honestly has someone written an essay on due south and the figure of the closet because
LOOK i am just saying that people spend a lot of time… physically… in closets in this show. want to have a clandestine conversation about like, anything? closet. want to find out why your best friend has been replaced by a really really inaccurate pod person? talk to your not-boss in the closet. the closet is a fraught, fruitful space. it’s where secrets are exchanged. it’s where information is hidden. it’s where people talk when they do not want to be heard.
let’s add to that, the fact that fraser’s father… HAS A WHOLE ENTIRE CABIN… in fraser’s closet. he builds it. he sets up shop there. the closet is where he lives. which adds an extra frisson to all of his stories about buck frobisher, eh?
and look, i am just saying that bob fraser exists at least in part as a cautionary tale for fraser. don’t be like your dad: don’t spend your life running away from and ignoring the people you care about. or you’ll be dead and you still won’t be able to get out of the fucking closet.
anyway if you take all of this into account, the brief use of the word “closet” in fraser’s merry little word-association game is even funnier. because ray reacts like he’s been bitten. or like dief has stuck his tongue on his ear or something. “what kind of question’s that?”
fraser is blithe, unwilling to recognise that he knows that ray means… what does ray mean? ray means that he has the exact same association with the figure of the closet that i do: queerness. and it’s suddenly been sprung on him.
fraser, as ever, demurs. plays the naïf. he assures ray that he meant “nothing untoward.” but in that case, why does he say the word closet? is he asking a question? is he baiting ray? is this a first step out?
of course, it can be all or some or nothing of those things, as you choose. it’s just a throwaway joke. but… in the context of the show it tickles me. the closet is, to steal a phrase from sarah monette’s readings of due south, an over-determined space. it’s a real space for exchanging real information; it’s a real space for fraught, secret conversation. it’s a magical space where fraser can encounter his father. and it’s a figure that we understand implicitly — it’s a euphemism, a commonly understood code. “what kind of question’s that?”
and think back to the scene where fraser is physically inside his closet, talking to his father. it appears to him as a spacious, full cabin. it’s lifelike. he can move around.
thatcher hears fraser talking from the closet. intrigued, or just nosy, she opens the door.
suddenly, as soon as she opens the door, the space closes. suddenly, fraser is just alone, in a too-empty space. the closet is an odd space that can crush people if they stay in it; the closet also offers safety and space that other people crush.
closets. who’d have them? for much of due south, his father’s closet cabin is the closest fraser gets to home — the closest he gets to the truth of what he wants to be doing. and in some ways, the show ends with this closet being exploded. his father has gone; and there he and ray are, in actual canada. partners; even if they‘re not working together anymore, they’re partners. isn’t that a lot of what call of the wild works to establish?
“what kind of question’s that?” maybe, ray, you should have have taken the leap of faith sooner, and answered it. but you weren’t there yet.
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