Synopses & Reviews
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. 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.
About the Author
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
Foreword. Mark Lawson. "Why do people have to die?" "To make contemporary television drama important, I guess" * Introduction: Part 1: Memento Mori: Spectacle, the Specular and Observing the Dead * Exquisite Corpse: Death as an Odalisque and the New American Gothic in
Six Feet Under--Mark Bundy * It's Not Television, It's Magic Realism: The Mundane, The Grotesque, and the Fantastic in
Six Feet Under--David Lavery * The Sacred and Profane: The Crisis of Ritual in
Six Feet Under--Rob Turnock * Sex, Shocks and Stiffs:
Six Feet Under and the Pornography of the Morbid.--Lucia Rahilly * Part 2: Mourning and Melancholia: American Cultural Crisis and Recovery * Buried Lives: Gothic Democracy in
Six Feet Under--Dana Heller * American Gothic: the Funeral Parlour, Family Values and the Use of the Gothic.--Mandy Merck * Queer and
Six Feet Under: Mourning after AIDS--Robert Tobin * Americanistis: Self Help and the American Dream in
Six Feet Under--Ashley Nelson * Part 3: Fisher Kings (and Queens): The Family Reconsidered * Mother Knows Best: Motherhood in
Six Feet Under--Kim Akass * Fisher's Sons: Brotherly Love and the Spaces of Male Intimacy in
Six Feet Under--Joanna di Mattia * "Like, Whatever": Claire, Female Identity and Growing Up Dysfunctional--Janet McCabe * Part 4: Undertaking New Identities: Subjectivities in Transition * Writing the Epitaph: Death Anxiety, Existential Heroism and
Six Feet Under--Katherine and Anissa Wardi * Desperately Seeking Brenda: Essentialist Notions of Subjectivity in
Six Feet Under--Erin McLeod * Queering the Church: Sexual and Spiritual Neo-Orthodoxies in Six Feet Under-- Brian Singleton * Revisiting the Closet: Reading Sexuality in
Six Feet Under--Samuel Chambers * POETRY: Peter Wilson * Episode Guide * Bibliography * Index.