SACRED AND PROFANE: SIX FEET UNDER

Abstract

Six Feet Under is one of HBO's most unlikely success stories, which in its third season in 2002 was nominated for ten Emmy awards. Let's say you are the CEO of HBO and I come in proposing to do a series on a family of morticians, living in their funeral home. Dad dies in the pilot episode (although he makes cameo appearances from the great beyond). Ruth, the mother, is a repressed housewife who smothers her family. David, the son who takes over at dad's death is a closeted gay, who comes out in the second year of the series. Nate, the elder son, is a Birkenstock-style floater, who, after an Oregonian vegan experience, finds himself caught at home by his father's death, suddenly a partner in the family business. His teenaged sister Claire, suffers from the angst that characterizes her cohort, angst intensified by growing up and living in a funeral home. You, as the CEO of HBO are likely to say: You want to do what? We’ll call you, don’t call us. However, then, you learn that my name is Alan Ball, and that I just won the Oscar for writing American Beauty. I get to do the unlikely series about morticians and burials.

Citation

Fontana, A., McGinnis, T.A. and Radeloff, C.L. (2005), "SACRED AND PROFANE: SIX FEET UNDER", Denzin, N.K. (Ed.) Studies in Symbolic Interaction (Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Vol. 28), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 109-120. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0163-2396(04)28012-7