Reading Six Feet Under TV to Die for

by Akass, Kim; McCabe, Janet; Lawson, Mark

• ISBN13: 9781850438090
• ISBN10: 1850438099
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2005-06-04
• Publisher: I. B. Tauris & Company

Summary

Praised for its unabashed portrait of the "death care" industry, HBO'sSix Feet Underis less about the business of death than the art of living well. Created by the Oscar winner Alan Ball (American Beauty), this innovative, controversial show charts difficult territory--from death, dying and bereavement, to female and gay sexualities, to family obligation and relationships--laying bare in the process an American cultural consciousness. This book examines such predominant themes as the dead body, magic realism and the grotesque, American cultural politics, family relationships, homosexuality, motherhood and more. A complete episode guide to the first four seasons is included.

Author Biography

Janet McCabe is Lecturer in Film Studies at Trinity College, Dublin. Kim Akass is Lecturer in Film Studies at London Metropolitan University. Both are editors of Reading Sex & the City (I.B.Tauris, 2003).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	vii
Contributors	ix
Regular cast list	xv
Foreword: Reading Six Feet Under	xvii
Mark Lawson
Introduction: "Why do people have to die?" To make contemporary television drama important, I guess.'	1	(18)
Kim Akass and Janet McCabe
PART 1 MEMENTO MORI: SPECTACLE, THE SPECULAR AND OBSERVING THE DEAD
1 'It's not television, it's magic realism': the mundane, the grotesque and the fantastic in Six Feet Under	19	(15)
David Lavery
2 Exquisite corpse: death as an odalisque and the new American gothic in Six Feet Under	34	(5)
Mark W. Bundy
3 Death, liminality and transformation in Six Feet Under	39	(11)
Rob Turnock
4 Sex, shocks and stiffs: Six Feet Under and the pornography of the morbid	50	(9)
Lucia Rahilly
PART 2 MOURNING AND MELANCHOLIA: AMERICAN CULTURAL CRISIS AND RECOVERY
5 American gothic: undermining the uncanny	59	(12)
Mandy Merck
6 Buried lives: gothic democracy in Six Feet Under	71	(14)
Dana Heller
7 Politics, tragedy and Six Feet Under: camp aesthetics and strategies of gay mourning in post-AIDS America	85	(9)
Robert Deam Tobin
8 Americanitis: self-help and the American dream in Six Feet Under	94	(15)
Ashley Sayeau
PART 3 POST PATRIARCHAL DILEMMAS (I): MAKING VISIBLE THE FEMALE SUBJECT
'Emily Previn, 1954-2001', Peter Wilson	109	(12)
9 Mother knows best: Ruth and representations of mothering in Six Feet Under	110	(11)
Kim Akass
10 'Like, whatever': Claire, female identity and growing up dysfunctional	121	(14)
Janet McCabe
11 Desperately seeking Brenda: writing the self in Six Feet Under	135	(14)
Erin MacLeod
PART 4: POST-PATRIARCHAL DILEMMAS (II): MASCULINITIES RECONSIDERED
'Nathaniel Samuel Fisher, 1943-2000', Peter Wilson	149	(1)
12 Fisher's sons: brotherly love and the spaces of male intimacy in Six Feet Under	150	(11)
Joanna di Mattia
13 Queering the Church: sexual and spiritual neo-orthodoxies in Six Feet Under	161	(13)
Brian Singleton
14 Revisiting the closet: reading sexuality in Six Feet Under	174	(17)
Samuel A. Chambers
PART 5: REFLECTIONS: MUSIC AND MELANCHOLIA
'S&D @ HBO (TR for SFU)', Peter Wilson	191	(1)
15 I'm dead, wow, cool: the music of Six Feet Under	192	(15)
Peter Kaye
16 Playing in the deep end of the pool	207	(10)
Thomas Lynch
Episode guide	217	(10)
Film and TV guide	227	(4)
Bibliography	231	(12)
Index	243