna Friel, Chi McBride, Kristin Chenoweth. ABC, 2008–2009. DVD. Warner Home Video, 2009.

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PART TWO

Philosophy and Pushing Daisies


4

Consuming Grief and Eating Pie LAURA ANH WILLIAMS

Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant. — Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

The final scene between the star-crossed lovers in Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 adaptation of Romeo + Juliet offers viewers a new spin on the classic tragedy. Rather than generating the usual tragic irony through Romeo’s (Leonardo DiCaprio) death moments before Juliet (Claire Danes) wakes, Luhrmann’s film surprises contemporary viewers by having Juliet awaken seconds before Romeo’s fateful poisoning.1 As Romeo speaks his final lines and kisses Juliet, her fingers begin to move and the camera moves in for an extreme close up on her eyes opening. Oblivious to her movements, Romeo brings his dram of poison to his lips and drinks as she reaches out to touch his face. The scene cuts back and forth between their shocked expressions and Romeo slumps back, succumbing to the poison, as Juliet rises to cradle his dying body. Faces stricken with confusion and grief, the lines Juliet ordinarily speaks to herself, “[w]hat’s here? Poison. Drunk all and left no friendly drop to help me after?” become questions she poses directly to her dying lover. Romeo, largely unable to speak, remains conscious with his eyes locked on Juliet’s face. His final words, “[t]hus, with a kiss, I die” are spoken to a fully conscious and lucid Juliet. The characters’ overlapping time together, as Romeo dies and Juliet comes back to life, help amplify the losses both suffer. The missed communication and tragic timing of the original is made somehow more tragic for these seconds 57

Part Two: Philosophy and Pushing Daisies

between life and death that the characters share.2 This liminal space between living and dying in Luhrmann’s film generates both desire and despair, as well as a magnified sense of loss. Both characters seem well aware of the speed and efficacy of the poison, and that this shared liminal space is fleeting. While liminality is deployed in this filmic example to heighten a tragic situation, in Bryan Fuller’s short-lived television series, Pushing Daisies, it is sustained as an ongoing narrative device to produce rather than disrupt desire between its two central characters. From the outset of the series, loss and impossibility define the central romance between “the Pie Maker” Ned and Charlotte “Chuck” Charles, the girl he loved and lost. Endowed with the ability to temporarily bring dead creatures back to life by touching them, Ned chooses not only to revive Chuck in order to discover her murderer, but also to keep her alive despite the fact that he will never be able to touch her again without instantly killing her. In psychoanalytic terms, Ned’s desire for the other is in direct conflict with his desire to deny the loss of the other. Freud’s 1917 essay, “Mourning and Melancholia,” describes two distinct grief responses to loss. Mourning is proposed as a healthy response; the subject grieves for a finite amount of time before the lost object is released and replaced. In “Mourning Beyond Melancholia: Freud’s Psychoanalysis of Loss,” Tammy Clewell elaborates: The work of mourning, as Freud describes it here, entails a kind of hyperremembering, aprocess of obsessive recollection during which the survivor resuscitates the existence of the lost other in the space of the psyche, replacing an actual absence with an imaginary presence. This magical restoration of the lost object enables the mourner to assess the value of the relationship and comprehend what he or she has lost in losing the other. But prolonging the existence of the lost object at the center of grief work (Trauerarbeit) does not persist indefinitely, for Freud claimed that the mourner, by comparing the memories of the other with actual reality, comes to an objective determination that the lost object no longer exists.3

Pushing Daisies makes literal the resuscitation of the existence of and “magical restoration” of Ned’s lost object. In reviving Chuck, he does, indeed, assess what he has lost in the nineteen years that have transpired since they last saw one another. However, this resuscitation does not do the “grief work” of mourning. Mourning ends and its success is achieved when the 58

4. Consuming Grief and Eating Pie (Williams)

loss is acknowledged and released by the griever and “respect for reality gains the day,”4 which Ned deliberately chooses not to do. In contrast, melancholia is mourning’s pathological opposite because of its indeterminate nature and its refusal to release its lost object. The lost loved one becomes internalized as a loss of an aspect of the ego which prevents the ego from “getting over” its loss. David Kennedy explains the distinction in terms of economy: mourning is identified with “expenditure and [...] unsuccessful or pathological mourning with the hoarding of desire.”5 The goal of mourning then is this “expenditure,” in the form of expressing or articulating loss through elegy.6 Pamela Thurschwell notes “Freud imagines this process of melancholic resurrecting of the object in cannibalistic terms. The extreme identification which follows the loss is called introjections; the ego metaphorically devours the lost object, becoming it by taking it into itself. [...] The economic theory of ‘Mourning and Melancholia’ suggests a world where people are literally filled up or taken over by the past.” 7 In The Melancholy of Race, Anne Anlin Cheng also describes melancholia as a form of consumption: “The melancholic eats the lost object — feeds on it, as it were.”8 While the mourning subject is able to move past loss, “melancholia alludes not to loss per se but to the entangled relationship with loss.” 9 David Eng and David Kazanjian argue that “in describing melancholia as a confrontation with loss through the adamant refusal of closure, Freud also provides another method of interpreting loss as a creative process.”10 It is within this framework of consumption, melancholia, creativity, and entanglement with loss that I locate Pushing Daisies. With its death-delaying premise, its principle setting of a pie bakery, and major plot lines including a spectrum of alimentary elements — a rival candy store, a comfort food cook-off, and anti-depressants baked into desserts11— the series offers a wealth of opportunities to explore alternative representation of melancholia and consumption. Ned represents an articulation of melancholia that can be seen as productive rather than pathological. Ned and Chuck’s relationship embodies indeterminable loss. However, it is precisely the loss and impossibility of the couple’s relationship in any conventional sense that propels them to seek creative ways of developing and sustaining their love. This essay will explore the ways through which melancholia and representations of cooking in this 59


fantasy space work to produce subjectivity and agency, rather than pathology. Because of the centrality of death to each episode, Pushing Daisies can be described as a romantic thanatological comedy.12 But for a show so entirely dependent on dying and dead persons, precious little screen time is spent with characters mourning. Rather, Ned’s ability and consequent relationship to the dead could be described as melancholic. Clewell explains, “[m]ourning comes to a decisive and ‘spontaneous end,’ according to Freud, when the survivor has detached his or her emotional tie to the lost object and reattached the free libido to a new object, thus accepting consolation in the form of a substitute for what has been lost.”13 Ned’s resurrection of Chuck suggests a refusal to detach his emotional tie to her or accept any libidinal substitute. He acknowledges several times that his choice to keep her alive is a selfish choice, narcissistic in Freud’s terms. However, the intimacy Ned desires with Chuck must find alternate means of expressions. The caveat to her resurrection precludes any physical intimacy. Consequently, like Eurydice for Orpheus, Chuck’s presence in Ned’s proximity also implies a continual threat of her loss. Her existence can also be seen as a form of lack, in the absence of her physical touch. Chuck’s relation to Ned, and the pie maker’s magical ability itself, complicate structures of death and loss and the boundary between mourning and melancholia. For while Clewell suggests that through detachment from the lost object, “the self is restored and the work of mourning brought to a decisive close,”14 Ned’s refusal to relinquish his lost love and his maintenance of her presence/absence in his life can be said to restore him.

“At This Very Moment”: Death as Temporal Anxiety From the outset of the series, death, for Ned, is not treated as a final and absolute loss to acknowledge and move past, but a dilemma of temporality and proximity. When, in the opening scene of the series, nine year-old Ned’s golden retriever Digby is run down by a semi-truck, the boy is able to revive him with a touch. When his mother dies suddenly later the same afternoon, he brings her back in a manner visually identical 60


to how he resurrected Digby. In both scenes, in an overhead camera shot, young Ned kneels at the side of the dead body, reaches out a finger and brushes the cheek of the deceased with the same heavenly sustained chords playing in the background. In both scenes, Ned sits back in astonishment as Digby and his mother immediately resume what they had been doing before their momentary interruption. Both times, too, the temporal and proximity caveat of Ned’s magical gift is emphasized — as the boy and dog chase each other up a hill, the camera lingers a moment to catch a dead squirrel fall out of a tree near the road. As the scene with Ned’s mother plays, the ticking of the mother’s egg timer is audible throughout. When Ned looks into his neighbor’s front yard and sees Chuck’s father fall over dead at the same moment the egg timer goes off, he realizes the exchange of life and death he has just inadvertently caused in the sixty seconds that have elapsed. The series reflects an obsession with temporality, introducing each character and describing each passage of time in temporal increments. Even the dog is introduced in terms of his relationship to temporality: he is “three years, two weeks, six days, five hours and nine minutes old. And not a minute older.”15 The voiceover transition from the opening exposition to the present in the pilot episode declares, “[i]t’s 19 years, 34 weeks, 1 day and 59 minutes later, heretofore known as ‘Now.’”16 Each episode maintains this obsessive focus on temporality, just as Ned fastidiously references his wristwatch each time he revives a dead body. Proximity, like temporality, is also a matter of anxiety for Ned, since the replacement death (the squirrel instead of Digby, Chuck’s father for Ned’s mother) is a random living being in close physical proximity.17 Physical proximity is suggestive of both desire and death for him. Consequently the psychological processes of acknowledging loss and grieving its finality are often displaced by desire, which for him, is inextricably connected to death. The narrator elaborates on both Ned’s gift and his displaced attentions just after reviving Digby: “[t]his gift was a gift given to him, but not by anyone in particular. There was no box, no instructions, no manufacturer’s warranty: it just was. The terms of use weren’t immediately clear, nor were they of immediate concern: young Ned was in love. Her name was Chuck.” 18 Having had less than a minute with Digby actually dead, Ned wastes precious little time grieving over his loss, and turns his attention to playing with Chuck. Additionally, Ned’s desire to 61


keep his mother alive causes Chuck’s father’s death, and for Ned the comfort and love associated with a mother’s goodnight kiss is forever linked to his mother’s death.19 When both of their parents have died, the voiceover again draws a direct link between grief and desire: “at their respective parents’ funerals, dizzy with grief, curiosity, and hormones, young Ned and a girl named Chuck had their first and only kiss.” In the most significant example, after reviving Chuck for sixty seconds, Ned rejects the imperative to return her to her murdered state because of his desire for her. The second touch, a reversal of his Prince Charming kiss, is nearly accomplished, and generates sexual tension between the two. However, Ned’s refusal to carry out his kiss of death serves to both suspend physical intimacy and also to sustain the continuation of their relationship. As series creator, Bryan Fuller argues, “if the basic complication is that you can’t touch each other, then it forces you to get to know someone and be intimate in a way where you don’t have the hurdle of physicality to get over because it’s not really an option.”20 Where he refuses an end to Chuck’s life and any relationship he could have with her, Ned chooses an end to physical contact with her instead. Normally, such a choice to negate any future physical contact would suggest an end to a romantic relationship, but for Ned, it marks a beginning. Ned’s relationship to Chuck can be described as melancholic in that it is a disavowal of her loss. As Judith Butler describes it, If in melancholia a loss is refused, it is not for that reason abolished [...] the internalization of loss is part of the mechanism of its refusal. If the object can no longer exist in the external world, it will then exist internally, and that internalization will be a way to disavow the loss, to keep it at bay, to stay or postpone the recognition and suffering of loss.21

Ned refuses Chuck’s loss and his own suffering of yet another loss in his life. Although he enables her to exist physically in the world, the fact that he keeps her resurrection a secret and hides her away from everything from her prior life functions as a kind of internalization.22 By moving her into his apartment and allowing her to accompany him to his pie restaurant and in his investigative adventures, Ned absorbs her into an aspect of his own life. In a sense, however, Ned’s melancholic refusal to accept Chuck’s loss produces an ongoing threat of loss, but also revives and ensures his relationship with her. 62


“Young Ned has become The Pie Maker”: Pie, Undeath, and Subjectivity Initially, loss and lack seem to characterize virtually everything about Ned. In the very first episode, he loses nearly everything he loves in life in quick succession: his dog, his mother, his proximity to the girl next door, his home and community.23 If, as Thurschwell explains, “[m]elancholics feel responsible for the death of the object; they feel they have psychically murdered the other person,” 24 young Ned can certainly be described as melancholic over his mother’s and Chuck’s father’s deaths. The series emphasizes the distinction between other characters and Ned and his abnegative lifestyle through his visual representation. He is slimbodied and occupies very little space with his hands often crammed deep in his pockets, clasped behind his back, or arms crossed tightly across his chest. His wardrobe consists entirely of white, black, and shades of grays.25 The lack of color in his dress is emphasized by the abundance of bright colors and lush textures worn by each of the other principle characters, and typifying the technicolor mise en scène. Private Investigator Emerson Cod is always seen wearing bright silky patterned shirts against cable-knit vests and plaid, checkered, and pinstriped suits with pocket squares; waitress Olive Snook is often decked out in uniforms of bright green or tangerine with white piping and pinstripes; and Chuck herself wears a variety of fashionable flowery sundresses, hats, scarves, and gloves. Even Chuck’s eccentric shut-in aunts Vivian and Lily Charles enjoy an abundance of mismatching animal prints, velvets, leathers, furs, red and black paisleys and Chinese brocades, not to mention their vivid, sequined synchronized swimming costumes.26 While each of these characters is often shown consuming the baked desserts offered by Ned, “the pie man” himself cannot enjoy his own creations, and is rarely seen eating anything at all. His abstinence from somatic pleasures is explained, in part, by his magical gift: “[t]ouch a dead thing once: alive. Touch a dead thing again: dead forever. Keep a dead thing alive for more than a minute and something else has to die.”27 Because of this ability, he can never again pet his dog Digby, embrace Chuck, or consume his own pastries, as the voiceover elaborates, “[t]he peaches never brown. The dead fruit in his hands become ripe with everlasting flavor, as long as he only touches it once.”28 63


So much as brushing against Chuck or Digby would cause their death, and handling the fruit fillings of his pies more than once would cause them to rot again instantly. For reasons unspoken, but obvious to viewers, Ned acknowledges being a vegetarian in the second season when offered a meat pie,29 and shrinks visibly from fur coats and other animal products.30 Beyond the consequences of his touch, though, Ned’s associations between pleasure and loss are developed during his childhood travails at the Longborough School for Boys, where his father abandons him after his mother’s death. Throughout the series, childhood flashbacks after his mother’s death show young Ned utilizing baking to rekindle feelings of comfort and love. In the first episode, the narrator makes explicit the way Ned’s fear of loss relates to his baking, explaining “[a]fter his mother’s death, Ned avoided social attachments, fearing what he’d do if someone else he loved died. And he became obsessed with pies.” This replacement of social connections with cooking is really a displacement in its most literal definition. Because of his anxiety of the threat of loss, Ned re-channels his desires and refocuses his energy in the safer alternative: baking. The second season episode entitled “Comfort Foods”31 opens with young Ned in “desperate need of comfort, and comfort for Ned meant pie.” The young pie maker is shown in a rare and happy moment of consuming pie voraciously before being joined by every other student in his class. The narrator explains, “[t]hey were all far from home and needed comfort. The longing and homesickness which filled the school like a plague was magically lifted with every bite.”32 This incident provides a foreshadowing for Ned’s future occupation and is the first of only two scenes where Ned is shown consuming his own pies. In contrast, the resurrected rotten fruit he is seen utilizing throughout the rest of the series prevents him from being able to taste his own creations. Because he uses this “alive again” fruit in his pies, ordinarily he is only able to offer comfort for others.

“A return to normal, or at least normal for us”: Rotting Fruit and Melancholia Because of his use of dead fruit, baking pies serves a similar structural function as his reviving the dead: whatever enjoyment they yield for 64


him must be unconventional. The very first pie young Ned ever bakes is revealed in flashback when, in “Smell of Success”33 young Ned’s longing for his mother is satisfied through his culinary production. As Ned wanders into the kitchen of the boarding school for boys, the narrator states, “[r]ealizing he couldn’t rush his heart into healing, he concocted a plan: to reconnect with his mother in a way that only he could.” Because fresh strawberries are on an unreachably high shelf, Ned pulls a rotten apple out of a nearby waste bin, which is immediately restored. The narrator continues: “[f ]or young Ned wasn’t like the other children, or the other adults for that matter. Which, in this case, delighted him. Briefly. Although young Ned knew he couldn’t taste the pie lest the fruit rot again, he didn’t care. The mere smell of it made him feel, if only for an hour, exactly like he wanted to feel: safe and warm and loved.”34 Pleasure and the satisfaction of desire are figured in terms of temporality here. The briefness of Ned’s delight and his hour of comfort draw a temporal boundary around what he can achieve for himself with his baking. While the voice-over narrates, Ned bakes the pie, pulls it out of the oven, and, because he cannot consume it, curls around it in his bed. The pleasure of eating is deferred for the pleasure of breathing the aroma of the dessert. The feeling of comfort and love becomes correlative to the pleasure of consuming, even if it is only by smell. While the impossibility of eating his own desserts is related directly to the impossibility of touching the love of his life, as the scene ends, the narrator declares, “[w]hich is why he became the Pie Maker.” Safety, warmth, and love are qualities Ned clearly values, and while he cannot enjoy them completely — and he cannot eat his pies — he still constructs his identity around producing these for his patrons and friends. Despite the threats of punishment or loss, reviving dead things, if only briefly, and generating pleasures, however faint or brief, help constitute Ned’s identity. While Ned himself lives in a state of sustained loss, he still generates his subjectivity and livelihood through his cooking. I linger over Ned’s utilization of rotten fruit because it is a motif the series repeats. His livelihood seems dependent upon his “omnipotent talent of reviving dead fruit into luscious fillings for his pastry marvels.”35 In the first image of the adult pie maker, he returns a moldy strawberry to a vibrant state of perfection. In “The Fun in Funeral,”36 he is seen tossing 65


resurrected peaches from bare hand to gloved hand, and in “Smell of Success,”37 viewers are introduced to an entire storeroom filled with racks of neatly organized trays of decaying fruit. This practice is abandoned briefly in the second season when, after vowing never again to touch dead things in “The Norwegians,”38 Ned is shown actually slicing fresh strawberries. Chuck notes this change, asking “[n]o more dead fruit? No more dead people?” In the following episode, “Window Dressed to Kill,”39 Ned feeds Emerson his newest pastry concoction before indulging in a generous mouthful himself. He says, “[n]ow that I’m out of dead-waking and back into pie baking, and no longer touching dead fruit, I can eat my own pie,” gleefully adding, “I’m going to get fat, aren’t I?” This is a rare moment of pleasure and excess for Ned that stands in direct contrast to his pie eating in the first season episode, “Girth.” Not knowing Chuck is sending pies to her bereaved aunts, Ned accidentally eats one of his own creations, spitting out the moldy strawberry filling. The title of the episode, “Girth,”40 although an equestrian reference within the plot, is significant because it is also suggestive of bodily excesses that Ned cannot indulge in, an excess he alludes to when he finally is able to consume his pie. Ned’s enjoyment of his pies, however, is still laced with loss. Being able to eat his own pies and living a “normal” life not centered on murder victims is dependent on Ned’s refusal to use — in a sense, a voluntary loss of— his ability. Ned’s refusal to revive the dead is of note because it is figured largely in the language of closeting. His desire for normalcy and to “fit in” requires the denial and suppression of a significant aspect of his identity. In fact the entire episode of “Window Dressed to Kill” (and the series at large) is replete with characters and subplots that are easily read for gay subtext.41 In addition to Ned closeting his ability (and desire), Olive is revealed to have a pair of surrogate fathers. Escaped convicts Jerry Holmes and Buster Bustamante (Richard Benjamin and George Segal) may not be romantically linked, but they easily construct Olive’s queer family. Other minor characters in this episode include flamboyant window dressers Wendell Featherstone and Denny Downs (Wayne Wilderson and Sam Pancake), and murder suspect Dick Dicker is played by Willie Garson, who is most recognizable for playing Carrie Bradshaw’s gay best friend on Sex and the City. Most significantly, Ned and Olive spend much of the episode pretending to be engaged to one another. Their performative engagement is 66


for the benefit Olive’s surrogate fathers and for Lily and Vivian Charles (who also help constitute queer family for both Olive and Ned). Although Olive is overtly using Ned to deceive Jerry and Buster, in a sense Ned is also using Olive as a beard to obscure his non-normative relationship with Chuck. Eventually Olive “outs” the fallacy of their engagement to everyone, and when she discusses the lie with her fathers, she tells them, “Ned doesn’t love me. He’s with someone else he loves very much.” The gender ambiguity of this confession seems unnecessary, and contributes to the gay subtextual elements, as does Chuck’s expression of jealousy to Ned that he and Olive are able to be “out celebrating your relationship when all we do is hide ours.” The secrecy and hidden nature of Ned’s relationship with Chuck and the impossibility for them to enjoy a normative romantic relationship contrasts with the highly visible and physical relationship that Ned performs with Olive. The normative is rejected, however, for the melancholic alternative, and this alternative is figured as “super”— meaning both beyond the range of the normal and surpassing average. Ned resumes using his “super” power, rather than hiding his ability and returns his affections to his impossible object of desire, the girl he can never touch. The episode concludes with a curious return to using rotten fruit as the primary ingredient in Ned’s pies. As he and Chuck replace fresh ingredients with decaying fruit, the voiceover explains their actions are “to accommodate the ingredients a super pie maker needs.”42 Moving a bowl of peaches green and white with mold to a shelf stocked with bowls of strawberries and other fruit in similar condition, Ned says, “[y]ou’d think that stocking dead fruit for baking while we waited for fresh fruit to rot would be depressing, but I find it sort of cathartic.” His comment reflects an alternative and productive relationship to the rotten and valueless fruit that constitutes his supply. Throughout the series, Ned and Chuck find creative alternatives to normative physical contact. Clear plastic prophylactics are employed repeatedly for comic effect. Ned outfits his car with a barrier between the front seats so that Chuck can sit by him.43 Chuck surprises Ned with a kiss through plastic food wrap44 and when they are both tied up in clear body bags.45 She embraces him with a tarp46 and they hold hands through winter gloves and beekeeper suits.47 They triangulate their desire through 67


suggesting physical contact with inanimate objects (the golden monkey figurines they have kiss in the first episode) and through actual contact with third parties (Chuck is seen hugging and petting Digby on numerous occasions, both often embrace Emerson in place of one another, and in one episode, Chuck holds the hand of a minor character while imagining he is Ned.48 Their romantic relationship is not the only source of triangulation the series offers, however. In “Oh, Oh, Oh ... It’s Magic,” 49 Olive facilitates Chuck’s first mother-daughter conversation with Lily Charles with the aid of a hidden listening device and earpiece. Through this triangulation, Olive asks Lily to role play and address her as though she were Chuck, while Chuck is able to ask her mother questions through Olive. Overall, it is Ned’s alternative mode of melancholia that creates and enables his relationship with Chuck. His refusal to accept her loss generates a new relationship that must develop through alternative means. The series makes literal Eng and Kazanjian’s revisionist formulation of melancholia that rejects its pathologization in favor of its creative possibilities: Were one to understand melancholia better, Freud implies, one would no longer insist on its pathological nature. In this spirit, we suggest that a better understanding of melancholic attachments to loss might depathologize those attachments, making visible not only their social bases but also their creative, unpredictable, political aspects[....]Unlike mourning, in which the past is declared resolved, finished, and dead, in melancholia the past remains steadfastly alive in the present[....] In this regard, we find in Freud’s conception of melancholia’s persistent struggle with its lost objects not simply a “grasping” and “holding” on to a fixed notion of the past but rather a continuous engagement with loss and its remains.50

Pushing Daisies as a whole seems to attempt to embody this new concept of melancholia, literally allowing Chuck to remain steadfastly alive in Ned’s present and future. Rejecting the impossibility of sustaining a romance with Chuck, Ned produces forms of intimacy he has avoided or rejected during his adult life. His deliberate entanglement with the deceased (animals, people, and even fruit) forecloses the possibility of certain physical pleasures, both romantic and gustatory, yet Ned’s identity is defined by these choices and self-denials. These losses do not function as obstacles but rather as occasions that produce creative alternatives. Ned’s unconventional entanglement with death and sustained non-normative 68


relations with rotten fruits, his deceased dog, and murdered love help formulate a form of melancholia that does not follow its conventional pathological trajectory, but instead produces new articulations of desire. The series as a whole reinforces this melancholia in its conclusion. As the camera flies over the Digby running through the same field of yellow daisies as in the first episode, the voice-over narrates, “At that moment in the town of Coeur d’ Coeurs, events occurred that are not, were not, and should never be considered an ending. For endings, as it is known, are where we begin.”51 In its final moments, the series abandons its temporal anxiety as it resists narrative closure and finality in favor of a self-conscious open-endedness. For fans of the series, this conflation of beginnings and ends not only echoes the beginning of Ned and Chuck’s romance in the first episode, but also simultaneously acknowledges and refuses its cancellation in its uniquely melancholic way.

Chapter Notes 1. Crystal Downing points out that this is not an entirely new staging. She notes a 1748 addition to the script by David Garrick “in which Juliet awakes in the tomb and has a 60-line chat with Romeo before he dies” (“Misshapen Chaos of Well-Seeming Form: Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet,” Literature/Film Quarterly 28.3 [2000]): 125– 126. 2. Courtney Lehmann suggests this is Luhrmann’s attempt to “thwart this tragic itinerary in the film’s ending, wherein Romeo and Juliet are only a blink away from escaping double suicide” (“Strictly Shakespeare? Dead Letters, Ghostly Fathers, and the Cultural Pathology of Baz Luhrmann’s William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet,” Shakespeare Quarterly 52.2 [2001]): 31. 3. Tammy Clewell, “Mourning Beyond Melancholia: Freud’s Psychoanalysis of Loss.” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 52 (2004): 44. 4. Sigmund Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia” Standard Edition Vol. 14, Trans. James Strachey. London: Hogarth, 1953: 253. 5. David Kennedy “The Beyond of the Subject : Mourning, Desire and the Uncanny.” Textual Practice 23. 4 (2009): 581. 6. Kennedy quotes Kate Lilley to explain, “Expenditure is the goal of elegy, as well as an account of how the elegist spends himself in the service of desire, in the articulation of desire” (581). 7. Pamela Thurschwell, Sigmund Freud. London: Routledge, 2000: 91. 8. Anne Anlin Cheng, The Melancholy of Race. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000: 8. 9. Ibid., 8. 10. David Eng and David Kazanjian, eds., Loss: The Politics of Mourning. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003: 3.

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Part Two: Philosophy and Pushing Daisies 11. Episodes 1.8, “Bitter Sweets,” and 2.8, “Comfort Food,” respectively. The antidepressants are first introduced in Episode 1.3, “The Fun in Funeral.” 12. From the Greek word for death, thanatos, Freud’s theories of the life and death drives, eros and thanatos, and the medico-academic study of death and dying, thanatolog y. Alessandra Stanley’s New York Times review of the show (“Loner Finds He Has a Touch for Piemaking and Undeadmaking,” New York Times 3 October 2007. Web. 18 January 2010) names Pushing Daisies as a standout in “a season already overloaded with series [...] that toy with the undead and paranormality” that she refers to as a trend of “thanatological correctness.” 13. Clewell, 44. 14. Clewell, 48. 15. Episode 1.1, “Pie-Lette” 16. Ibid. 17. “Pie-Lette.” The substitute death is also on an economy of roughly equivalent scale: when Ned revives a batch of frogs in a science lab, a cluster of birds drop out of a nearby tree (Episode 1.2, “Dummy”). When he reanimates fruit, we see flowers in the window box wilt and die. Rationalizing the resurrection of Chuck’s bee colony, he speculates that his ability will eradicate the building’s water bug infestation (Episode 2.1, “Bzzzzzzz!”). Keeping Chuck alive causes the death of the funeral director in an adjacent room (“The Fun in Funeral”). 18. “Pie-Lette.” 19. The evening after Ned witnesses Digby’s, his mother’s, and Chuck’s father’s deaths, his mother dies a second time (and permanently) when she kisses him goodnight. 20. Bryan Fuller and Barry Sonnenfield, Interview with David Bianculli Fresh Air. NPR. WHYY: Philadelphia. 2 October 2007. 21. Judith Butler, The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997: 134. 22. In the final moments of the series finale, Ned and Chuck move from this internalized mode to an externalization of her existence when they show up at Aunt Lily’s and Vivian’s doorstep. 23. After his mother’s death, his father “hustle[s] him off to boarding school, never to see him again” (“Pie-Lette”). 24. Thurschwell, 91. 25. There are rare exceptions: in “Bzzzzzzz!” when he goes undercover to work for Betty’s Bees, Ned wears a tan blazer with gold trim. In “Comfort Food,” he is decked out in a colorfully striped vest and cherry pie-adorned straw boater hat. 26. For more on clothing and gender see Alissa Burger’s “Fashion, Femininity, and the 1950s: Costume and Identity Negotiation in Pushing Daisies” (Chapter 10). 27. “Dummy.” 28. “Pie-Lette.” 29. Episode 2.4, “Frescorts.” 30. Ned’s effect on taxidermy (or more accurately “reverse taxidermy”) animals is utilized in “Robbing Hood” (Episode 2.7) and “Window Dressed to Kill” (Episode 2.11). 31. “Comfort Food.” 32. Ibid. 33. Episode 1.7, “Smell of Success.”

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4. Consuming Grief and Eating Pie (Williams) 34. Emphasis mine. 35. Will Glover, “Pushing Daisies as Sweet as Pie” Knight Ridder Tribune Business News. 3 October 2007. Web. 18 January 2010. 36. “The Fun in Funeral.” 37. “Smell of Success.” 38. Episode 2.10, “The Norwegians.” 39. “Window Dressed to Kill.” 40. Episode 1.5, “Girth.” 41. For a further queer interpretation of the series, see Daniel Farr’s “The Queer, Quirky World of Pushing Daisies” (Chapter 8). 42. Emphasis in original. 43. “Dummy.” 44. “The Fun in Funeral.” 45. “Dummy.” 46. Episode 2.9, “The Legend of Merle McQuoddy.” 47. “Window Dressed to Kill” and “Bzzzzzzz!” 48. Episode 1.4, “Pigeon.” 49. Episode 2.6, “Oh, Oh, Oh ... It’s Magic.” 50. Eng and Kazanjian 3–4. 51. Episode 2.13, “Kerplunk.”

Works Cited Butler, Judith. The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997. Cheng, Anne Anlin. The Melancholy of Race. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Clewell, Tammy. “Mourning Beyond Melancholia: Freud’s Psychoanalysis of Loss.” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 52 (2004): 43–67. Downing, Crystal. “Misshapen Chaos of Well-Seeming Form: Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet.” Literature / Film Quarterly 28.2 (2000): 125–131. Eng, David, and David Kazanjian eds. Loss: The Politics of Mourning. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. Freud, Sigmund. “Mourning and Melancholia.” Standard Edition. Vol. 14. Trans. James Strachey. London: Hogarth, 1953: 243–258. Fuller, Bryan, and Barry Sonnenfield. Interview with David Bianculli. Fresh Air. NPR. WHYY, Philadelphia. 2 October 2007. Glover, Will. “Pushing Daisies as Sweet as Pie.” Knight Ridder Tribune Business News 3 October 2007. Web. 18 January 2010. Kennedy, David. “The Beyond of the Subject: Mourning, Desire and the Uncanny.” Textual Practice 23. 4 (2009): 581–598. Lehmann, Courtney. “Strictly Shakespeare? Dead Letters, Ghostly Fathers, and the Cultural Pathology of Authorship in Baz Luhrmann’s William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet.” Shakespeare Quarterly 52. 2 (2001): 189–221. Pushing Daisies: The Complete First Season. Created by Bryan Fuller. Perf. Lee Pace, Anna Friel, Chi McBride, Kristin Chenoweth. ABC, 2007–2008. DVD. Warner Home Video, 2007.

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Part Two: Philosophy and Pushing Daisies Pushing Daisies: The Complete Second Season. Created by Bryan Fuller. Perf. Lee Pace, Anna Friel, Chi McBride, Kristin Chenoweth. ABC, 2008–2009. DVD. Warner Home Video, 2009. Thurschwell, Pamela. Sigmund Freud. London: Routledge, 2000. Stanley, Alessandra. “Loner Finds He Has a Touch for Piemaking and Undeadmaking.” New York Times 3 October 2007. Web. . Accessed 18 January 2010. William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet. Dir. Baz Luhrmann. Perf. Leonardo DiCaprio, Claire Danes. 20th Century–Fox, 1996. DVD.

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5

“Neophobic Ned Needs Neoteny” Neuroses and Child’s Play ANN-GEE LEE

“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things” —1 Corinthians 13:11

It seems we have always drawn a line between childhood and adulthood, and “never the twain shall meet.” While this Biblical quote seems idealistic, does any adult really put away “childish things?” Or more importantly, do they want to? Whether they are aware or not, humans have a tendency of carrying these “childish things” with them, both mentally and physically. Nietzsche wrote, “[i]n the true man, there is a child concealed — who wants to play.”1 This tendency, neoteny, derived from the Greek, teinen, “to stretch,” has been defined as, “the retention of childlike attributes into adulthood” with such attributes including “sensitivity, curiosity, creativity, humor, wonder, joy, imagination and playfulness.”2 Neoteny as a scientific theory has long been associated with animal development. In the last several decades, however, psychologists have begun associating neoteny with play and other psychologically-critical characteristics humans retain from childhood, such as those mentioned above. At the 2008 Technology, Entertainment, and Design (TED) conference, Stuart Brown presented on the importance of play,”3 stressing the idea that people need to preserve their childhood interest in play as a way to potentially become happier, and even smarter, adults. Not doing so may lead to serious consequences. 73


In relation to neoteny, the theories of neophobia and neophlia will be applied to this analysis. In Why People Play, M.J. Ellis refers to Desmond Morris, who explains two types of organisms: neophobic and neophilic, which are perfect descriptions of Ned the Pie-Maker and Charlotte “Chuck” Charles in Pushing Daisies. Morris describes neophobic organisms as those that prefer “rigid niches with small behavioral repertoires.” 4 Neophilic organisms, on the other hand, are “novelty-liking” and have a “wide behavioral repertoire, where adaptive responses and up-to-date information about the environment are at a selective premium.”5 Play is usually associated with neophilic organisms. In the case of these two protagonists, Chuck is the neophile. Ned is a young man afflicted with neuroses and negative views of the world due to loss and trauma experienced since childhood. Ned is representative of the non-neotenous “adult” who could benefit from some play in his life, but is instead conditioned to “play it safe.” His childhood sweetheart, Charlotte “Chuck” Charles, whom he brought back to life, has lost those “adult” inhibitions in her new life: no longer afraid of death, she is free to play, and becomes healthier for it. Over the course of the series, her positive influence on Ned eventually pulls him out of his doldrums and shows him the fun in life that comes from having nothing to lose. This essay examines the growing childlike nature of Ned after the introduction of Chuck’s neotenic influence, achieved through the analysis of the characters’ personality traits and actions with neophilic and/or neophobic distinction. Ultimately, I argue the positive aspects of neoteny, such as “sensitivity, curiosity, creativity, humor, wonder, joy, imagination and playfulness”6 act as the cure for the phobias and doubts that afflict Ned.

Neoteny and Scholarship Usually associated with neoteny, until recently play has not been a topic that has been taken seriously. In fact, social anthropologist Ashley Montagu blames the United States culture, which has “transformed play into an aggressive drive to win.”7 He claims, “the authentic meaning and purpose of play has been confused and corrupted.”8 Normally associated with the idiom “child’s play,” the subject of play has become more popular 74

5. “Neophobic Ned Needs Neoteny” (Lee)

in recent years. Illuminating the benefits of play, Montagu asserts that “[s]uch play ... has led to the enormous broadening of perceptual horizons, new discoveries, further exploration, and mastery over the environment. Play has probably been the most important factor in the evolution of social behavior among vertebrates.”9 Early studies on neoteny related to animals and quantitative analysis of their physical growth and appearance. Studies of primates have led to findings regarding their physical and biological similarities to humans. As research in the field progressed, researchers began to study other animals’ interactions with one another. In his examination of bears, animal expert Bob Fagen shares his ideas of play with psychologist Stuart Brown, arguing that “[i]n a world continuously presenting unique challenges and ambiguity, play prepares them for an evolving planet.”10 Animal research often leads to similar studies with humans; therefore, this is an issue of which we should take note. Of more immediate relevance to us today are studies of the transition from childhood to adulthood and the role of physical and mental play. In her 1968 book, The Psycholog y of Play, Suzanna Millar mentions that Plato and Aristotle both gave thought to the importance of play. The latter believed that children should “play” as if they are adults to better prepare them for adulthood.11 Therefore, once they reached adulthood, they could make a smooth transition and be more ready to face adversity. To demonstrate this child-to-adult transition, Montagu lists various neotenic traits active throughout the human life cycle, including: playfulness, love, friendship, sensitivity, sound thinking, to know, to learn, work, organization, curiosity, wonder, imagination, creativity, open-mindedness, flexibility, experimental-explorativeness, mindedness, enthusiasm, resiliency, joyfulness, sense of humor, optimism, laughter and tears, compassion, honesty-trust, intelligence, song, and dance.12

As shown above, these characteristics and activities can be employed by any child or adult. Support for studies on neoteny and play have been apparent not only in biology and psychology but have also been branching out to anthropological and cultural studies as well. In his 1974 article, “Anthropological Views of Play,” Edward Norbeck reveals that due to the Protestant work ethic, play was associated with being idle, which is a sin. Thus, for many 75


years, studies on play or even the consideration of play as research-worthy have been rejected. However, Norbeck asserts: “[p]lay is universal human behavior. It exists in every human society, and it is both a biological and cultural phenomenon.”13 Since play has not been a field of research that has been taken seriously until recently, his words from thirty-some years ago might make more sense today with researchers like Brown making it more easily understood for general audiences. Many studies are discovering the detriment caused by lack of play. Psychologist and president of the National Institute for Play, Stuart Brown, conducted clinical research in various hospitals for 20 years, spending his time observing 8,000 patients’ instances of play and finding how crucial play was in their recovery process. Brown laments the fact that some adults have the tendency to divide their life into work versus play, which is not what children do. Children are almost always continuously engaging in physical or mental play. Brown also laments the notion that although neoteny is a natural part of life, this “major genetic design” has been deprioritized, especially in educational and familial circumstances.14 Such findings show how crucial the implementation of various types of play and retention of neotenous characteristics is to the life of a healthy adult — a fact which is often overlooked. Brown and his research team have worked with prisoners as well and have linked deprivation of play to murderous intentions. According to Brown, play reveres and affirms life as sacred: “[i]t doesn’t kill or dominate, it handicaps the strong with the weak, it crosses species lines and probably leads humans toward vegetarianism; [it] evokes peace and security and avoids true violence.”15 Play can be a way to exercise the mind or body or, as Plato believed, prepare us for hardships and the unknown. Therefore, a little play does not hurt anyone; moreover, more play may benefit everyone’s well-being, especially their mental health and maturity, which is what will be examined first with Ned.

Ned’s Neophobia As a consequence of his strangeness, Ned has thoroughly detached himself from the world of the living, but as the show progresses, the largest 76


portion of his growth is his opening of himself and his mind to new experiences. Ned lives a comfortable, self-disciplined life. As he tells Chuck, “it’s pretty much I bake pies and wake the dead. I live a very sheltered life.” 16 This is especially true as Ned has not had many companions in his life due to his special ability and family issues. Ned has an inability to be close to anyone; this lack of physical contact leads to emotional detachment as well. It all began the day he discovered his power: his beloved dog, Digby, was hit by a diesel truck and instantly killed.17 However, with one touch from Ned, Digby came back to life. Regrettably, Ned cannot touch Digby ever again. In terms of family, Ned grew up mostly with his mother, who died of an aneurysm. Ned brought her back to life, which caused Chuck to lose her father, who was next door, watering his lawn; Ned unfortunately lost his mother again when she kissed him goodnight. From these experiences, Ned learned the Rule: “first touch, life; second touch, dead again forever.”18 There is also another caveat: if he revives someone for longer than a minute, another life in close proximity will be taken, which he unfortunately did not learn until he inadvertently killed Chuck’s father. From the time he lost his mother, Ned has not liked being touched. The Narrator explains that after Ned’s mother’s death, “he avoided social attachments ... fearing what would happen if they died.” When Chuck says, “[y]ou can’t just touch somebody’s life and be done with it,” Ned replies, “[y]es, I can. That’s how I roll.”19 Every time he must revive a dead body and then touch it again to keep it dead, he shudders. Moreover, due to the fact he can revive dead things, he must be a vegetarian and cannot eat his own pies, which consist of rotten fruit which he has brought back to life; he must also be careful around animals preserved by taxidermy. Due to his special ability and family situations, Ned is very uptight and usually pessimistic. When Chuck tells him to loosen up, Ned says, “I don’t do loose. I prefer tightly wound” and adds that he prefers there to be no extra room for surprises.20 Ned is not a fan of surprises, although Chuck likes to call herself one; however, she is one of the few exceptions he allows. Within the show, Ned is the easiest to surprise, and his mouth is always agape when anything goes awry. When the Pie Hole group is bullied by the Balsam siblings and war is declared on The Pie Hole, Ned refuses to retaliate and says, “[y]ou let your emotions get away from you 77


and everything falls apart.”21 Later, when Chuck decides that they should fight back, he implores her: “Chuck, don’t go to the dark side. Revenge never works.” Though Ned will fight in rare instances, when faced with danger, he mostly tries to avoid conflict with others. He also prefers to keep his social circle small since the more people he meets, the greater the likelihood that his secret could be discovered if he accidentally disclosed anything through word or action. Also, as a form of self-protection, Ned learned to lie after his father had promised he would be back and never reappeared.22 Ned feels abandoned and instead of allowing others to abandon him, he tends to abandon them first. He can also be selfish. When Chuck asks him if he brought her back as an act of kindness, he replies, “I was being selfish. I’d love to tell myself I was being unselfish, but I know deep down I was being selfish for selfish reasons. I just thought my world would be a better place if you were in it.”23 Continuing the conversation, when she asks who else he has revived from the dead, he tells her about Digby, herself, and nobody else, because he needs to hold onto his secret for a while longer. Ned’s other concerns arise from others’ perceptions of him. Since he was a child, he has feared being discovered; he reveals to other characters his nightmares of being shut in white walls and being dissected to every inch, like a government experiment.24 When he was in school, he was often distressed by the fact he could bring dead things back to life. Ned sees his gift as more of a curse and dislikes himself for having this power and for causing anyone grief because of it. When they talk to travel agent Deedee Duffield, he admits to Chuck, “I’m sort of embarrassed to do it in front of you.”25 He is ashamed of his ability; this shame causes him to disassociate him from others, and he is especially worried about their possible reactions. Since Chuck’s father died, Ned has always felt guilty for what he did, however inadvertently. When he visits the funeral parlor to see Chuck, he intends to tell her what he had done so many years ago: killed her father. When he decides to keep her alive on a whim, he must hold onto that secret for a little longer, which just adds to his paranoia. However, his biggest fear is that something could happen to Chuck and he is terrified of the consequences of people finding out that she is alive again. Every time he mentions the possibility of people discovering she is alive again, he refers to issues of morality, as well as the possibility of facing 78


torches and pitchforks, an allusion to the townspeople’s reaction in Frankenstein. In addition to emotional anxiety, Ned experiences biological problems when he is placed in uncomfortable situations. In a couple of episodes, his eye twitches, and Emerson Cod, the private investigator with whom he has a partnership, or Chuck can detect something is wrong.26 Ned has “anxiety-induced acid reflux” when he is around magic because his father used to perform magic tricks for him, and his ultimate magic trick was disappearing from Ned’s life.27 Afraid that Dwight Dixon (Stephen Root) will find out the truth about Chuck, he bakes constantly, calling it “stressbaking.”28 When he is not actually baking, but is stressed, he says he is “stress-baking in my head.”29 Such examples show Ned’s paranoia and constant fear, which mostly arise from his so-called gift and the fact that he blames his father for abandoning him. Ned is also a man bound by rules and regulations that prevent conflict and provide protection. When Chuck’s father returns in “The Legend of Merle McQuoddy,”30 Ned asks him to stay upstairs in Ned’s apartment and not come out. He even creates a Rule Book for him to follow; as a result, Chuck’s father runs away, not one to be restricted by rules, a trait she inherits from him. When rules are broken and his comfort zones are being invaded, Ned’s neuroses multiply. Fortunately, when he learns to let go of those neuroses, he allows himself to feel happiness, which he has heretofore never felt he has deserved.

Chuck’s Neophilia Until the pleasure cruise that results in her death, Chuck, who lost her father at a young age and never knew her mother, had never really stepped out of her home to experience life; all she knew were her aunts and her books. According to the Narrator, “[s]he read about people she could never be, on adventures she would never have.”31 Her ideas of “fun” were restricted to her aunts’ home and local events. It was not until she died and was resurrected that she really began to live. Chuck reflects on her life and then concludes, “I guess dying’s as good a reason as any to start living.”32Chuck, the neophile, wants to be physically free. She is no 79


longer afraid of death and takes on a daredevil attitude. She wants to live her new life to the fullest and have fun. She dislikes Ned telling her to stay home. As Ned tells Emerson, “[s]he said she didn’t climb out of a coffin for me to keep her in a box.”33 These words show her strong will and free spirit. Chuck also finds a thrill or a “high” when she puts herself in danger’s way. When she knows full well that her killer will be paying her aunts a visit, she deliberately gets out of the car even after Ned has told her to stay there, goes up to the window to spy on Ned and her aunts, and then climbs up the side of the house to the second floor to find out what her murderer was seeking.34 Ned, of course, is shocked and unhappy about this since he is concerned for her safety and does not know what he would do if the secret were out. In another episode, when she goes to the murder scene at a stable, wishing to confront the ghost and ask him questions, she takes Digby with her and jokes that they are the “walking dead” on Halloween.35 Though like any other living person she begins her search somewhat afraid, she wishes to talk to the “ghost” to get some answers about life. Before going into the morgue for the first time,36 she says, “[h]i, Emerson. Isn’t this exciting?” although Emerson is clearly is not happy with her tagging along or the fact that she is even alive. Chuck even occasionally risks dying because she wants to be close to Ned. In the beginning, she wants to sit in the front seat of the car with him, and after he repeatedly reminds her how the slightest graze could kill her, she finally relents, saying, “I’d kiss you if it wouldn’t kill me.”37 However, she is not afraid of death anymore and in her new life, Chuck still knows how to protect herself, proving so to those who believe otherwise. For instance, in the first episode, before she even knew Ned was the one who had brought her back to life, she uses the coffin lid to attack him. In addition, after her Aunt Lily shoots Chuck’s killer, Chuck gives him a good kick.38 She often thinks of how she wished she had lived, and being able to face her killer and defend herself as she was unable to do during her murder, however belatedly, helps alleviate some of the regret. Moreover, she has lived a very sheltered life with mostly pleasant people, so when she encounters adversity, she tends to become defensive and finds a way to get even with people who are mean to her. For example, initially, Emerson does not take a liking to her: she is “Dead Girl” and 80


should stay that way. Therefore, his feelings of annoyance intensify when she accompanies them to the City Morgue. During their first trip to the morgue, he locks her out of the car.39 After Emerson is done talking to Ned and gets out, she gets back into the car and locks Emerson out.40 This kind of revenge mechanism is childlike. To get even with the Balsam bullies, who opened up a new candy shop across the street, she and Olive dress up in slinky black outfits with ski masks and sabotage the candy shop. She says to Ned, after the sabotage, “[s]orry, my whole body is pumping with adrenaline.”41 Chuck readily shows how she feels, perhaps because it makes her feel more alive. She also has a heightened sense of right and wrong. She often calls people out on what they are doing wrong, calling them liars and cheaters. In the final episode of the series, Ned revives the dead body of one of her aunts’ enemies, Blanch Remora, who proceeds to insult her aunts. This infuriates Chuck, who then tells Ned: “[t]ouch her! Touch her before she talks back. Touch her!” and laughs and adds “[t]hat felt so good” when Ned returns Blanche to her previous dead state.42 These examples demonstrate childish yet satisfying instances in which neoteny allows Chuck to successfully face enemies and conflict. Another play activity children like to engage in is dressing up and pretending to be someone they are not. In instances of danger, Chuck wears a disguise or goes undercover. Chuck dresses up as a ghost to visit her aunts for a trick-or-treat at two in the morning.43 She goes undercover at Betty’s Bees44 and enjoys it because it was her first job interview and her first job, based on something she had expertise in, bees. When Olive encounters a murder during her stint at the nunnery, she asks Emerson and the team to help her find the killer, and Chuck of course, dresses up as a nun.45 Later, she and Olive find themselves employed by My Best Friend, Inc., trying to find the killer of a recently-murdered Frescort, Joe.46 In one case, she and Olive are hired as waitresses in the dim sum restaurant, donning wigs and intricate hairpieces as part of their elaborate disguises.47 In the final episode,48 she dresses up as a male janitor to deliberately sabotage her aunts’ synchronized swimming soundtrack. These instances all relate to neoteny, as children often dress up and play pretend. However, grown-up Chuck has childlike ways of dealing with reality. She cannot be discovered and hence has to undertake new identities. In her new life, she can be whoever she wants to be. 81


Despite her joy in playing pretend, Chuck has not lost her love for learning. Leading a very sheltered life, she seldom went out and lived vicariously through characters in her many books. Chuck contributes to the team with her background as a voracious reader and she continues to apply her love for learning to the cases. She even shocks Emerson and Ned with her knowledge of the law, revealing that she had experience “volunteering as a stay-at-home juror for a paraplegic judge.”49 In the Halloween episode “Girth,” she began reading about ghosts to see how the team could handle the case or even better, find ways to communicate with the ghost.50 In one instance, when she befriends a thief, she informs the gang that her Grueneberg ganglia, “bundle of nerves on tip of nose that detects pheromones,” indicates whether she can trust someone or not.51 With their icebox full of exotic cheeses, she has learned about smells and olfactory power from her aunts. The most useful information Chuck has learned, however, from years of being a “shut-in” comes from countless hours of listening to foreign language tapes. When Ned and Emerson, with Chuck tagging along, are looking for the murderer of a Dandy Lion car company employee, she speaks Japanese to company CEO Mark Chase, who speaking to potential Japanese investors.52 When she wants to find out whether Lily really is her mother, she pretends to be a telephone surveyor, calling Lily a few times, using different accents.53 At the dim sum restaurant, she not only speaks Chinese to the murder victim, but translates from English for the murder victim’s friend, who is also a Chinese speaker.54 Her knowledge of these languages proves to be very helpful in terms of finding clues to cases. Chuck even considers herself intelligent in an episode in which Ned is not around to wake the murder victim, and she and Emerson must resort to “old-fashioned way” of investigating, which Chuck considers fun. In trying to convince Emerson to allow her to help, she says, “I may not be Superman, but I’m smart and I’m helpful.”55 I would associate these instances to growth because before she was murdered, she had studied many things. The cases that allow her to apply that knowledge were merely the exams. Chuck admires people for having different talents and has a large repertoire of skills, even for a shut-in. She carries the same sense of awe about the world she had when she was a child. Of course, being alive again, Chuck does have a few adult-related worries of her own, including 82


frequently worrying about her aunts’ well-being and her fear that since she and Ned cannot touch one another that he might move on.

Neoteny and Love Some of Ned and Chuck’s neotenic moments come from their relationship. Ned and Chuck begin as strangers with only blissful childhood memories to propel them. Emerson tells Ned, “[y]ou don’t know anything about her except she had soft lips when she was ten.” Ned replies, “[t]hat should be enough.”56 In the same episode, Chuck feels the need to reacquaint herself with Ned, who is still not fully open with her about what has been going on since they were children. She says, “I don’t know anything about you since you were nine” and asks him, “[w]e haven’t seen each other for 20 years. Don’t you want to know about me? I want to know everything about you.” The truth of the matter is, since they have not seen each other for many years, they can only still refer to the things they did as children unless he opens up, which he has trouble doing. Ned and Chuck’s attraction to each other resembles teenage puppy love. When Chuck’s father wants Ned to stay away from her Chuck tells Ned to think of her father’s attitude as a way to relive their teenage years, to “break curfews and mislead our parents and generally sneak around.”57 She is amused that her father is giving her first boyfriend a hard time. She refers to herself as a “flirty head cheerleader” and Ned as “the studly varsity quarterback.”58 This appeals to Ned because as he was growing up, he probably was not able to have such adolescent experiences. Also, Chuck was his first love, and when she was alive, they were not able to have a relationship because they were separated as children. In the final episode of the series, when Chuck has to stay home while the gang goes to the Aquacade to protect Lily and Vivian, Ned correlates it to Chuck serving “detention” while they go off on “spring break” without her, though she says she does not mind.59 Ned seems to know that Chuck likes these childish allusions because it gives them both a second chance together. Additionally, their relationship is also replete with fairy tale references. The couple often allude to romantic notions, such as Sleeping Beauty and Prince Charming. When Ned first sees Chuck in her coffin before he wakes 83


her, the narrator notes that “[o]nly Prince Charming could know how the Pie Maker felt upon looking at her.”60 These fairy tale references lead to unusually high expectations for each other. As a result, they seem to hide secrets from each other to maintain the image of perfection. Moreover, while there are obstacles in their relationship, such as the inability to touch each other, as well as envying those around them who can, such factors make the relationship fun and challenging — resembling play — usually, but also difficult, as Chuck admits when they find themselves locked in the trunk of a car.61 Luckily, since they know that they must be mature adults in their communication, they often talk out their problems. When the problems, which are usually serious issues, are resolved, then they can begin to once again engage in play. Moreover, Ned’s love for Chuck brings out surprising instances of bravery in him. For example, when he is placed in a life-death situation (they are, after all, almost always in pursuit of murderers), he will repeatedly chooses the fight response instead of flight response although he remains extremely nervous until the danger has passed. This is evident in the episode in which they chase down Wilfred Woodruff,62 the Asian American descendent of a confederate soldier. He and Ned have a swordfight, which is depicted as very romantic, especially evident with the grin Ned sends toward Chuck after Woodruff is conquered. Again, this is a rare instance of Ned’s bravery arising from feelings for Chuck. While romantic notions are normal for most couples, Ned and Chuck have a very unconventional relationship: they cannot touch each other because if they do, Chuck will die again and cannot be revived a second time. Therefore, one interesting way Ned and Chuck compromise their physical and psychological limitations is through improvisation. Since Digby was the first dead thing he revived, Ned created a wooden arm that allows him to pet Digby. In one scene, Ned even strokes Chuck’s cheek with the wooden appendage. Moreover, when he revives Chuck, they have to find a way to cohabitate without killing her, so Ned comes up with a system to create organization in their lives. Whenever they are within the vicinity of the other, they announce whether they are entering or leaving or what they are doing so that they will not accidentally bump into each other. Olive wonders why Ned and Chuck’s relationship lacks touch. Chuck says they can only touch “prophylactical-ly” and invents an “allergy” 84


that explains why she and Ned cannot touch. In regards to touching “prophylactically,” since they cannot directly touch each other, they kiss with plastic wrap between them, hug each other by wrapping garbage bags around the other, dance with each other in bee suits, and ride in the car with a plastic partition between them and a hole with a rubber glove that allows them to hold hands; they even sleep the same way, with a plastic partition between them and rubber gloves enabling them to hold onto each other while sleeping. When they do not use these instruments, they hold their own hands or hug themselves simultaneously. However, an easier way for them to “touch” one another is by wearing gloves, which leads Ned to deem winter his favorite time of year and contemplate moving to the South Pole.63 His jokes often show how although he is improvising, he wishes life were different. Other times, they find a substitute if someone is else is around, usually Emerson, who dislikes their “lovey-dovey” manners, or Olive. Whenever Chuck has just escaped danger, she will hug Emerson as a replacement for Ned. Sometimes, Chuck says to Ned, “I’m going to hug Digby and pretend he’s you.”64 In one episode, they see a “hug machine” at My Best Friend, Inc. and although Ned is “not a fan of the hug,” he uses the machine to pretend he is hugging Chuck.65 All of these examples demonstrate their creativity in the way they interact as a couple.

Neoteny and Creativity In relation to neoteny, creativity is an important factor. Montagu states, “[p]lay, imagination, make-believe, daydreaming, reverie, and fantasy are fundamental neotenous traits which are precursors of creativity in young adult and later life.”66 This pertains to Ned and Chuck because when they were together as children, they played pretend, though it was a more destructive form of pretend, in which they imagined they were giant lizards terrorizing a tiny city. Montagu emphasizes that “[m]akebelieve and daydreaming are universal childhood traits, and there probably never has been an adult who has not indulged in this imaginative behavior — which is something more than imaginative, for it is very often cre85


ative.”67 Obviously, Ned has some psychological growing to do; however, Chuck’s death has allowed her to embrace a childhood approach which has liberated her from the concerns of adulthood. This approach and freedom allow her to use her imagination and creativity to help them both cope with the changes in their lives and enjoy them. Chuck finds her own way to relate to things she does not understand. For example, when they encounter a murder suspect who has a life-sized doll as a girlfriend, she says, “[m]aybe that’s his truth that’s different from our truth.”68 While most of the time, Ned initially disagrees with Chuck but eventually learns to see things her way, sometimes she tries to put herself in his shoes. With this, she visualizes. When she finds out crooked funeral director Lawrence Schatz died as a result of her being alive again, she is unhappy because she feels like her life is not her own since someone else’s life was given to replace hers.69 In the same episode, relating to their childish notions of love, she tells Ned, “I asked myself if I were storming a castle to save a Sleeping Beauty from the jaws of death and in the melee, my Sword of Truth flew swift and short and killed an unfortunate outlaw nearby, how would I feel?” Ned asks and Chuck replies, “I’d feel happy and then bad, and primarily happy and then I’d think about it too much and then I’d feel bad again.”70 While this is nothing like the dinosaurrampaging they did as children, she is using a method she used as a child to understand present-day circumstances. Despite his neuroses, Ned also has a creative way of coping with his problems. As Montagu states, “[c]hildhood is the province of the imagination, yet in the wasteland between imagination and reality only too often lie the unrealized dreams of the child. Reality defeats most men, and only a few dare challenge it with their imagination.”71 As a boy, since Ned no longer had parents to comfort him and had only one friend at school, he finds a way to bring back his feeling of home — through pies. When he baked pies, he helped the other boys at school cope with their homesickness and he realized the other power he had in his ability to evoke the feeling of being “warm, safe, and loved”72 with others. To Ned, pies always bring him a sense of home and he is thrilled when Olive and Randy begin their relationship in The Pie Hole,73 as it provides the perfect ambience for romance. Baking pies is how Ned creates comfort in his chaotic world. Play and creativity contributes to how the Pie Hole gang solves the 86


cases. In almost every episode, they work to solve at least two problems: a murder and a personal problem between them. Ned and Chuck mature from lessons learned from their crime cases. During each case, one or both of them have an epiphany and figure out a way to make their relationship work. This is where I would argue that neoteny in the form of play, a much more beneficial characteristic that they brought with them from childhood, allows them to cope with the realities of life and enables them to grow psychologically.

Neoteny and Language Besides their actions, we can also see neotenic traits in the ways the protagonists talk. Montagu posits, “[p]layfulness and the sense of humor are, of course, very closely allied, as are laughter, wit, imagination, and creativity; all these are in fact a form of play. It is in the play of ideas and the unexpected, the incongruous and yet strangely congruous, that humor is generated.”74 In the dialogue between Ned and Chuck, sometimes, the figurative becomes the literal, or both are used. For example, Chuck wants to follow Ned and Emerson to find out who had killed her. Ned tells her not to push her luck. She retorts with, “[w]ell, Luck pushed me first.”75 Though their job is to solve murders and they are often surrounded by tragedy, Chuck the idealist believes, “[t]he world would be better if they dabbed calamine on welts of bad news.”76 Chuck is also fond of personification. When she is back in her room in the same episode, she declares, “[i]t’s amazing how a familiar smell can wrap you in its arms and cuddle away any ugly memories between now and the last time you smelled it.”77 Another example of her word play arises from her embrace for the new and unknown. When they talk to Emerson’s murdered nemesis, the victim wonders where he is; she tells him that dying and being alive again is like “a limbo-y non-denominational way station.”78 Instead of telling him that he is basically dead, she finds an interesting euphemism to console him. Such instances of word play exhibit Chuck’s neophilic traits. In contrast, Ned’s dialogue is related to his neuroticism and insecurities. When she asks about his ability to bring the dead back to life, expresses his mixed feelings, telling her that “I don’t want you to think I’m 87


a killer.”79 Ned’s social circle is very small, and though he does have these friends, he feels closest to Chuck. Her opinion means the most to him. He tries to change to accommodate her. However, most episodes begin with Ned’s aversion to change. For example, Chuck has an idea of baking miniature pies, which she calls “cup pies,” but he explains that he is a “purist” who only believes in traditional pies. Later, he is able to see things from her perspective and adds cup pies to the menu.80 These are all examples of healthy play that allows them to keep their mind on the case while also trying to have fun.

Neophilic Ned It is with the influence of Chuck that Ned transforms — from neophobe to neophile. He experiences pleasant emotions through their relationship, creativity through improvisation, and word play inspired by Chuck. However, it seems his growth arises whenever the two encounter a problem because one of them is hiding a secret. He learns that he feels much more relieved after not having to keep something inside. The audience can see growth in Ned when Emerson muses about him not “squawking” about something.81 Since Ned has often complained or found another pessimistic way of viewing the situation, even Chuck is surprised when he does not. Ned even admits that Chuck is a “big girl” now, and she can take care of herself. Similarly, when Chuck stays in Olive’s apartment, which makes Ned unhappy, he reveals his emotions to Chuck. He informs her that even though he knows she can take care of herself, he fears they are growing apart. She asks him, “[w]hat is so terrible about starting fresh?” He replies, “[b]ecause starting fresh means something else is ending stale. You’re Chuck, who I destroyed Play-Doh cities with. Chuck, my best friend, my first kiss. I don’t want that to change.”82 Ned wishes to take care of Chuck and protect her, but also knows she wants to be herself and tries to accomodate that. He needs to let her “grow up” and he also needs to grow up himself. Moreover, Ned has found people around him to love, and they accept him for who he is. During the course of the show, Ned begins by hating himself and his capabilities; with the help of Chuck, he later learns to compromise, which allows him to come to terms with who he really is. 88


In the case of our Pie Maker protagonist, Ned, the traumas of his youth and the very real necessity to be careful with his special circumstances mean that he has been alienated from the ability to be care-free. When Chuck re-enters his life, her own set of special circumstances allow her to be his guide back to a healthy adult balance between care, responsibility, and play. At the beginning of the series, it feels like Ned and Chuck are extremes — hence, the neophobic and neophilic distinctions. Over the course of the series, they both inch towards a healthy center. As research has shown that neoteny, in the form of play, is good for us, this would suggest that we need more shows like Pushing Daisies, but ironically, we as viewers and mainstream consumers tend to reject them. As the responsibilities and pressures of adult life force us to grow up, rare shows like Pushing Daisies remind us of the play, imagination, creativity, and humor — all the best things about life from our childhood. Ned and Chuck were only allowed 22 episodes to demonstrate the fact, and viewers know the two still have a lot of growing up to do.

Chapter Notes 1. Ashley Montagu, Growing Young. 2d ed. Granby: Bergin & Garvey, 1989: 130. 2. “The Meaning of Neoteny.” Neoteny Labs, 2009. Web. 4 August 2010. 3. Stuart Brown, “Why Play Is Vital — No Matter Your Age.” YouTube, 12 March 2009. Web. 4 August 2010. 4. M.J. Ellis, Why People Play. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1973: 81. 5. Ibid. 6. “The Meaning of Neoteny.” 7. Montagu, 129. 8. Ibid. 9. Montagu, 131. 10. Stuart L. Brown, “Through the Lens of Play,” ReVision 17.4 (1995): 5. 11. Suzanna Millar, The Psycholog y of Play. Baltimore: Penguin, 1968: 13. 12. Brown, 10. 13. Edward Norbeck, “Anthropological Views of Play,” American Zoologist. 14.1 (Winter 1974): 267–268. 14. Brown, 10. 15. Brown, 11. 16. Episode 1.2, “Dummy.” 17. Episode 1.1, “Pie-Lette.” 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid. 20. Episode 1.7, “Smell of Success.”

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Part Two: Philosophy and Pushing Daisies 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68.

Episode 1.8, “Bitter Sweets.” “Pie-Lette.” Ibid. Episode 2.7, “Robbing Hood.” “Pie-Lette.” “Pie-Lette,” “Dummy.” Episode 2.6, “Oh-Oh-Oh ... It’s Magic.” “Robbing Hood.” Ibid. Episode 2.9, “The Legend of Merle McQuoddy.” “Pie-Lette.” Ibid. “Dummy.” “Pie-Lette.” Episode 1.5, “Girth.” “Dummy.” “Pie-Lette.” Ibid. “Dummy.” Ibid. “Bitter Sweets.” Episode 2.13, “Kerplunk.” “Girth.” Episode 2.1, “Bzzzzzzzzz!” Episode 2.3, “Bad Habits.” Episode 2.4, “Frescorts.” Episode 2.5, “Dim Sum Lose Some.” “Kerplunk.” Episode 1.4, “Pigeon.” “Girth.” “Robbing Hood.” “Dummy.” “Oh, Oh, Oh ... It’s Magic.” “Dim Sum Lose Some.” Episode 2.11, “Window Dressed to Kill.” “Dummy.” “The Legend of Merle McQuoddy.” Ibid. “Kerplunk.” “Pie-Lette.” Episode 2.12, “Water and Power” Episode 1.3, “The Fun in Funeral.” “Window Dressed to Kill.” Episode 1.6, “Bitches.” “Frescorts.” Montagu, 139. Montagu, 137. “Bitter Sweets.”

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5. “Neophobic Ned Needs Neoteny” (Lee) 69. “The Fun in Funeral.” 70. Ibid. 71. Montagu, 131. 72. “Smell of Success.” 73. “Water and Power.” 74. Montagu, 152. 75.“Pie-Lette.” 76.“Robbing Hood.” 77. Ibid. 78. “Water and Power.” 79. “The Fun in Funeral.” 80. “Smell of Success.” 81. “Bzzzzzzzzz!” 82. Episode 2.2, “Circus Circus.”

Works Cited Brown, Stuart L. “Through the Lens of Play.” ReVision 17.4 (1995): 4–12. _____. “Why Play Is Vital — No Matter Your Age.” YouTube, 12 March 2009. Web. Accessed 4 August 2010. Ellis, M.J. Why People Play. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1973. “The Meaning of Neoteny.” Neoteny Labs, 2009. Web. Accessed 4 August 2010. Millar, Suzanna. The Psycholog y of Play. Baltimore: Penguin, 1968. Montagu, Ashley. Growing Young. 2d ed. Granby: Bergin and Garvey, 1989. Norbeck, Edward. “Anthropological Views of Play.” American Zoologist. 14.1 (Winter 1974): 267–273. Pushing Daisies: The Complete First Season. Created by Bryan Fuller. Perf. Lee Pace, Anna Friel, Chi McBride, Kristin Chenoweth. ABC, 2007–2008. DVD. Warner Home Video, 2007. Pushing Daisies: The Complete Second Season. Created by Bryan Fuller. Perf. Lee Pace, Anna Friel, Chi McBride, Kristin Chenoweth. ABC, 2008–2009. DVD. Warner Home Video, 2009.

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6

“Here Lies Dwight, Here Lies His Gun. He Was Bad, Now He’s Done.” On Justice and Schadenfreude CHRISTINE ANGELA KNOOP

“The Fun in Funeral,” the third episode of Bryan Fuller’s semantically eclectic and visually arresting show Pushing Daisies, presents its hero, the pie maker Ned, who can rouse the dead with one touch and make them die again with the next, in an intensely uncomfortable situation: he is presented with a supposed murder victim for whose death he is himself responsible. The man is the director of a funeral home whose life Ned inadvertently traded for his beloved’s, when he could not bring himself to touch her again within one minute of raising her from the dead — a decision that, in the world of Pushing Daisies, means the death of another person who is in close proximity. Ned’s colleague and friend, private eye Emerson Cod, who knows about the pie maker’s rare and secret gift and uses it for business purposes, is well aware of how uncomfortable the situation is for Ned: Chuck, the girl whose life was traded for the funeral director’s, is in the room with them, and she did not previously know about this specific aspect of Ned’s gift. However, instead of pitying Ned, Emerson shows absolutely no sympathy for him. The reason for his lack of compassion lies in the fact that when he tried to tell the pie maker about the deceased’s identity before going to the morgue, Ned failed to make the time to listen to him in private. Right before Ned pulls back the cover from the funeral director’s face and realizes who he is dealing with, Emerson says laconically: 92

6. Here Lies Dwight, Here Lies His Gun (Knoop)

“[f ]uture me [...] is saying ‘I told you so’ up one side of you and down the other one, but now me is just going to sit back and watch.”1 When Ned has discovered who he is supposed to be questioning, he runs out of the morgue in a panic, followed by a still rather unmoved Emerson who, full of unsympathetic glee, forces Ned to admit the terms of her revival to Chuck — and she, predictably, is not pleased. Emerson seems to think that Ned having to face the consequences of his actions is only just — and Ned does not contest this view, although he appears to be taken aback by his friend’s refusal to cover for him. Emerson’s relentlessness is further enhanced by the fact that he himself was in close proximity when Chuck was revived, and thus had been at risk of being sacrificed for her.2 Emerson’s idea of justice, which in this particular situation borders on karmic payback as well as personal revenge, leads him to experience a pleasurable satisfaction deriving from Ned’s feelings of exposure, discomfort, guilt, and shame: Schadenfreude.

What Is Schadenfreude? Schadenfreude as a complex, layered emotion is, in my view, a particularly characteristic feature of Pushing Daisies. The show re-evaluates the universal propensity to pleasure in others’ misfortune, presenting and staging it in a specific manner, mostly in direct reference to conceptions of justice or a lack of justice. Before getting into a more detailed analysis, however, I should like to dedicate some thought to three basic questions: what is Schadenfreude, in what aesthetic contexts do we encounter it, and why do we enjoy the pains of others? Generally, the German term Schadenfreude (literally translated: rejoicing in harm) is used to describe the pleasure we take in others’ misfortune. Sometimes, it is translated as “malicious pleasure,” but this interpretation is misleading and does not do justice to the German use of the word. Indeed, the term “malicious” automatically implies a level of vindictiveness and spite that the German term can, but does not need to imply, despite Schopenhauer’s allegation that Schadenfreude is always “devilish,”3 “the very opposite of compassion,” and a sign of “impotent cruelty.”4 I argue that Schadenfreude is a more complex and multi-faceted 93


phenomenon than that. While it can be sign of great unkindness, it need not exclude parallel feelings of nurturing, empathy, or pity. For example, it is easy to feel Schadenfreude when someone slips on the proverbial banana peel, but this feeling does not exclude worry for the person’s wellbeing, or even a readiness to help them up and make sure they are fine. Schadenfreude need not be malicious: it is certainly very human; and it is one of the emotions we genuinely enjoy, as the German saying “Schadenfreude ist die schönste Freude” (“There is no pleasure like the pleasure in others’ misfortune”) clearly implies. Also, Schadenfreude should not be mistaken for cruelty or sadism: while it can go very far, it is typically felt by observers to the misfortune only; these observers do not usually bring the misfortune about (although, like Emerson, they might be ready to add to it). Moreover, too detailed a knowledge of the person suffering the misfortune, too intense an identification with that person, or too strong a display of distress can all diminish or altogether omit feelings of Schadenfreude. What is more, the feeling can be overridden by the equally complex emotion of vicarious embarrassment, which might cause the observer to withdraw from a situation, or even help to resolve it just to make it “go away.” In his monograph When Bad Things Happen to Other People, John Portmann suggests that there are four overriding types of Schadenfreude: Beyond the myriad of possible causal antecedents of Schadenfreude lie what I consider its principal sources: (1) low self-esteem; (2) loyalty and commitments to justice; (3) the comical; and (4) malice.5

If we look at it from the point of view of aesthetic experience, these categories become more difficult to apply. What role can Schadenfreude play in the context of art, in literature, in film, or on stage? In this changed communicative situation, we firstly have to identify who is feeling the pleasure in others’ troubles. Logically, this could either be a character of the aesthetic world we are presented with, or alternatively the recipient, i.e. the viewer, reader, or listener. There is, quite obviously, a great difference between these two possibilities. Many texts, films and plays are presented in a manner that is supposed to incite Schadenfreude in the recipient; in fact, these works only function within their genre if the recipient is willing to experience the feeling at all. This is evident in examples from different genres. 94


Many cartoons only work if we are willing to laugh at the misfortunes of the characters displayed; one example is Wile E. Coyote from the Looney Toons cartoons, whose clumsy attempts to drop anvils on the Roadrunner or alternatively make him blow up always go awry and end up with the coyote itself being hit, burnt, squashed or the like. Other examples are South Park, where Kenny, to the delight of the audience, died a different death in every single episode of the show’s first five seasons, and The Simpsons, where Homer makes the audience laugh with his attempts to strangle his son in violent fits of rage.6 Examples from film would include comedic moments as brought to us by Buster Keaton or Laurel and Hardy.7 In literature, the feeling can be equally light, as we find it, for example, in Molière’s and Feydeau’s comedies, influenced by the Commedia dell’arte, in which the reader/viewer is encouraged to feel mostly gender- and classrelated Schadenfreude towards the rich, self-involved elderly man being cheated on by his beautiful young wife, lied to by his daughter, or told off by his maidservant. However, in some cases literary Schadenfreude is turned against the reader, making her realize that the character she has been laughing at it is pitiful to a point that excludes Schadenfreude. This can be increased by textual strategies, as is the case, for example, in Alexandre Dumas’s The Count of Monte Christo, where the treacherous enemies of the protagonist slowly turn into the helpless victims of a disturbingly determined madman.8 If, however, the phenomenon is not designed to be felt by the reader or viewer only, but actually becomes a prominent feature of the text, the situation changes. Traditionally, fictional characters who show too much delight at others’ troubles are eventually punished or at the very least presented as despicable, disingenuous beings. This holds for the gleeful fox in Aesop’s fables as much as for the malignant step-siblings often encountered in the fairy tale, for the self-indulgent bourgeois in the German comedic poems by Wilhelm Busch,9 and for characters like Molière’s eponymous hero in Tartuffe or the sanctimonious wiseacre Foma Fomitsch Opiskin in Dostoevsky’s The Village of Stepanchikovo and Its Inhabitants. Hence, while apparently it is only human to experience Schadenfreude, and pleasant to a degree, in fact, where we want to experience it in the context of aesthetic experience, too, an open display of it is ruled to be problematic, insincere, uncongenial and generally worthy of retribution. In other words, if we see 95


Schadenfreude displayed by a fictional character, this makes the character despicable — but we are invited to feel it ourselves when this character is brought down for the exact feeling we want to have when he is brought down. In my view, it is precisely this paradox which Pushing Daisies cleverly challenges, thus questioning both the traditionally purely negative connotations of Schadenfreude and the conceptions of aesthetic justice usually presented to the audiences.

Comedy, Mischief, Rivalry and Morality as Motivators for Schadenfreude The four main characters of Pushing Daisies all occasionally rejoice in others’ misfortune. They rejoice in it spontaneously, for ethical reasons, for reasons of rivalry, or simply for mischief. However, this does not decrease their likeability; what is more, Schadenfreude seems to be the only way for them to deal with a world in which ethics and justice are shifting, if at all determinable. Moreover, the one motivation which never seems to stand behind their emotional response is the one Schopenhauer believed to be the prototypical one: mere malice. The character that seems most prone to it is Emerson Cod. His pleasure in others’ misfortune usually derives from his sense of justice; he takes pleasure in what he perceives as just punishment. An example of this is his reaction to the death of Dwight Dixon. When in Season 2, Chuck tricks Ned into permanently bringing her father back to life, the victim of this action is Dwight, who was lurking at the graveyard with a rifle, ready to kill Chuck in order to retrieve a valuable watch. Chuck is shocked by Dwight’s death, although she was aware that her father’s life would be traded against that of another human being, and she experiences intense feelings of guilt. Eventually, she acknowledges her actions to Emerson, who reacts angrily — while the re-awakening of the dead as such does not appear to offend his sense of morality, keeping them alive at the expense of others seems utterly questionable to him (as the opening anecdote has shown as well). He thus fails to sympathize with Chuck, but grudgingly agrees to help her to bury the corpse. Finally, Chuck asks him to say a eulogy for Dwight; she feels that her guilt might 96


be assuaged if Dwight had a proper funeral. Emerson agrees to speak at Dwight’s grave, but the eulogy amounts to the words “[h]ere lies Dwight, here lies his gun. He was bad, now he’s done.” What could be construed as Schadenfreude in this context is directed at both Chuck and Dwight. She is the one who is responsible for Dwight’s dying, and Emerson is not about to ease her guilt by pretending that Dwight at least got a proper funeral. At the same time, Emerson makes it very plain that Dwight does not deserve his pity: “he was bad,” in this context, is enough for him not to be mourned any more than his gun, which lies beside him in the grave, and enough for Emerson to be satisfied that he is dead.10 Of course, Emerson does not appear to be particularly joyful, which could be read as a lack of delight in others’ misfortunes, but I argue that low-level affective arousal is typical of ethically motivated pleasure in others’ misfortune: a calm, laconic satisfaction rather than abundant joy. Nonetheless, the deadpan eulogy for Dwight need not be considered Schadenfreude only. Indeed, it reflects the fatalistic way in which Emerson generally sees life and death, an outlook he reveals, for example, when he reacts to the awkward advertising of the candy store owner from across the street with the pessimistic words: “this is how it all ends. Some weird guy comes in saying stuff that don’t make no sense, and by the time your head realizes, ‘Hey, this weird guy don’t make no sense,’ your guts are all over the window.”11 Hence, Emerson Cod’s feelings of Schadenfreude are a part of his generally rather pessimistic outlook on life. Moreover, they are based on a notion of justice that does not rule out enjoying others’ misfortune, but categorically forbids any active attempts to bring it about, as long as these active attempts endanger the other person. Also, his feelings rely on the notion that re-gifting life, if this is permanent, is nearly as immoral as taking life in the first place; in the very least, it is “shockingly stupid.”12 To Emerson, there is a clear boundary between the living and the dead, and he seems to count the re-awakened among the dead, calling them “zombies,” “the un-dead,” or “the living dead,” much to Ned’s dismay, who prefers the term “alive again.”13 Finally, Emerson is not beyond enjoying the troubles of others as a boost to his self-esteem. When Ned brings Chuck back to life, thereby killing the funeral director, Emerson unapologetically states: “I’m glad you did it. Makes the worst thing I ever did seem insignificant.”14 97


The pie maker himself seems rather less inclined to indulge the feeling, although he is not altogether free of it either. Of all four protagonists, Ned seems the most keenly aware of the ethical obstacles tied to his gift; the fact that he is the one to touch the dead people, thus deciding on life and death, puts him into an active position that makes the secondorder emotion of the unaffected onlooker quite impossible indeed. Schadenfreude is an emotion that does not necessarily involve action. In other words, acting in any way harmful against someone in order to rejoice in their resulting misery would not be Schadenfreude but cruelty, sadism or a similar emotion (although it may be accompanied by pleasure in some contexts). Ned is on the verge between action and emotion: even if he feels Schadenfreude toward the murderers he helps to arrest, for instance, he never seems to be able to rid himself of the fact that his actions brought about their misery. As a result, Ned attempts to stay emotionally detached. The only moments where he displays an emotion akin to Schadenfreude is when rivals for Chuck’s attention are defeated; his triumphant second touch of a murder victim who flirted with Chuck during his minute of revival is accompanied by noticeable glee — at least until Ned becomes aware of himself and looks as if found out, apparently feeling a shame intensified by Emerson’s sardonic remark “[n]ow that was a crime of passion.”15 This is characteristic of Ned’s feelings; whenever he shows a tendency to it, even outside the morgue and in relation to living people, he is either reprimanded for it or finds himself uncomfortably close to the boundary between pleasure and guilt. For example, he feels but a guilty joy when he manages to pin down the murderous wife in “Bitches” until the police arrive. Chuck tries to console him by reminding him that his actions saved an innocently accused and even more fragile other woman: “she was the lion who had the baby zebra in her maw, and you were the crocodile who came from nowhere.”16 Ned, however, is not comfortable with being a crocodile, either; in fact, his predatory instincts are too underdeveloped to allow him to rejoice in tackling a woman, even a murderous one. This lingering feeling of guilt Ned displays whenever he has to affect some else’s life (which happens in every single episode) certainly dampens any pleasure in others’ misfortunes. Nevertheless, Ned’s and Emerson’s feelings of Schadenfreude are sim98


ilar in one respect: both do not seem to mind joking about the dead people’s misfortunes. This, for example, separates them from Chuck. In the episode “Dummy,” the girlfriend of a murdered scientist develops a severe eating disorder, drowning her sorrows in massive quantities of food. When Ned, Chuck and Emerson follow her in the car to the scene of the crime, Ned remarks: “[t]hat car can’t have a very big engine.” Emerson replies: “[m]aybe she ate it,” which makes Ned laugh. Chuck, however, reprimands her friends, pointing out that the girl “obviously has a very serious disorder.”17 Ned’s and Emerson’s mischievous jokes are clearly contrasted with Chuck’s refusal to laugh at the expense of the girl. Similarly, Emerson and Ned occasionally ridicule the way the murder victims died, for example when Emerson dryly comments on one particularly unusual cause of death with the words: “[d]eath by Scratch ’n’ Sniff. What the hell happened to people shooting each other with guns?”18 This shows an utterly important side to Schadenfreude: it is a very potent means to protect oneself from aspects of the world one cannot deal with without putting one’s own sense of self, one’s “human equilibrium,” as G.B. Milner calls it, at risk.19 A non-serious response to disconcerting situations is a frequent occurrence in many different kinds of human contexts; laughing at others’ misfortune is only one of these. Wallace Chafe points out: The feeling of nonseriousness [...], whether it is elicited by humour or nonhumour, can be viewed as a safety valve whose purpose, simply stated, is to keep us from taking seriously things it would be counterproductive to take seriously.20

Thus in some cases, the refusal to take the misfortunes of others seriously is a means of protecting oneself against, for example, understanding the fragility of human life, personal feelings of guilt, or merely a sense of being exposed in an unpredictable, illogical world. It prevents the disconcerting identification with the unlucky. Along these lines, it is no surprise that Ned and Emerson, the two characters to show the least trust in the logic and fairness of fate, are prone to joking in terrible situations. In a way, these two are the exact opposite of the eponymous protagonist in Voltaire’s Candide and his teacher Pangloss, who, altogether devoid of humor, suffer through incredible misery in the blind belief that they do live in the best of all possible worlds, and that in the end all will be well if one is willing 99


to resign oneself and stick to growing one’s own garden (of course, here the narrator could be suspected of a kind of morbid pleasure in his characters’ misfortune that is quite reminiscent of Emerson and Ned, and also of the narrative voice in Pushing Daisies). Moreover, Chafe claims that phenomena which we deem strange, even if they are shocking or pitiful, often make us laugh, a reality linguistically reflected in the two meanings of the term “funny”: The ambiguity of that word is telling. It can be a synonym for “humorous,” but it means just as often that something falls outside our repertoire of expectations about how the world is. Our language thus shows tacit recognition of the relation between nonseriousness and a failure to conform to normal expectations.21

In relation to Schadenfreude as a coping mechanism, one point needs to be examined more closely. Strictly speaking, neither Emerson nor Ned need to deal with the dead. Emerson could earn his money doing regular detective work, and Ned could find alternative financial means to run The Pie Hole. While it is barely possible for him to avoid his gift altogether, an issue I shall return to in more detail later in this essay, there is no immediate necessity to use it on a regular basis for economic purposes. The situation is rather different for Chuck, who could not simply walk away. Firstly, it appears that the money she makes doing business with her two friends is the basis of her livelihood. After all, having returned from the dead, she must keep her existence and its circumstances hidden from the world and thus cannot pursue a normal career without using a fake identity, which of course comes with serious risks, as she does in the episodes “Bzzzzzzzzz!”22 and “Frescorts.”23 Secondly, she is kinder than Ned and Emerson to the revived murder victims and seems to have a profound interest in justice being served. Indeed, her interest in justice was there prior to her death; the narrator reveals that when living with her aunts, Chuck had “fostered her love of the law by volunteering as a stay-at-home juror for a paraplegic judge.”24 Moreover, she appears to be less emotionally detached from the cases than Emerson and Ned. The difference between their attitudes becomes evident when she tells Ned: “You can’t just touch somebody’s life and be done with it!” and Ned unequivocally replies: “Yes, I can. That’s how I roll.”25 However, while we could conclude that Chuck is forced to go down this road when Emerson and Ned could walk away, 100


and while she at least seems to do it for the right reasons, her behavior does not condone this view. Chuck continually shows an unapologetic pleasure in the stories of the re-awakened, dead again murder victims her existence depends on, in the drama, the action, and Ned’s role in it; in that sense, she, too, rejoices in others’ misfortune, using it as a basis for an exciting life. Chuck’s behavior could be explained in two ways. It could be assumed that like Ned and Emerson, she actively chooses to focus on the pleasurable aspects, instead of, for example, dwelling on the fact that she is surrounded by people who will not have the second chance she herself got. This could be supported by the few times we actually see her fall into a desperate state of doubt which borders on existential crisis, such as in the episode “Bad Habits.”26 Alternatively, we could assume that Chuck, by way of dying, has entered a different mental state, in which she is able to deal with death and suffering in a more serene manner. In this case, her few crises could be read as a mere worry for her own (and Ned’s) future. This could be supported with the sympathetic, yet matterof-factly, unsentimental attitude she adopts toward the bereaved of the murder victims (“We’ll bring pie. Someone dies, you bring food. It’s what you do.”27).Moreover, her mental state can easily be compared to the attitude of most of the other revived murder victims, who seem quite serene and cheerful, too; even those who are angry do not appear to be afraid or tormented by the death experience, or the fact that they just have one single minute. We also learn that only death has made Chuck morbid.28 This casts new light on Chuck’s emotional responses: if in her new state of mind, death is an unfortunate mishap rather than a fatal catastrophe, and if this is the way she herself has experienced it, then it makes sense for her to react calmly and appreciate its comical and exciting effects. Moreover, Chuck’s tendency to show compassion for the victims could, in the light of her morbid fascination, equally be construed as a complex kind of Schadenfreude. Friedrich Nietzsche points out that pitying others can be very enjoyable, as it caters to our feeling of self-esteem (we are doing “good” by displaying empathy) and entertains us, because the person we pity will often trust us in return and reveal more information about the nature of the misfortune: 101

Part Two: Philosophy and Pushing Daisies [A neighbor] has experienced a misfortune, and now the “compassionate” come along and depict his misfortune for him in detail — at length they go away content and elevated: they have gloated over the unfortunate man’s distress and over their own and passed a pleasant afternoon.29

Michael Ure, who discusses Nietzsche’s conceptions of pity and Schadenfreude, speaks of the “thrilling pleasures of the pitier’s voyeurism”30— a description that certainly fits many of Chuck’s displays of empathy. Interestingly, the characters seem well aware of the morbid nature of both their empathy and their service to justice; this becomes apparent, for example, when they discuss whether they are “ambulance chasers” or rather “concerned citizens of the world.”31 Moreover, while Chuck usually displays higher levels of empathy for the victims and the bereaved than Ned and Emerson, she does not mind making fun of her friends’ shortcomings, even to their faces, a character trait that she shares with Emerson, but that is most often directed against him. As is frequently the case though, her gloating does not keep her from helping her friends. An example of this can be found in the episode “The Fun in Funeral,” where she mocks Emerson for being overweight and thus having gotten stuck in a window that Ned climbed through easily, comparing Emerson to Winnie the Pooh — but at the same time, she tries her best to pull him out of his uncomfortable situation. As is the case with Ned, rivalry and bad treatment of her loved ones can incite a whole other kind of Schadenfreude in Chuck. This becomes evident when she has the chance to square off with one of her aunts’ synchronized swimming competitors. The woman has just been eaten by a shark, and is re-awakened by Ned for questioning. When she makes a choice remark about Chuck’s aunts, Chuck rounds on her, then asks Ned to touch her again “before she talks back.” When he obliges, Chuck exclaims triumphantly, “Ha-ha! That felt so good!”32 Here, she displays utter satisfaction at the fact that the lady (a) is dead and will never speak again, and (b) died without being able to defend her standpoint. This rare and violent kind of Schadenfreude at a rival’s suffering is one of the most direct instances of pleasure in others’ misfortune displayed on the show; but it is no happenstance that it coincides with a moment where Chuck’s “moral compass”33 wavers, as Emerson remarks, and where she puts herself and her own wishes before those she cares about. 102


While this personal feud is rare for Chuck, the last of the four characters, Olive Snook, appears to feel Schadenfreude exclusively for reasons of rivalry. Olive is prone to jealousy, which is unsurprising insofar as the man she loves is in love with Chuck; she views Chuck as a rival to Ned’s attention and affection and seems to believe (although the events prior to Chuck’s appearance do not encourage this view) that it is Chuck who separates her from happiness and the life she should be having. As a result, anything that negatively affects Chuck is good for Olive’s feeling of selfesteem — an aspect Portmann deems common.34 The narrator formulates the feeling of self-doubt positively, remarking that “Olive Snook [loves] to win.”35 But then he reveals that for her, winning largely consists in her rival losing — a classic feature of Schadenfreude 36: “[s]he celebrated the fact that the unflappable brunette who had swept in from nowhere to steal the pie maker’s heart might be flappable after all.”37 However, since Chuck seems to “win” most of the time (she has a firm hold on Ned’s heart), despite Olive’s belief that Chuck is not a particularly nice person (among other things, she thinks Chuck faked her own death), Olive often only feels sadness or even indignation, which, as Aristotle points out, is the middle ground between envy and Schadenfreude: “the man who is characterized by righteous indignation is pained at undeserved good fortune.”38

Schadenfreude, Justice and the Naïve Ethics of the Fairy tale Why is Schadenfreude such a prominent feature in all four lead characters of the show? Why does it appear in characters that are nonetheless likeable? Finally, how does Pushing Daisies manage to turn this conventionally undesirable feeling into a human trait they are not blamed for? One of the reasons why Pushing Daisies so unapologetically uses the concept of Schadenfreude could be rooted in its generic proximity to the fairy tale. The reasons for this are manifold, extending from the structure of the stories told to the appearance of the fictional world and the values and rules it follows, but also including some literal references to the 103


world of the fairy tale. In general, the link to the fairy tale is made evident from the first episode, where Ned revives the dead Chuck, a deed that is unmistakably reminiscent of one of the most famous fairy tale scenes of all time: the re-awakening of Sleeping Beauty by her own Prince Charming, which the narrator explicitly evokes.39 Moreover, the fairy tale typically features a strong narrative instance, here represented by the voice of Jim Dale; a clear-cut world with a number of potentially well-designed, but non-existent places (like Ned’s and Chuck’s native town, Couers d’Couers); a complete lack of institutional inhibitions (taxes, health insurance, etc.); an understanding that the perception of miraculous events can be easily adjusted to (for example, when Emerson detects Ned’s gift, he does not doubt his sanity and check into a mental health facility, but rather immediately understands the rare business opportunity that presents itself ) and finally, a value system which is marked by a naïve, clear-cut ethics. Indeed the ethics of the fairy tale is interesting insofar as it caters not to an idea of balanced justice, as the law should strive to do, but to a supra-individual feeling of what the world should ideally be like, with the good being rewarded and the bad being punished. This punishment is usually accompanied by Schadenfreude. Of course, the fairy tale traditionally does not offer insights in the characters’ minds. However, the fact that fairy tale characters are often not content with justice being served, but actually stay around to watch the punishment, seems to point toward rather strong levels of Schadenfreude on their part. Indeed, the punishment of the wicked occasionally even coincides with the heroes’ final celebration, or even becomes an integral part of it (a particularly dreadful example is the punishment of the evil stepmother in the Grimm’s original version of Snow White, where the wrongdoer is forced to dance at her stepdaughter’s wedding in red-hot burning shoes until she drops dead to the ground — amidst the guests of the party, who do not seem to consider this cruel, intolerable, or, at the very least, as dampening the party spirit). The misfortune of the wicked is part of the victory and is unabashedly enjoyed. While Pushing Daisies has no such horror scenarios, shots of the murderers in their prison cells, or of the protagonists celebrating the defeat of others, are no rare occurrence. Most importantly, the world of the fairy tale has to be one where 104


there are means to clearly distinguish the good from the bad. In the fairy tale, this means that the wicked need not have committed their sins in the story itself, and their wrongdoing need not be directed against the good. Generally, however, fairy tale characters can loosely be categorized as helpers (good) or harmers (bad). An example of this would be Puss in Boots, where the evil sorcerer is tricked into shifting his shape and becoming a mouse, and is then eaten by the cat. The cat thus manages to secure the sorcerer’s lands and castle for the youngest of the miller’s sons, whose only inheritance, despite his excellent character (of which we are informed at the beginning of the story), is his father’s cat. Needless to say, what happens to the sorcerer is as unfair as it is illegitimate. Killing someone to secure his lands just because one believes to deserve them oneself is hardly an ethically defendable course of action. Nonetheless, the fairy tale shows this action as the ethically right way of the world, and that only because we hear that the youngest of the miller’s sons is a good person and thus deserves riches and happiness, whereas the sorcerer is known to be evil, and thus deserves punishment. This naïve ethics of the fairy tale usually goes hand in hand with an invitation to dwell on Schadenfreude, which is implicitly offered to the reader: she is invited to rejoice in the punishment of the wicked, a joy she shares with the characters, but which is only based on a rather questionable ethics. In Pushing Daisies, the viewer is equally presented with a clear-cut image of good and bad. The characters do not know the anguish that lies in the uncertainty of how to determine someone else’s goodness of heart. No matter what their actions are like, Pushing Daisies presents its heroes, especially Ned and Chuck, as good people; and while the proximity to the detective story only rarely allows for the bad people to be revealed as wicked right away, in most cases it is perfectly clear that they are deserving of their fate, once their deeds are exposed. Emerson Cod explicitly draws on this distinction between good and bad when he tells Ned and Chuck: “when you spend all your time chasing bad guys, you want the best of the good guys in your corner.”40 This seemingly simplistic take on ethics, offering a battle between good and bad, is often accompanied by a great deal of Schadenfreude expected from the viewers, such as when we get to see a sad elderly lady in a prison cell, which, we are told implicitly, she will never leave again41— a scenario that could be conflicting or even heart105


breaking in the sense evoked by Foucault’s Discipline And Punish, but which in this case is presented as a mere version of the popular phrase “[s]he had it coming.” Yet at the same time, as is the case with all the other instances of proximity to the fairy tale in Pushing Daisies, the limits of this ethical reference are clearly sketched. While it is true that like the fairy tale, Pushing Daisies appears to rely on a rather naïve take on ethics, its conception of justice is far more complicated than might be assumed at first sight. None of the four main characters on the show are beyond ethical blemish. We learn from the outset that Emerson is keen on assembling riches, but not on exerting himself for his money, which prompts him to work with the man who can question the dead. Indeed he openly declares that it is not his occupation he enjoys, but “counting [his] money in the bubble bath.”42 Ned, we learn in the first episode, has the same profane reason for using his gift : money. To save his café, The Pie Hole, from bankruptcy, he touches murder victims back to life, finds out who killed them, and touches them to die again, only then to share the reward with Emerson. Chuck’s morbid curiosity and voyeuristic tendency lead her, like Ned, to pursue “business” with Emerson. Finally, Olive Snook nurses feelings of jealousy and envy. Moreover, in the episode “Girth,” it is revealed that Olive believes she may have killed a fellow jockey years ago while working as a professional equestrienne. The protagonists’ ethical blemishes are matched by those of (also positively connoted) minor characters, such as Chuck’s aunt Lily, who, we learn, has gotten pregnant by her sister’s fiancé and would (quite literally43) be willing to kill preventatively in order to protect her family. Neither the characters’ inclination to do ethically questionable things for money nor the dark secrets in their past are reminiscent of the fairy tale. Pushing Daisies presents us with characters who are the heroes of the story and who, within the logic of the story, will be the ones to do the “right thing”— but they might not always do it for the right reasons, or indeed there might not be a “right thing,” only the best possible thing under problematic circumstances. Here, the naïve ethics which Pushing Daisies shares with the fairy tale is rather a necessity to protect the characters from the understanding that their world is inherently unethical, and that they are bound in a Catch-22 situation in which they will be guilty either way they choose. 106


Ethical Paradoxes and the Unavoidability of Action The inherent ethical paradox of the world Pushing Daisies presents us with lies in the fact that it is a world where Ned’s gift is possible. Ned can wake the dead and kill them again with two consecutive touches, but it is not his gift that poses the main ethical problem — it is the fact that he lives in a world where this gift is possible. Usually, potential human qualities and actions are implicitly rated on an ethical scale; thus, their normative acceptability is rated, and we can behave accordingly or accept the consequences. However, if a certain quality is not something we can determine (such as the color of our eyes or our ability to do complex equations), these are exempt on the ethical scale. In Ned’s case, the matter is more complicated. Ned can scarcely avoid using his gift, whether he accidentally touches a dead fly while sweeping the floors, dead leaves in the fall, or dead fruit in his bakery. While waking the dead is not necessarily unethical as such (although disturbing the peace of the dead might of course be conceived as dishonorable44), killing certainly is. However, once he has awoken anything or anyone from the dead, Ned is in the position of having to kill. By going back to stories from his past, where Ned tried in vain to deny or ignore his gift, the show clearly demonstrates that he is not able to avoid using it altogether. He cannot not kill, because he cannot not bring plants, people, and animals back to life. Nevertheless, he lives in a world where killing is not allowed or condoned. This does not only put Ned in a paradoxical situation, it also shows the paradoxical ethical condition of the world Pushing Daisies presents us with — a world which, in this particular instance, reminds more strongly of the Greek mythology than of the fairy tale. In The Unbearable Lightness of Being, the novelist Milan Kundera lets the narrator ponder the question why defecation is considered disgusting, and why it is impossible to talk about it or, worse, to fail to keep one’s own defecation private. The narrator remarks: “[e]ither/or: either shit is acceptable (in which case don’t lock yourself in the bathroom) or we are created in an unacceptable manner.”45 In Ned’s case, the situation is not much different, although killing, on an ethical scale, is obviously much more serious a matter than speaking of defecation: either his dealings with 107


the dead are acceptable because of their unavoidability, or he is created in an unacceptable manner. The show does not answer this question, because it cannot. Ned is unique in the world; no one else has his gift, so it cannot be used for the conception of social and ethical norms. The problem, however, is that Ned’s bodily condition puts him at a much higher risk of breaking the cardinal ethical rules than other people. The problem could, of course, be solved by saying that Ned only “kills” people who were dead to begin with. If it were not for him, they would be quite as dead as they were before he first touched them, so by touching them twice, he does not really take anything away from them. But does this really improve the matter? By re-awakening a dead person, Ned gives them back life. As we see in Chuck’s case, they might have developed some mannerisms while dead, but their aliveness is not impaired by the experience. Ned himself is quite aware of that: “[w]hen you’re dead, that’s what you are, but when you’re dead and then you’re not, you’re alive again.”46 Hence, the people whom Ned revives are not dead people on borrowed time, they are actually alive — which makes the ethical choice of killing them (or someone else) even more confusing. On the other hand, if we assume that Ned is allowed to take their life back because he has regifted it in the first place, then he is attributed a nearly godlike quality uncomfortably reminiscent of the Christian phrase “[t]he Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away.”47 And yet, the show makes a point of not presenting Ned as godlike at all. He is insecure, tries not to dwell on the situation, and seems inherently conflicted with his actions. If we assume, however, that it is not right merely to take back what one has given, then Ned behaves unethically either way once he re-awakens a dead person: every time he takes a life back (or fails to do so, thereby passively taking another), Ned commits an unethical deed by choosing individually which life he is allowed to take and which can be traded for another. The show presents Ned and all the others as sure that the life to be taken should be the one of the person who was dead to begin with. Yet at the same time, Ned’s straying from this rule in favor of Chuck is presented as romantic and, if not as the “right” choice, certainly not as the “wrong” one in the grand scheme of things. In fact, the reiterated life of Chuck determines the ethical paradox of Pushing Daisies. The characters assume that those who were re-awakened need to die again, but the viewers are presented 108


with a positively connoted world the sheer existence of which depends on the breaking of this rule: had it not been broken, Ned would be alone, Chuck would be dead, and Lily and Vivian would sink deeper and deeper into their feelings of depression without anyone taking care of them. As a result, there is no real ethical guidepost for Ned or anyone knowing about his gift. Chuck certainly is most affected by this. Being one of the few that Ned permanently revived, she cannot go back to her old life without either having to present diffuse explanations based on lies, or exposing Ned. Since, as I have argued above, Pushing Daisies presents a world where Ned’s gift is socially as undesirable as it probably would be in our society, exposing him could endanger the man Chuck loves and owes her life to. If she stays around Ned, however, she not only puts her life (and thereby his happiness) permanently at risk, but she also partakes in the re-issuing and taking of lives on a regular basis. Emerson, for his part, is a private detective who appears to have specialized in solving murders. Using Ned to gain further information helps him to bring down murderers and, often, to keep them from killing again. If Emerson did not enlist Ned’s help, many more people would die (the show makes this plain when Ned temporarily decides no longer to use his gift48). Hence, even if it were possible to deny, disregard, or simply not employ Ned’s gift, this would not solve the ethical paradox these characters are in simply for knowing that the gift exists. The ethical paradox forces the characters to make their own rules by which they can define justice and remain capable of acting. Instead of dwelling on the ethical gaps this strategy inevitably bears, they tend to search for alternative motivations for their actions: money and love are clearly the most prominent ones. However, as little guidance as their world offers in terms of ethics, there remains a strong sense of transcendental logic about it: Ned’s gift, although it will turn him into the proverbial guilty innocent, is a destiny, and like the hero of the Greek myth, he cannot escape his destiny, whether he attempts to do so or not.

Schadenfreude as a Narrative Necessity I have established above that Pushing Daisies explores the topic of Schadenfreude from different angles: with reference to questions of rivalry, 109


self-esteem, and mischief; as a coping mechanism, allowing for moments of comic relief in a paradoxical world which seems to follow a certain logic, yet one that remains impenetrable; and as a hidden side-effect of competition and even pity. As I have mentioned in the beginning of the essay, the show avoids only one potential motivation for the feeling, this motivation being malice. In that sense, it seems to me that Pushing Daisies makes a rather unusual point, that is, a point for Schadenfreude as a positive, harmless, constructive and healthy emotion. Seen from a meta-level, this might even be a narrative necessity. Indeed, the fictional world of Pushing Daisies can only work if Schadenfreude becomes a permanent feature: the characters’ ability to make light of death, murder, suffering, and grief, to stay emotionally detached to an extent that allows for fascination and pleasure even in moments of genuine compassion, and their tendency to joke where one might cry are necessary prerequisites for Pushing Daisies remaining what it is — a comedy. In that sense, the seriousness of the topic addressed needs to be balanced by an emotion with extraordinary comic potential. This emotion must be psychologically convincing even under the unlikely circumstances Ned, Chuck, and Emerson are used to experiencing daily. Moreover, it needs to assure a light and humorous tone without dissolving the dramatic tension. It turns out that Schadenfreude serves this purpose perfectly. Moreover, the feeling is always presented as a non-malicious emotion which does not exclude compassion. It is occasionally directed at dead people, but being dead, in the world of Pushing Daisies, is a rather bearable, albeit not ideal, condition. The fact that characters who are depicted positively can feel this way towards those who are dead emphasizes this fact. In that sense, the positive interpretation of Schadenfreude developed in the show highlights the one possible solution to the ontological paradox presented by the world of Pushing Daisies: life may be beautiful, but dying is not enough of a catastrophe to lose one’s sense of humor at the prospect of human mortality and its conditions.

Notes 1. Episode 1.3, “The Fun in Funeral.” 2. This is not the first mention of Emerson’s anger and Ned’s guilt. In fact, Emerson

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6. Here Lies Dwight, Here Lies His Gun (Knoop) speaks his mind in the very first episode, right after finding out about the terms of Chuck’s revival. Ned reveals that the death of the funeral director was the result of a “random proximity thing,” whereupon Emerson exclaims, “[b]itch, I was in proximity!” to which an evidently guilt-ridden Ned replies, “I wasn’t thinking.” When Emerson implicitly continues to question the morality of Ned’s motivation to save Chuck, Ned admits, “I’m not proud” (Episode 1.1, “Pie-Lette”). 3. Arthur Schopenhauer, On the Basis of Morality. Translated by E.F.J. Payne. Providence: Berghahn, 1995: 137. 4. Schopenhauer, 162. 5. John Portmann, When Bad Things Happen to Other People. New York: Routledge, 2000: 31. 6. Depending on the cultural situation, the propensity to tell Schadenfreude-inciting stories might have to do with the propensity to competition. In cultures where competition is a virtue, where outsmarting someone for one’s own gain is part and aim of the social reality, a character like the mouse Jerry, permanently outrunning the cat Tom, or the Roadrunner, effortlessly turning the coyote’s evil plans against him, carry a social ideology (the term “ideology” here being used in the loose Bakhtinian sense of the conventional contextual semantics linked to certain actions, gestures, words, and events). Zdenbk Miler’s cartoon of the little mole Krtek, which was shown in communist Czechoslovakia, can be used to support this point. While Krtek is no entirely communist character (and Miler certainly is no communist thinker), since he clearly values his own time, space and privacy, as well as makes his own decisions, he complies with communist morals insofar as he is entirely devoid of a competitive edge. While the American cartoon characters were loved for the action they brought to the screen, and the suspense and eventually Schadenfreude they incited, Krtek, to this day, is immensely popular in Europe for doing the exact opposite. An example of this could be the first Krtek film from 1956, Jak Krtek ke kalhotkám pri§el (How Krtek Got His Pants), which features the little mole peacefully sewing a pair of trousers amidst his equally eventempered animal companions. 7. Laurel and Hardy, interestingly, are called‚ “Dick und Doof ” (“Fatso and DimWit”), in Germany, from where the term “Schadenfreude” stems. One might wonder if the verbal canonization of Schadenfreude as we find it in German might lead to a greater propensity to the emotion itself: the title “Dick und Doof,” politically quite incorrect, implies that the entertainment value of the film derives directly from the characters being overweight and intellectually underachieving. 8. Interestingly, the filmic adaptation of the novel from 2002 has chosen to forgo the transformation in Monte-Christo’s character and the gruelling nature of his desperation, madness, and cruelty. In so doing, it missed the process where the reader’s Schadenfreude at Monte-Christo’s victims turns into a sneaking feeling of horror towards the originally kind and well-mannered Edmond Dantès, who can barely be recognised in the spiteful and merciless count — an aspect which can be read as the psychologically most artful strategy of Dumas’s whole novel. 9. The Schadenfreude displayed in Busch’s texts is especially striking as he invents characters whose main, if not only, attribute is that they enjoy others’ misfortunes and resent them for any good luck they might have, like the character of Schlich (Schlee in the English translation) in Plisch und Plum (Ker and Plunk). Schlich constantly observes the people in his surroundings and rejoices when things go awry for them: “[n]ow Schlee observes, ‘Cruel destiny! / Tee-hee!— But really not for me!’” (Wilhelm

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Part Two: Philosophy and Pushing Daisies Busch, Max and Moritz: With Many More Mischief Makers More or Less Human or Approximately Animal. Edited and translated by H. Arthur Klein. Mineola, NY: Dover, 1962: 78). 10. This double take on Schadenfreude reflects his reaction to Ned killing the funeral director: While Emerson is fine with the funeral director’s sinister fate because he was a dishonest man, he will not accept this as an excuse to kill him actively. 11. Episode 1.8, “Bitter Sweets.” 12. Episode 1.1, “Pie-Lette.” 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid. 15. “Bitter Sweets.” 16. Episode 1.6, “Bitches.” 17. Episode 1.2, “Dummy.” 18. Episode 1.7, “Smell of Success.” 19. George Bertram Milner, “Homo Ridens: Towards a Semiotic Theory of Humour and Laughter.” Semiotica, 5 (1972): 27. 20. Wallace Chafe, The Importance of Not Being Earnest: The Feeling Behind Laughter and Humour. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamin, 2007: 11. 21. Chafe, 12. 22. Episode 2.1, “Bzzzzzzz!” 23. Episode 2.4, “Frescorts.” 24. Episode 1.4, “Pigeon.” 25. “Pie-Lette.” 26. Episode 2.2, “Bad Habits.” 27. “Dummy.” 28. Episode 1.3, “The Fun in Funeral.” 29. Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality. Edited by Maudemarie Clark and Brian Leiter. Translated by R.J. Hollingdale. Vol. 113 of Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy, edited by Karl Ameriks and Desmond M. Clarke. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997: 137. 30. Michael Ure, “The Irony of Pity: Nietzsche Contra Schopenhauer and Rousseau.” Journal of Nietzsche Studies, 32 (2006): 77. 31. ”Pigeon.” 32. Episode 2.13, “Kerplunk.” 33. Ibid. 34. Portmann, 32–35. 35. Episode 1.5, “Girth.” 36. This particular feature of Olive’s Schadenfreude extends beyond Chuck; she also displays it when she wants to win the cooking contest (Episode 2.8, “Comfort Food”) or competes with the candy store owner from across the street (“Bitter Sweets.”). Rejoicing in the defeat of her rivals is an integral part of the joy of winning. With this turn, the show reveals the pleasure in others’ misfortune that is inherent in many a competitive attitude, and emphasises both the ugliness lurking in the alleged asset of competitiveness, and its sheer humanness. 37. “Girth.” 38. Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by David Ross. Whitefish, MT: Kessinger, 2004: 27. It is noteworthy that the English translations of The Nicomachean Ethics interpret the Greek word χαιρε− κακiα as “malignity” or “spite” (the latter being

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6. Here Lies Dwight, Here Lies His Gun (Knoop) used in the edition I quote above). However, χαιρε− κακiα, in a literal sense, means nothing else than Schadenfreude or “pleasure in others’ misfortune,” corresponding to the adjective χαιρe− κακος, which means “pleased at others’ misfortune.” If we look at the unapologetic gloating displayed, for instance, in Aesop’s fables, or at the pleasure in others’ misfortune and defeat being attributed to the gods in the Greek mythology, it should barely surprise us that the Greek language has a word for this complex phenomenon which does not rashly define the corresponding emotion as either entirely positive or altogether negative. 39. “Pie-Lette.” 40. Episode 2.13, “Kerplunk.” 41. “Girth.” 42. “Dummy.” 43. In “Comfort Food,” for instance, she is ready to shoot Dwight because he is a danger to her sister Vivian’s happiness. 44. The show alludes to this matter when Ned accidentally reawakens an elderly gentleman who immediately complains, “[W]hat part of ‘Do not resuscitate’ don’t you people understand?” (Episode 1.3, “The Fun in Funeral.”) 45. Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Translated by Michael Henry Heim. London: Faber and Faber, 1985: 248. 46. “Pie-Lette.” 47. The Holy Bible, Job 1: 20–21 (KJV). 2003–2010. Web. Accessed 16 February 2010. 48. Episode 2.11, “Windows Dressed To Kill.”

Works Cited Aristotle. The Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by David Ross. Whitefish, MT: Kessinger, 2004. Busch, Wilhelm. Max and Moritz: With Many More Mischief Makers More or Less Human or Approximately Animal. Edited and translated by H. Arthur Klein. Mineola, NY: Dover, 1962. Chafe, Wallace. The Importance of Not Being Earnest: The Feeling Behind Laughter and Humour. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamin, 2007. Kundera, Milan. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Translated by Michael Henry Heim. London: Faber and Faber, 1985. Milner, George Bertram. “Homo Ridens: Towards a Semiotic Theory of Humour and Laughter.” Semiotica 5 (1972): 1–30. Nietzsche, Friedrich. Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality. Edited by Maudemarie Clark and Brian Leiter. Translated by R.J. Hollingdale. Vol. 113 of Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy, edited by Karl Ameriks and Desmond M. Clarke. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Portmann, John. When Bad Things Happen To Other People. New York, Routledge, 2000. Pushing Daisies: The Complete First Season. Created by Bryan Fuller. Perf. Lee Pace, Anna Friel, Chi McBride, Kristin Chenoweth. ABC, 2007–2008. DVD. Warner Home Video, 2007.

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Part Two: Philosophy and Pushing Daisies Pushing Daisies: The Complete Second Season. Created by Bryan Fuller. Perf. Lee Pace, Anna Friel, Chi McBride, Kristin Chenoweth. ABC, 2008–2009. DVD. Warner Home Video, 2009. Schopenhauer, Arthur. On the Basis of Morality. Translated by E.F.J. Payne. Providence: Berghahn, 1995. The Holy Bible. Job 1: 20–21 (KJV). 2003–2010. Web. Accessed 16 February 2010. Ure, Michael. “The Irony of Pity: Nietzsche Contra Schopenhauer and Rousseau.” Journal of Nietzsche Studies 32 (2006): 68–91.

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7

“It’s a Destiny Thing — Enjoy It!” Free Will and Determinism in Bryan Fuller’s Series PATRICK GILL

Before creating Pushing Daisies, Bryan Fuller had already garnered an impressive amount of critical praise and a dedicated following of television viewers with two other projects, Dead Like Me (2003–2004) and Wonderfalls (2004). None of these were spared a certain amount of controversy, as Fuller left Dead Like Me in the course of its first season, had to endure the cancellation of Wonderfalls (co–created with Todd Holland, famous for his work on The Larry Sanders Show and Malcolm in the Middle, among others) after the transmission of only four episodes, and finally saw Pushing Daisies canceled after what fans and critics alike thought a regrettably short run. How dedicated a fan base these shows attracted may be gleaned from the fact that, five years after its cancellation and even longer after Fuller’s involvement with it, Dead Like Me was rounded off with a direct-to-DVD movie in 2009, and from the fact that speculation about a similar farewell to Pushing Daisies was rife shortly after news of its cancellation broke.1 Having sprung from the mind of one creator (Holland’s considerable input into Wonderfalls excepted2), these three shows obviously display numerous similarities while at the same time presenting their audiences with very distinct and individual styles and storylines. But underlying the perhaps more obvious overlaps between these three shows, such as fast and inventive cuts, inimitably dry and witty dialog, and frequent negotiations of troubled character constellations with particular emphasis on the family 115


unit, there is in all three shows a fascinating undercurrent of that eternal question so prominent in theology and philosophy: the conflict between the ideas of free will and determinism. That conflict, as adumbrated by Pereboom, is the following: The ancient problem of free will originates in a conflict between two forceful considerations. On the one hand, we human beings feel that we are the source of our actions in a particularly weighty sense — one very different from the way in which a machine is the source of what it produces. This difference becomes apparent in our judgments about blameworthiness and praiseworthiness when their object is a human being rather than a machine. Although we may sometimes blame a photocopier when it malfunctions, most of us would consider this attitude inappropriate. But when a normal and mature human being does something wrong, we presume that he is the source of his actions in a sense strong enough to make our blame appropriate. To claim that we are the source of our actions in so strong a sense is to claim that we are morally responsible. Traditionally, it has been assumed that moral responsibility requires us to exercise some type of free will to generate our actions. But we also have reasons to regard human beings as more like machines than we ordinarily suppose. These reasons derive from various sources: for example, from the scientific view that human beings are parts of nature and therefore governed by natural laws, or from theological concerns that require all events to be causally determined by God.3

Answering the question of how and to what effect these “two forceful considerations” are negotiated and balanced in Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls and Pushing Daisies is the object of the present essay. The most conspicuous way in which all three of these series engage with aspects of determinism is their use of preternatural phenomena, and it is in Dead Like Me and Pushing Daisies in particular that these aspects bring with them a set of rules according to which the respective protagonist can (and will have to) behave. Thus scriptwriters are given a fixed frame of reference within which certain decisions on the part of the protagonists will have to manifest themselves. While it is of course true that — in principle at least — such frames of reference exist for characters in all television series, and implicitly govern the likelihood of certain behavioral patterns on the part of characters, the sets of rules introduced by Bryan Fuller’s television series are both unusually strict and unfamiliar, thus heightening their audience’s awareness of them. Along with the strict rules protagonists have to live and use their individual talents by, another feature of Dead Like Me and Pushing Daisies 116

7. “It’s a Destiny Thing — Enjoy It!” (Gill)

that highlights a sense of determinism in these series is the use of voiceovers and the way in which these convey a strong sense of teleology. When the narrator in Pushing Daisies embarks on one of his expositional voiceovers (“At this very moment in the town of Couer d’Couers, young Ned was nine years, twenty-seven weeks, six days and three minutes old”),4 it is as if the entirety of Ned’s life was laid out before him like a book to be read from start to finish or to be dipped into at any given point. While the case of George in Dead Like Me is somewhat different, the fact that she can at least look back on her life in the occasional voiceover with the knowledge of what would become of her, means that these voiceovers are also imbued with a certain sense of teleology. Despite the presence of these determinist features in Bryan Fuller’s television shows, and in Dead Like Me and Pushing Daisies in particular, television series in general can be expected to rely rather heavily on the presence of free will in the universes they create. After all, only this (i.e. the presence of real moral choices) can provide depth (and development) of character. Referring back to Pereboom’s illustration of the entire conflict, it would have to be a very dedicated audience indeed that would develop and maintain a lively interest in the story of a machine that simply and unquestioningly did what it was programmed to do. As this essay argues, it is the delicate balance between the competing forces of determinism and free will that is a central aspect of Bryan Fuller’s television shows. This is not to say that this phenomenon is always approached from exactly the same angle in all three of these shows, however. Instead, it is possible to observe some interesting developments regarding this phenomenon from one series to the next. In order to provide some focus in a discussion of a total of sixty-four episodes and one feature film, the present essay will primarily engage with the respective pilot episodes.

“That’s just the way it is”: Dead Like Me Dead Like Me follows the story of eighteen-year-old Georgia Lass (“George” to her friends), who dies in a tragic accident involving an alfresco lunch break and a space-station toilet seat. Upon dying, George discovers that she is to become a grim reaper, an undead entity collecting the souls 117


of people just prior to their deaths and then escorting the recently dead to their respective afterlives. Assigned to the “External Influence” division of grim reapers, George is especially concerned with accidental deaths, murders and suicides. As her initial assertion regarding her own indifference toward life in general, made in the introductory voiceover to the pilot episode (“I excel at not giving a shit”5) illustrates, George is a rebellious and emotionally detached teenager in her “natural” life. Any rules imposed on her by society (characteristically represented by both her mother and the temp agency she goes to work for) are viewed by George with utter disdain. Thus it is no surprise that George initially struggles with her new existence as a grim reaper and the duties attached to it. This is illustrated by a section of the voiceover used to introduce the early episodes of season one: “[e]verybody dies. That’s just the way it is. I’m told I’m not supposed to argue or question or even try to understand. I’m told a lot these days.”6 While it seems that no one could have convinced the living George of the logic and necessity of certain restrictions imposed upon the living (like, for instance, accepting a dead-end job in order to earn a livelihood), much of the charm of Dead Like Me is created by its portrayal of her gradual (and reluctant) acceptance of the metaphysical laws George suddenly finds herself governed by. These involve the fact that the souls of the living have to be collected prior to their deaths and escorted to an undisclosed kind of afterlife, the portal to which is represented differently depending on the deceased. Further, each death is accurately predicted in the form of an ETD (“estimated time of death”) given to her boss on a list which he then breaks down into a series of individual post-it notes for his fellow reapers. The reapers themselves are seen by the living as someone other than who they were in life. Finally, accidental deaths are brought about by “Gravelings,” gremlin-like creatures not usually noticed by humans. George’s induction into her new life falls to the other members of her team of grim reapers, and among these primarily to Rube, the division leader. Her extreme reluctance to come to terms with these apparently unalterable rules is perhaps best illustrated by means of her first reap, a young girl who was supposed to die in a train accident. When George realizes that her “mark” is only a child, she decides not to reap her soul. When she is confronted by Rube about this, he tells her in no uncertain 118


terms that “[t]hat’s not how it works. You just can’t change fate.”7 The souls of those about to die have to be reaped, else their souls “wither and die and rot inside [them].”8 Thus it is that Rube explains to George the necessity of what they are doing as grim reapers and finally sways her to go and collect the girl’s soul. His closing question in this exchange is of course purely rhetorical, since morally speaking, there is no choice in the matter: if George decides not to do what she perceives to be a bad thing, something even worse will happen. In terms of an exertion of free will, this is the equivalent of making someone commit a robbery by holding one of their relatives at gunpoint: yes, there is a moral choice to be made, but the parameters within which it is to be made make it a choice in name only. While the restrictions imposed on George by her new mentor Rube take some getting used to, she gradually learns to come to terms with them in the course of the first season, even if it takes the occasional hard-learned lesson on her part. In fact, what makes George such a deeply human character is the reluctance with which she comes to accept these rules and the way in which she reflects on them. This is made all the more poignant by the show’s vagueness on a number of questions the average viewer would probably deem central to any portrayal of a life after death: nothing is known of the effect of the reapers’ work beyond its most immediate outcome; in the very first ninety seconds of the show, the origin of the metaphysical rules governing life and death is ascribed to a “lower-case g” god in a creation myth of which George says it is “just a story”9; and when asked about the existence of God, Rube — the man who is supposed to know these things — has only this to say: “[w]hat do you think?”10 The fact that the rules gradually trickle down to her and are not univocally given as the invention of a supreme being with a clear and comprehensible purpose encourages George’s speculation. Thus, even though she cannot ignore the rules, she is not given any reason to accept them eagerly and unquestioningly either. So while there is little actual choice in these metaphysical matters, George’s deliberations and habitual hesitation at least bring some notion of an autonomous life with them and stop that aspect of her existence from turning into the unthinking processes associated with Pereboom’s machine. Where George is markedly restricted in her exertion of free will regarding her duties as a grim reaper, she is equally restricted in her ten119


tative contact with her family, and with her little sister Reggie in particular. In the third episode of the first season (“Curious George”), Rube warns her not to seek out her family or somehow try to send her sister messages about her continued existence, but she does so anyway.11 As with the metaphysical rules governing her work as a reaper, it is George’s realization that it is too painful to keep in touch with her family that makes her decide to stop, not necessarily any formal rule unquestioningly accepted by her. Despite this resolution, however, there continue to be points of contact between George and her mother, father and sister. These are of course necessary since her family’s inability to cope with her death is an ongoing theme developed in the show, and it would be difficult to maintain this separate story arc if it had to unfold in complete and utter isolation from the main story. Thus George attends one of her father’s classes in one episode, for instance.12 In all, however, her reticent behavior with regard to her family is largely based on her own common sense rather than on her being informed of an abstract set of rules she is expected to follow uncomplainingly. She may occasionally tempt fate in the course of her reaping duties, but the ensuing “Reapercussions”13 (as one episode title puts it) gradually convince her to heed the rules because she can grasp the negative consequences in principle. In the case of her family, it is the consequences of her actions on her family on a personal level that make her choose a new path. The one area of her new existence in which she seems absolutely free to make autonomous choices is life among her fellow reapers. Once the post-it notes have been distributed and the souls have been reaped, George, Rube, Mason, Roxy and Betty (replaced by Daisy after the fifth episode) have a relatively normal communal life, some of them even holding down regular jobs in the world of the living. In their dealings with one another they give off the distinct impression that — as long as it does not have any impact on their reaping tasks — they are free to commingle as they like, to develop likes and dislikes for one another and to generally have a normal existence in which, in stark contrast to their work as reapers, not everything is a question of fate. Characteristically for these three shows created by Bryan Fuller, it is in the surrogate family that the protagonist from a troubled background finds a new and real sense of belonging. Thus Rube is soon seen as a loving father figure habitually calling George by the pet 120


name “Peanut,” Mason takes on the role of the pitifully erratic brother, and Roxy occasionally steps up as a tough but caring mother figure. All of them (including Betty, and later on in season one, Daisy) are deeply troubled characters with enough problems of their own, but in coming together (involuntarily) and forming strong bonds (voluntarily), they manage to create a close-knit community. Strictly speaking, the logic of all of this is of course anything but spotless. Creating a universe in which fate rules supreme in some areas of life but not in others is after all a fairly inconsistent undertaking. But the relative opacity of the metaphysical rules outlined above — and even more so of their origins and purpose — helps Fuller to pull it off nonetheless. The feeling of free choices within the group of reapers especially stands out from the rest of the show and should perhaps not be taken too literally. It can easily be read as a subjective impression on George’s part. While George never managed to feel at home in her own family (and in this context her mother’s words of encouragement to go and get a dead-end job should be given some weight, when she says “[b]eggars can’t be choosers”14), George never really feels in control of anything in her “natural” existence. As her appreciation of her relative freedom in the face of indubitable proof of the existence of fate and her appreciation of those nearest to her in her new life increase, so does her sense of empowerment within the context of her immediate environment.

“From now on, I’m Fate’s bitch”: Wonderfalls At the center of Fuller’s next television series, Wonderfalls, is the character of Jaye Tyler, a philosophy graduate working in a Niagara Falls gift shop. When various animal-shaped inanimate objects start talking to her and giving her instructions, Jaye has a breakdown. However, the animals continue talking to her even after she has sought therapy, and at some point she has to consider the possibility that it is not her mind that is at fault but that she is really receiving messages from some undisclosed preternatural source. Bryan Fuller explains the origins of this fairly unusual premise: 121

Part Two: Philosophy and Pushing Daisies He [co-creator Todd Holland] had a thing for the Joan of Arc legend, and we started talking about what it would mean to have someone called who really didn’t want to be called, and who might be the last person you would want to be called, and who was calling them, and all of the elements of that legend and how they might be reinvented today. We were in his kitchen talking about this, and he had a couple of salt and pepper shakers with a cow head and a bull head, and we thought “wouldn’t it be interesting if the higher power was speaking through these?”15

The idea of Jaye’s becoming “Fate’s bitch,” as she puts it in the second episode, obviously gives this series a strong determinist stance, and as is the case with George in Dead Like Me, much of the interest in the development in Jaye’s character is firmly based on the portrayal of her gradual acceptance of the voices she hears. But where George is introduced to new hard and fast rules (i.e., collect the souls of the living before they die, don’t interfere with fate), and while she has someone to explain them to her or at least to point out the terrible consequences of ignoring them, all Jaye can rely on is the hopelessly vague instructions of a variety of inanimate objects. These animal-shaped objects (after which all the individual episodes of Wonderfalls are titled) can really be seen as the rightful heirs of ancient oracles. Oracles are of course a staple ingredient of ancient myth and legend, but it may be worth reminding ourselves of one of their most basic characteristics: their utterances are rarely univocal. That is not to say that they are unreliable in terms of their not telling the truth. On the contrary, ancient oracles are conspicuous for always having been right all along.16 The problem is that the recipients of their messages usually turn out to have lacked understanding and insight. That the talking animals express themselves in hopelessly vague terms is frequently due to the deictic nature of their pronouncements: for instance, they rarely use names but usually refer to people by means of personal pronouns, thus making misunderstandings highly likely. But the fact that these messages require interpretation also puts their entire existence right on the cusp between free will and determinism. If oracles can foretell the future, that seems to speak in favor of a world in which everyone’s actions are predetermined; but if there are several possible reactions to an oracular utterance, this seems to indicate a certain amount of choice. So how exactly do these oracular utterances work in Wonderfalls? 122


Out of the blue, Jay will find herself addressed by some kind of animal-shaped object. Usually, the instruction she is given is expressed in a single sentence which — for as long as she resists acknowledging it — will be repeated over and over again. The only adverse effect she has to fear in case of non-compliance, then, is becoming seriously annoyed with, and of course distracted by, a talking (or sometimes singing) inanimate object. But this is usually all it takes for Jaye to make at least some effort at following the given instructions. In most cases, these will be vague, as for instance “[g]et off your ass”17 or “[m]ake me a match.”18 Any attempt on her part to engage the inanimate object in a more general exchange is ignored. Thus, in the pilot episode, Jaye asks the talking wax lion the following questions, to no avail: “[i]s that supposed to mean something? Is that a metaphor? Are you Satan? Are you God?”19 The vagueness of the instructions usually leads to an episode-long deferral, as Jaye tries to work out exactly what the animals want from her. In the case of the pilot episode’s “[m]ake me a match,” Jaye first assumes she is supposed to set up a delivery man with her sister and acts accordingly. Toward the end of the episode it is finally revealed that her matchmaking skills were meant for her sister and the delivery man’s ex-wife. But miraculously, she has managed to make the desired match, even though she has been pursuing the wrong avenue all along. This miraculous resolution of all ostensible problems (in other people’s lives — never really in Jaye’s own) can even be brought about as a result of instructions that may make Jaye think she is to work against someone when what she is really doing is working in their favor. This is the case in the second episode, when Jaye is given the — for once — unequivocal instruction to “destroy Gretchen,”20 a former classmate of hers. Hesitant at first, Jaye grows so annoyed with Gretchen in the course of the episode that she is finally ready to avail herself of any means to humiliate the other woman during their high school reunion. As it turns out though, that humiliation helps to bring Gretchen’s life back on track and to finally make her happy. In fact, everything Jaye does that appears to be a phenomenal mistake (like running over her father in his car) turns out to have been of significant benefit to someone (like giving doctors a chance to discover a dangerous blood clot in her father’s leg which might have ended up killing him). It is the gradual realization of this holistic world view, in which everyone’s lives are so intricately inter123


twined that good intentions may not bring about the desired outcome but heeding the talking animals does, that brings Jaye to the following conclusion: “I’m done fighting. From now on, I’m Fate’s bitch.”21 In terms of her personal life, Jaye starts out on a path similar to George’s in Dead Like Me. Underappreciated and emotionally detached, stuck in a menial job and constantly struggling with a difficult family and their challenging expectations, Jaye is as unlikely a person as any to bring happiness into other people’s lives. In contrast to George, though, she is not surrounded by people who share her situation. Although she can confide in her best friend Mahandra, who again and again tries to find rational explanations for Jaye’s visions of talking animals, there is no other person in the series sharing her gift. In contrast to George, then, Jaye is not cut off from her family but instead has to cope with family life while at the same time keeping her visions a secret. As the series continues, she gradually becomes better at dealing with her family, in no small part thanks to the fact that her constant involvement in other people’s lives begins to make her a more caring person overall. As has already been noted, the degree of coercion at work on Jaye is somewhat smaller than in the case of George. If George acts against the rules of the universe as explained to her by Rube, terrible things will happen to people’s souls, so her actions can actively bring about bad things. Whenever Jaye refuses to act according to the animals’ instructions, she is merely in danger of failing to bring about other people’s happiness. But the processes by which they discover these rules and gradually come to accept them are fashioned in a similar vein. The rules are there for them to discern (though admittedly only rather vaguely in Jaye’s case), they follow their instincts to go against these rules from time to time, but in the end they have to accept them, since they grasp the consequences of not doing so. In terms of a definition of the conflict between free will and determinism as outlined by Pereboom, this behavioral pattern is relatively difficult to pin down, as — in black and white terms — George and Jaye are neither free agents making entirely autonomous choices, nor machines programmed to fulfill a predefined function without reflecting upon it. Perhaps another definition of determinism would suit their cases rather better. As Porter points out, “[t]o the determinist, all of our actions are inevitable responses to given conditions, the strict effects of prior causes,”22 124


so that we should maybe see determinism in the present cases as conditioning rather than coercion. Jaye and George both try out forms of behavior other than the prescribed ones. But since they are “normal and mature human being[s],”23 they have to come to the conclusion that in their respective universes, the odds are heavily stacked in favor of accepting the rules and the guidance given to them.

“What if you didn’t have to be dead?”: Pushing Daisies The intimate connection between Pushing Daisies and at least one of Bryan Fuller’s previous shows is outlined by Fuller himself in an interview: The idea [for Pushing Daisies] started back on ‘Dead Like Me’ when I thought ‘Okay, Georgia is a character who touches people and takes their souls and wouldn’t it be interesting if she had a romantic foil ... somebody who touches people and gives their life back.’ Then I put that idea in my back pocket and it just kept on percolating.24

Despite the similarities among these series, Pushing Daisies differs from its predecessors in a number of significant ways. The single most important aspect in the context of the present essay is the idea of free will and determinism expressed in the show, and as with the other shows, this is closely connected with the protagonist’s unusual abilities. Given the context in which the present essay appears, a particularly detailed introduction to Pushing Daisies is hardly necessary. A brief recap of the rules governing protagonist Ned’s deeds will however be necessary, as these will of course feature rather heavily in this discussion of ideas of determinism and free will in the show. The best possible adumbration of young Ned’s discovery of his powers is of course offered by the show’s narrator in the opening sequence, when he points out that “Ned could touch dead things and bring them back to life,” but that “he could only bring the dead back to life for one minute without consequences. Any longer and someone else had to die.”25 Finally, and most significantly for Ned’s relationship with Chuck, anyone thus raised by Ned will die for good if touched by him for a second time. 125


As in Wonderfalls and (to a somewhat lesser degree) Dead Like Me, the origin of Ned’s preternatural talents remains undisclosed. But while the protagonists of the other two series are either univocally instructed or given an explicit explanation of what they are to do and why, Ned is never told how to use his unusual powers. After the unfortunate death of his mother, he goes about empirically testing his powers and their consequences, as is repeatedly shown in flashback montages during the expository voiceovers to individual episodes. Having discovered the rules governing his powers, Ned develops his own moral code regarding their use. When he accidentally revives the criminal running from Emerson Cod in the pilot episode, he knows he has to touch him again since not doing so would have two unwelcome consequences: it would constitute an inappropriate interference with the criminal’s fate (after all, he is clearly supposed to die) and it would put innocent bystanders at risk.26 These rules are absolutely clear to Ned. More importantly, they are of his own devising. Most important of all, though, is the fact that he is therefore free to change them when the expected outcome appears necessary or desirable to him. That he does not do so lightly should be self-evident, but in his encounter with Chuck, he simply cannot help offering her a way out of death. In the absence of clear rules imposed on him by others and in the presence of his childhood sweetheart, he is free to make that decision. The extent of Ned’s freedom to choose whether or not to use his powers and thus fulfill his supposed destiny is perhaps best exemplified not by means of the pilot episode — though this clearly features a crucial deviation from the rules Ned has set himself— but by a closer look at a particular episode occurring late in the second season, “Window Dressed to Kill.”27 After all, it is this episode that centers around global questions of fate and identity rather than focusing on any one particular instance in which Ned uses his powers or declines to do so. As Ned decides to give up use of his powers for good in order to become “a normal guy who makes pies,”28 Chuck is eager to become “the alive-again avenger,”29 Emerson Cod’s new sidekick in the crime-solving business. While this is the most obvious renegotiation of ostensibly predetermined roles, questions of identity are raised throughout the episode, as in the brief exchange that ensues when Ned enters The Pie Hole to find Olive Snook in the company of her erst126


while abductors. His question after the identity of the visitors is countered by Olive with the rather more comprehensive question “[w]ho are any of us, really?”30 Throughout the rest of the episode, being “normal” becomes Ned’s lodestar, but it is a challenge he clearly enjoys. Pretending to be engaged to Olive, he can experience “a normal relationship” and is in a situation in which he can “help [her] in a way that doesn’t require being super, it just requires being normal.”31 The situation comes to a head, though, when Ned realizes that Olive’s friends are in need of a little help beyond the normal and that in order to be the best friend to Olive he can be, he will need to return to his old ways. Randy Mann expresses this concept when he tells Ned that “[p]eople that have super powers don’t not want to use them.”32 That the decision to return to his old ways is seen as something of a necessity by Ned should not distract from the operative word want: Ned is not coerced into making this decision — it is his to make one way or the other. If circumstances conspire to nudge him in the one direction rather than the other, it is still a choice he makes, as is illustrated by the emphatic closing statement of his resolution to give up his attempts at being “normal”: “[n]o more pretending to be normal. The best way I can help anyone is by being a pie-making dead-waker. Pretending to be something I’m not is a recipe for disaster. So I say yes to ‘super’ and no to ‘normal.’”33 The decisive difference between Ned on the one hand and Jaye and George on the other is the way that he can choose his own motivation for his actions (“[t]he best way I can help anyone”) and the way he can embrace his abilities. Where Jaye is simply resigned to her fate (“[f ]rom now on, I’m Fate’s bitch”), Ned is not shown to simply give in — he is shown to make a voluntary and deliberate decision. In terms of the uses of his powers, then, Ned is far more a master of his own fate than Jaye or George. The only aspect of destiny that could be discussed in this regard is the incredible coincidence that — with the exception of Chuck’s father, of course — Ned seems to be singularly lucky with fate’s choice of surrogate victims, as they all turn out to have been crooks highly deserving of their unfortunate ends. Of course, a case could be made for an all-pervasive sense of conditioning in this story, as all characters are governed by their backstories to an astonishing degree: thus Chuck meets her fate after escaping her aunts’ 127


agoraphobic existence and traveling the world, while Ned is conditioned to become a pie-maker after we see his mother baking pies on the day of her death and after we find out that he took solace in this activity during his boarding-school days.34 But in terms of his use of his powers and of the momentous decisions taken on his part in the course of the show, Ned is a free agent, always making decisions based on his own moral principles. This is further illustrated by a contrastive look at the protagonists’ social circles in these three television series. After all, George is stuck with a set group of people on the composition of which she has no say. She can have better or worse relations with the people in that group, but who gets to join the group is out of her hands. Jaye, on the other hand, is not transplanted from one social set to another by her unusual abilities, but her social contacts with regard to her preternatural challenges are extremely limited and try as she might, she cannot even let anyone in on her secret. Ned, however, has not only gathered these people around himself by choice, but in the cases of his dog Digby and his childhood sweetheart Chuck, his influence in their being a part of The Pie Hole set is incomparably greater, as he is literally responsible for their continued existence. There is no doubt that the Pushing Daisies universe is intermittently informed by ideas of determinism. The omniscient narrator (“[t]he facts were these ...”) evokes the impression of an outside observer with all storylines past, present, and future at his disposal, which in turn smacks of a universe in the grip of predetermination. Fanciful fairytale coincidences frequently seem to govern the lives of many of the guest roles, also supporting the idea that some things are simply meant to be. In terms of the decisions of its protagonist, however, it offers the widest range of choices of any of Bryan Fuller’s television series.

“I mean, if it’s destiny, there’s probably a reason for it, right?” Those who consider an interpretation of Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls and Pushing Daisies focusing on their use of different varieties of determinist universes a tad far fetched should perhaps consider Bryan Fuller’s involve128


ment in another prominent television series, Tim Kring’s Heroes. Here, a diverse group of people discover they possess different super powers and are faced with the question of to what purpose they are to use them. Frequent recourse to prophecies marks out the Heroes universe as one governed by a certain degree of predetermination, while characters frequently try to change fate or at least to bring about circumstances in which things that have been foretold can be interpreted in different ways. Asked about what originally attracted him to Heroes, Bryan Fuller had this to say: The show really isn’t a superhero show. It’s about regular people realizing they have superpowers and it’s about how they deal with it. What I was attracted to was the themes of destiny and fate and our individual roles in the universe. If you look at “Dead Like Me” or “Wonderfalls” you’ll see that the characters ask those same types of questions. I really related to that.35

Fate, then, is a subject close to Fuller’s heart, and if he omits Pushing Daisies in the statement above, it is only because at the time the interview was conducted, that particular show was still waiting in the wings. Other links between Fuller’s various shows have been commented on before, from some casting overlaps (such as Lee Pace, who also played Jaye’s brother in Wonderfalls) to the occasional reappearance of names, characters or objects that could previously be seen in the earlier shows (the Happy Time temp agency Ned claims to work for36 is the company George actually works for in Dead Like Me, for instance, just as the Muffin Buffalo from Wonderfalls37 shows up in Pushing Daisies38). But while these occasional hints at Dead Like Me and Wonderfalls contained in Pushing Daisies may have started out with the intention of linking the three shows in more than an exclusively playful intertextual sense, their effect in the finished product of Pushing Daisies is certainly not that of convincing us that the three shows are set in the same fictional universe. The aesthetics and settings of the shows are simply too different to let their characters inhabit the same diegetic space. Most importantly in the context of the present essay, so are the rules governing the exertion of free will. If Ned’s character was originally envisioned as a foil to George’s grim reaper, giving life where George took it, it would have been necessary to have him work under someone’s orders, to have him fulfill an explicit purpose in the grand scheme of things. But the Ned we are presented with in Pushing Daisies is not a fiercely independent person struggling to come 129


to terms with hard and fast rules or constant unexplained instructions; instead, he is the reticent bearer of a gift he has no explanation for, a gift that requires him to make moral choices and to come up with his own rules. The only thing he has in common with George and Jaye with regard to the use of his powers is that he cannot talk about them to all and sundry (much to Olive’s dismay, in particular) and the relative isolation this brings. But in this, too, he has more freedom of choice than either George or Jaye, the former because she can only really communicate within her group of grim reapers, the latter because she cannot communicate her preternatural episodes to anyone and expect to be believed. Far from saying that by allowing his protagonist greater freedom Fuller develops toward something better or more interesting in Pushing Daisies, I would contend that the degree of free choice represented in these shows is always exactly proportionate to what the individual shows set out to do: if you want to portray a rebellious teenager who never cared for grownup life or for other people and you want to sketch the process of her growing up fast in very challenging circumstances, introducing a set of metaphysical rules that character has to come to terms with is a legitimate instrument. In contrast, if you want to tell an original and highly unusual love story (which, at its heart, Pushing Daisies is and which — tellingly — Wonderfalls and Dead Like Me are not), it would be difficult to restrict character development to a simple coming to terms with the way things are. If these are the varieties of determinism on offer in these three shows, their distinguishing features are of a relative rather than of an absolute nature. Choice is possible in the worlds of all three shows, but in two of them the sensible or right path to take is outlined to the protagonists. They may choose not to follow that path once, but as soon as they learn of the consequences of their behavior, they will reflect on it and resolve to mend their ways. In contrast to any real kind of determinism, what is on display in Pushing Daisies as well as in Dead Like Me and Wonderfalls is a hybrid form. It is, to put it bluntly, a kind of fairytale determinism. In fairy tales, the idea of predetermination is particularly useful and desirable where it gives us a sense of justice. A predicted outcome really comes to pass and confirms our belief that certain actions have to have certain consequences. Logically demonstrating to a child that if one thing 130


is predetermined in a given universe, all things must be, would probably not be considered very good parenting. Neither would this premise be an ideal foundation for a scriptwriter, as the example of Pereboom’s machine has demonstrated. In telling a story, it is our instinct to create causalities, to link one event to the next by saying that the one follows directly and exclusively from the other. On the other hand, it is also our instinct to attribute characters with free will, since they would not be particularly interesting agents if it were otherwise. By skillfully picking the best of both worlds depending on his storytelling requirements, and by setting the determinist aspects in wildly implausible and yet consistent and versimilitudinous frameworks, always banking on his audience’s willingness to suspend their disbelief and follow where he takes them, Bryan Fuller has created three highly original television shows which — among other things — remind us that questions of free will and determinism will continue to present a challenge to our preconceptions about what it means to be human.

Chapter Notes 1. Brendon Connelly, “Pushing Daisies to Do a Firefly and Become a Movie?” slashfilm.com. 14 January 2009. Web. 1 March 2010. 2. While both Fuller and Holland are listed as creators and executive producers of the show, Holland is credited with having written five of the show’s thirteen episodes, while Fuller is not listed as a writer on any of them. 3. Derek Pereboom, “Introduction.” Free Will. Ed. Derek Pereboom. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997: vii. 4. Episode 1.1, “Pie-Lette.” 5. Episode 1.1, “Pilot.” 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid. 11. Episode 1.3, “Curious George.” 12. Episode 1.9, “Sunday Mornings.” 13. Episode 1.4, “Reapercussions.” 14. Episode 1.1, “Wax Lion.” 15. Sarah Warn, “Interview with Wonderfalls’ Bryan Fuller,” AfterEllen. 24 March 2004. Web. 1 March 2010. 16. Walter Burkert, Oedipus, Oracles, and Meaning: From Sophocles to Umberto Eco. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991: 23.

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Part Two: Philosophy and Pushing Daisies 17. Episode 1.2, “Pink Flamingos.” 18. “Wax Lion.” 19. Ibid. 20. “Pink Flamingos.” 21. Ibid. 22. Burton F. Porter, The Good Life: Alternatives in Ethics. Lanham, MD: Rowan and Littlefield, 2001: 54. 23. Pereboom, vii. 24. Terri Schwartz, “An Interview with Pushing Daisies Creator Bryan Fuller.” Comic Book Resources. 26 October 2006. Web. 1 March 2010. 25. “Pie-Lette.” 26. Ibid. 27. Episode 2.11, “Window Dressed to Kill.” 28. Ibid. 29. Ibid. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid. 32. Ibid. 33. Ibid. 34. Episode 2.8, “Comfort Food.” 35. Taylor. 36. Episode 2.1, “Bzzzzzzz!” 37. Episode 1.6, “Muffin Buffalo.” 38. “Comfort Food.”

Works Cited Burkert, Walter. Oedipus, Oracles, and Meaning: From Sophocles to Umberto Eco. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991. Connelly, Brendon. “Pushing Daisies to Do a Firefly and Become a Movie?” slashfilm.com. 14 January 2009. Web. Accessed 1 March 2010. Dead Like Me: The Complete First Season. Created by Bryan Fuller. Perf. Ellen Muth, Mandy Patinkin, Callum Blue, Jasmine Guy, Laura Harris, Jessica Stevenson. Showtime, 2003–2004. DVD. MGM Home Entertainment, 2004. Pereboom, Derek. “Introduction.” Free Will. Ed. Derek Pereboom. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997. Porter, Burton F. The Good Life: Alternatives in Ethics. Lanham, MD: Rowan and Littlefield, 2001. Pushing Daisies: The Complete First Season. Created by Bryan Fuller. Perf. Lee Pace, Anna Friel, Chi McBride, Kristin Chenoweth. ABC, 2007–2008. DVD. Warner Home Video, 2007. Pushing Daisies: The Complete Second Season. Created by Bryan Fuller. Perf. Lee Pace, Anna Friel, Chi McBride, Kristin Chenoweth. ABC, 2008–2009. DVD. Warner Home Video, 2009. Schwartz, Terri. “An Interview with Pushing Daisies Creator Bryan Fuller.” Blast Magazine. 8 September 2008. Web. Accessed 1 March 2010.

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7. “It’s a Destiny Thing — Enjoy It!” (Gill) Taylor, Robert. “Reflections: Talking with Bryan Fuller.” Comic Book Resources. 26 October 2006. Web. Accessed 1 March 2010. Warn, Sarah. “Interview with Wonderfalls’ Bryan Fuller.” AfterEllen. 24 March 2004. Web. Accessed 1 March 2010. Wonderfalls: The Complete Series. Created by Bryan Fuller and Todd Holland. Perf. Caroline Dhavernas, Katie Finneran, Tyro Leitso, Lee Pace, Tracie Thoms. Fox, 2004. DVD. 20th Century–Fox, 2005.

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PART THREE

Gender and Pushing Daisies


8

The Queer, Quirky World of Pushing Daisies DANIEL FARR

Pushing Daisies was a series notable for its unique and quirky treatment of death and social relationships. Integral to this show’s plot is the central character’s ability to make those who are dead undead. This queering of life and death is merely the beginning of the complex fluidities of social life tackled in this groundbreaking series. Situated in the town of Couer d’Couers, “Heart of Hearts” in French, this show blends mid-twentieth century aesthetics and ideologies with modernity. Informed by a historic Americana, past this show espouses a progressive queer take on the social institutions of gender and sexuality, race, and the family with the frequent inclusion of referents of queer cultures at large. Pushing Daisies was the third mainstream scripted television series of the twenty first century to center storylines around the topic of death, following Six Feet Under 1 and Dead Like Me.2 Despite a short run, Pushing Daisies garnered significant acclaim and awards, demonstrating a solid foundation of storyline, production, and performance. As creator of both Dead Like Me and Pushing Daisies, Bryan Fuller offers a unique interpretation of death as fluid — dying does not mean one is necessarily deaddead. Through the locating of death as a potentially unstable or incomplete state of being, a location of multiple meanings and interpretations, this series particularly lends itself towards analysis informed by queer theory. The difficulty in undertaking and discussing a queer analysis of a cultural text, such as this series, is the multiple meanings of “queer” unto itself. “Queer” may be deployed as a noun, adjective, verb, or adverb.3 While various texts have sought to explore the emergence and visibility of 137

Part Three: Gender and Pushing Daisies

gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) in television,4 recent work has begun to explore the underpinning politics of this queer inclusion and visibility.5 Herein, queer will be engaged as a theoretic approach to examining the disrupting, challenging, or transforming of hegemonic structures and institutions. Further, within this analysis an examination of queer iconography and inclusion will be explored for cultural references and visibility.

Be a Man (and Bake Me a Pie)!? Queering Masculinity As the central character of the series, Ned is a man who can wake the dead with a single touch, but more importantly he is a man who queers masculinity. As the proprietor of The Pie Hole restaurant, Ned bakes and appears to only serve pie. While running and owning a business are likely considered appropriately masculine endeavors, centering upon pies —fruit filled pies — may encourage the questioning of his masculinity, sexuality and even his sex. His queer masculinity works to not only locate Ned as an outsider, but also allows the audience to question the concepts and values of hegemonic masculinity. This location as an outsider begins in his youth, as portrayed during opening sequences with particular emphasis upon how he differs from the other boys. Centering around his ability to make dead things undead as a source of difference, this status clearly affects his overall treatment and lower status ranking in the boy-masculine hierarchy, despite few peers being aware of his ability. Ironically, the only time he appears somewhat popular among his boys’ school peers is when he begins to bake pies,6 reminding them of their homes. This affirmation of gender-queer behavior bolsters Ned’s path towards a less normative masculinity — a masculinity that allows for greater fluidity and potentially feminine overtones. Ned is a prime example of what Robert Heasley has termed a “straight sissy boy.”7 His gendered presentation, behaviorally and physically, as well as sexually, is read as queer by both his peers and the audience. Central to this construction is Ned’s occupation as a baker, often referred to in more feminized non-professional terms as “the pie maker.” He isn’t a profes138

8. The Queer, Quirky World of Pushing Daisies (Farr)

sional, but is engaging in behavior that one might liken or equate with a motherly, feminine figure. Being a “maker,” rather than baker, may work to further reduce his occupational status. His restaurant, while relatively successful, is not really a manly endeavor, given its primary food. Indeed, Ned himself equates pie making with recollections of his mother.8 As a tall white man, over six feet in height, Ned is often shown in manners that work to transform his physicality, to reduce his size — to shrink and perhaps feminize him. His posture is often hunched, with hands in pockets, bringing his chest inwards. His “aww shucks,” modest stance not only lessens his height, but reduces the appearance of muscularity as well. Counter to modern ethos of masculine posturing and physical presentation,9 Ned is portraying a masculine physicality that is likely understood as effeminate or sissy in nature. Aesthetically, Ned is often shown in khaki type pants, t-shirts, pullovers, or cardigans, with canvas sneakers — one might liken his style to that of Mister Rogers.10 While his clothing aesthetic certainly reads as appropriately masculine, his posturing accompanied by his soft-spoken personality leads one to question his sexuality and thus his gender. Even among his closest friends and colleagues Ned’s identity is a topic of question and debate. This uncertainty and queer read of his character is noted in at least two episodes. Emerson, Ned’s private investigator collaborator and friend, for example notes “[b]efore dead girl came along, I didn’t know what you liked. Or if you liked or if you had anything to like with. For all I know, you could have been one of those people born with both, but didn’t use either.”11 Nearly a year later, Olive, Ned’s waitress and friend discusses their relationship with a competitor at a food contest as “[w]ho Ned? ... We’re partners in a contest. Unromantic partners. Like a brother and a sister. Like an asexual, androgynous brother and a sister.”12 As two of the closest people in Ned’s life, confusion about his gender and sexuality, and even sex, abound. It is only in the presence of a love interest, Charlotte (Chuck), that his sexuality and thus gender are understood within the context of hegemonic masculinity. Ned may queer gender and sexuality enough to facilitate the positing of his identity outside the realms of hegemonic heterosexual-homosexual and masculine-feminine binaries, but is ultimately understood and defined by this romantic other in a manner accessible to the viewing audience. 139


The questioning of Ned’s identity in the series is not only referenced by his close associates, but by even recent acquaintances. When meeting the owners of a newly opened competing candy shop across the street, Dilly and Billy, Ned’s sexuality is challenged during a confrontation as Dilly, using a fake stutter states, “[a]me-on-g-g-gay.”13 After Ned’s retort of “[w]hat?,” it is learned that she has supposedly said “[g]ame on.” The stuttered statement, meant to create tension and discomfort for the Pie Holers, also confronts and challenges Ned’s sexuality. Culturally, real masculinity is affiliated with heterosexuality — to be gay would imply a lower status and lesser degree of masculinity. Men are certainly socialized to police masculinity through the threat of homosexual demarcation,14 but to have this sort of stigmatization coming from a woman works to further reinforce its stigma and deference of status. Even in a world where Ned is allowed to be unique, in a myriad of manners, he struggles with his differences. As he struggles with his identity and queer ability to wake the dead he asks, “[w]ho wants to be Superman? Not me. I say no to ‘super’ and yes to ‘man.’ I’m Clark Kent.” 15 Ned yearns to be the iconic “good guy” who can live a normal life. Yet the story leads him to understand that his queer identity is far preferable. As he concludes, “[n]o more pretending to be normal. The best way I can help anyone is by being a pie-making dead waker. Pretending to be something I’m not is a recipe for disaster. So I say yes to super and no to normal.”16 Emerson Cod, P.I., as a central character and of few African Americans in the series, serves as a counter-balance to Ned’s sissy status, but also demonstrates a queering of masculinity. Superficially, Emerson is presented as an assertive, aggressive, and physically intimidating man, yet his “feminine” side is also actively conveyed to the audience. In the view of his colleagues and clients he presents a heavy-set body dressed in masculine suits, but also frequently includes bright, arguably feminine colors in his shirt and accessory choices. Despite the outer masculine coating of a suit, his underlying queerness is portrayed by the pink, lavender, and various floral shirts, ties, scarves and ascots in which he is often adorned. This said, given our cultural system’s racial privileging of whites, Emerson as an African American may have greater fluidity in his clothing color choices in part due to less risk of status loss, but perhaps also the wider range of color choice fluidity and stereotypes within the discourse of black mas140


culinity. While his aesthetic may challenge hegemonic white masculinity, it does not challenge norms of black masculinity in the same way. Emerson is clearly queered here in that his aesthetic has multiple reads and meanings for not only his clients and friends, but for the viewing audience. Emerson, despite aesthetics, is certainly understood in queer terms as it is revealed that he is an avid knitter.17 While knitting has at times been considered an acceptable masculine craft or occupation,18 today is often regarded as a primarily feminine hobby. Emerson, who uses knitting as a way to relax and release stress, is certainly aware of the possible stigma affiliated with knitting and is only shown knitting in the privacy of his office. In so doing he is a man “living in the shadow of masculinity.”19 He is aware of the potentially stigmatizing implications of this pastime, but reduces this threat by keeping his hobby closeted. He is clearly policing his own masculinity to maintain a front of acceptable manhood. This said, the inclusion of this pastime in the series offers a progressive world view of masculinity to the audience. Not only does Emerson regulate of his own masculinity but he also works to police the masculinity of other men. This policing is particularly evident when confronted with the emotionality of other men, as stated to a client about to cry in The Pie Hole: “[i]t is not okay for a grown-ass man to weep in public ... with a bunch of happy families enjoying pie. If you can’t hold it, you take your ass to the men’s room and cry in private on the toilet. Like a man.”20 To be a man is to contain one’s emotions and when one cannot control them to keep them private and locked behind closed doors. This message about emotionality and privacy is later reinforced when an adolescent boy, a client, about to cry in The Pie Hole, dismisses himself to rush, presumably, to the bathroom. 21 Messages of appropriate masculinity are clearly taught from an early age, but may need reinforcement during times of distress. Surprisingly, throughout the various portrayals of Ned’s childhood traumas of his mother’s death and his father’s abandonment the audience never witnesses Ned’s tears. Among issues of masculinity and gender policing is the threat of feminization. While Ned may challenge traditional masculinity he is not frequently stigmatized via feminization — people may question his sexuality, but rarely confuse or mark him as a woman. The demarcation of a man with feminine attributes, such as “throws like a girl,” is a common form 141


of policing via stigmatization. As a one-time suspect states, following a comment from Olive, “[h]ey, I’m just here for pie and conversation. Neither of which are cause to call a man a bitch.”22 One can question masculinity, but to actively flip it towards femininity is the ultimate offense and insult. Despite the series’ primarily progressive queer portrayals of masculine, the threat of homosexuality to traditional masculinity is also observed. This is notably revealed by Emerson’s mother, upon finding a pop-up book he had written, stating: “[t]he cover screams smear. What’s with the main character being a girl? You saying I turned you gay?”23 To which he replies, “I ain’t gay and this ain’t about you. It’s about my daughter.” This scene reveals several layers of homosexual threat and fear informed by cultural stereotypes. Chiefly, the suggestion from his mother that she “turned him” gay reflects various social beliefs that mothers, particularly single mothers, are to blame for making a son gay. Further, the association of gay masculinity with femininity is poignantly clear. To all this, not only must a “real” man counter such an assertion, but he must do so with improper English and must bolster his heterosexuality through the assertion of procreation. Being marked as a parent, presumably from heterosexual intercourse, is strongly correlated with beliefs of heterosexuality. A real man not only has sex with a woman, but is virile and can produce offspring.

A Boy Named Sue? No, A Girl Named Chuck: Queering Femininity Not to be neglected, femininity in this series also receives a queer reception. In both central female protagonists, Charlotte and Olive, the audience observes hyper-feminine physical portrayals with queered character traits and experiences. Charlotte, as Ned’s crush and girl-next-door as a child, is brought back from death after her untimely murder.24 She is introduced to the audience and to most characters in the show as “Chuck.” This masculinization of her name not only queers her feminine embodiment, but also bolsters the queerness of Ned’s affection. Physically, Chuck is the embodiment of traditional femininity — she is white, slender and tall with modest breasts and long hair. She favors clothing reminiscent of a mid-twentieth century aesthetic with full skirts, often of flowery patterns 142


and bright colors. She is not only the physical portrayal of this aesthetic, but embraces a modest and emotional personality sensitive to the needs of her friends and family. She is a caregiver whose efforts extend beyond Ned, Emerson, and Olive to even include the reclusive aunts who raised her — despite their belief that she is dead. Even in death, or rather undeath, she is enacting femininity. Olive, friend and waitress with a crush upon Ned, offers an exceptionally flirtatious form of femininity. While her amours are often unnoticed or dismissed, she continues to swoon and seek Ned’s attention. Her physicality, like Chuck’s, is also white and quite feminine with blond hair, although she is of shorter stature and often shown in shorter dresses with lower necklines and more visible cleavage. Her femininity may be bolstered in the series as the only character who breaks into bouts of singing.25 While singing itself may not be coded as feminine, the singing in which Olive partakes if primarily driven by emotions of love and sorrow. She is deploying song, much like a diary entry, as a means of emotional revelation targeted to the audience, as it is almost always silenced when another character enters the scene. Yet, she too demonstrates a gender queer past when it is learned that she had been a horse jockey.26 Not only is jockeying a field dominated by male riders in reality, but this too is the portrayal in the show. All of her old jockey buddies and competitors are men. Olive, despite limited aggression with Ned, is also the one to initiate a kiss when he saves her from danger.27 Yet, her assertiveness, or spunk, is clearly visible when she threatens a male customer and crime suspect: “[d]on’t make me cut a bitch,”28 as well as in her competiveness at the cook-off.29 Even her sexuality is briefly queered as a female private investigator flirts with her. Despite Olive’s dismissal of her overtures she is challenged “should I believe you? Your pulse races,” to which she replies “only because you’re standing so close.” 30 She may indeed have a moment of attraction, but to uphold appropriate femininity, must reject such overtures. To be erotically attracted to women is culturally understood as masculine, or at the very least queer. As a central character, clearly in love with Ned, to have attraction to a woman, or bisexuality, would likely result in confusion, not only among the Pie Holers, but for the audience as well. As frequent characters, Chuck’s aunts, Vivian and Lily, also work to queer traditional femininity. As sisters who spent their lives, prior to taking 143


custody of Chuck, as synchronized swimmers, they embodied femininity and grace. This imagery persists and is queered in their camp clothing aesthetic of very bright colors, sequins, and sparkle. As unmarried “spinsters,” they challenge the traditional notions of women seeking to marry and have children. Indeed, it is learned that Lily particularly rejected maternity in her youth when she gave birth to Chuck, but never told Chuck she was her mother.31 Given the cultural assumption that women desire, or should desire, to mother, this rejection of motherhood is challenging to traditional femininity — particularly when she ends up caring for Chuck for much of her life without revealing her secret identity. Despite their campy personas and spending their adult lives together sharing a life mostly devoid of men, they are marked as heterosexual by the portrayal and references to their relationships with men. This said, Lily, despite having had a one-time sexual relationship with a man, Vivian’s then fiancé, may be argued as queer in her dismissal and distrust of men and it can be hypothesized that her past relationship may have only emerged to support gendered expectations that women are to be involved with men. However, this act may also be seen as a clear betrayal of her sister — an act of resistance counter to traditional family values. While these central female characters also serve to queer gender, I would argue they do so to a lesser degree than the men. These women present queering in their daily portrayal, but it is particularly found in specific episodes or in aspects of lesser consequence, as with the name Chuck. They clearly adhere to their feminine roles the majority of the time, with moments of gender dissent. The men engage with gender dissention on a more frequent basis, particularly Ned, who relishes in the embodiment of queer manhood. Ultimately, the context of the storyline and necessity of audience appeal limits the degree of queering that can occur and sanitizes gender fluidity to achieve a socially acceptable level of queer.

I’m White, My Son’s Black ... Who’ll Notice? Queering Race, Ethnicity, and the Family Race and ethnicity is a complex matter to address in any series. Pushing Daisies employs a particularly progressive and queer approach to its 144


engagement with racial-ethnic issues with the frequent dismissal or complete ignorance of difference. Central to this queering of race is Emerson’s status as a black man, but with only limited reference to how his race may result in a different social experience than the white Ned, Chuck, and Olive. Emerson, for his part, rarely refers to race as a social factor, although at one point he makes a comment to Ned “that’s racial profiling.”32 Ironically, this comment is not actually about race so much as it is about a breed of dog. However, a queer read of this comment can bring it back to race if one reflects upon the historic construction of races as different types or species. Further, while this comment is superficially about a dog, an animal, one may also reflect upon the historic demonization and treatment of African Americans, particularly men, as uncontrolled and wild animals. Racial and ethnic identities and the cultural assumptions of their cohesiveness are challenged at various locales in this series. This is most poignantly demonstrated by a competing group of private investigators from Norway.33 Among the three Norwegians, Magnus Olsdatter (Orlando Jones) is black, while the other two, Nils Nilsen (Michael Weaver) and Hedda Lillihammer (Ivana Milicevic) are fair-skinned. Magnus particularly challenges the cultural ideologies affiliated with Nordic racial physicality as fair skinned. He is not only queering the racial expectations of these “Norwegians,” but is also the leader, thus queering the expectations of racial hierarchical systems in the U.S. Surprisingly, his physical distinction garners almost no reaction from the Pie Holers. While whites dominate character representations in the series, Asian Americans garner attention and visibility in this series as well, having significant presence in at least two episodes. However, these presentations are often problematic. A particularly queer presentation of Asian identity is that of an Asian client, Wilfred Woodruff (Eddie Shin), with a strong Southern accent.34 He speaks and behaves in manners reminiscent of an old Southern gentleman. This portrayal is so befuddling to the Pie Holers that Ned even asks if he had been adopted. It is ultimately learned however that his great-great-grandfather had fled southeast from building the transcontinental railroad, stolen the clothes off a fallen Confederate soldier and taken his name. He may have appeared Asian, but he had taken a white man’s name and identity, though it is rather queer that this act of 145


renaming was never challenged in the racially stratified southern states. Bolstering this portrayal of dishonesty and low-life status is an episode centering upon gambling in a dim sum restaurant.35 This Chinese-run poker table is played via the transformation of dim sum into cards, with different meats serving for each suit of cards. Here we are meet the Chinese gangster “Shrimp Boy.” Shrimp Boy, as a large, well-built man, experiences a queer name that references small size — perhaps this is a reference to cultural beliefs that Asian men have small phalluses, or perhaps it is referencing the small domain over which he has control. Regardless, the irony of this illegal gambling ring certainly suggests that Emerson may not be the most effective P.I., as the restaurant is below his own office. Effectively, this episode works to simultaneously stigmatize and degrade Asian and African Americans. Further, within the sting operation to break up the gambling ring, Olive and Chuck are able to infiltrate this entirely Asian run establishment and work as servers — essentially they are two white girls dressed in stereotyped Chinese dress with black hair, but who are they really fooling? One of the queerest racial interactions of the series is the introduction of Emerson’s mother, Calista.36 During the opening sequence as the audience learns briefly about Emerson’s childhood as the son of a private investigator, his presumably single mother, one observes a child read as black and a mother likely read as black, but perhaps racially ambiguous. However, when we meet his mother as an older woman, she is clearly white. Yet, never does any character make note or inquire about this racial distinction. While Emerson’s upraising may support cultural stereotypes of black children being raised by single mothers, his inexplicably being raised by a white mother is left undiscussed. This dismissal of racial discord not only queers racial expectations and beliefs, but also works to queer the concept of family. The queering of family in this series emerges in multiple forms ranging from challenges to traditions of relationships and monogamy, the use of progressive language, and the allusion to gay and lesbian parenting. Polygamy is a central component of an episode where the murder of a polygamous man with four wives is investigated.37 Within this family we not only observe polygamy, but also interracial marriage as the husband is white, two wives are also white, one is Asian, and the last is African 146


American. Their family connection is actually reflective of their dog-breeding family pursuit of the ideal dog, a hybrid of four species. Another unique relationship found in the series is that of a man with his “Real Girl.”38 This man asserts this relationship and his girlfriend are real. This assertion serves as counterpoint to the “real” relationship of Ned and Chuck, a relationship where they are unable to touch. One is forced to wonder: what makes a relationship real? Beyond diversity in presenting normative families and relationships is the queer language sometimes used in defining family bonds. As one client asks, “[a]re you a parent or guardian, Emerson Cod?”39 This not only defers the importance of gender by using the word “parent” instead of “father,” but has expanded the concept to be inclusive of a myriad of adult/child socio-emotional bonds that may entail a “guardian.” The deference of gender and the dismissal of a biological imperative or connection demonstrates a complex and queered construct of what a family or a “parent” can be. Most poignantly, the idea of parents is found in Chuck’s relationship with her aunts. Being raised by her aunts, they functionally portray a lesbian coupling. Yet this family is particularly queered as Chuck speaks on various occasions of having cared for her aunts. She may have been a child, but who was really the caregiver or parent is unclear. Further, as previously discussed, Lily’s lack of recognition for her biological-maternal connection to Chuck works to challenge cultural imperatives of the importance of biology in constructing motherhood, which is particularly important when viewing this family as an allusion to lesbian parenting. Clearly, the assertion here is that biology isn’t the most important; it is the social bonds that matter. Olive, who was raised by two heterosexual parents more interested in their own lives than their daughter’s, also has a second set of “parents”— two men. As a child she had run away and stowed away in the vehicle of two car thieves, Jerry Holmes and Roy “Buster” Bustamante; despite their efforts to return her unharmed, misunderstandings led to their lengthy incarcerations for kidnapping.40 After they escape from prison “papa number one and papa number two,” as Emerson refers to them, seek her aid to escape across the border. Olive, having maintained a letter writing relationship with them through most of her life, has come to think of them as parents, with more affinity than for her own biological parents. 147


This queer parenthood doesn’t end with two sets of parents, but with the unstated sexual identities of these men. It is unclear whether these men are merely comrades in crime or if they are a couple. The referencing of them as “papas” and their escape from The Pie Hole cross-dressed as nuns certainly works to challenge traditional ethos of hegemonic heterosexuality.

“He’s a cosmo-drinking shopaholic. Queer” 41: Queer Cultural Visibility Throughout the series, gender and sexuality are often constructed in a manner that allows for multiple interpretations. One central manner of deploying queer visibility is through an “invisible guise.”42 This approach deploys references and visibility that can be interpreted via a heterosexual or homosexual lens: essentially, a reference that is only understood as queer by those who are well acquainted with LGBT culture. With cultural familiarity, many heterosexuals can read the scene or situation as heterosexual. In so doing, heterosexual audiences are not challenged or made uncomfortable, queer audiences feel part of the story, and the producers have the ability to deny knowledge of potential references. Perhaps one of the most evident tongue-in-cheek references one can decipher is the significant amount of time Ned spends touching and working with “fruit” and the restaurant name itself, The Pie Hole. While these may be understood as merely humorous puns, one may also interpret fruit as an allusion to gay men and the putting of fruity things in one’s mouth as an allusion to oral sex. Ned’s propensity for waking the dead with a single outstretched finger may also be understood in queer terms. While this may be to minimize touching, it may also be a sexual allusion. This allusion is actually reinforced when Emerson encourages Ned to re-dead Chuck’s father — to “[t]ap that.”43 More subtle references that may deploy queer interpretation emerge throughout the series. When Emerson becomes stuck crawling through a window, Chuck refers to him as “Winnie the Pooh.”44 A superficial read may merely interpret this as Pooh stuck in the tree seeking honey, however a queer read may reveal the referencing to Pooh as a “bear.” In gay men’s 148


culture, Emerson would certainly be regarded as a “bear.”45 His heavy set physique and facial hair certainly suggest the physical embodiment of this gay subculture. Olive’s horse race, the “Jock-Off 2000,”46 in the titillating titled episode “Girth,” lends allusion to both masturbation and the phallus. References to queer iconography emerge in the series, offering a subtle welcome to the queer audience. During a scene in the sewer we hear “follow the yellow thick hose”47 from both Chuck and Ned. This allusion to the “yellow brick road” in the 1939 classic film The Wizard of Oz is understood by most any audience member. However, the historic queer cultural adoration of Dorothy, played by Judy Garland, which has spawned a slang phrase for a gay man, as a “Friend of Dorothy,” may not be known by most heterosexual audience members. Reference to Elizabeth Taylor, a well-documented gay advocate and another gay icon, occurs in an episode entitled “Bitches.”48 Olive states: “I used to have a horse named The Pie in another life. That’s because I wanted to be like Elizabeth Taylor. She was so pretty.” Further, the episode title of “Bitches” can be read through multiple lenses — as a female dogs, as aggressive women, or as slang deployed among gay men. Similarly, Julie Andrews and The Sound of Music are referenced in the opening of the second season as Olive is hidden away at a nunnery.49 Julie Andrews is not only a visible supporter of gay rights, but is also noted for her iconic role in Victor Victoria (1982) as a woman who is publicly pretending to be a man, to foster a successful cabaret career as a “drag queen”— quite a queer role. Calista’s reference to a victim as a “cosmo-drinking shopaholic. Queer”50 is a reference that can be widely understood — a reference to the exceptionally popular television series Sex and the City.51 This show, and later movies, not only portrayed shopping as a near-sport and spawned a Cosmo drinking fad, but also included regular and frequent portrayals of gay men and various LGBT persons and their relationships. While this statement may be argued as stigmatizing, to be fair, the “queer” following her initial statement was inflected to read as “odd.” This said, it is impossible to dismiss the clear implication of this word choice. Another example of queer cultural visibility is the saving of a fisherman from a deserted island by a gay family cruise.52 The show has no qualms about presenting clear, visible examples of gay culture in this 149


episode as the ship-wrecked sailor is shown on the ship wearing a shirt stating “I love my gay moms.” Oddly however, this “family cruise,” bolstered by the shirt, does not appear to include families so much as scantily clad fit men partying. This inclusion, while perhaps positive in its statement of a family cruise and queer visibility, also reinforces cultural stereotypes that these venues are not really about family, but about gay men, partying, and possibly pursuing promiscuous sex. In this episode a realtor, who is trying to sell the lighthouse on which much of the episode is centered, is likely also read as a gay man based on his language and mannerisms. Frequently the show deploys victim and suspect names that can allude to real people. A particularly queer allusion is found in client-turn-suspect, Napoleon LeNez,53 a man who works with smell and its subconscious influence. LeNez readily echoes and plays on the syllabic structure of LeVay; Simon LeVay is a well-known neuroscientist noted for researching gay male brain structures, who is himself a homosexual. This affiliation is further bolstered by the fact that Christopher Sieber, who plays the role of LeNez, is an out gay man. A similar tactic of queer reference occurs when Wilson Cruz, an out gay Latino actor, plays the role of Sid Tango, an aqua-performer.54 His interactions with Olive offer particularly clear double-entendre as he states, “[i]f only more people around here would be as accepting of who I am.” Olive’s shock is clear in her response, “[p]eople aren’t accepting? Here?” Her surprise is likely rooted in a resumption of his sexual orientation and a stereotypical belief that aqua performance would be a tolerant and welcoming environment for LGBT persons. However, this idea is deferred in Sid’s response, when he explains the struggles of “[b]eing a man in aqua entertainment ... which is to say, unappreciated and invisible.” Despite the likely interpretation that stigma is affiliated with sexuality, it is actually, at least from Sid’s perspective, rooted in his gender. Not only is Sid’s Latino status enforced with the stereotyped affiliation with the dance the tango, but his queer identity is only slightly veiled. His queer identity is likely understood by most audience members given his flamboyant demeanor, language, and clothing. Yet, Sid is suggesting the stigma is not about his sexuality, but is rather about his gender. When Sid steps outside towards the pool further queer references abound as Emerson comments “[h]oly Ibiza, Monaco, and Saint-Tropez. That is some banana 150


hammock.” Here not only is Emerson’s sexuality potentially challenged by his acknowledgment and noting of Sid’s groin, queering his identity, but is also enforced by his referencing of several common gay tourism destinations. Emerson’s sexuality may be queered, but Sid’s is clearly marked as gay — this presumed “invisibility” has been made clearly apparent to the audience. Beyond references that may pass without much note by a heterosexual audience, the show also poignantly engages with a critique of gay and lesbian discrimination in the military. Olive states: “[s]o, that’s how it is. You wanna roll army-style: Don’t ask, don’t tell. Well, guess what works in the foxhole works in The Pie Hole.”55 The U.S. Military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, established in the early 1990s, allows gay, lesbian and bisexual soldiers to serve, but they must maintain a closeted life and not reveal their sexual identity. However, this statement is countered in the episode by the Narrator’s pointing out that the Norwegians “adhered to a strict do ask, do tell policy.”56 The show appears to be making a clear statement that the secretiveness of the U.S. military, as in The Pie Hole, is not working well and that a more open, out, environment could be more successful.

Boxing the Pie to Go: Conclusions As the series comes to a close, the narrator states “events occurred that are not, were not, and should never be considered an ending. For endings, as it is known, are where we begin.”57 The very foundation of this series is built upon the queer notion that death can be fluid and is not a state of being that is clearly defined. Throughout the series we see this queer beginning imbue the series with complex queer portrayals of gender, sexuality, race, and the family. What is particularly unique about this series is not its inclusion of queer constructs and LGBT references so much as the centering of these constructs in the main characters and story plots. While many series include “special episodes” where queer or LGBT issues are addresses, few have taken the progressive step of embracing a holistically queer world as Pushing Daisies. Indeed, this series has pushed the boundaries of what mainstream queer television can and should do to welcome the broadest possible audience and to support social diversity. 151


Chapter Notes 1. HBO, 2001–2005. 2. Showtime, 2003–2004. 3. Noreen Giffney, “The New Queer Cartoon,” in Ashgate Research Companion to Queer Theory. Noreen Giffney and Michael O’Rourke, eds. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009: 365. 4. Ron Becker, Gay TV and Straight America. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006; James R. Keller, Queer (Un)Friendly Film and Television. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2002; James R. Keller and Leslie Stratyner, eds., The New Queer Aesthetic on Television. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006. 5. Samuel A. Chambers, The Queer Politics of Television. New York: I.B. Tauris, 2009. 6. Episode 2.8, “Comfort Food.” 7. Robert Heasley, “Queer Masculinities of Straight Men: A Typology.” Men and Masculinities, 2005, 7(3): 315, and Robert Heasley, “Crossing the Borders of Gendered Sexuality: Queer Masculinities of Straight Men” in Thinking Straight: The Power, the Promise, and the Paradox of Heterosexuality. Chrys Ingraham, ed. New York: Routledge, 2005: 116–118. 8. Episode 1.7, “Smell of Success.” 9. See Tough Guise. Dir. Susan McGee Bailey. Media Education Foundation. 2002. 10. Mister Rogers was the lead character of a long-running popular children’s show, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. PBS, 1968–2001. 11. “Smell of Success.” 12. “Comfort Food.” 13. Episode 1.8, “Bitter Sweets.” 14. C.J. Pascoe. Dude, You’re a Fag. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007; Tough Guise. 15. Episode 2.11, “Window Dressed to Kill.” 16. Ibid. 17. Episode 1.2, “Dummy.” 18. Western European knitting guilds only allowed male members. The role of men in knitting varies with time and locale in Western history. See Stanley Chapman, Hosiery and Knitwear: Four Centuries of Small-Scale Industry in Britain, c. 1589 –2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. 19. Robert Heasley, “Queer Masculinities of Straight Men: A Typology.” Men and Masculinities 2005, 7(3): 317–318, and Robert Heasley, “Crossing the Borders of Gendered Sexuality: Queer Masculinities of Straight Men” in Thinking Straight: The Power, the Promise, and the Paradox of Heterosexuality. Chrys Ingraham, ed. New York: Routledge,. 2005: 122–126. 20. Episode 2.1, “Bzzzzzzzzz!” 21. Episode 2.9, “The Legend of Merle McQuoddy.” 22. “Smell of Success”; Episode 1.5, “Girth.” 23. Episode 2.4, “Pigeon.” 24. Episode 1.1, “Pie-Lette.” 25. For examples, see “Dummy,” “Bzzzzzzzzz!,” “Comfort Food,” and “The Legend of Merle McQuoddy.” 26. “Girth.”

152

8. The Queer, Quirky World of Pushing Daisies (Farr) 27. Ibid. 28. “Smell of Success.” 29. “Comfort Food.” 30. Episode 2.10, “The Norwegians.” 31. Episode 1.9, “Corpsicle.” 32. “Pie-Lette.” 33. “The Norwegians.” 34. Episode 1.3, “The Fun in Funeral.” 35. Episode 2.5, “Dim Sum Lose Some.” 36. “Frescorts.” 37. Episode 1.6, “Bitches.” 38. “Bitter Sweets.” A “Real Girl” is a full-sized anatomically correct female doll, often used for sexual purposes. For a film that explores a similar relationship see Lars and the Real Girl. Dir. Craig Gillespie. 2007. 39. Episode 2.2, “Circus Circus.” 40. “Window Dressed to Kill.” 41. Said by Calista in “Frescorts.” 42. Daniel Farr and Gretchen Guenther, “Seeking the Rainbow Dollar: Gay and Lesbian Marketing and Consumption” in The Globetrotting Shopaholic: Consumer Spaces, Products, and their Cultural Meanings. Tanfer Tunc and Annessa Babic, eds., Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars, 2008: 49–54. 43. “The Legend of Merle McQuoddy.” To “tap that” is a widely understood reference to encourage one to have sex with someone. 44. “The Fun in Funeral.” 45. Les Wright, ed. The Bear Book: Readings in the History and Evolution of a Gay Male Subculture. New York: Harrington, 1997. 46. “Girth.” 47. “Smell of Success.” 48. “Bitches.” 49. “Bzzzzzzzzz!” 50. “Frescorts.” 51. HBO, 1998–2004. 52. “The Legend of Merle McQuoddy.” 53. “Smell of Success.” 54. Episode 2.13, “Kerplunk.” The series had been cancelled with episode 2.10, but the final three unaired episodes were televised in May and June of 2009. 55. “The Norwegians.” 56. Norway allows gay men and lesbians to openly serve in their military. “Countries that Allow Military Service by Openly Gay People” by Palm Center for Sound Public Policy at www.palmcenter.org. June 2009. Web. 3 August 2010. 57. “Kerplunk.”

Works Cited Becker, Ron. Gay TV and Straight America. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006.

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Part Three: Gender and Pushing Daisies Chambers, Samuel A. The Queer Politics of Television. New York: I.B. Tauris, 2009. Chapman, Stanley. Hosiery and Knitwear: Four Centuries of Small-Scale Industry in Britain, c. 1589 –2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. “Countries that Allow Military Service by Openly Gay People.” Palm Center: Blueprints for Sound Public Policy. June 2009. Web. . Accessed 3 August 2010. Giffney, Noreen. “The New Queer Cartoon,” in Ashgate Research Companion to Queer Theory. Noreen Giffney and Michael O’Rourke, eds. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009: 363–378. Heasley, Robert. “Crossing the Borders of Gendered Sexuality: Queer Masculinities of Straight Men.” Thinking Straight: The Power, the Promise, and the Paradox of Heterosexuality. Chyrs Ingraham, ed. New York: Routledge, 2005: 109–129. _____. “Queer Masculinities of Straight Men: A Typology.” Men and Masculinities, 2005, 7(3): 310–320. Keller, James R. Queer (Un)Friendly Film and Television. Jefferson: NC: McFarland, 2002. _____ and Leslie Stratyner, eds. The New Queer Aesthetic on Television. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006. Lars and the Real Girl. Dir. Craig Gillespie. Perf. Ryan Gosling, Emily Mortimer, Paul Schneider, Kelli Garner, Patricia Clarkson. MGM, 2007. Pascoe, C.J. Dude, You’re a Fag. Berkeley: University California Press, 2007. Pushing Daisies: The Complete First Season. Created by Bryan Fuller. Perf. Lee Pace, Anna Friel, Chi McBride, Kristin Chenoweth. ABC, 2007–2008. DVD. Warner Home Video, 2007. Pushing Daisies: The Complete Second Season. Created by Bryan Fuller. Perf. Lee Pace, Anna Friel, Chi McBride, Kristin Chenoweth. ABC, 2008–2009. DVD. Warner Home Video, 2009. Tough Guise. Dir. Susan McGee Bailey. Media Education Foundation. 2002.

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9

Sweet Talk in The Pie Hole Language, Intimacy, and Public Space TARA K. PARMITER

In his painting Nighthawks (1942), Edward Hopper presents an iconic image of urban alienation: four strangers lean against the bar of a diner, all sharing a common space yet remaining isolated in their private worlds. The couple on the right — a redhead in a red dress and a man in a fedora — rest their elbows on the counter, staring straight ahead rather than talking face to face. On the left, a second man hunches on his stool with his back to the viewer and his hat brim pulled down over his eyes, shielding himself from fluorescent lights and friendly advances. The server in a white apron and hat could have provided a link between these lonely individuals, bringing them together with some conversation and a cup of coffee, yet he seems barricaded behind the bar, crouching out of sight and cut off from communication. Each nighthawk is an island, lost in his or her thoughts and disconnected from their surroundings. Their loneliness radiates into the empty streets outside, eerily lit by the diner’s late night glow. It is a scene of quiet isolation, four silent figures in a deserted urban landscape. In contrast, The Pie Hole of Pushing Daisies is a performance space of musical numbers and linguistic ballets. Similarly situated on a street corner and also casting its glow on the empty streets outside, The Pie Hole is the central gathering place for the Pushing Daisies cast, a pie-shaped eatery where the four primary characters enjoy fresh baked delights, solve murder mysteries, and cultivate their friendships and romances. Yet even with all the action, the characters in The Pie Hole are in some ways as isolated as Hopper’s lonely figures, each mirroring a nighthawk on the canvas. Ned and Chuck, our romantic leads, are wildly in love, but they cannot 155


touch without suffering the severest consequences: like Hopper’s couple, they must forever sit side by side. Olive Snook, the lovelorn waitress, pines for a man who only has eyes for another woman, and like Hopper’s server trapped behind the bar, she seems perpetually shut off from the other Pie Holers. Emerson Cod, though secretly yearning for his long-lost daughter, presents the hardened exterior of the gruff P.I. and, like Hopper’s slouched over customer, strives to conceal his emotions. But although these characters at first seem as disconnected as Hopper’s nighthawks, their experiences in The Pie Hole enable them to forge an arguably stronger bond with each other through their “sweet talk,” the quirky and imaginative dialogue that helps make Pushing Daisies so distinctive. The sweet talk in The Pie Hole celebrates an alternative form of intimacy, one focused on language rather than physical touch. The very name of the eatery refers to a talkative mouth, and although the common phrase is to “shut your pie hole,” meaning to “shut up,” Olive explains that at The Pie Hole the phrase is more accurately “open your pie hole ’cause it’s real good!”1 This reading reminds us of the value of opening our mouths and letting our voices, feelings, and dreams be heard. Although the characters in The Pie Hole do not touch each other, they can open their pie holes and verbalize their bonds. Ned and Chuck’s convoluted metaphors, Olive’s songs, and Emerson’s literary aspirations reveal the power of words to close distances, so rather than standing as four lonely figures in a diner, their language creates the intimacy they so desperately seek.

Let’s Talk about Sex: Pushing Daisies and the Language of Intimacy When speaking of intimacy in a romantic relationship, our thoughts quickly turn to sex. For example, when Emerson Cod interrogates Chuck’s Aunt Vivian, asking if she had had “intimate relations” with the con artist Dwight Dixon, Emerson clearly wants to establish the extent of their physical relationship.2 Vivian, however, misreads his use of the word “intimate,” focusing on the pleasant hours spent getting to know her Romeo rather than something more salacious. Instead of considering “intimate relations” in the “biblical sense,”3 as Emerson has to explain, Vivian embraces the 156

9. Sweet Talk in The Pie Hole (Parmiter)

etymology of the word’s Latin root intimus, meaning inner or inmost. By valuing “longs walks” and “clarinet concertos,”4 shared activities meant to give her insight into her lover’s inmost feelings, Vivian reveals the show’s true understanding of intimacy. As psychologists Richard E. Sexton and Virginia Staudt Sexton define it, “intimacy means an awareness of the innermost reality of one person by another.... It is seeing other persons in their essential depth and knowing them from inside out, internally and deeply. It is the closeness, love, caring, and affection of friends, family, close associates, and neighbors.”5 In their definition Sexton and Sexton emphasize emotional contact over physical contact, seeing into another’s heart over touching another’s body. While such an emphasis may seem odd in a romantic comedy — which by its generic conventions requires the wedding and consummation of the leads by the happy ending —Pushing Daisies embraces the primacy of emotional connection and the complicating challenges that arise in a relationship without touch. This understanding of intimacy is particularly relevant considering the show’s unconventional plot. Ned, the Pie Maker, can touch a dead thing and bring it back to life, but if he lets it live for more than a minute, something else will die in its place. Moreover, if he touches the now “alive again” entity a second time, it will become dead again, permanently. In his business, Ned uses this talent to conjure up fresh fruit for his pies and to help Emerson Cod streamline his investigations by touching murder victims, asking who killed them, and collecting the reward money. But when Ned brings his childhood sweetheart Charlotte Charles, aka “Chuck,” back to life, he is frozen with the joy of having her in his world again and the fear, pain, and longing of knowing that they can never physically connect. When the show debuted, San Francisco Chronicle critic Tim Goodman wondered if “the unfulfilled romance may eventually test the viewers’ patience,” 6 but his concern rises out of an understanding of romance that privileges the touch, the kiss, the physical union. Series creator Bryan Fuller sees it another way: “[i]t’s not so much about celibacy as it is about intimacy,” he explains. “Sometimes physicality gets in the way of true intimacy. So if that’s removed from a relationship, what’s going to happen?”7 Most romantic plots on television shows depend upon suspending the viewers’ satisfaction, waiting until sweeps week or season finales for pivotal turns in the characters’ romantic relationships. But we 157


always expect that the consummation will finally occur, that Ross and Rachel will reunite by the end of Friends, that Maddie and David of Moonlighting will stop their flirting and lock lips, that Mr. Big will finally sweep Carrie Bradshaw off her feet and back in bed for some Sex in the City. Ned and Chuck manage to smooch “prophylactically” through plastic wrap,8 hold hands while wearing gloves, and spoon in bed with the aid of a vinyl partition, but since they never will connect physically they must forge their relationship through words, not the silent messaging of touch. Given this unusual premise, the show’s writers had a unique opportunity to play with their characters’ voices, and I refer to the resulting dialogue as “sweet talk” not only because of its intimate nature but also because it is so whimsically stylized. Because Bryan Fuller envisioned Pushing Daisies as a fairy tale romance, he chose to tell it as a fairy tale as well, complete with the kindly narrator voiced by Jim Dale, famous for his audio presentations of the Harry Potter series, and story book, sing-songy language that highlights the written quality of the characters’ speech. In an interview, Fuller admits, “I love to write slightly heightened dialogue just because it’s more fun to say, and particularly with Pushing Daisies, which is a significantly heightened world, that it’s fun to have people speak a little bit more, not elegantly but written.”9 By defining the dialogue as “written,” Fuller acknowledges not only the joy of language inherent in the show but also the conscious crafting of it. Anna Friel, who plays Chuck, observes that the “dialogue is so poetic and it’s so fast and rhythmic,”10 while Kristin Chenoweth, who plays Olive Snook, notes that the dialogue is “very tricky to get in your mouth but it’s very musical.”11 The language sounds so musical and poetic to these actresses precisely because of its written quality: rather than relying on the vernacular of the everyday, the quirky dialogue of Pushing Daisies draws on an array of figures of speech and thought, literary devices more often found in poetry class than in conversations on television. As a small sampling, consider the following techniques that add such spice to the Pushing Daisies scripts: • Alliteration, the repetition of a consonant sound, as in the names “Billy Balsam,”12 “Lefty Lem,”13 “Dwight Dixon,”14 “Burley Bruce,”15 and “Betty’s Bees.”16 158


• Palindromes, a mirrored patterning in which a word, phrase, or sentence reads the same forward and backwards. In Pushing Daisies, these palindromes are made of complete words, as in the town of “Coeur d’Coeurs,” the travel agency “Boutique Travel Travel Boutique”17 or the synchronized swimming duo the “Darling Mermaid Darlings.” • Euphemism, a gentler way to say something unpleasant, as in calling someone “alive again” rather than “the living dead,”18 labeling an illicit kiss as a “friendly expression of innocent gratitude,”19 or refusing to admit you had murdered someone by saying you had “inadvertently, unintentionally and without forethought disappeared” that individual.20 • Chiasmus, the criss-crossing rhetorical move in which the structure of the first half of the sentence is inverted in the second half of the sentence. For example, in the episode “Frescorts” the narrator tells us, “Emerson Cod had uncovered Joe’s address, while Chuck and Olive addressed going undercover,”21 with “address” criss-crossing from a noun to a verb and “uncovered/undercover” switching from verb to noun. • Antithesis, another inverting move in which a contrast or opposition in meaning occurs in two parallel phrases. For example, when Ned laments that “[s]tarting fresh means something else is ending stale,”22 he highlights the parallel structure of the opposing terms “starting/ending” and “fresh/stale.” • Zeugma, from the Greek word for “yoking,” in which one word in a sentence relates to two others, but with a noticeable difference in meaning. For example, in “Water & Power,” the narrator observes that a character trapped in a dam outflow was “struck by the irony and then by the water,” “struck” serving as the verb for both nouns.23 Similarly, in “Circus! Circus!” an acrobat sneers that “[c]lowns make two things here: balloon animals and enemies.”24 While this sampling is not exhaustive, what strikes me most is that the figurative language in Pushing Daisies focuses on creating syntactic and linguistic connections. Although the characters do not physically touch, their “heightened language,” as Fuller calls it, complements their desire to come together. Looking back over these examples, we can note that alliteration celebrates the consonant echoes of a string of words sharing the same sounds, and palindromes similarly form a pleasing unit with their 159


mirrored repetitions. Chiasmus, antithesis, and zeugma all depend upon forging a structural balance in the sentence, with “criss-crossing” and “yoking” both emphasizing intersections and connections. Although euphemism seems to hide from the truth, it still takes joy in finding new ways to describe something. Even on the sentence-level, then, the characters of Pushing Daisies all try desperately to connect with each other, their syntax and word choice expressing their longing for intimacy. When looked at taxonomically, each character has a distinct voice and a preferred literary styling, but in the end they all speak from a desire to be heard, understood, and loved.

The Pie Hole’s Linguistic Menu NED

AND

CHUCK : PARTNERS

IN

DIALOGUE

As the show’s linguistic lovers, Ned and Chuck have the most intertwined dialogue. In addition to the techniques mentioned above, these characters particularly rely on similes and metaphors, literary devices that create connections between dissimilar entities, not unlike love itself. This duo regularly uses metaphors to express their love and support for each other, acknowledging that they have an unconventional relationship that can best be described figuratively. When Chuck wonders if there is something strange about their inability to touch, Ned assures her that their relationship is merely “eccentric in a quaint way, like dessert spoons.”25 Similarly, in a moment when Chuck needs comforting, Ned declares, “I’ll be your comforter. Consider me your king-sized duvet ready to wrap you in goose-down goodness.”26 These metaphors focus on support and camaraderie, suggesting that Ned will do anything to make Chuck feel more at home in her life with him. Chuck, in turn, frames metaphors about hope and possibility; having come back from the dead, she strives to seize the opportunities around her and has an exhaustively optimistic approach to life.27 Trying to convince Ned to reanimate her dead father, she muses, “[t]o bring my dad back, even for a minute, may be ghoulish, but also sweet. Like a taxidermied pet, or stuffing someone’s ashes in a teddy bear.”28 Likewise, in describing the benefits of a good hug, Chuck uses the simile, “[i]t’s like an emotional 160


Heimlich: someone puts their arms around you and they give you a squeeze, and all your fear and anxiety come shooting out your mouth in a big wet wad and you can breathe again.”29 With these similes Chuck presents grim with a grin, diffusing thoughts of death by giving the threat a warm and cheerful spin: like Chuck herself, her language is a surprising combination of the cute and the ghoulish. Admittedly Chuck concocts unusual comparisons, but that is what makes simile and metaphor so fresh: the surprise of the unexpected connection. Ned and Chuck take to heart George Orwell’s famous first rule of writing, “[n]ever use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are accustomed to seeing in print.”30 But more than striving for originality, they use metaphoric language to express their devotion to each other, always seeking new ways to describe the ineffability of their love. This playful quality of their language appears most clearly in their extended metaphors, metaphors that stretch across sentences, bouncing back and forth between the two and snowballing in the process. For example, when Chuck asks Ned if he has a “sea of questions” about his longlost father and newly-found brothers, Ned admits, “[m]aybe a pond,” shrinking the size of the body of water in an effort to avoid the subject. Undeterred, Chuck urges him to plunge into that pond, but Ned resists, claiming, “I’m not a diver; I’m a cautious swimmer. I test the water with my big toe and then gently wade into the shallows.”31 The pattern here appears in many of Ned and Chuck’s exchanges: one uses a word that the other picks up and twists, as when Ned shifts from “sea” to “pond” or from “diving” to “wading.” It is as if they are dancers, the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers of the spoken word, responding to each other’s moves and yet working in tandem to create a shared metaphor. German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer argues that “[e]very conversation presupposes a common language, or better, creates a common language,” and perhaps that is what makes Chuck and Ned’s exchanges so telling: their conversations create something new, a relationship collectively constructed by what Gadamer calls “partners in dialogue.”32 Ned’s conversations with Chuck highlight not only how much he loves partnering with her in verbal ballet but also how isolated he had felt his entire life when he was partner-less. Flashback scenes repeatedly reveal Young Ned as a social outcast, abandoned by his father and bullied at 161


boarding school. As an adult, this sense of isolation is mirrored in his selfdefensive body language: Ned shoves his hands in his pockets, wraps his arms around his body, or clasps his hands behind his back, all showing an attempt to withhold himself from human contact, whether with the living or the dead. This physical tendency to turn inward also appears in Ned’s linguistic attempts to hide behind denial and negation; Ned often focuses on what he is not rather than what he is. As in the swimming metaphor above, he is not a “diver,” he is “not a fan of the hug,”33 he is “not a ripper [off of Band-Aids],”34 and although Chuck tells him “you could do with a little loosening up,” Ned retorts, “I don’t do loose: I prefer tightly wound. Not shapeless with extra room for surprises.”35 Unlike Chuck, who always wants to open up to everyone, Ned faces a constant struggle between his instinct to bury his feelings through negative words and his joyful realization that Chuck can draw positive feelings and words out of him. Similar to his negations, Ned also harbors unspoken secrets, not only the secret of his magic finger or of Chuck’s alive-again status, but his most guilty memory of childhood: by using his powers, Young Ned had inadvertently killed Chuck’s father. But under Chuck’s influence, Ned realizes the value of speaking up and promoting close personal relationships with the people around him. As the narrator explains, Ned tells Chuck the truth because he “had never felt closer to another person as he did at that moment.”36 Although this confession temporarily estranges him from the woman he loves, ultimately Ned’s words allow the lovers to forge a stronger connection. What the show suggests in this reconciliation is that speaking our most intimate secrets to our loved ones brings us closer together than anything else can.

THE MULTI-VOCAL OLIVE SNOOK Like the Pie Maker, Olive Snook also loves someone she cannot touch, and her unrequited feelings for Ned leave her desperate to find a place she belongs. Flashbacks tell us that Young Olive had always longed for attention, “dream[ing] of a life in which she was actively loved and only occasionally ignored,”37 but her experience in The Pie Hole often finds her actively shut out. Since Ned, Chuck, and Emerson must conceal the secret of Chuck’s brush with death and Ned’s supernatural ability, whenever the 162


conversation turns to those essential topics, Olive gets shooed away. In multiple episodes she approaches the trio in their Pie Hole booth, eager to join the conversation, only to be brutally rebuffed. In one such instance, Olive brightly inquires, “[n]o casual case chit-chat to pass the time whilst perusing the menu?”38 but the others promptly place their pie orders, engaging in no chit chat and essentially telling her “you’re just a waitress, not part of our coffee klatch.” Olive feels their secrecy keenly, and though she tries to conceal her pain with a cheerful smile, she sometimes has to stand up for herself. “I need to feel that I belong,” Olive insists to Chuck after the chit-chat brush-off. “I want a full-fledged membership and an all-access pass to the P.I.-palooza.”39 Olive recognizes that true intimacy relies on trust and truth-telling, so the secrecy of her Pie Hole friends remains a stinging reminder of the barriers between them. But as much as Olive wants to join the conversations of the detecting trio, she likewise struggles to hold back the words she longs to share with them. In love with Ned, yet aware that he does not return her affection, she lives daily with the fear that she might expose her secret and open herself up to the pain of rejection. The problem, though, is that Olive does want to lay bare her secrets; as she says of a revived carrier pigeon, Olive is “meant to fly. She needs to fulfill her destiny and deliver that message.”40 But the challenge of delivering her messages dogs Olive throughout the series. In time, Olive becomes the repository of more and more secrets — not only must she hide her love from Ned, she has to hide from Vivian and Lily Charles that Chuck is still alive and later hide from Chuck that her aunt Lily is actually her mother. The strain of these secrets nearly makes her head pop, and she finally has a breakdown in The Pie Hole, crying out, “I am a sawed off shotgun full of secrets.... At any moment, truth buckshot could come spewing out of my muzzle. Look out!”41 As much as she wants to share her innermost secrets with the others, Olive recognizes the dangers of exposing her own or her friends’ privacy. Using the metaphor of the shotgun emphasizes the threat of divulging the truth: we never know who might suffer collateral damage. Torn between wanting to speak out and fearing that she cannot control the “truth buckshot” she could blurt out, Olive seeks temporary refuge among cloistered nuns under a vow of silence.42 But even upon her return to The Pie Hole, her conflicting desires to belong and to protect herself leave her in a state of verbal confusion. 163


Perhaps because of this confusion, Olive’s voice is the least stable of all the characters; indeed, she speaks in multiple voices, as if trying to please whomever she addresses. Olive is essentially a performer, struggling to play multiple roles in her attempts to find acceptance. At times she plays the perky, petite waitress, greeting each customer with a beaming smile and a slice of Georgia Peach Pie. Inspired by the hominess of The Pie Hole, Olive moves cheerfully through the space, engaging warmly with each customer. As she explains to Emerson, “[t]his isn’t Pies-R-Us, Pie City, or Thousands of Pies in One Place. This is a bells on the door, pies baking, mom and pop place. We chit chat here.”43 Olive’s repeated invocation of “chit chat” suggests that as a waitress she values cheerful small talk, pleasantries to pass the time and make the customers feel at home. When alone, however, Olive shows her introspective side, singing along with what the narrator calls “the orchestra in her heart.”44 Music offers an outlet for Olive; taking advantage of star Kristin Chenoweth’s Broadway background, the Pushing Daisies writers often put Olive’s emotions into song when her emotions become too overwhelming. “Hopelessly Devoted to You” from Grease, “Eternal Flame” by The Bangles, and “Hello” by Lionel Ritchie all allow Olive to articulate her feelings for Ned, but they don’t bring her any closer to joining him in a duet. Perhaps her most comical performances appear in her attempts to engage Emerson as a fellow detective. These moments sparkle with the comic juxtaposition of the hulking P.I,, with his stout frame and his “don’t mess with me” demeanor, and the perky pixy of a waitress trying so hard to speak on his terms. In the episode “Dummy,” for example, Olive attempts to join Emerson in a booth, only managing to perch on the edge of the bench as Emerson refuses to budge. “What’s the poop?” she asks, and when Emerson looks at her blankly, she chatters on, “[t]he poop. Scoop. Skinny. Deal-ee-o. 411. P.I. lingo.” Pleased with herself for knowing these terms, she gets exited when Emerson replies, “[r]hubarb.” “What’s that mean?” she inquires, leaning forward eagerly, but he simply snaps, “P.I. slang for ‘get me a damn slice of rhubarb.’”45 Emerson refuses to play her game and speak “P.I. lingo” with her, rudely reminding her that he considers her not a colleague but someone who can bring him his dessert. Yet Olive persists in her efforts to speak with Emerson throughout the series, even hiring Emerson on two occasions to solve mysteries for 164


her. In all these instances, she flips back and forth between sounding like a sweet, bubbly blonde and a street-smart, 1940s era femme fatale, a codeswitching linguistic style often noted in bilinguals who move seamlessly from one language to another. When Olive solicits Emerson’s aid in “Girth,”46 the scene even evokes an old black and white film noir: while venetian blinds cast foreboding shadows across her face, Olive slips evasively into the booth across from Emerson sounding and looking every bit like one of those dames who always lead the detective astray. Later in “Bad Habits,” when Olive seeks Emerson’s aid in solving a mystery at her convent, she switches from a wholesome “[p]raise be!” to a down-to-business, “[a]lright, here’s the sitch,” a change in voice registered not merely in her words but in her tone.47 These comic shifts show Olive embracing the different aspects of her self in different contexts; it is not that her innocent waitress persona is fake or that her savvy P.I. lingo is misplaced, but that her identity encompasses her many voices.

EMERSON COD : FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD “BAD ASS” Emerson Cod is perhaps the hardest nut to crack on The Pie Hole menu. A big, gruff African American always dressed in three-piece suits and brightly colored dress shirts, Emerson presents himself as a “misunderstood bad ass,” more interested in profit than in people.48 As we saw in his interactions with Olive, Emerson is more prone to curtail discussion than to promote it. He becomes the voice of harsh reason, cutting through the sugary goodness of the others’ fairy-tale dialogue with a medicinal dose of reality. As New Jersey Star Ledger critic Alan Sepinwall observes, “whenever the banter — or anything else about the show — threatens to become too irritatingly twee, there’s Chi McBride as Emerson to slap some sense into the others.”49 As the sense slapper, Emerson regularly brings the dialogue back down to earth. More than the other characters, for example, Emerson uses clichéd metaphors literally: when he exclaims “that’s bat crap”50 or says a book is “a bomb,”51 he is not referring to disbelief or poor reviews but to guano and explosive devices. Emerson is also more likely to employ pop-cultural references, usually in a snide or sarcastic tone. Similar to the fast-talking Sawyer of ABC’s Lost, who addresses his fellow 165


castaways with rude pop-cultural monikers rather than their given names, Emerson uses pop-cultural references, often with a caustic twist, to denigrate the people around him. Ned’s twin brothers become the “Wonder Twins” and the “Bobbsey Twins”52; Chuck’s alive again father becomes “Daddy Dead-bucks”53; Chuck, in her fervor to help sleuthing, becomes “Nancy Shrew”54 ; chatty Olive becomes “Employee of the Mouth.”55 Where the other characters draw on metaphor as their primary literary device, Emerson more frequently draws on allusions, ranging from the popular (“Clue’s a board game. The professor did it in the barn with a rubber mallet. That’s a clue. We find evidence,”56 or “It’s raining nuns”57) to the literary (“[w]hat got thee to a nunnery?”58 or “[w]e’re going to be outside to catch the Iceman when he Cometh”59). These allusions situate Emerson firmly in the real world of the audience — the heightened, fairy tale landscape of Pushing Daisies could easily be construed as an alternate reality, but Emerson, as always, keeps us grounded in the real. As the character to draw on these allusions most frequently, however, Emerson stands out in the Pushing Daisies crowd, creating a linguistic hallmark that separates him from the others. In many ways, Emerson welcomes this linguistic and physical separation. Emerson is the most removed from The Pie Hole family, only hesitantly allowing himself to ease into their circles. We see Emerson in his detective’s office more than we see Olive, Chuck, or Ned in their apartments, suggesting Emerson’s desire to remain aloof. Though Emerson often uses The Pie Hole for business meetings, he still maintains the privacy of his own space where we can see his more vulnerable side, such as when he relaxes with his knitting or labors over his pop-up book, Lil Gumshoe, a thinly veiled “map designed to bring his missing daughter back to him.”60 In his language, he tends to be both curt and dismissive, castigating the others for trying to draw him into their private lives. When Ned has a sexy dream about Olive and approaches Emerson for advice, Emerson tries to reject his advances, muttering, “[t]here’s no way for this conversation to be anything but awkward for me.”61 Later, when Ned has the frightening realization that by helping Chuck reanimate the dead bees in her hive “I could have been swarmed in my underwear,” Emerson promptly snaps, “[h]ey, you don’t just get to put them pictures in my head — that’s an assault on my imagination.”62 Even Emerson’s emphatic “[o]h, hell no,” a 166


comic recurring motif, emphasizes his resistance to listening to what others have to tell him: Emerson constantly tries to shut people out, closing his ears and eyes to what he does not want to see, hear, or imagine, and such exclamations echo this desire to remain apart. But Emerson’s crusty exterior does soften as the series progresses, and he becomes more forthcoming and personal in his exchanges with the others. The pivotal turning point in Ned and Emerson’s relationship comes in the Season 1 finale, “Corpsicle,” in which Emerson confesses that he is a father. Previously, Emerson had kept his private life away from The Pie Hole chatter. While all the other characters struggle to connect with each other, Emerson’s attention is turned outside of the group towards Penny, his long-lost daughter. On a stakeout, Ned seeks Emerson’s advice about a fight with Chuck, concerned that she won’t forgive him for lying to her. When Emerson initially brushes him off, Ned accuses him of not understanding, but Emerson sets him straight: “[o]h, I understand better than you think. You feel like you, like you messed up, like you just lost the only person who ever meant anything to you, part of you feels like it’s for the best, and like you maybe never even deserved her in the first place.”63 Surprised by this heartfelt admission, Ned pushes Emerson to continue, and Emerson eventually confesses his secret. The scene even invokes the imagery of the confessional booth: not only does Ned initially misinterpret Emerson’s claim to be a father to mean “a priest,” but the front seat of the car mimics the space of a confessional, with a Plexiglas partition requiring the men to speak to each other through perforated holes, similar to a confessional screen. Though physically separated, the men have never been closer than in this exchange, and while Emerson is not seeking forgiveness, he does gain the understanding and sympathy of a friend. Similarly, Emerson’s tone shifts throughout the series from a materialistic focus on money to a deeper appreciation for the people in his life. Though early in the first season he could complain, “[t]he fun part’s counting my money in the bubble bath,”64 he gradually realizes that the “fun part” does not need to be so selfish or solitary. Despite his impatience with Olive, for example, Emerson eventually grants her the affectionate nickname “Itty-Bitty” and takes a fatherly interest in her troubled love life. Later in “Kerplunk,” Emerson confesses to Ned and Chuck how important they have become in his life: “I’m a solo guy by nature, but I choose to 167


affiliate with the both of you, reason being ’cause when you spend all your time chasing bad guys, you want the best of the good guys in your corner.”65 Perhaps his most touching moment comes when he breaks the news to Vivian Charles that Chuck’s grave had been exhumed by a crack team of Norwegian detectives and was found empty. “I didn’t want the Vikings to give you the news that will break you heart,” he tells her sympathetically. “That sort of thing can only come from a friend.”66 That Emerson refers to himself as a “friend” reveals the distance he has traveled since teaming up with the folks at The Pie Hole. No longer focused solely on his monetary gains, he can earnestly claim that “what really matters” is “the people, people! People you work with, clients you work for.”67 Though he had resisted this understanding for so long, Emerson finally embraces the intimacy of his circle of Pie Holers.

“Pie is home: people always come home”: Coming Home to a Public Space When the Pushing Daisies characters “open their pie holes,” any number of secrets, songs, or confessions can spill out, but their ultimate aim is to connect with the people around them. Although not all the dialogue examined above was uttered in the confines of The Pie Hole itself, even when the characters are speaking elsewhere this public space remains the center of their adventures and their growing intimacy. But it is important to consider why a restaurant, a public space, becomes such a pivotal site for these loving dialogues, these “intimate relations.” Restaurant and drinking establishments are of course familiar sets for television programs. Whether a bar in Boston where everyone knows your name, a funky coffee shop where your friends gather nightly on the same beat up couches, or a waffle house where you meet to discuss business with your fellow grim reapers, public eating places provide a logical focal point outside the home where television characters can join each other in conversation.68 Monk’s Diner of Seinfeld 69 granted Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer a space to gather to commiserate over failed relationships, decry the idiocies of their workplaces, and ponder life, the universe, and nothing. The dialogue at Monk’s was snappy and witty, full of punch lines, 168


jabs, and catch phrases that permeated into popular culture, and as we listened to these four wacky individuals gabbing in their booth, we could sense their camaraderie and see how well they complemented each other. Likewise, Luke’s Diner of The Gilmore Girls 70 provides a space for Lorelei Gilmore and her daughter Rory to share monster cups of coffee and wax poetic on movies, relationships, and the idiosyncrasies of life in Stars Hollow, Connecticut. Their dialogue is famously fast-paced and eclectic, drawing on a staggering range of pop cultural references, but more importantly, it extends to welcome the entire supporting cast of eccentric locals who share the diner with them. Although Lorelei and Rory have a home and a kitchen of their own, the diner not only offers them a gathering space for their extended “family” of friends but, since Lorelei famously cannot cook anything more complicated than Pop Tarts, it also offers them their primary source of sustenance, making it their hearth away from home. Unlike the alienating diner of Hopper’s Nighthawks, then, these television restaurants and coffee shops are framed as homes. No longer a symbol of urban isolation, these restaurant sets promise a public-private space, a communal meeting ground where the characters come to know each others’ inner selves. The Pie Hole, in particular, stands in this position both literally and metaphorically; Ned, Chuck, and Olive all live in the apartment building above the restaurant, but emotionally they consider The Pie Hole their true center, repeatedly referring to it as “home.” In “Bitter Sweets,” for example, Ned refuses to believe that the candy store across the street poses a challenge to their business, for “pie is home: people always come home.” Later, when Ned finds Olive at the convent, he fervently tell her, “[t]his place isn’t you, you belong at home,” insisting not only that The Pie Hole deserves to bear that title but also that Olive belongs there, acknowledging her desperate desires to find her place.71 In The Architecture of Happiness, philosopher Alain de Botton observes, “[o]ur homes do not have to offer us permanent occupancy or store our clothes to merit the name. To speak of home in relation to a building is simply to recognize its harmony with our own prized internal song.”72 Ned, Chuck, Olive, and Emerson find solace in the warmth and comfort of The Pie Hole because it resonates with their “internal songs,” the quirky sweet talk that makes them feel at home with one another. As Chuck’s Aunt Vivian puts it, these characters do not come to The Pie Hole because they’re “craving 169


pie,” but because they’re “craving company,” the company found in a shared space and a shared language.73 Though public in that no one actually lives within these establishments, television eateries like The Pie Hole provide a space for their characters to build a family of their friends, a family united through shared interests and language. Before Chuck’s arrival, the restaurant had been a place for Ned to hide, burying himself in the confectionary reminder of his mother’s love. But with Chuck’s guidance, Ned rises above his status as emotional shut-in and realizes that he needs to reach out. Chuck boldly tells him, “I know you. You say you don’t want to be connected, but I don’t believe that. I mean, everyone needs family.”74 Though Chuck literally refers to blood relations here, her words speak to all the characters in Pushing Daisies. Whether reuniting with lost daughters, aunts, nieces, and fathers, forming new romantic partnerships, or redefining their notions of friendship, the characters constantly seek the love and support of family, whether traditional or unconventional. At home in The Pie Hole and speaking their own intimate languages, Ned, Chuck, Olive, and Emerson remind us that there are more ways of touching others than simply holding hands.

Chapter Notes 1. Episode 1.3, “The Fun in Funeral.” 2. Episode 2.10, “The Norwegians.” 3. “The Norwegians.” 4. “The Norwegians.” 5. Richard E. Sexton and Virginia Staudt Sexton. “Intimacy: A Historical Perspective.” Intimacy. Ed. Martin Fisher and George Stricker. New York: Plenum, 1982: 1–2. 6. Tim Goodman, “Quirky New Drama Too Good to Be Pushing Daisies.” San Francisco Chronicle 3 October 2007. Web. 7 February 2010. 7. Qtd. in Rob Owen, “Quirky Delight Pushing Daisies Takes a Fairy Tale Look at Death.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. 30 September 2007. Web. 7 February 2010. 8. Episode 1.6, “Bitches.” 9. “The Master Pie Maker.” Pushing Daisies Season 2 DVD Extras. 2009. 10. Qtd. in Maria Elena Fernandez, “A Fairy Tale in Bloom: With its Sweet Love Story and Quirky Cast of Characters, Pushing Daisies is a Crime Show of a Different Color.” Los Angeles Times 9 January 2009. Web. 7 February 2010. 11. “The Master Pie Maker.” 12. Episode 1.8, “Bitter Sweets.” 13. Episode 1.4, “Pigeon.”

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9. Sweet Talk in The Pie Hole (Parmiter) 14. Episode 2.5, “Dim Sum, Lose Some.” 15. “Bitter Sweets.” 16. Episode 2.1, “Bzzzzzzzzz!” 17. Episode 1.1, “Pie-Lette.” 18. “Pie-Lette.” 19. “Bitches.” 20. “The Norwegians.” 21. Episode 2.4, “Frescorts.” 22. Episode 2.2, “Circus! Circus!” 23. Episode 2.12, “Water and Power.” 24. “Circus! Circus!” 25. Episode 1.2, “Dummy.” 26. Episode 2.4, “Frescorts.” 27. This linguistic optimism also appears in Chuck’s proficiency with foreign languages: One of the running gags of the show is that Chuck can speak the language of any non–English speakers they encounter. As explained in “Dummy,” Chuck pursued this “love of language” when living with her shut-in aunts, finding language acquisition a way to connect with the outside world. Her ability to communicate so freely with others is often contrasted to Ned’s inability to express his feelings. 28. “Bzzzzzzzzz!” 29. “Pie-Lette.” 30. George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language.” A Collection of Essays. New York: Harcourt, 1953: 170. 31. Episode 2.6, “Oh, Oh, Oh ... It’s Magic.” 32. Hans-George Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2d ed. Trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall. New York: Crossroads, 1989: 378. 33. “Pie-Lette.” 34. “The Fun in Funeral.” 35. Episode 1.7, “Smell of Success.” 36. “Bitter Sweets.” 37. Episode 2.11, “Window Dressed to Kill.” 38. “The Norwegians.” 39. “The Norwegians.” 40. Episode 1.4, “Pigeon.” 41. “Bzzzzzzzzz!” 42. In the first three episodes of Season 2: “Bzzzzzzzzz!,” “Circus, Circus” (Episode 2.2), and “Bad Habits” (Episode 2.3). 43. “Dummy.” 44. “Dummy.” 45. “Dummy.” 46. Episode 1.5, “Girth.” 47. “Bad Habits.” 48. Episode 2.13, “Kerplunk.” 49. Alan Sepinwall, “Sepinwall on TV: ‘Pushing Daisies’ review.” NJ.com 1 October 2008. Web. 50. “Bad Habits.” 51. “Smell of Success.” 52. “Oh, Oh, Oh ... It’s Magic.”

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Part Three: Gender and Pushing Daisies 53. “The Norwegians.” 54. “Bitter Sweets.” 55. “Circus! Circus!” 56. “Dummy.” 57. “Bad Habits.” 58. “Bad Habits.” 59. Episode 1.9, “Corpsicle.” 60. “Frescorts.” 61. “Bitches.” 62. “Bzzzzzzzzz!” 63. “Corpsicle.” 64. “Dummy.” 65. “Kerplunk.” 66. “Norwegians.” 67. “Norwegians.” 68. I refer here to Cheers, from the series of that name (NBC, 1982–1993), Central Perk from Friends (NBC, 1994–2004), and Der Waffle Haus from Dead Like Me (Showtime 2003–2004). Like Pushing Daisies, Dead Like Me was also created by Bryan Fuller, and notably has an episode set in the diner called “Nighthawks” (Season 1, Episode 12) that deals explicitly with Hopper’s painting. 69. NBC, 1989–1998. 70. WB, 2000–2006; CW 2006–2007. 71. “Bad Habits.” 72. Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness. New York: Pantheon, 2006: 107. 73. “Bzzzzzzzzz!” 74. “Dim Some, Lose Some.”

Works Cited De Botton, Alain. The Architecture of Happiness. New York: Pantheon, 2006. Fernandez, Maria Elena. “A Fairy Tale in Bloom: With its Sweet Love Story and Quirky Cast of Characters, ‘Pushing Daisies’ is a Crime Show of a Different Color.” Los Angeles Times. 9 January 2008. Web. Accessed 7 February 2010. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method. 2d ed. Trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall. New York: Crossroad, 1989. Goodman, Tim. “Quirky New Drama Too Good to Be ‘Pushing Daisies.’” San Francisco Chronicle. 3 October 2007. Web. Accessed 7 February 2010. “The Master Pie Maker.” Pushing Daisies Season 2 DVD Extras. 2009. DVD. Orwell, George. “Politics and the English Language.” A Collection of Essays. New York: Harcourt, 1953: 156–171. Owen, Rob. “Quirky Delight ‘Pushing Daisies’ Takes a Fairy Tale Look at Death.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. 30 September 2007. Web. Accessed 7 February 2010. Pushing Daisies: The Complete First Season. Created by Bryan Fuller. Perf. Lee Pace, Anna Friel, Chi McBride, Kristin Chenoweth. ABC, 2007–2008. DVD. Warner Home Video, 2007.

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9. Sweet Talk in The Pie Hole (Parmiter) Pushing Daisies: The Complete Second Season. Created by Bryan Fuller. Perf. Lee Pace, Anna Friel, Chi McBride, Kristin Chenoweth. ABC, 2008–2009. DVD. Warner Home Video, 2009. Sepinwall, Alan. “Sepinwall on TV: ‘Pushing Daisies’ Review.” The Star-Ledger. 1 October 2008. Web. Accessed 7 February 2010. Sexton, Richard E., and Virginia Staudt Sexton. “Intimacy: A Historical Perspective.” Intimacy. Ed. Martin Fisher and George Stricker. New York: Plenum, 1982.

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10

Fashion, Femininity, and the 1950s Costume and Identity Negotiation in Pushing Daisies ALISSA BURGER

Bryan Fuller’s Pushing Daisies has a signature look and feel, a tone that combines the recognizably mundane with a world of whimsical fantasy. Charlotte Charles, better known as Chuck, also bridges the gap between life and death, between Ned’s past and present, and between the public and the private in her transition from the home of her shut-in aunts to the wider world, even though once there, she must remain undercover, being presumed dead. Chuck’s liminal status is reflected in her wardrobe as well. The time period of Pushing Daisies remains undetermined, with mid-twentieth century architecture, cars, and clothing existing side by side with more contemporary clothing, cultural references, and state of the art technologies, such as those used by a rival investigative crew in the second-season episode “The Norwegians.”1 Following this pattern, the clothing of the core characters is a postmodern combination ranging from Emerson Cod’s hardboiled 1940s-style fashion, complete with fedoras and handmade wingtips,2 to Ned’s jeans and t-shirts, and Olive’s dresses with bold colors and sweeping patterns. Chuck’s wardrobe is the most eclectic of all, spanning a range of fashion influences and time periods. However, the majority of her clothing takes inspiration from fashions of the 1950s, with structured lines, defined waists, full skirts, and formal, feminine details. The visual connection of Chuck with the nostalgia of the 1950s significantly works to establish her characterization and her relationships 174

10. Fashion, Femininity, and the 1950s (Burger)

with others, as well as contributing to the overall tone of the series as both near and yet very far from our own world. Fashion has historically been a significant reflector of the values and anxieties of its surrounding culture. As Ruth P. Rubinstein argues, “[v]isual images from the past and present form what French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs calls the collective memory. ... Ideas, beliefs, and values — that is, the basic constructs of collective life — are embodied in images.”3 This is particularly significant in terms of fashion specifically, because throughout history, “clothing and accessories came to be seen as a physical manifestation of the ideas, the institutions, and the power held by those people. In a given society, at a given time, therefore, the clothing worn by individuals in authority has automatically provided information about their position and power in society.”4 As a result, an individual’s clothing can productively reflect their place within their specific culture, as well as their relationship with those around them, and the values they espouse. While historical moments can often be defined by a few signature styles and fashion trends, the world of Pushing Daisies is one of “fashion pluralism.”5 In keeping with the series’ liminal position between reality and fantasy, a wide range of fashions and historical influences appear between characters and even at different times with the same character. For example, at times Ned wears a classically cut black suit and tie, while at other times he appears in jeans and t-shirts, equally comfortable and in keeping with his characterization in either. As a result of this freedom of fashion choice, the clothing of each character becomes especially significant because, instead of adhering to a universally accepted fashion, as has historically been the case,6 they are free to pick and choose the clothing that best reflects their personal identities, desires, and ideals. This creates space for individuals to use fashion to express their individualism and identity without the worry of marginalization or exclusion as a result of not adhering to traditional fashion codes since, with the move toward pluralism, one fashion is not privileged above others, in contrast to previous time periods. As a result, contemporary fashion “establishes a sense of self: it communicates moods and personal attitudes,”7 as well as positioning individuals within their surrounding culture and influencing their relationships with those around them, how they see themselves and how they are seen by others. 175


Fashion, Femininity, and the 1950s Chuck’s fashion sensibility is most clearly and consistently inspired by clothing of the mid-twentieth century in general and the 1950s in particular. Women’s fashions of the 1950s stand at the intersection of postWorld War II optimism and the reemergence of more traditional gender roles as many women transitioned from the workplace back into the home. As Ed Humaira Husain points out, “[t]he 50s were an aggressively positive decade. The triumph of democracy in World War II made for an optimistic mood that was accompanied by increasing prosperity,”8 which included increased buying power for women, which was often spent on new ready to wear fashions and accessories. The 1950s also signaled the return of many women back into the home in retreat from their wartime workplaces, including a significant shift in privileged values and gender roles. As Tracey Tolkien explains in Dressing Up Vintage, Although unprecedented numbers of women had worked during World War II, the average 1950s woman was sold the idea that home, husband, and children were once again her ultimate goal once the war had ended. ... Women’s clothing styles reflected this return to a more stable, traditional role. “Soft,” “charming,” and “feminine” became advertising buzzwords; themes echoed in the flowery prints, the taffetas, the satins and chiffons, the bows, the flounces, and the frills which are so typical of the 1950s look.9

The soft, feminine style emerging in the 1950s was also tempered by a heightened sense of structure and formality in fashion. As Tolkien continues, “[f ]ormality runs through the decade, both for day and eveningwear, and keeping up this ultra groomed, ultra-accessorized high-maintenance look became a job in itself,”10 with women investing their time and, inevitably, their identities, in achieving this ideally feminine look. This combination of moving forward and looking back to adopt more traditional gender roles complicated women’s fashion during this time period and resulted in clothing that combined elements of both fun—demonstrated in the full skirts, bright colors, and bold patterns—and the formality of structured hats, handbags, and the popular stiletto, creating a new sense of femininity. Chuck demonstrates the ambivalence between these differing approaches to the feminine both in her approach to and very personalized use of fashion, which offers variations on 1950s style, supplementing it 176


with both earlier and later inspirations. Her interaction with other characters also reflects the anxiety of women’s roles that was engaged in the 1950s, in part through fashion. In many ways, Chuck is idealized and feminine, especially in dress, her empathy with the murder victims she, Ned, and Emerson investigate, and her continuing role as a caregiver, however necessarily estranged, from her aunts. However, Chuck is also a contemporary woman who refuses to fall within traditional feminine gender roles. First and most obviously, is her nickname of “Chuck,” rather than the formal and ladylike “Charlotte.” This nickname signals as especially strong bond between Ned and “the girl named Chuck,” because Chuck has not forgone the bold, gender-transcending adventures of her childhood, the memories of which Ned has cherished during their long separation, and which continue to be central to both of them in understanding who Chuck is and the values that are central to her identity. In addition, this rejection of passivity is underlined in the very moment of Chuck’s reawakening. Framed within fairy tale discourse as a “sleeping beauty” awakened by Ned’s “Prince Charming,” when Ned touches Chuck and she is once again alive, she does not melt in the face of her hero or become paralyzed with fright at having come to consciousness inside a coffin. Instead, her first instinct is one of self-protection; she grabs Ned’s necktie and knocks his head against the edge of her casket lid, which allows her a few short seconds to get up and position herself on equal footing with the now-reeling Ned. This is in direct contrast to the many murder victims Ned touches as he, Chuck, and Emerson solve crimes; rather than equalizing their relationship with Ned, as Chuck does in these first moments, they instead usually remain prone and calm, looking up at and up to Ned and company as those who will right the wrongs that have been committed against them before returning to death.11 Finally, this independence is further underscored because when Chuck is alive again, she is determined to move beyond the traditional, care-giving role she occupied at home with her aunts, getting a job and moving out of Ned’s apartment and into Olive’s, which is temporarily Chuck’s own, the first time in her life she has lived alone.12 However, Chuck never entirely gives up her empathetic role as a caregiver, both to her aunts through anonymous herbal mood-enhanced pies,13 and to the murder victims Ned awakens through her habitual question of whether they have any last wishes or 177


unfinished business she can take care of for them, a question that, Ned admits, he himself had “never thought to ask.”14 Chuck’s complication of traditional and contemporary gender roles reflects both the tension engaged in 1950s fashion sensibilities and in her own specific clothing choices. Positioned within the context of contemporary life, signaled by elements such as advanced technologies and Ned’s more modern jeans and t-shirts, Chuck’s 1950s fashion sensibility also demonstrates a heightened sense of nostalgia. Fashion is cyclical and as such, trends often call back to previous clothing styles, taking inspiration from earlier periods. However, nostalgia is not strictly a desire to recapture an earlier time period. As Judith Clark explains in Spectres: When Fashion Turns Back, “[n]ostalgia is satisfying because it is a longing for a past that never existed and for a future than can never be. As a fantasy you can make the past any way you want to.”15 This nostalgia is especially resonant with Chuck’s peculiar position: since becoming “alive again,” she cannot reenter her former life with her aunts and now must embrace nostalgia in lieu of recapturing her own past. However, Chuck’s future is similarly unsettled. While her embrace of structured 1950s-style clothes emphasize her femininity, she is unable to pursue a traditionally romantic feminine role in her relationship with Ned, since she will be returned to death if they touch. In this way, both Chuck’s idealized past and future are outside of her reach. In this case, nostalgia becomes the only suitable stand in and this approach is embraced by Chuck, in her childhood recollections and her dreams for the future — including a job, an apartment of her own, and her desires for her and Ned’s future together — as well as in her fashion. Another element of nostalgia that resonates particularly strongly with Chuck is that, as Jean Bertrand Pontalis argues, “[n]ostalgia carries the desire, less for an unchanging eternity than for always fresh beginnings.”16 Chuck was literally given a second chance at life when Ned brought her back to life with a touch of his magical finger and, reflecting on this new beginning, she decides that “dying’s as good an excuse as any to start living.”17 In addition, the theme of “fresh beginnings” resonates throughout Pushing Daisies in its entirety, in the aunts’ triumphant return to the water as the famed synchronized swimming duo The Darling Mermaid Darlings,18 Olive’s new friendships with the aunts and her romance with Randy Mann,19 Emerson’s relationship with Simone and his attempt to reclaim 178


his role as a father to his daughter, Penny,20 and the resurrection of Chuck’s father.21 Some of these beginnings hold great promise and bring happiness and fulfillment, while others have disastrous results, such as Chuck’s desertion by her father.22 However, regardless of the outcome, new beginnings, in and of themselves, are significant, suspending disbelief, creating hope, and removing unnecessary boundaries of possibility. As the series’ omniscient narrator relates at the conclusion of the series finale, “[a]t that moment in the town of Couer d’Couers events occurred that are not, were not, and should never be considered an ending. For endings, as it is known, are where we begin.” Chuck’s embrace of nostalgia as both an idealized past and the continual promise of new beginnings draws from this philosophy, connecting her both temporally and spatially to a surrounding world which is simultaneously self-contained and yet full of endless possibilities. A close consideration of Chuck’s wardrobe in the episode “The Fun in Funeral,” the third episode of the first season,23 will illustrate the role of nostalgia for the 1950s, femininity, and the ongoing negotiation of gender roles in connecting Chuck’s characterization and costuming. Chuck first appears in this episode in the kitchen of The Pie Hole with Ned, cutting peaches for a pie. Seen in a medium shot that extends from just below her hips to her head, Chuck is wearing a bright orange button-down shirt with a feminine v-neck style, accentuating her breasts. Her sleeves are cuffed or rolled above the elbow, with an apron tied around her torso, defining her slim waist and achieving the ideal structured effect 1950s fashion style. The colors of clothing are also of particular importance in Pushing Daisies. As creator Bryan Fuller explains of the colors, “on one level you can look at the reds and the golds and the greens ... [and] in a psychological context, the green being life and earth, and the gold being spirituality and the red being, sort of, once again ... life and life’s blood and passion.”24 But in addition, as Fuller continues, “those happen to be the colors that are most generous with our skin tones.” The result is that bright, vibrant colors of Chuck’s clothes are colors that psychologically connect her in viewers minds’ to warmth and life, while also highlighting her feminine beauty to the fullest possible extent, giving viewers once again an idealized image of femininity in general and the character of Chuck in particular. For someone who is supposed to be keeping an inconspicuous low profile, the colors Chuck wears, as well as the life and warmth they signify, are irrepressible. 179


In addition to the significance and vibrancy of Chuck’s orange shirt, she is also tied to moments of life and warmth in this scene through her actions as well, establishing her role within the social microcosm of The Pie Hole and her growing relationship with Ned. As the scene begins, Ned is tossing rotten peaches into the air, restoring them to ripeness with his magical touch. If he touches the fruit a second time, it will rot once again in his hands so, working as a team, Chuck takes the “alive again” fruit, cutting it for the pies. Before Chuck’s arrival, with his secret closely guarded from Olive, Ned wore gloves to cut the fruit; in removing the thin barrier between himself and the fruit and removing one level of mediation in his baking through the baker-proxy of Chuck, with her life and warmth, Ned grows closer to both Chuck and his pies. Intimacy is also mediated in the growing relationship between Ned and Chuck in this scene, which features the first instance of Chuck kissing Ned through plastic food wrap, insistently achieving the closeness that would seem to be precluded by Ned’s strange gift. Chuck is dressed in similarly warm colors when she accompanies Ned and Emerson to the morgue to see the latest murder victim, who turns out to be Lawrence Schatz, the grave-robbing funeral director who died when Ned failed to “re-dead” Chuck. Here Chuck wears a knee-length bright yellow dress, with short sleeves and a v-style neckline underneath a long belted jacket of the same color with a peter pan-style collar. Chuck complements this ensemble with yellow stiletto heels, pearl and gold earrings, and glamorous dark sunglasses. Finally, she wears a yellow and orange flower-pattered scarf over her hair, tied in the Kelly style, so named for the elegant Hollywood starlet turned princess of Monaco Grace Kelly. The combination of disparate but complementary styles in Chuck’s clothing here works to highlight her identity and her ongoing negotiation of traditional gender roles: the fitted jacket is simple and functional, while the artfully tied scarf and large sunglasses add an aura of mystery and exoticism befitting a young woman who, though supposed dead, is now “alive again.” This echoes the overall tone of Pushing Daisies in its entirety, which presents an eclectic combination of the fantastical and the everyday, with whimsically fairy tale elements coexisting side by side with the everyday. When Chuck, Ned, and Emerson go to the Schatz Funeral Home later in the episode to speak with Schatz, Chuck wears a dress that similarly 180


highlights the structure and style of the 1950s. In this scene, Chuck wears a full-skirted, knee-length, red v-neck dress, with tiered piping detail on the skirt, and elbow-length gathered sleeves. This dress is accessorized with red stilettos, a red wide-brimmed saucer hat, dark and glamorous sunglasses, and clustered pearl earrings. Chuck’s accessories in this scene are paramount in creating mid-century nostalgia, because in creating the refined femininity of the 1950s, “[h]ats and stiletto heels maintained this formality, in as much as wearing either required a very definite poise.”25 Like Chuck’s ensemble in the kitchen of The Pie Hole, this red dress has a fitted waist and feminine neckline, emphasizing the contours of her body. In fact, the issue of Chuck’s body is a central issue within this scene. Just days ago, her body lay on display in this very funeral parlor and, as she learns on talking with the reanimated Lawrence Schatz, the funeral director had taken her father’s silver pocket watch, with which she was supposed to have been buried. Aghast and angry at discovering that Schatz now has the watch, Chuck asks “you stole that off my dead body?” to which Schatz replies, “your dead body wasn’t doing anything with it.” In a moment of passion, Chuck snatches her watch back from Schatz and slams the casket lid down upon him; however, when it gets stuck with Ned’s minute ticking away, all of their bodies are in danger. Reopening the casket in the nick of time, Ned “re-deads” Schatz and life, for the crew of The Pie Hole anyway, goes on. Rounding out Chuck’s range of clothing in this episode, and representative of much of her style throughout the series, Chuck wears a pair of fitted dark green slacks with a green diamond-patterned shirt. This scene finds Chuck once again in the kitchen of The Pie Hole, this time alone, as she clandestinely bakes a pie for her aunts. The style of her shirt here echoes that of her earlier wardrobe, a collared button-down with structured lines that emphasize the feminine shape of her body. In addition, the style featured in this ensemble refers back to the casual daywear trends of the 1950s, which were less exaggeratedly feminine than the full-skirted day and evening dresses, but still carried the same tone of formality and refinement in the feminine lines of the garments.26 Finally, the connection of the color green with life, as explained by Fuller, underscores Chuck’s “alive again” status, which she was forced once again to contemplate upon learning of Schatz’s death, along with attendant feelings of joy, gratitude, and guilt that someone else had to take her place. The green also connects 181


Chuck to her aunts, to whom she had devoted her life up until her untimely death, and who she continues to take care of from afar by way of anonymous pies. The dual significance of life here as reflecting on both Chuck’s “alive again” status and the lives of those she loves underscores Chuck’s connection to and simultaneous isolation from the people around her and the wider world, prompting Chuck to reflect on the gift of her new life and, more importantly, what she wants to do with it. Finally, in Chuck, Ned, and Emerson’s return to the Schatz’s funeral home toward the conclusion of this episode, Chuck dons a dress that plays on her usual 1950s-inspired style, though with different color schemes and a slightly different style, which arguably position her more firmly within contemporary culture rather than embodying a sense of nostalgia for the past, as she resolutely moves forward with her present after coming to terms with her role, however tangential and unintentional, in Schatz’s death. In this scene, Chuck’s dress is patterned with pale purple, yellow, and light green in an abstract flower design. Instead of referring back to the structured feminine fashions of the 1950s, as she does with her earlier hats, jewelry, and stilettos, Chuck’s dress here is simply completed with a pair of similarly pale and patterned low-heeled sling-backs. Finally, this dress differs from Chuck’s earlier featured fashions with its thinner, more contemporary straps, which start wide near the neckline and then taper as they near her shoulders. However, despite these differences in color and style, Chuck’s fashion continues to take inspiration from Chuck’s signature style of 1950s fashions which informed her earlier wardrobe, with the fitted waist and full, knee-length skirt echoed here as well. The range of clothing worn by Chuck in this episode demonstrates her ongoing negotiation of her “alive again” identity, including which gender roles she chooses to embrace and which to challenge or jettison altogether. Chuck is consistently dressed in bright colors, such as orange, yellow, red, and green, which convey her irrepressible energy and her unflinchingly positive outlook on life. The structured and fitted look of the clothes highlight Chuck’s feminine features, including belted clothes that define her slim waist, knee-length skirts that reveal and highlight her legs, and low, v-style necklines that accentuate her breasts. The visible emphasis on her body, through the contours of her clothing, also underscores her “there-ness,” a living body full of warmth and vibrancy, rather 182


than the dead one she was when Ned first touched her and which her aunts and the wider world presume her to be. In addition, Chuck also self-reflexively plays with her appearance, including her clothing, underscoring the connection between appearance and performative identity, with the more modern pattern of her purple patterned dress, her burgeoning independence, and her negotiation of her feminine-gendered role as caretaker to her aunts. Simultaneously, she embraces her nurturing role in her interactions with Ned, Olive, and Emerson, as well as caring for others through helping solve their murders, oftentimes choosing more traditionally feminine clothing, such as the structured lines and feminine flair of 1950s fashions, though never without her own personal flair.

Textiles and Intertextuality The connection between Chuck’s wardrobe and her continued negotiation of her personal and gendered identity is especially significant in comparison with the clothing of the larger cast of Pushing Daisies characters. Costume designer Robert Blackman comments on the eclectic intertextual inspirations of Pushing Daisies fashions that “[t]he decades I’d dip into were the ’40s, ’50s, ’60s, early ’70s, skip the ’80s and then come back to the ’90s until the present day,” adding that the costume racks included “a symphony of black, brown, charcoal, and navy. Then a series that were magenta, orange[,] green, just zany colors.”27 While Chuck’s look takes inspiration from a variety of the time periods Blackman mentions, she remains most consistently linked with the sophisticated and feminine styles of the 1950s, a unique touchstone that sets her apart from the fashion of the other characters, all of whom have their own individual signature looks as well. The combination of these characters and their fashions creates an intertextual tapestry that encompasses the inspiration of a variety of time periods, genres, and sensibilities. Contrary to Chuck’s whimsical, colorful mid-century looks, Ned’s clothing is simple and contemporary. In addition, Ned’s clothes are consistently black, gray, and white, which as Blackman explains, makes sure viewers “never lose sight of him, no matter how bright the other clothes are.”28 While the hues of Chuck’s clothes connect her to life, energy, and 183


the wider world, the darkness of Ned’s clothes signal his isolation and his desire to remain as removed from his surroundings and as disconnected from the people around him as possible, for fear of the repercussions of his gift and the danger of relationships and discovery. In a way, it is as if his mourning for his mother has continued well into his adult life, a sorrow over not only the loss of his mother (and through desertion, his father as well) but the destruction of his innocence and the overwhelming weight of his self-imposed feelings of guilt, especially for the deaths of his mother and Chuck’s father, his responsibility, and the blame he puts upon himself. In his relationship with Chuck, Ned’s embrace of his own identity occasionally extends to a sense of play involving his outer appearance and clothing, including his undercover operation as a temp employee hired by Betty’s Bees29 and his role as manager of the Darling Mermaid Darlings as they launch their comeback.30 When Ned appears on the aunt’s doorstep at Chuck’s side at the series finale, once again dressed in his familiar suit, with white shirt and black jacket,31 it is not a signal of his return to his earlier isolation, but rather one choice he now has among many, made possible by the re-entry of Chuck into his life, including her ongoing, playful negotiations of gender and identity, as well as her forgiveness of Ned for his role in her father’s death. Olive Snook’s wardrobe echoes the bright colors of Chuck’s own throughout most of the series, though in Olive’s case, she is most predominantly featured in bright orange or lime green, the colors of her zip-front, white pin-striped Pie Hole uniform. While color theory traditionally associates golds and oranges with warmth and greens with nature, renewal, and harmony,32 Olive’s clothing in The Pie Hole works to project who she wants others to see her as, rather than who she actually believes herself to be. In truth, due to her unrequited love for Ned and her struggle to be included in the mystery-solving clique of Ned, Chuck, and Emerson, Olive often feels excluded, rejected, and alone. However, with her Pie Hole uniform, she dons the matching persona of a warm and friendly waitress; as she chides Emerson into making small talk, touting the personal nature of the restaurant and the people who find their home away from home within it.33 Working at The Pie Hole, Olive knows who she is and where she fits in and in this sense, Olive’s clothing at The Pie Hole is expressive of her identity and her position within this microcosm. However, even 184


when Olive is successfully projecting her own image of herself as a pie waitress, embodied in her dress and demeanor, at times her insecurities become clear against her own will, such as in her “chit chatting” with Emerson who quickly rebuffs her attempt at bantering and friendly intimacy, asking not for a personal connection but just a slice of rhubarb pie.34 Outside of The Pie Hole, Olive’s clothes are also bright and modern, usually with short, form-fitting skirts and low-cut necklines, emphasizing her femininity, as well as her desire for a romantic relationship and to be found attractive and sexually desirable. These fashion choices highlight Olive’s vivacious attitude and her yearning for connection with others. Interestingly, Olive’s clothes are the only ones to receive overt criticism within the Pushing Daisies world, when she is talking with the mother of a deceased jockey and Olive’s former rival, John Joseph Jacobs. As Jacobs’s mother tells Olive with acidic false magnanimity, “I have made peace with Johnny’s death. It wasn’t easy at first but knowing that it was an accident, and that you stayed single, and that all the rest of them are drunks, it made it all a little easier.” When Olive inquires how Mamma Jacobs knows Olive is still single, the older woman casts an appraising look at Olive’s clothing before snarking “you wouldn’t need all that bait if your belly were full of fish, dear.”35 However, despite this critique, Olive is consistently shown as attractive, good natured, and tenacious. In addition, Mrs. Jacob’s calling Chuck “Butch”— remarking “well, I knew it [her name] was something unladylike” when corrected — undercuts the validity of her criticism of Olive by revealing Mamma Jacobs as a mean-spirited and vindictive old woman, rather than a sympathetic, mourning matriarch. In addition, much like Ned, Olive’s sense of play, negotiation, and growth, enacted in part through her clothing and appearance, increase throughout the series, establishing her on more equal footing with the surrounding characters, especially in collectively-themed costuming, such as kitschy raincoats, 36 Comfort Food Cook Off costumes,37 and matching jumpsuits as part of the Darling Mermaid Darlings entourage.38 In contrast, rather than incorporating them within the larger group, aunts Lily and Vivian’s costumes set them further apart from the everyday world, with sparkle, glamour, and panache. Lily and Vivian’s clothing often draws on Eastern inspirations, with vibrant red and gold silks, dramatic designs, and even occasional patterned parasols. Lily and Vivian’s 185


wardrobe also plays with loud animal print patterns, including zebra stripes and leopard spots, setting them apart as both internationally intriguing and domestically eccentric. This is underscored by their home, which is filled with eclectic furnishings and exotic taxidermy birds. Lily’s body is also marked as “othered,” with this physical status constantly reinforced by a series of sequined and elaborately-designed eye patches, covering the eye she lost due to a cat sand-related infection and which forced the Darling Mermaid Darlings into retirement. Lily’s eye patch sets her apart from those around her, such as in the “Pie-Lette,” when presumed-dead Chuck is standing right in front of Lily, who cannot see Chuck because of her bad eye. This othering also estranges Lily, at least temporarily, from her own dreams of swimming again,39 which for her symbolizes both freedom and honest intimacy with her sister Vivian, which has been foreclosed by the fact that Chuck is Lily’s daughter, rather than her niece, with Vivian’s one-time fiancé Charles Charles the father of the child. However, the signature look that sets Lily and Vivian apart from the everyday world most dramatically is their Darling Mermaid Darling costuming, which combine many of the signature looks adopted by Lily and Vivian. The swim costumes they wear to perform in their Aquacade comeback as a once again famous synchronized swimming duo include black fishnet stockings under one-piece v-necked bathing suits, with a leopard print pattern, a square ended and intricately patterned cross design in the center, with red around the design and edges of the suit, a large red three-dimensional flower at the V of the neckline, and full metallic trim at the hips and shoulders.40 Their Darling Mermaid Darling costumes combine all of the bold and brash fashion qualities that set Lily and Vivian apart as eccentric shut-ins, as existing outside of normative culture, both socially and spatially. However, the culmination of what makes them different also makes them uniquely talented, as they recapture the fame, fans, and adulation they had lost when their Darling Mermaid Darlings career was previously cut short. Finally, Emerson Cod’s fashion provides yet another era of fashion influence: that of the 1940s era hardboiled private detective. He often wears dark, earth-toned three-piece suits, classically styled and accessorized with a scarf or standard “gum-shoe” fedora. His appearance is carefully cultivated and he puts a good deal of time and effort into achieving the right look. Engaging with the mythos of the hard-boiled detective, Emerson’s look 186


comes off feeling effortless, though the extensive thought that goes into it is briefly revealed when he and Olive get caught in the rain and he fusses over his “custom cobbled” wing tips.41 In addition, much like Chuck, while Emerson’s clothing takes a very specific historical and genre referent as its inspiration, Emerson is constantly negotiating who he is, who he wants others to see him as, and how he relates to the larger world, in part through his clothes. For example, while his suits and jackets are often black or earth-toned, he wears button-down shirts with bright colors and bold patterns. Finally, his fashion is augmented by his secret passion for knitting, in his cable-knit vests and other homespun touches. His position as a nononsense private eye who is more interested in the payout than justice for the murder victims clashes dramatically with his angst at being estranged from his daughter, his desperation to find her, and on a daily basis, his growing trust and friendship with Ned, Chuck, and Olive. The contradictions and complexities within his character, much as with Chuck’s ongoing negotiation of her own gendered and personal identity, are reflected in his clothing, an eclectic combination of the classic and the contemporary. The connection between the continued negotiation of identity, including relationships with those around them, are inextricably intertwined with the clothing worn by Chuck, Ned, Olive, aunts Lily and Vivian, and Emerson. In addition, the fact that Robert Blackman and the rest of the Pushing Daisies costume crew feature a wide range of fashions from multiple periods of the 20th century create an intertextual interplay between a variety of times and tones, all of which work together to create a world of fantasy that remains nonetheless grounded in reality and the everyday. The significance of Chuck’s fashion is that, in taking inspiration from the 1950s and playing on discourses of nostalgia, they — and she, as the character who dons them — create continuity, the promise that past and future can be connected, regardless of the mundane and supernatural obstacles that stand in the way of this rag-tag band of heroes. Ned is stuck between his past guilt over the deaths of his mother and Chuck’s father and is struggling to find a way to move from these past transgressions into a life where he can build a loving, honest relationship with Chuck and come to terms with his own power and its role within his life and in structuring his identity. Olive is moving from a past of unrequited love and into a future where she can be her own woman, happy and loved in return. 187


Lily and Vivian are working to overcome the obstacles that took their Darling Mermaid Darlings career from them and the secrets that separated them from one another to a relationship that emolliates or reconciles these differences, respectively. Emerson is obsessed with his lost daughter and the past he can never regain, fighting to reestablish his connection with her and develop a new identity where his paternity and his connection with his little girl are paramount. The schism between Chuck’s past and future is the most dramatic, since these two parts of her life are separated not only by personal obstacles that must be overcome and relationships with loved ones that need mending, but literally by death. She was alive, dead, and then, thanks to the supernatural power of Ned’s touch, “alive again.” Connecting past and present, in this very unique instance, presents a whole new set of challenges for Chuck, including how she wants to live her life differently than before, who she wants to be, and how she wants to remake herself, both as an individual and in relation to the people around her. The fairy tale tone of Pushing Daisies is significant in achieving this negotiation, which lies well within the realm of the supernatural, bringing together the fantastic nature of Ned’s gift, Chuck’s resurrection, and a fairly realistic, if heightened, world in which all of these things can come together. In addition to the indeterminate time and place offered by the fairy tale elements of the series, Chuck’s clothing builds upon this in-between and not quite settled sense of where and when. Her fashion draws extensively on inspirations from the oft-idealized 1950s, which could be read as implying a desire to return to a simpler and more romantic earlier time. However, Chuck’s engagement with nostalgia challenges this reading of her mid-century wardrobe, with the realization that nostalgia is more productively addressed not as a longing for an impossible to recapture past, but rather “for always fresh beginnings.”42 Finally, while the inspiration of 1950s fashion remains central to Chuck’s look and clothing, she is constantly negotiating elements of this source, pairing modern fabrics with classic lines or bringing contemporary flair to a vintage dress. Through this critical engagement with 1950s styles, Chuck is also negotiating her own identity, her status as “alive again,” and her place within the microcosm of The Pie Hole and the context of the larger world. But this negotiation is never easy. Her status as a daughter becomes com188


plicated when she conspires to have Ned bring her father back to life and keeps him alive, only to have him abandon her, and by the revelation that her Aunt Lily is, in truth, her mother. Her position as Olive’s best friend gets muddied by her discomfort with Olive’s love for Ned and her jealously that Olive and Ned can touch, while she and Ned cannot.43 In figuring out where she fits, Chuck struggles with the tension between past and future, a shifting that is also reflected in her clothing; as Pexton Murray explains, “[w]hen one considers that at best our lives are spent in a hostile world, both in the narrow neighborhood sense, and in the broader, global sense, it is easy to understand that clothing, and the way it covers us, has many deep, inner meanings. Clothing becomes our security blanket.”44 Chuck filters her experiences and her ambivalence about her place within the larger world in part through her clothing and while she often melds 1950s style with contemporary inspirations, or occasionally draws fashions from many of the other decades that inspired Blackwell in creating the couture of Pushing Daisies, she returns time and again to the fitted, structured, and sophisticated flair of the 1950s and the nostalgia it embodies, with the goal of connecting past and future resurfacing again and again in both Chuck’s look and her “alive again” life. At the conclusion of the series, Chuck and Ned show up on Lily and Vivian’s doorstep, at the very moment when, unbeknownst to them, Lily and Vivian’s past and future are on the verge of becoming permanently estranged.45 Significantly, this is one of the few moments in the entirety of the series in which Chuck’s clothes are not visible, hidden behind the large bouquet of flowers she has brought for her aunts. In this moment, Chuck’s negotiations end, or are at least temporary suspended, and the identity roles that Chuck chooses and embraces, those that make her feel complete, are in her relationship with Ned and her reunion with and reconciliation of her aunts, an act that brings Chuck’s past and future together at last.

Chapter Notes 1. Episode 2.10, “The Norwegians.” 2. Episode 2.9, “The Legend of Merle McQuoddy.” 3. Ruth P. Rubenstein, Dress Codes: Meanings and Messages in American Culture, 2d ed. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001: 5.

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Part Three: Gender and Pushing Daisies 4. Ibid. 5. Fred Davis, “Fashion as Cycle, Fashion as Process,” Fashion, Culture, and Identity. Chicago: University Chicago Press, 1992: 107. 6. Ibid. 7. Maggie Pexton Murray, Changing Styles in Fashion: Who, What, Why. New York: Fairchild, 1989: 9. 8. Humaira Husain, ed. Decades of Beauty. New York: Hamlyn/Reed Consumer, 1998: 118. 9. Tracy Tolkien, Dressing Up Vintage. New York: Rizzoli International, 2000: 27. 10. Tolkien, 27. 11. There are isolated instances in which the murder victims once reanimated try to get up and evade their fate, including the “nun on the run” in Episode 2.3,“Bad Habits.” However, Chuck is the only one who faces Ned on his own level, seeking equality rather than passively retreating before death or running in panic. 12. Episode 2.1, “Bzzzzzzzzz!” 13. Episode 1.3, “The Fun in Funeral.” 14. Episode 1.1, “Pie-Lette.” 15. Judith Clark, Spectres: When Fashion Turns Back. Antwerp: Mode Museum Antwerpen, 2004: 24. 16. Qtd. in Clark, 27, emphasis original. 17. “Pie-Lette.” 18. Episode 2.13, “Kerplunk.” 19. Including Episode 2.12, “Water & Power” and “Kerplunk.” 20. Including Episodes 1.9, “Corpsicle,” 2.4, “Frescorts,” “Water and Power,” and “Kerplunk.” 21. Episodes 2.8, “Comfort Food” and “The Legend of Merle McQuoddy.” 22. “The Legend of Merle McQuoddy.” 23. I have chosen to do a close reading of this particular episode because it features a wide range of Chuck’s wardrobe trends, providing a representative overview of her style, which continues (with some variation) throughout the rest of the series. A range of Chuck’s many clothing changes in this episode are considered here; other clothing elements from this episode and others generally fit within the larger stylistic paradigms presented here. In addition, “The Fun in Funeral” is the third episode of the first season, at which point Chuck has fairly successfully navigated the transition from dead to “alive again” and has successfully established her personality, her role within the larger social group of The Pie Hole, and her signature look. 24. “Extra Helpings.” Pushing Daisies Season 1. DVD. 25. Decades of Beauty, 124. 26. Tolkien, 31. 27. Mary Rochlin, “Robert Blackman: Pushing Daisies.” New York Times 5 June 2009. Web. 6 April 2010. 28. Rochlin. 29. “Bzzzzzzzzz!” 30. “Kerplunk.” 31. Ned’s tie is a bit more colorful in this instance, a dark red with horizontal black stripes, visually marking the ways in which he has changed and the ways in which he has stayed the same over the course of the series, while also highlighting his newfound ability to be more flexible and playful regarding his own appearance.

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10. Fashion, Femininity, and the 1950s (Burger) 32. Tom Fraser and Adam Banks, Designer’s Color Manual: The Complete Guide to Color Theory and Application. San Francisco: Chronicle, 2004: 21. 33. Episode 1.2, “Dummy.” 34. Ibid. 35. Episode 1.5, “Girth.” 36. “The Legend of Merle McQuoddy.” 37. “Comfort Food.” 38. “Kerplunk.” 39. While Lily blames the loss of her eye for the end of the aunts’ Darling Mermaid Darlings career, there are also several psychological barriers that prevent her from getting back in the water and embracing this relationship with her sister Vivian. 40. “Kerplunk.” 41. “The Legend of Merle McQuoddy.” 42. Pontalis, qtd. In Judith Clark, Spectres, 27. 43. Especially following an instance in which Olive kisses Ned in “Girth.” 44. Pexton Murray, 10. 45. “Kerplunk.”

Works Cited Clark, Judith. Spectres: When Fashion Turns Back. Antwerpen: Victoria and Albert Museum/Mode Museum, 2004. Davis, Fred. “Fashion as Cycle, Fashion as Process.” Fashion, Culture, and Identity. Chicago: University Chicago Press, 1992: 101–120. “Extra Helpings.” Pushing Daisies: The Complete First Season. DVD. Warner Home Video, 2007. Fraser, Tom, and Adam Banks. Designer’s Color Manual: The Complete Guide to Color Theory and Application. San Francisco: Chronicle, 2004. Humaira Husain, ed. Decades of Beauty. New York: Hamlyn/Reed Consumer, 1998. Pexton Murray, Maggie. Changing Styles in Fashion: Who, What, Why. New York: Fairchild, 1989. Pushing Daisies: The Complete First Season. Created by Bryan Fuller. Perf. Lee Pace, Anna Friel, Chi McBride, Kristin Chenoweth. ABC, 2007–2008. DVD. Warner Home Video, 2007. Pushing Daisies: The Complete Second Season. Created by Bryan Fuller. Perf. Lee Pace, Anna Friel, Chi McBride, Kristin Chenoweth. ABC, 2008–2009. DVD. Warner Home Video, 2009. Rochlin, Margy. “Robert Blackman: Pushing Daisies.” New York Times 5 June 2009. Web. Accessed 6 April 2010. Rubinstein, Ruth P. Dress Codes: Meanings and Messages in American Culture, 2d ed. Boulder, CO: Westview, 2001. Tolkien, Tracy. Dressing Up Vintage. New York: Rizzoil International, 2000.

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About the Contributors Alissa Burger is an assistant professor at the State University of New York, Delhi, and teaches English and humanities courses. Her research interests include representations of gender performativity in literature and film, parallel tales, including her work on The Wizard of Oz and Wicked, the role of the musical in contemporary popular culture, and the literary horror genre. Matt Dauphin gratuated from Arizona State University in 2007 with a degree in justice studies and social inquiry and in 2011 received a master’s degree in literary and textual studies at Bowling Green State University. His research interests include the exploration of utopian/dystopian ideas in contemporary speculative fiction and the study of identity formation and performance. Chief among his concerns is the liminality between individualism and group inclusion. His favorite type of pie is lemon meringue. Daniel Farr is a visiting assistant professor of sociology at Randolph College and is pursuing a Ph.D. at the University of Albany, SUNY, with a dissertation exploring parental aspirations among young gay men. His primary areas of research explore the intersections of masculinities, sexualities, and families. His recent publications have particularly addressed various aspects of queer culture and media including: transgender personal ads, gay and lesbian commercial content, and queer families in the media. Christine Garbett is a Ph.D. candidate at Bowling Green State University; her dissertation discusses the literacy practices of working-class deaf people. Her research interests include disability and deaf studies, feminist rhetorics, pedagogical theory, and composition. Patrick Gill has been an instructor in Mainz University’s Department of English and Linguistics since 2001. He has taught classes on the contemporary British novel, British television comedy, Shakespearean texts and their contemporary adaptations, and British poetry of all ages. While his current research is in the intercultural aesthetics of literary translation, he maintains a strong interest in aspects of popular culture, particularly in British and American television series. Lorna Jowett is a senior lecturer in media and American studies at the University of Northampton, U.K., where she teaches television, science fiction, and horror. Her research focuses on genre and gender across film, television, and literature.

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About the Contributors Her monograph Sex and the Slayer: A Gender Studies Primer for the Buffy Fan was published in 2005, and she is on the editorial board of Slayage: The International Online Journal of Buffy Studies. Christine A. Knoop is an assistant professor at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, where she teaches comparative literature with a focus on French and francophone studies and literary theory. Her research interests include conceptions of authorship and the ways in which they are challenged and subverted by contemporary writers; non–mother tongue writing; and the promise and predicament of interdisciplinarity for literary studies. Ann-Gee Lee, who received a Ph.D. from Bowling Green State University, teaches writing courses at the University of Arkansas Fort Smith. Lee’s interests are languages, reading, writing, music, television, film, fashion, technology, art, and design. Tara K. Parmiter received a B.A. in English from Cornell University and a Ph.D. from New York University, where she teaches composition in the Expository Writing Program. She has published articles on the vacation spaces of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, the imagined landscapes of Lucy Maud Montgomery, and the journey narratives of the Muppet movies. Laura Anh Williams is a Ph.D. candidate in theory and cultural studies at Purdue University. Her research interests include Asian American literature, food studies, popular and visual culture. She teaches in the Department of English at New Mexico State University.

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Index 80–81, 85, 88, 92–93, 99–103, 105–106, 109, 110, 111n, 126, 139, 140–141, 144–151, 156, 174, 186–187 Cod, Penny 167, 179 color 2, 21, 63, 139–140, 179–187 “Comfort Food” (episode) 6n, 19, 26n, 40n, 41n, 42n, 64, 70n, 113n, 132n, 152n, 153n, 190n, 191n comic book 5 community 28–42 “Corpsicle” (episode) 41n, 153n, 167, 172n, 190n costume 23, 24, 63, 70n, 81, 139, 140, 142– 144, 146, 165, 174–191 Couer d’Couers 69, 104, 117, 137, 159, 179

abjection 30–31, 33–35, 38, 40 Amélie (film) 13, 17, 21, 22 “Bad Habits” (episode) 19, 23, 26n, 41n, 90n, 101, 112n, 165, 171n, 172n Balsam, Billy and Dilly 77, 81, 97, 140, 158; see also “Bitter Sweets” Betty’s Bees 2, 44, 81, 158, 184; see also “Bzzzzzzzzz!” “Bitches” (episode) 26n, 52n, 90n, 98, 112n, 149, 153n, 170n, 171n, 172n “Bitter Sweets” (episode) 23, 24, 40n, 41n, 42n, 70n, 90n, 112n, 152n, 153n, 169, 170n, 171n, 172n Buffy the Vampire Slayer (series) 22 Burton, Tim 13, 21, 22 Bustamante, Buster 66–67, 147–148; see also “Window Dressed to Kill” “Bzzzzzzzzz!” (episode) 6n, 23, 26n, 41n, 52n, 70n, 71n, 90n, 91n, 100, 112n, 132n, 152n, 153n, 171n, 172n, 189n

Dale, Jim 104, 158 Dandy Lion 2, 82 Darling Mermaid Darlings 41n, 159, 178, 184–186 Dead Like Me (series) 1, 4, 6, 28, 115–122, 124–130, 137 determinism 115–133 Dexter (series) 11, 15 Digby 3, 41n, 49, 51, 60–61, 63–64, 68, 69, 77, 78, 80, 84, 85, 128 “Dim Sum Lose Sum” (episode) 20, 23, 24, 26n, 90n, 153n, 171n, 172n disability 43–53 Dixon, Dwight 79, 96–97, 158; see also “Comfort Food”; “Dim Sum Lose Sum”; “The Norwegians”; “Oh Oh Oh ... It’s Magic”; “Robbing Hood” “Dummy” (episode) 6n, 41n, 70n, 71n, 89n, 90n, 99, 112n, 113n, 152n, 164, 171n, 172n, 191n

Charles, Charles 1, 18, 38, 41n, 61–62, 63, 77, 79, 83, 160, 162, 179, 184, 186, 188– 189 Charles, Charlotte (Chuck) 2, 18, 20, 28, 32–33, 35, 38–39, 41n, 43, 45, 46, 47– 51, 58–69, 74, 77–89, 92–93, 96–103, 105, 108–109, 110, 126, 139, 142–144, 146, 147, 155–158, 160–162, 170–183, 188–189 Charles, Lily 2, 20, 32, 34, 37, 39, 41n, 43, 45, 66, 68, 80, 82, 83, 106, 109, 143–144, 147, 163, 185–186, 188–189; see also Darling Mermaid Darlings Charles, Vivian 2, 20, 32, 34, 37, 39, 41n, 43, 45, 66, 83, 109, 143–144, 147, 155– 156, 163, 168, 169–170, 185–186, 188–189; see also Darling Mermaid Darlings Chenoweth, Kristin 2, 4, 158, 164 “Circus Circus” (episode) 40n, 41n, 91n, 153n, 159, 171n, 172n Cod, Calista 142, 146, 149 Cod, Emerson 2, 18–20, 28, 33, 46–48, 49,

Elsita 43, 47; see also “Pigeon” Emmy Awards 4 fairy tale 2, 17, 18, 29, 62, 83–84, 86, 95, 103–106, 128, 130–131, 158, 166, 177, 188 fan support 4–5

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Index femininity 141–144, 176–183 Firefly (series) 4, 12 flashback 20, 64, 126, 162 free will 115–133 “Frescorts” (episode) 2, 26n, 41n, 42n, 70n, 90n, 112n, 153n, 158, 171n, 190n Friel, Anna 2, 158 “The Fun in Funeral” (episode) 15, 26n, 40n, 52n, 65–66, 70n, 71n, 90n, 91n, 92–93, 102, 110n, 112n, 113n, 153n, 170n, 171n, 179–183, 190n

neoteny 73–91 Nighthawks (painting) 155–156, 169 “The Norwegians” (episode) 16, 26n, 40n, 41n, 66, 71n, 145, 151, 153n, 168, 170n, 171n, 172n, 174, 189n “Oh Oh Oh ... It’s Magic” (episode) 23, 26n, 42n, 68, 71n, 90n, 171n Pace, Lee 1, 129 The Pie Hole 2, 17, 29, 31, 33, 36, 37, 47, 48, 77, 86, 100, 106, 126, 128, 138–139, 141, 148, 151, 155–156, 162–164, 166, 168– 170, 180–181, 184–185, 188 “Pie-lette” (episode) 40n, 41n, 52n, 70n, 89n, 90n, 91n, 111n, 112n, 113n, 131n, 132n, 152n, 153n, 171n, 186, 190n “Pigeon” (episode) 7n, 26n, 41n, 47, 52n, 71n, 90n, 112n, 152n, 170n, 171n

genre hybridity 3, 11–27 “Girth” (episode) 66, 71n, 82, 90n, 106, 112n, 113n, 149, 152n, 153n, 165, 171n, 191n Greek mythology 107, 109 Greene, Ellen 2, 3 grief 58–72 Holmes, Jerry 66–67, 147–148; see also “Window Dressed to Kill”

queer discourse 66–67, 137–154 race 144–148 “Robbing Hood” (episode) 16, 23, 26n, 40n, 41n, 70n, 90n, 91n Romeo + Juliet (film) 57–58

isolation 28–42, 51 justice 92–114 “Kerplunk” (episode) 24, 26n, 41n, 42n, 71n, 90n, 112n, 113n, 153n, 167–168, 171n, 172n, 190n, 191n Kurtz, Swoozie 2

Schadenfreude 92–114 Sex and the City (series; films) 66, 149, 158 singing 3, 19, 143, 164 The Singing Detective (miniseries) 23 Six Feet Under (series) 137 “Smell of Success” (episode) 41n, 65, 66, 70n, 71n, 89n, 91n, 112n, 152n, 153n Snook, Olive 2, 3, 18–20, 32, 34, 36–37, 39, 41n, 47, 50, 66–67, 81, 85, 103, 106, 112n, 126–127, 139, 142–143, 146–148, 149, 151, 156, 158, 162–165, 171n, 174, 184–185, 187, 189 The Sound of Music (film) 3, 20, 149

“The Legend of Merle McQuoddy” (episode) 41n, 42n, 71n, 79, 90n, 152n, 153n, 189n, 190n, 191n Lem, “Lefty” 17, 37–38, 43, 45, 47, 158 LGBT 138, 148, 150, 151 linguistic style 24, 61, 87–88, 115, 155–173 Mann, Randy 36–37, 42n, 86, 127, 178; see also “Frescorts”; “Kerplunk”; “Water & Power”; “Window Dressed to Kill” masculinity 138–142 McBride, Chi 2, 20, 165 melancholia 59–60, 62–69 Moonlighting (series) 23, 24, 158 mourning 58–59, 60

Twin Peaks (series) 11, 21, 24–25 Victor/Victoria (film) 149 visual style 2–3, 12–13, 19–24, 61 “Water & Power” (episode) 41n, 42n, 90n, 91n, 159, 171n, 190n “Window Dressed to Kill” (episode) 23, 26n, 41n, 66, 70n, 71n, 90n, 113n, 126, 132n, 152n, 153n, 171n The Wizard of Oz (film) 149 Wonderfalls (series) 1, 5, 6, 28, 115–116, 121– 130

Narrator 14–16, 26n, 61–65, 69, 77, 79, 104, 117, 128, 151 Ned 1, 2, 18, 19, 20, 28, 31, 32, 38–39, 41n, 42n, 43, 44, 46–51, 58–69, 74, 76–89, 92–93, 98–103, 105–109, 110, 111n, 125, 138–142, 155–158, 160–162, 170, 174–175, 178, 183–184, 187 Ned’s mother 1, 61–65, 77, 128, 139, 141, 184

The X-Files (series) 12, 15, 21

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