Nathan Fielder is a Canadian comedian who practices a highly conceptual form of "cringe" comedy -- this is a genre developed, I think, from an unsettling aspect of "stand-up". Some stand-up comics specialize in insulting their audiences -- this aspect of verbal combat between comedians and hecklers evolved into the work of stand-ups comics like Don Rickles and, also, the institution of the celebrity "Roast" in which a bench of comics mock some famous person (and, then, in a turn-around are mocked themselves.) Comedy isn't pretty. Ridicule and insult can turn nasty quickly and the "cringe-factor" (that is, discomfort arising when the comedian has seemingly gone too far or become too personal or objectionable in his or her mockery) has always been an implicit aspect of the art. Fielder exploits the "cringe-factor" associated with his peculiar appearance and dead-eyed, seemingly autistic indifference, to ordinary human interactions -- his work is cringe-worthy because apparently tone-deaf to the sensibilities of those with whom he interacts. All comedians approach their art from the stance of an outsider, someone who is uniquely positioned to see the grotesque and absurd in human behavior that otherwise goes unnoticed (or, at minimum, unspoken). Oliver Sacks, also an outsider, homosexual and drug-addicted, once wrote a book called An Anthropologist from Mars, Seven Paradoxical Tales (seven case-histories of neuro-divergent people). Fielder's persona seems to be similar -- he's an alien, radically disconnected, it seems, from the norms of human interactions, obsessive, and with a bizarre affect: he's robotic, like some kind of machine pretending to be human. Fielder's physiognomy is peculiar: he has a square-head with big wet eyes and large, swollen and reddish lips -- his appearance is a weird combination of mannequin handsome and the clownish. His features are cartoonish, inexpressive -- he emits an aspect of slightly bemused and baffled anxiety.
Fielder's magnum opus to date is the second season of the HBO show, The Rehearsal (six episodes varying from 35 to 58 minutes in length). The show is highly cerebral but strangely affecting -- Fielder's awkward and baffled deportment is an external representation of what most of us feel from time to time: we don't fit in, we're misunderstood, we can't quite read the emotions of those around us. He embodies certain Kafkaesque anxieties that everyone has experienced but that may be difficult to express in words. I'm casting around for meaningful analogies because Fielder's The Rehearsal is essentially indescribable, unlike anything else on TV and creates an emotional aura that is distinct, and, even, oddly moving but hard to identify. There may be some aspect of Wittgenstein's late philosophical investigations in The Rehearsal -- this is comedy so removed from social norms that it seques into philosophical inquiry. The premise for The Rehearsal was established in a prior HBO series bearing that name -- Fielder maintains that casual and, even, important human interactions can be improved, even perfected if they are rehearsed in advance. If you want to ask out a girl, you should first prepare a script to that effect and, then, rehearse it with someone representing the target of your affection. The simulation that you are rehearsing should replicate the conditions in which the act or encounter will occur to the greatest extent possible. Therefore, Fielder devises huge sets, including entire bars and, in the second season, an immense soundstage representing an airport down to the smallest possible detail. For Fielder, rehearsal equals simulation and, in the astonishing finale to the second season, a flight simulator is used to train the comedian to pilot an actual Boeing 737 with more than 150 people (paid actors) on the airplane for a scary two-hour flight.
Fielder starts with an inquiry about cockpit communication in commercial passenger planes under emergency conditions. It's Fielder's thesis, based on review of cockpit transcripts documenting dialogue between pilots and their first officers (co-pilots), that power relationships inhibit the first officers from criticizing the pilot in command of the plane; the co-pilot is authorized to provide input and, even, take the controls to stave off a disaster -- but, as it happens, the first officers tend to defer to the pilot to the extent that avoidable catastrophes occur. Therefore, Fielder proposes to devise strategies that will empower the subordinate co-pilots to engage more proactively with the jet pilots. Fielder has engaged an old fellow who is a retired FAA official and student of plane crashes, and with this guy as his advisor aims to make reforms in legislation and training so as to empower the first officers to correct errors that they witness their pilots making. This premise sounds both abstract and bureaucratically dry, but Fielder rapidly expands the scope of his inquiry into experiments of the most bizarre and disquieting kind. He decides to train co-pilots with respect to "difficult conversations" by having them audition contestants for an American Idol sort of competition, here called Wings of Song. Fielder knows that 90% of the contestants will be turned aside at the audition phase and he wants his co-pilots, his test subjects, to be comfortable with hurting people's feelings. (During this experiment, he discovers a woman co-pilot who universally liked by the people that she auditions; Fielder tries to discover her particular quality that makes her so good at delivering bad news to people. Then, he sends her aloft, flying with an aggressive male pilot who makes weird and suggestive banter with her as they are zoom through the skies). Determining that Sully Sullenberger is the perfect pilot (he successfully landed his disabled plane on the East River after a bird-strike) Fielder acquires his autobiography, excerpts key passages, and, then, tries to replicate those experiences -- this requires Fielder to shave off his body hair, be diapered as an infant, and interact with surrealistically huge figures representing Sullenberger's parents -- he breast feeds from a huge mock-up of Sullenberger's mother. In this section, Fielder concludes that Sullenberger's favorite song is a tune by the band Evanescence and notes that there is a 23 second period of silence when the pilot shut off his radio while descending to land on the East River. Fielder hypothesizes that Sullenberger was either listening to the chorus from that song or, perhaps, singing it to give himself courage -- the chorus to the tune turns out to be 23 seconds long. Fielder experiments with "pack psychology" -- that is, emboldening one co-pilot to kiss a woman that he likes by having him "hunt with a pack", that is, travel everywhere with 12 people who all mimic his every expression and gesture. Fielder is told that his notion that all human actions should be carefully rehearsed before being attempted is a method of helping autistic people navigate through a world that they have difficulty decoding. (Fielder is administered a test as to decoding mood from visual signals and fails dramatically, suggesting that he is autistic himself.) A group of autistic people use his mock-up of the airport to rehearse traveling through that environment where they are otherwise apt to experience sensory overload. Fielder meets with a congressman assigned to an oversight committee involving aviation -- this is cringe comedy of the most explicit type. The congressman is a conventional civic booster and glad-handing politician who can't wait to get away from the earnest and baffling Fielder who argues to him that encouraging co-pilots to kiss their dates has something to do with aviation safety. In the final hour, we learn that Fielder has been taking pilot lessons. After months of not making progress, Fielder has, in fact, learned to fly and, indeed, has a commercial license and is instrument-rated. He applies for a license to fly large-scale passenger planes and recruits actors to ride on his maiden-journey from San Bernadino an hour west to the Nevada border and, then, back again to original airport. (The actors are all willing to fly on the 737 although they are told that Fielder has never flown a plane like this before; upon learning that no one has turned down this gig, one man mutters "Actors!") The camera follows Fielder as he acquires a 737 and provides his actors with their lines: he is such a control freak that everything they say on board is scripted, included responses to the beverage service. Fielder is able to fly the plane, although he has only 300 hours time in the air because it is not carrying paying passengers, but rather actors who have been paid themselves to take the flight. Cringe comedy involves the audience's fear and discomfort that something humiliating or embarrassing might occur as a result of the comedian's insults or other interactions with the public. Fielder ups the ante -- the viewer's fear here is that he will crash the airplane and cause almost two-hundred deaths. With an obliging co-pilot, the 737 takes off. As it turns out, the scariest things that occur during the flight are close encounters with another aircraft carrying HBO cameras and tracking along the 737. Fielder has been agonizing over whether he should consult with a physician to determine whether he is, in fact, autistic. In fact, he goes to a clinic and has an MRI that is said to be able to detect whether the subject of the study suffers from autism. But the results aren't available before his inaugural flight and so he answers "no" to the FAA health survey question about mental illness and unusual neurological conditions. After successfully landing the aircraft, Fielder embarks on a second career flying empty 737 to various locations all around the globe -- we see him landing the big planes at night and in fog. He watches The Wings of Song competition. The winning contestant sings the song by Evanescence that Sullenberger may have listened to or hummed himself when he was landing his plane on the East River. Fielder gets a text message that the study results from his MRI are available. But he deletes the message. He says that only the best and brightest and most skilled (and normal) people are allowed to fly big passenger jets. He flies big passenger jets and, ergo, there can't be anything wrong with him. (This scene correlates to an earlier episode in which he asks a girl whom he has rejected as a Wings of Song contestant to rate him as a judge. She writes down a number that we can't see. Fielder looks at the scrap of folded paper that seems to show "6" but, then, turns it over to give himself a "9".)
Fielder was instrumental in scripting and filming The Curse, an extraordinary Showtime series. In the final episode of The Curse, gravity somehow gets reversed with respect to Fielder's character. As his wife is giving birth, he falls upward, desperately trying to remain earthbound, but, in the end, hurled into the icy cold of outer space. In other words, Fielder's character is inadvertently flying and, indeed, ascends to his death. It's hard not to see various tensions and themes linking this visionary sequence in the Showtime series with the flying scenes in The Rehearsal.
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