Reading Six Feet Under: TV to Die For by Kim Akass, Janet McCabe Read Free Book Online Page B

very abstract, and there’s something kind of spooky about it but something kinda beautiful about it at the same time, and that sorta fits within the tone of the show in which there are things that are sad and upsetting and ugly and depressing about life but there’s beauty in them as well (Ball, director commentary for
    ‘Pilot’, season one DVD).
    What on earth (or beneath it) is Six Feet Under ? Are we certain Poul knows what he is talking about when he insists that Six Feet Under viewers ‘know what you are talking about’, beginning with the opening credits? The sequence offers us the macabre (a corpse), the enigmatic (that crow might have flown right out of a Wallace Stevens poem), 22
    ‘ I T ’S NOT TELEVISION, I T ’S MAGIC REALISM ’
    the mystical (the white light into which the gurney and its passenger move resembles the classic near-death experience), the self-referential (Ball’s name on a tombstone carries on a cinematic tradition of auteur signature, like Hitchcock’s cameos) and the naturally mysterious (that single tree, that verdant hillside). If HBO’s brand is ‘not TV’, what is the trademark, the brand, ‘the mission statement’, if you will, of this, its ‘not The Sopranos ’ series?
    It’s Not TV, It’s the Grotesque …
    One ready-to-hand designation for Six Feet Under might be ‘grotesque’.
    Needless to say, much of the often scatological, frequently-immersed-in-bodily-fluids, always about bodies, both dead and alive, often ghoulish Six Feet Under clearly invites such a seemingly non-commercial branding. (HBO, after all, demonstrates a certain affinity for the grotesque, as Carnivale in its entirety and The Sopranos , Deadwood, Real Sex, Taxicab Confessions upon occasion confirm.) David Fisher rebukes his brother: ‘You want to get your hands dirty? You sanctimonious prick. Talk to me when you’ve had to stuff formaldehyde-soaked cotton up your father’s ass so he doesn’t leak’
    (‘Pilot’, 1:1). A corpse displays an erection (a phenomenon known as
    ‘angel lust’) and later defecates (‘The Will’, 1:2). A man is accidentally sliced to pieces in a huge bread dough mixer (‘The Foot’, 1:3). A lawyer dies from autoerotic asphyxiation while masturbating (‘Back to the Garden’, 2:7). Blood erupts (twice) from the Fisher and Sons Funeral Home plumbing system – ‘It’s like The Shining in here!’
    Claire Fisher proclaims (‘Parallel Play’, 4:3). Claire steals a corpse’s foot in order to get back at her boyfriend for labelling her a ‘toe slut’
    at school (‘The Foot’, 1:3). A grossly fat corpse falls to the floor when the gurney collapses (‘Making Love Work’, 3:6). Rico restores the flattened face of a woman smashed in by a traffic light (‘Crossroads’, 1:8). Funeral services for a porn star (‘An Open Book’, 1:5) and a biker (‘It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year’, 2:8) turn into bizarre, over-the-top wakes. Claire does a portfolio of photographs of corpses (‘The Secret’, 2:10). In ‘The Plan’ (2:3), Rico excitedly begins to describe the effects of cancer on the body to a widow who has just lost her husband to the disease, until silenced by David. Claire’s art teacher Olivier praises her work with the strange compliment that it 23
    READING SIX FEET UNDER
    ‘instantly makes me want to throw up’ (‘The Eye Inside’, 3:3). A visiting artist, Scott Philip Smith (Evan Handler) at LAC-Arts, describes one of his favourite works: a Reagan-era protest in which he ‘spent two nights roaming the streets of New York City in the dead of winter asking [the homeless, mentally ill] to wipe their asses with
    [the American flag]’ (‘Nobody Sleeps’, 3:4). Mysterious boxes of shit (or ‘doo’, as Arthur Martin refers to it) begin arriving at the Fisher house, addressed to Ruth Fisher’s new husband George Sibley in season four. All these matters might be called grotesque. But is Six Feet Under itself grotesque?
    The