The success of American Beauty brought Sam Mendes and Alan Ball's names into the attention of the mainstream media. The exact details of how Six Feet Under was created are murky and conflicting, but the point of the story is that in 2001, Alan Ball had his own series on HBO. Six Feet Under was about a family that ran an independent funeral home in Los Angeles, and it followed their lives as they dealt with death, love, acceptance and, most importantly, life.The series began with the death of Nathaniel Fisher, Sr. as he was driving to the airport to pick up Nate, Jr., who had left LA years ago to make his own life in Seattle.
Nate didn't abandon his family entirely (he came home for Christmas and such), but due to his repressed fear of death that he developed due to his misunderstanding of what his father actually did in their basement, he had become somewhat of a prodigal son. Although Nate originally intended to stay only for about a week, in order to help his mother deal with her grief, Nathaniel left 50% of the funeral home to both of his sons, which upset them both. Nate wanted nothing to do with the funeral home, while David had spent years of his life working there, sacrificing his dream of becoming a lawyer, and felt his father had cheated him. This added to the tension between the two brothers, but by the first season's end, they had become trusting partners.The main theme of the series is about life and death; death defines life (more Sandman wisdom for you!), and therefore, you should live your life the way you want because you never know when death is coming.
Insecurities about life manifest themselves through conversations between living and dead characters; all of the surviving Fishers "speak" to Nathaniel at some point in the series, and his personality reflects the person he is talking to. For example, David, who is a closeted homosexual, fears that people don't accept him, and so when he speaks to his father, Nathaniel acts homophobic. Dead bodies brought to the Fisher & Sons Funeral Home also have a tendency to speak to the living characters, acting as a mirror for the character's thought. Rico, the Fishers' conservative employee, was against holding the funeral of both a murder and his victim, and saw them both arguing with each other.Not all of the fantastical elements involve dead bodies. The title Six Feet Under refers both to the colloquialism for death but also to the fact that many of the characters suppress their emotions, and they tend to come out in fantasy sequences. These range from terrifying (an image of someone committing suicide) to frickin' awesome (whenever Claire or David sing their emotions is great, since both Lauren Ambrose and Michael C. Hall are professionally trained singers).
These glimpses into the minds of the characters help show us what people are really thinking, since most of the characters would never express how they truly felt.
The main exception to this is Brenda, a woman Nate met on the plane from Seattle. She is the anti-Fisher; there is no opinion that she will not give, no feeling she will not express. This isn't to say that she is an airheaded girl who speaks every thought that comes across her mind (a la Cordelia Chase from the early Buffyverse). Rather, if she feels strongly about something, she makes it known. But nearly everyone else goes through life ignoring the thoughts and feelings that would make life so much simpler, thus complicating relationships (and keeping the storylines compelling for us).Before I end, I would like to post a few videos. None of the footage is from the series itself; these are promos released before the the season premieres of the second through the fifth seasons. They aren't too spoilerish (though they do reveal what characters are active), but they are very well-shot. Feel free to skip ahead to the next post, but if you never saw the series on HBO, these aren't included on the DVD sets, so here they are to enjoy.
Season 2:
Season 3:
Season 4:
Season 5:
Up next: Love...
No comments:
Post a Comment