Chapter Text
a)Finnish American masculinity (Wuornos, Lucas’ ethnicity, performance)
If you’ve seen me in the Haven fandom before, you have to have noticed my intense love for Finnish American Nathan Wuornos. I started watching the show because of it and I wasn’t disappointed. For the record, I consider Nathan FinnAm because Wuornos is a Finnish name(though Hansen is more likely Norwegian/Danish), Lucas is Finnish on his Dad’s side and he has specifically said that he used that side for inspiration:
“One of the things I looked forward to about playing someone like Nathan is that he keeps his cards pretty close to his chest,” says Bryant. “He doesn’t necessarily give everything away, and he’s a man of few words, which I really am not. I’m far more expressive than Nathan, so the chance to wrestle myself down to stillness has been exciting for me. I’ve sort of been using my Dad’s side of the family for that. They’re from North Dakota and of Scandinavian/Finnish heritage, where there is a tendency to say much less than sometimes is necessary."
http://scifiandtvtalk.typepad.com/scifiandtvtalk/2010/08/havens-lucas-bryant-a-man-of-few-words.html
Just wanted to clear that up. For fun stuff about Nathan’s Finnishness, check out yokyopeli.tumblr.com/tagged/finnam-nathan
So, yeah, Nathan is very Finnish. And Finnish masculinity has interesting toxic masculinity aspects. ‘What are feelings?’,'why is smalltalk?' ‘let’s keep the nails in/I don’t need a 9th MRI’, only talking about your feelings when you know they are absolutely accepted (that’s some weird phrasing, basically I mean talking to Audrey about Jess in 1x8; talking to Garland in 1x11; talking about his feelings about Audrey being shot to Duke in 4x11); ‘why talk if you have nothing worthwhile to say’ and Lucas’ ‘can Nathan use even less words to convey this?’ acting. Also we have this thing called 'sisu' and Nathan has a lot of it.
Urban Dictionary: - endurance, resilience, tenacity, determination, perseverance
- an inner reserve of diligence, capacity, the ability to face head-on and always overcome
- craziness: the recklessness that inspires a person to take on something in the face of incredible odds
- bravery, empowerment, inner strength
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=sisu
Yeah, that about sums it up.
This is one of those things where I end up going ‘I don’t think they purposefully wrote Nathan as’, Finnish in this case, but Maine (means ‘fame’ in Finnish btw) does have a significant enough Finnish American population, they gave him and his adopted father the last name of a Finnish American serial killer and happened to cast someone with Finnish heritage in the role.
And here I’ll say that I am not always quite sure where for me ‘Nathan is being very Finnish here’ overlaps with the other coding they kinda did with him. With possible neurodiversity and mental health stuff especially is tricky. My friend came up with a game of 'Finnish or depressed' which is a tough game, and I'm not sure whether some things that make Nathan seem autistic to some is just him being Finnish to me.
(Side note here that I think Nathan is white coded, even if not specifically as Finnish, yet Lucas has described his heritage as ‘Iranian and Finn’ which would make him mixed but white passing, I guess, although I’ve only found that one mention of his Iranian heritage. It’s simpler to treat him as a white character, though, even if that is a kinda messy approach.)
b)Disability
Nathan is lacking an actual sense, it affects most if not all aspects of his life and he has suffered bullying from it, and some dehumanization because of it (‘not a real boy’, ‘I know what you are’, ‘can’t have her think Haven is full of freaks’). He does not fit the ‘able-bodied’ category of ‘proper’ masculinity, and on occasion that is kinda made implicit.
c)Sexuality & Gender
This is tricky because I assume they meant to write him as straight but there is also some queerbaiting in the show with Duke, kinda something with Chris, (and possibly with Dwight, although that might be more publicity stuff than in-show) and I have written a lot about how there are moments of ‘Nathan doesn’t do sexuality right’ which to me leads to some asexual coding (demisexual specifically https://archiveofourown.org/series/996453), specifically comments from Mara (5x3 calling him a prude, and how he doesn’t view sex right) and evil!Duke (5x23 calling Audrey frigid and then acknowledging that it makes sense for her to pick Nathan because of it). (ETA) For a more fun possible ace coding moment is Audrey basically eating shirtless!Nathan up with her eyes while Nathan wonders whether she doesn't like his shirt choice (5x21).(/ETA) He definitely has some issues surrounding sex and some (submissive) kinks.
I’m getting more into this in chapter 3 but the ‘tough guy’ runner with Audrey in 1x1 (in the beginning and the end) and 4x5 with ‘Lexie’, does definitely have its connection to toxic masculinity ‘ideals’, with the idea being that Nathan is just putting on a front of toughness rather than admit to feeling pain. The sledding accident kinda has that too, what with kid!Nathan thinking that just because he can’t feel pain about the crash must mean nothing too bad happened to him.
Nathan does have a pretty typical masculine presentation, with Batman voice and everything, but there are times when his level of masculinity is found ‘lacking’, both by Garland (he’s not tough enough to survive) and Duke (‘not a real boy’, dismissive gesture of ‘at least your still the same gender’ in 5x6; making fun of Nathan getting called ‘sugar’ by Laverne).
I also kinda suspect something was meant with that line about 8 year old Nathan really liking the Pet Shop Boys, just because of the reputation that band has as 'queer' music, I guess.
d)Neurodiversity and/or Mental Illness
Nathan is pretty common autistic headcanon, and even if you wouldn’t necessarily go specifically there, Nathan has a history of child abuse, bullying, emotional neglect, his Trouble disconnects him from others physically and his status as Troubled can be socially isolating, he has terrible coping mechanisms and some self harm behavior (stabbing his hand with a fork and a toothpick, burning himself) and he lost his mother when he was young and his father died in front of him. Also at the latest in s4 he develops suicidal depression although there are implications of that in at least s3 if not season 2.
So there is definitely stuff going on with him outside of the neurotypical and/or mentally healthy person assumptions, although I don’t feel quite qualified enough to fully comment on that. Although I think there is a fascinating difference between s1-s3 and s4-s5b on how Nathan handles all of that that I hope to deal with.
e)Toxic Masculinity definition
Toxic masculinity is a complicated term relating to aspects of masculinity that are unhealthy and lead to issues for all genders, like limiting the amount and type of emotions men are allowed to feel (mostly anger), how they should deal with conflicts (violence) and how they should reject anything that could be considered feminine. It’s a very limiting view of gender roles.
Earlier I differentiated between ‘emotional’ vs ‘physical’ toxic masculinity. Fascinatingly, Nathan got a good dose of both from his fathers without, in my opinion, actually getting quite sucked under either version of masculinity. Shout out to the women in his life for that, specifically his mother Elizabeth and Laverne. More on that later. For an example of physical toxic masculinity, aka how men should exist physically and their relationship to pain, here I’ll quote secret nazi Grant Ward from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. 1x1:"And yes, it did hurt a little bit, but I try to mask my pain in front of a beautiful woman, it makes me seem more masculine.
Nathan’s Trouble has a lot of that aspect of toxic masculinity, and we see that in Max, too.
A lot of Garland’s parenting ends up perpetuating emotional toxic masculinity, because he is all ‘friendship is burden’ and his inability to discuss anything with Nathan. Garland had a very specific vision of how he had to raise Nathan, which included emotional neglect and trying to toughen him up any chance he could and not putting much stuck in emotional stuff.
f)At the end of this kinda introductory chapter I could make a kinda tl;dr thing and say that I do think that there are aspects of Nathan, his Trouble and his writing that relate to toxic masculinity but I think I would conclude that he rises above that. Because while yes he is physically numb he is also very very emotional, he plays an emotionally supportive role quite a bit and the comparison of the way his Trouble functions for Nathan and how physical toxic masculinity functions in reality is very tricky, because Nathan isn't just ignoring his injuries because he's trying to be hyper-masculine, he genuinely has a disconnect between his body and what happens to it that affects how he deals with everything. So, he had the potential to be a very toxic masculinity confirming character, but I don't think he is.
I think that's a decent stopping point for now.