Reading Six Feet Under: TV to Die for

by Kim Akass

Book Overview

Praised for its unabashed portrait of the 'death care' industry, HBO's 'Six Feet Under' is less about the business of death than the art of living well. It was created by Alan Ball ('American Beauty') and centres on a Pasadena undertakers run by two brothers, with their mom and teenage sister making up the dysfunctional family quarter. This innovative, controversial show charts difficult territory, from death, dying and bereavement, to female and...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1850438099
• ISBN13: 9781850438090
• Release Date: June 2005
• Publisher: I. B. Tauris & Company
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.6" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

The Ideal Companion for the HBO Masterpiece

Academic in nature, this is perhaps the best and only place to start examining Alan Ball's monumental series, Six Feet Under. I read this book in a day, wishing and praying there will be further media studies written about this breakthrough in television. Simply put, this tome is not for everybody, a work probably more at home on a university student's bookshelf. While there are many films that may merit criticism and further reading, I would be hard-pressed to name a handful of television shows worth examining. What makes the series so fascinating and alluring is not only its near cinematic approach to capturing the daily lives of funeral directors in southern California, but its ability to go beyond television and go beyond film to discuss topics routinely ignored in mainstream movie theatres and on network television. Reading Six Feet Under: TV to Die For provides the commentary those of us who love the many intellectual/psychological/philosophical/spiritual layers the series possesses. From the first few essays, we begin to understand why Six Feet Under went beyond other series - death, as Mark Lawson writes in the foreword, is the last taboo. The dead body is on the table in the show, the momento mori is there in front of us. Watching each episode we are in the threshold space (or liminal as Rob Turnock describes it in his essay, 'Death, liminality and transformation in Six Feet Under)from the moment the death occurs to the funeral/burial by the last scene. But the contributors here offer more than an examination of death. They look at mainstream America's love affair with self-help, its difficulties with pornography, homosexuality and feminism. We read about teenage angst, the identity crisis faced by both Brenda and Claire as well Ruth's matriarchal role. The book closes with a touching, human essay on death by famed Funeral Director/Poet, Thomas Lynch whose books Alan Ball had his actors read before beginning the series. Since finishing this book, I am hard pressed to find something else that will nourish my unquenchable curiosity concerning this brilliant t.v. series. Six Feet Under deserves to be studied and hopefully one of the essayists in this book will take the time to write a full-length critique. My only criticism (minor though) is that book was written and published before the fifth and last season. Hopefully a revision is in the making that will allow the writers an opportunity to re-examine and bring closure to the numerous topics they have tackled.

Serving the living by caring for the dead

Most of the contributors to this volume of essays on HBO's 5-season hit SIX FEET UNDER praise the series as groundbreaking, smart, well-written, honest, and deeply felt. I share their high opinion of SFU and find that I continue to find new things to delight in (if you can use that expression for a series that focuses on death and damaged human relations) each time I watch an episode. If you're a fan of SFU or just someone who likes to watch television thoughtfully, you'll find this volume helpful. These are not newspaper style reviews; most are essays by academics focusing on one character or aspect of the show. There is academic jargon here to be sure (in some essays more than others), but I found I could navigate it fairly easily with a dictionary at my elbow (though I had to Google "diegesis" to understand Peter Kaye's article on the music of SFU). Special attention was given to gender issues. Part III is entitled "Post-Patriarchal Dilemmas: Making Visible the Female Subject" and contains essays on Ruth Fisher (the mother whose unexpected and premature widowhood launches season 1), Claire (her only daughter), and Brenda (a complicated outsider who becomes increasingly involved with the family over the course of the series). I found Erin's MacLeod's "Desperately Seeking Brenda: Writing the Self in Six Feet Under" especially engaging--in part, because I found this character more baffling and frustrating than any other in the show. As with many of the essays in this volume, I suspect MacLeod wrote her essay at some point during season 3 or 4, but certainly well before Brenda's full trajectory was known. She seemed to have missed the opportunity to comment on Brenda's personal post-patriarchal experience (the death of her own father, Bernard Chenowith). I think the volume would have been greatly enhanced if contributors were given an opportunity to attach Afterwords to their essays based on having seen the entire series, including the amazing final episode in which viewers are shown exactly how each of the main characters faces her/his own death. Gender is also the key theme in "Part IV: Post-Patriarchal Dilemmas: Masculinities Reconsidered," with Queer Theory playing an important role in Brian Singleton's "Queering the Church," which focuses on the way David Fisher deals with his homosexuality, and Samuel A. Chambers's "Revisiting the Closet," which focuses on the experiences Russell Corwin, an art school classmate of Claire's, a relatively minor character in the series. Again, it would have been interesting to know what these authors thought upon seeing the last episode of season 5. My favorite essay in the whole volume, however, was "Playing in the Deep End of the Pool" by Thomas Lynch, who is a funeral director (from a family of funeral directors) in addition to being a skilled writer. Besides providing useful insights into SFU's portrayal of his profession, he gives the first critical perspective I've read on Jessica Mitford's classic 196

Speaking Fiercely from the 'I'

This book is wonderful if you're a literate SFU fan, and most of the show's fans are. This book has a variety of hard-core analyses of the different elements of SFU, and each one--except for a silly article that's more confessional than analysis--offers a very illuminating perspective on an aspect of the show. That SFU lends itself to such examination is hardly surprising if you are a fan. The real pleasure to be found in the book is seeing the show scrutinized by such intelligent people, which is not only a compliment to the show, but also underscores just how transcendant and perfect the show was. In essence, this book is a collection of writings by fans like you and me but who happen to have Phds and teach at universities. Reading about the Fishers in this way provides a new narrative of sorts in which the Fishers are again alive. Meaning, the show's over, which makes me want to kill myself, but here is a chance to read about their adventures in a fresh way that makes them alive that little bit longer. The only drawback to the book are the few extremely goofy poems and overly morbid photographs that unnecessarily interrupt the pages. In short, this book is an extremely thoughful love letter from intellectuals, and the Fishers deserve nothing less. I still can't believe the show's over.

A great start for all the researchers.

I am glad that a book on Six Feet Under has been published. The book contains a number of useful essays, regarding the notion of death, American culture, homosexuality, feminism, music and other aspects in the excellent TV drama. The essays are grouped neatly and are very well-organized. Readers will absolutely find something insightful under each section. Interestingly most, before each section begins, there is a poem, regarding the theme of that particular section. So, the book is not entirely academic and research work, but also some creative writing. The most useful part of the book, I think, is not just the selected essay, but the detailed bibliography provided at the back. One thing I don't like about the book is that some essays are quite narrow in discussing the content of the drama. For example, a few essays merely talk about the plot in several episodes in the first two seasons. Yet, the season 4 of the drama has been out, so it'd be more extensive and convincing if the essay could cover all four seasons. I wish after the finale season of the drama, a more detailed and in-depth anthrology would be published. Six Feet Under is not just a TV drama, it's literature, it's a classic. It deserves more written records.

OVER MY HEAD

The show is very fun to watchand easy to understand but this book is way over my head they discuss so much symbolism and connections i think it would be hard for the average person like me to understand but if you really like to analyze things this book is for you