X-Message-Number: 19314 From: Date: Thu, 20 Jun 2002 02:02:54 EDT Subject: Re: [Cryonics Europe] Six feet under In a message dated 6/19/02 4:37:15 AM Pacific Daylight Time, writes: > As Six Feet Under, the surreal series about an American firm of funeral > directors, has just started showing in the UK on Channel Four, I searched > through http://www.cryonet.org to see if there were any reviews. Apart from > references to it in other articles, there was no specific review. Six Feet Under has received "critical acclaim" here in the US and won Alan Ball (American Beauty) and HBO Golden Globe Awards for Best Television Series: Drama, and Best Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-series or Motion Picture made for Television: Rachel Griffiths. However, the critical acclaim has been mostly confined to the movie intelligentsia, not the common TV and movie reviewers who write for the press. In fact, most reviews I've read have criticized the series on almost every ground; structure, subject matter, character development, and plot. The initial reviews from HBO viewers on the official website were often venomous. You'll note it won Golden Globes, not Emmys. Not surprisingly, I think Six Feet Under is brilliant and astonishing television (even by BBC standards which I consider very high). The best source of information about the series is to be found on the web. A Google search will disclose a range of websites. HBO also has its own website for the series which is excellent and for which they are planning major upgrades. It can be accessed at: http://www.hbo.com/sixfeetunder/ There is a good deal of material on the characters, the actors, and yes, even the writers. HBO has been very attentive to web users and conducts surveys and provides excellent support for the show. One feature I enjoy is the site's Trivia game which asks questions about the plots and characters of the episodes, as well as occasional questions about the history of filmography dealing with death and dying. While I have only seen every episode only once, I'm both embarrassed and proud that my score is frequently 100% and virtually never below 86% (2 wrong out of the 15 question series). FYI, this is the first game I've played since I was about 8 years old. I think this show should do well in the UK where its intelligent dialogue and not infrequent references to serious literature in a thoughtful way will not be a turn off. It should also do well there because it confronts difficult issues head-on without the usual sentiment required to make them palatable, or even suitable for social discussion. Alan Ball has grabbed death by the balls and is examining it from multiple perspectives. Each show typically opens with the last minutes of the life, and ultimately the death, of a person who will be the Fisher Family's next client. Sometimes these openings are used for the life and death of the person they are caring for to provide insight and instruction on how life is lived, good, bad and in between. Sometimes the deaths stand alone and there is no deep interaction with the ensemble cast. However, in almost every case there is a real message in the program. To those not living in Southern California, and especially to those who have not lead the kind of strange life that I have: interacting with the cryonics community, the funeral industry, and the unusual people and just plain weirdoes that populate Southern California, the show may seem contrived or unreal. Perhaps I find each episode so imprintable because I have lived a life much like the Fishers and have interacted with people as alien and bizarre, if not more so, than the Fisher's have. Alan Ball is a gay man and one of the Fisher son's is gay (David). The straight son, Nate, reminds of me of many, many Southern Californians I've known and his experiences brushing up against unusual women, the drug culture and life there in Gomorra are very real. Ball's portrayal of an uptight gay man seeking to find his self esteem and to find romantic love are honest and believable. The portrayal of the contemporary American funeral scene is mostly dead-on accurate. There are a few occasional technical slips, and far too many of the Fisher's clients die from accident or homicide. But overall, the details are handled superbly. Regulatory violations, and the intense and unfair efforts of a national funeral service business to buy up or destroy the Fishers are all to real. The national concern is on the series is called Kroehner Services International (KSC) which is a thinly veiled, and all to accurate image of the real-world Service Corporation International (SCI). For the record, I don't like SCI. I don't like their tactics, I don't like the way they run their "units" and I especially don't like their refusal to deal with cryonics organizations. SCI has been systematically trying to gain nearly complete control of the death care industry in the US. Since they are a large bureaucratic corporation they are inflexible and destroy the possibility for the excellent relationship possible between competent cryonics organizations and quality independent business people who are strongly service oriented (i.e., your typical independent funeral director). From what I have heard, the KSI tactics depicted on Sex Feet Under (SFU) are all too real. I've met SCI people who remind me all too vividly of KSI's Matt Gilardi and Mitzi Dalton Gaynor. > Anyone care to let us have their thoughts, either for CryoNet or Cryonics > Europe and/or Longevity Report? My thoughts, rambling as they are, are presented above. > It has been showing longer in the States - has any reference to cryonics > been made later in the series? No, there has been no reference to cryonics, although I've proposed this to the SFU writers. There is a wonderful scene in one of the second season episodes where David Fisher is explaining death to his male lover's 9 year old niece, Taylor. David says quite unequivocally that he is afraid of death and that death is not a good thing. However, don't make the mistake of thinking SFU is a poster-board for the immortalist position. Rather, it deals with death in many ways from many perspectives. Mostly it tries to show how very different people deal with the most important and fearsome question in life: death! That, in and of itself, is a breakthrough on television or anywhere else. Also, unless you're clueless or psychotic a good hard look at suffering, dying, death and postmortem events should awaken you to the possibility that it is *not* a good thing. Add to that the gifts that Alan Ball brings to the series and you have something very special. Whatever else he is, Alan Ball is a man who thinks outside the box. A man who understands that much of human fear, incompletion, longing and sometimes happiness is tied up with the fact that we all suffer and die -- and to what purpose? He understands the difference between people who are bruised by the reality of life and its difficulties (including the death sentence we live under) and he is gifted at exploring the magnificent array of strategies people use to deal with these hard realities. The Fishers and the ensemble cast who support them are all on different kinds of journeys to find some balance, peace and purpose in life. Death is a major hurdle they all face, but Ball is too gifted and too insightful about the human condition to make the series that unidimensional. A final word of commentary and advice: you have to watch this show for a while and give it a chance. I have just seen the first episode for a second time and I was amazed at how much depth it had and how much my perspective had changed on the characters. My first watch-through I was too stunned and hypnotized by Ball's vision. The second time I found a wealth of detail I was simply too stunned to pick up on during my first viewing. And of course, it goes without saying that this program isn't for everyone. Probably most people on Cryonet will find it un-watchable. That's a pity in that if you want to learn a lot about the funeral industry, hoe real people deal with death, and details of the funeral industry, including key government regulations, it's a great way to get educated. It took me 20 years to learn most of the things I've seen presented in two years' worth of episodes. The series has been renewed for one more year. It is not, regrettably, available on DVD or VHS at this time. Mike Darwin Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=19314