Major Themes
The show focuses on human mortality and the lives of those who deal with it on a daily basis. When discussing the concept of the show, creator Alan Ball elaborates on the foremost questions the show’s pilot targeted:
| “ | Who are these people who are funeral directors that we hire to face death for us? What does that do to their own lives – to grow up in a home where there are dead bodies in the basement, to be a child and walk in on your father with a body lying on a table opened up and him working on it? What does that do to you? | ” |
Six Feet Under introduces the Fisher family as the basis on which to explore these questions. Throughout its five-season, 63-episode run, major characters experience crises which are in direct relation to their environment and the grief they have experienced. Alan Ball again relates these experiences as well as the choice of the series' title, to the persistent subtext of the program:
| “ | Six Feet Under refers not only to being buried as a dead body is buried, but to primal emotions and feelings running under the surface. When one is surrounded by death – to counterbalance that, there needs to be a certain intensity of experience, of needing to escape. It's Nate with his womanizing – it's Claire and her sexual experimentation – it's Brenda's sexual compulsiveness – it's David having sex with a male hooker in public – it's Ruth having several affairs – it's the life force trying to push up through all of that suffering and grief and depression. | ” |
Read more about this topic: Six Feet Under (TV series)
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