Reviews of Six Feet Under from a Realist/Thematic/Ideological Points of View Essay Example

reality checks I was somehow glad that Six Feet Under portrayed the world as it is instead of shying away from forbidden issues like gay sexual identities and nude dead people that was once deemed the ultimate taboo subjects in the history of American film-making in its attempt to portray as much of the real world as possible. Well, much of the real world is indeed portrayed through the eyes of the characters, and what a dark world it turns out to be, too.Nathaniel’s death, the Fishers later found, does come with its setbacks, ultimately in their social life, forcing them to make unwarranted decisions such as the playboy Nate settling down in Los Angeles as the funeral home’s business partner, albeit reluctantly at first. Like as Ruth says, “It’s Fisher and Sons. You’re the sons” (‘The Will’, 1:2). Setbacks aside, as for now, for Nathaniel Fisher Sr.

, he may be six feet under, but he surely does unearth a whole lot of drama along the way. (420 words)Part 2 Write a separate 400 word review discussing and/or evaluating the ideological meaning of the pilot episode of Six Feet Under. The events of the pilot episode of HBO’s Six Feet Under begins with the death of Nathaniel Fisher, who is involved in a car-crash and dies, ironically, in his brand-new hearse on the eve of Christmas. Hence this gives us the idea what Six Feet Under is all about: the fatherly figures play a strong role in every drama, and the death of Nathaniel Fisher changes it all.However, the introduction to the rest of the Fisher clan later erases any ideas of American dream

and introduces elements of Gothic culture within the land of the free.

Take the closet homosexual David Fisher (Michael C. Hall) for example. While Uncle Sam constantly emphasises on freedom, all gay people, not only David, find themselves in a secluded and closed-off world, unable to reveal even to his own family that he is in fact homosexual and dating Keith (Matthew St. Patrick), a black policeman.

This, I think, somehow affects the fantasy of the white middle-class family.Will the all-American middle-class society truly accept with open arms a homosexual into their society? Not a chance. Six Feet Under is set in Los Angeles, regarded as the portal to the land of hope, youth and successful dreams, the personification of the American dream that seems to glorify everything from fame to youth to wealth. So, score one the American dream: the City of Angels is a symbol of everything good and pure, no matter how fragile hope seems to be within the dark and morbid world of Six Feet Under.So, one moment Six Feet Under portrays the all-American dream in all its splendour, and the next moment it introduces the hypocrisy of the idea itself, and brings the idea of a Gothic culture of all things gloom and doom within the folds of the nation.

Even within the American world of glitz and youth, death, the other ultimate taboo subject, makes a more-than-frequent visitor. Even more unlikely, death is partnered with the market system itself, hence transforming the dead into yet another bunch of consumers.Look at the mock commercials that advertise funereal products for the dead within the pilot episode of Six Feet Under itself.

The funeral coach commercial that promises comfort for your loved ones even in death possesses an undertone of ridicule. The question that you have to ask yourself: why on earth would the dead want comfort at all? (400 words) Part 3 Write a 700 word commentary on the similarities and/or differences between the two reviews.

Comment on the significance such similarities and/or differences have for the analysis of media texts. Include reference to the set readings for Topics 1 and 2 where appropriate. One of the apparent differences between the reviews is that in the first review from the perspective of a realist approach, the content of the text is vital, so saying that much emphasis is set on the representational aspects and themes of Six Feet Under and how the real world is portrayed within the text.Whereas for the second review from the perspective of an ideological approach, broader social contexts are stressed upon, in Additionally, as it is in novels, other forms of media texts, or in this case Six Feet Under “gives us a sense of people existing in continuous time, and locate them in a physical world more specifically than any kind of literature” (Childs 2006, p. 199).In a way, it means that this particular approach tries to portray the world within Six Feet Under so that it resembles the real world as much as possible, hence the theory of realism based on the assumption that the text ‘imitates’ reality and that “that reality is more or less stable and commonly accessible” (Childs 2006, p.

199). The second review, however, focusing on ideological approach, is an approach that centres on ideologies to

define a text, which, in the case of Six Feet Under, involves American nationalism and capitalism.Apart from that, the review applying the realist approach gives more liberation for the critic’s insight, making it more opinion-based rather than theory-based while the second review treats Six Feet Under as products of socio-economic conditions within the American society. In this sense, the ideological approach, through Marxism, indicates that “the ideology that is dominant in any era is conceived to be, ultimately, the product of its economic structure and the resulting class-relations and class-interests” (Abrams 1993, p. 42), thus representing ideology as a ‘superstructure’ with the contemporary socio-economical system as the ‘base’.

However Six Feet Under, despite its attempts to portray the real world, cannot escape from its fictionality. In this context a fiction is something that it ‘made’, and exists for centuries until it is destroyed. Nevertheless, a fiction does not necessarily mean that it “lacks truth” (Scholes et al 1982, p. 3) or that it does not contain any traces of facts.In fact, Scholes (1982) reasserts that there is a link between ‘fiction’ and ‘fact’: these two elements come together in the context we call ‘history’.

History may mean ‘things that have occurred in the past’ and also the ‘recorded versions of things that are supposed to have occurred’, thus making fact and fiction complements of each other. Hence, a realist approach to Six Feet Under in this manner can be regarded as the expression of timeless truth.The ideological approach to text, on the other hand, only reads texts to see the ways in which ideologies and its inequalities are produced within the text. In the second

review, it is apparent that the critique is written to highlight these inequalities and at the same time emphasising the form of dominant ideology within Six Feet Under.

Ideology in this case is “the means by which ruling economic classes generalise and extend their supremacy across the whole range of social activity and naturalise it in the process so that their rule is accepted as natural and inevitable” (Hartley 2002, p. 05). Consequently, this focuses mainly on American nationalism, the dominant ideology, and later, the antithesis of it, namely the Gothic culture, both in which are detected within Six Feet Under. What is important to note, however, is that Terry Lovell (1981, cited in McKee 2002, p.

64) stated that “the concept of ideology has become debased coinage”, stressing the fact that ideology is no longer rooted to Marxism. In fact it has become “a simple search for bad ‘isms’ in a text” (McKee 2002, p. 64), or as pointed out in the case of Six Feet Under, capitalism.Therefore, as conclusion, the significance such differences have for the analysis of media texts is that it provides alternatives to the ways a text is analysed. A general consensus is never achieved about the best methods for generating knowledge.

Thus, in achieving knowledge, we either turn to the scientific rigours of content analysis, in this case the ideological approach to media text, or end up making our own interpretations of the text without specifically explaining “why we make these interpretations” (McKee 2002, p. 1), here achieved by the thematic or the realist approaches. (729 words) Total word count: 1549 words. References: •Abrams, M.

H. (1993), “Marxist Criticism”,

in A Glossary of Literary Terms, 6th edition, Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers: 241-246. •Childs, P. (2006), “Realism” and “Theme”, in P. Childs & R. Fowler (eds), The Routledge Dictionary of Literary Terms, Abingdon & New York, Routledge: 198-200; 239-240.

•Hartley, J. 2002), “Ideology”, in Communication, Cultural and Media Studies: The Key Concepts, 3rd edition, London & New York Routledge: 103-6. •McKee, A. (2002), “Textual Analysis”, in S.

Cunningham & G. Turner (eds), The Media and Communications in Australia, Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin: 62-71. •Scholes, R. , Klaus, C. H. , Comley, N.

R. & Silverman, M. (1982), “The Elements of Fiction”, in R. Scholes et al (eds), Elements of Literature 5: Fiction, Poetry, Drama, Essay, Film (Revised edition), New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press: 3-21.