The Sagging Weight of Dad's BBQ

 In Sag Harbor, Ben's interactions with his father characterize his family dynamics and, in part, explains Elena's self-distancing from Ben's family. His father is frequently described as destructive: for instance, Ben fears the sound of the alcohol cabinet opening, implying that domestic violence is frequent. 

Throughout the book, the father is shown as a figure in the post-civil rights movement generation: he lives by the teachings of DuBois and feels a strong racial pride as an African-American man. More precisely, most of the Sag adults feel this pride-- DuBois was one of the "certain names ... [with] an emanation or halo" (18). In fact, even Ben reports being blown away by DuBois' teachings of double-consciousness during his college years (18). However, his dad is special in that this pride often comes at the cost of his family and influences Ben's actions.

The first example of his father's violence is when Ben is hit for not retaliating against a white bully rubbing his skin to demonstrate that it "didn't come off". His father insists that this was racially motivated: he claims that the boy was calling him a slur. When Ben seems oblivious to the racial implications of these actions, his father lashes out and slaps Ben twice. He claims that "nothing can hurt [him] more than [he] could". His anger is directed more toward Ben's inability to recognize the blatant racial discrimination, which he himself was probably frequently subjected to, than the kid's actual racism. Ben's dad attempts to instill a strict intolerance toward racism in Ben, even at the cost of violence. Another point to consider is that Ben's parents are both affluent and both in completely white-dominated fields- they had, most likely, experience racism. Even at Ben's visit to a classmate's Bar Mitzvah part, people remark how he is so "regal and composed" and has the composure of "the son of an African diplomat" (10). This shows how commonplace racism was in these affluent communities. 

Not all domestic violence is directly motivated by this pride, however. In the chapter "To Prevent Flare-ups", Ben refers to his family as a "Cosby Family", a metaphor for how the family's shining surface hid the dirty actions underneath (192). Ben describes how the facade that his family tried so hard to upkeep made him "squirm ... quietly" (192). The similarity to Fun Home is uncanny. Bruce's artisanship toward the Fun Home is almost identical to the Coopers' BBQ weekends--both are a facade kept by the fathers to make sure their families are perfect to the outside, at the expense of the families themselves. Even Benji & Reggie's haircuts reflect this; their perfect tucked-in afros found themselves "utterly misshaped and disordered, ... revealed as counterfeit" (196). In fact, the chapter makes frequent and glaring references to this dynamic. 

Ben's constant tension with his father is also shown in the scene where he makes a "dreaded calculation" for how many drinks his father has had, commenting that he was "pushing [his] luck by hanging around' (207). Ben cowers and fears his parents, and so does Reggie: after being called "Shitface" for a whole year, all of his Burger King shifts were crammed into the weekends in order to minimize his contact with his father. Ben is even afraid to switch the channel: he laments that they "were a made-for-TV family" (207). Cleverly, this comments on the double meaning of "made-for-TV": the first states that they watched TV religiously, perhaps as refugees from the constant tension within the family, and the second points out the facade that they put up for the outside world. Interestingly, the outside world (perhaps willingly) ignores the turbulence underneath, as evidenced by the quiet turning of heads from Ben's family acquaintances. 

The pinnacle of the family tensions are demonstrated through Ben and his father's direct interactions via the barbeque: the dad's celebrated barbeque turns out to be "charred and shrunken, ... crumbling into black specks" (233). Whitehead achieves an anticlimactic ending to the chapter by describing the father's "celebrated" barbeque. Ben seems to be saying here that the barbeque was much like the rest of his family: perfect on the outside but shriveled on the inside. The tension between Ben's parents, escalated through the usage of flimsy paper plates, further shows how broken the family is behind the scenes. Tying back to the beginning, Ben's father insists that Ben respond with a yes or no to his question about the barbeque sauce, perhaps wanting Ben to look at himself through the eyes of himself and only himself. Either way, Ben's appetite is long gone after his silent battles over the TV channel with his father.