Realism And Idealism In Six Feet Under

Realism And Idealism In Six Feet Under

Even from just the pilot episode of Six Feet Under, it is succinct to say that it is an intelligently written and beautifully filmed television series, not just because it confronts the taboo subject of death in such shockingly realistic and graphic ways, but also because it approaches the dark world of Goth culture with such dramatic intensity you can almost feel that the characters are walking, breathing living beings right beside you.
We see realism right at the start, at the opening credits, where Alan Ball brings us through, in perfect cinematography and editing technique, the process by which a body is transported from a hospital, past a grieving kin in the distance, wheeled into a funeral home, prepared for the funeral, before being laid into the grave. It tells us right smack at the start that death is inevitable, but life has got to go on. As mentioned earlier, Six Feet Under takes the taboo subject of death and with no qualms, shoves it right straight in your face, almost akin to waving a giant sign screaming “Get Real, Death is Certain”.
In fact, we see it everywhere, all the scenes in the funeral home about preparing a body (after the opening credits), all the talk about how to prep a body, details about the work that has to be done depending on the condition of the body, it is as real as it gets, which certainly contributes to building up the “suspense”, the paranoid anticipation of the next death, but yet we are slowly, but gradually brought towards a “climax” whereby viewers are encouraged to shift their positions on death towards acceptance.
A large realistic part of the pilot focuses on portraying funeral home workers as real, caring, responsible and respectable individuals that are no different from us. While they may be very professional when it comes to their work, they too, are humans with emotions, and not the scary, freaky, ghoulish monsters we are made to think of in prior depictions of anyone connected with the dead in...