Six Feet Under and Dead Like Me

A pair of cable shows shed light on life by focusing on death.

HBO's Six Feet Under deals with a family that runs a mortuary. Each week begins with a bizarre death of someone whose body ends up at Fisher & Diaz Mortuary. The dead person's spirit often appears to one of the main characters to shed some light on what's happening. The deaths, however, are not nearly as bizarre as the Fisher family. SFU is currently in its fourth season.

Dead Like Me is about a young woman (George) who has been killed by a toilet seat falling from a disintegrated space station (weird death is a key in DLM as well). Rather than moving on to an afterlife as we usually think of afterlife, George by luck of the draw becomes a Reaper. Reapers are undead people whose job it is to harvest peoples’ souls just before they die. DLM is about to begin its second season.

Both shows, as is so often the case with cable series, are geared to adults. Both (although SFU more than DLM) include strong profanity and adult themes.

As much as death seems central to both of these shows, they are really about life. Both shows, in very different ways, give us the opportunity to examine the meanings of life by putting the life experiences of the characters into perspective.

SFU is very dark and haunting. The characters move from crisis to crisis in their personal lives. None of them has really found a good coping mechanism, and their trials often get out of control. These are people who have seriously messed up their lives -- often with considerable help from others. There is Nate, who returned to help with the family business after his father died. He had a very torrid relationship with Brenda, whose childhood was written about in a popular book. She and her manic-depressive brother have a serious relationship that might be described as emotional incest. In season three, Nate is married to a passive-aggressive hippie who has his child, then disappears; we discover that she is dead at the end of the season.

Nate’s brother David is gay and in an on-again-off-again relationship with Keith, a former police officer, now working as a security guard. They struggle with their relationship. David was "closeted" through most of the first season, and still struggles with being "out."

David and Nate’s sister Claire has now completed high school and is going to art school, seeking to develop her talent. But like her brothers she also has a terrible time trying to find a real relationship with someone. Unsurprisingly, she is also somewhat affected by the constant presence of death in her life. (The family lives in the mortuary).

In the early seasons, their mother Ruth was experiencing a new freedom that came with the death of her husband. Since then, she has been with several men and is now married to a man she knows almost nothing about, except that he’s been married six times.

As mentioned above, the show has a very dark and haunting feel to it. There is always trouble and crisis to be dealt with. But in some ways it is very similar to what we'd expect from the Preacher of Ecclesiastes -- if he were in a bad mood. The Preacher kept looking for what would give life meaning. The characters of SFU are all looking for happiness in many ways -- sex, success, relationship, family, religion; but they always come up short. In Ecclesiastes, the Preacher finally concluded that the meaning of life was that we all die, so we should enjoy the days that we have. But the people in SFU have not learned that lesson yet. They continue to seek ways that they hope will give them happiness while happiness continues to elude them, because they have not made the connection of life and death in their lives -- even though death is such a constant for them.

DLM is also dark, but it is dark comedy. George, the new Reaper, never really learned much about life while she was alive. She is fresh out of high school -- no career, no ambition, no plans -- when the toilet seat does her in.

But as a Reaper, she now has responsibilities. She may be dead, but then again, she's not dead. To start off, she needs to figure out how to do all the things living people need to do, like get an apartment and money for food. She is given her assignment each day by Rube, the leader of her band of Reapers, who has taken her under his wing a bit. It is important that she does this work: the soul trapped in a dead body is a terrible thing. So -- as distasteful as her job is (and this group gets all the weird deaths) -- it's imperative that she follows through.

There are a few other Reapers with whom she interacts and learns (some good things and some things not so good). They are all putting in their time until they've met their quota (whatever that is) and can move on to whatever reward awaits them.

We (and George) also look in from time to time on her family and the struggles they have with their grief at losing her.

George, we observe, is learning much more about life after she has died than she learned while alive. In some ways this is encouraging, seeing her grow out of her slacker persona (although not without struggle). But it is also a bit sad because we know that she could just as easily have experienced this growth and the joy she finds, while still living.

SFU’s dark tragedy and DLM’s dark comedy both remind us, as did the
Preacher, that we need to find the joy in life while we can, because in the end, it is all so brief.

A Day Without a Mexican

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Since I grew up and spent most of my life there, I am well aware of the Hispanic heritage that permeates California. City names (Sacramento, Los Angeles, Santa Ana), street names (Sepulveda, Figueroa), names of mountains (the Sierra Nevada range) all remind us that this land once was a part of Mexico. And yet, the burgeoning presence of Latinos in our culture is disturbing to some. There are Latinos whose families have lived in California for generations and then there are Latinos who have crossed the border only recently. But this is true as well for other border states: Texas, New Mexico, Arizona. It is becoming increasingly true throughout the country as well.

It is cultural elitism and an anti-cultural bias that feed much of the animosity directed toward the immigrants themselves and those perceived as immigrants because of their heritage. Actually, much of the economy of California (and other places) involves Latinos -- not just as low wage workers (those who pick the fruit, mow the lawns, work as day laborers), but also as teachers, doctors, politicians, judges and every other occupation.

In A Day Without a Mexican, Sergio Arau tries to provide a satirical look at what would happen if suddenly all the Mexicans were gone. (“Mexican� here includes other Latin Americans, because for Anglos, aren't they all Mexicans?) A woman wakes up with her husband and son gone. The TV station's weather man is gone. There are no workers in the fields, the schools are in crisis because twenty percent of K-12 teachers are Latino.

An anti-immigration state senator becomes acting governor and has to deal with the chaos that ensues from all the missing people. Can he get the Hispanics back? Can his family manage without their Latina housekeeper?

A Latina newscaster is the only Hispanic left in the entire state. Why is she still here? Can science find a clue in her to keep other ethnic groups from disappearing?

Will the film really give us something to think about? It should have. But it doesn't. The best it does is give us a few statistics, scattered throughout the film, noting the extensiveness of Latinos in California. It doesn't really speak to the key issues about the place of such a large ethnic group in a larger society. It only touches on, and poorly, the bias against Hispanics. It barely touches on immigration policy.

It also limits its ability to address such issues. California is completely isolated from the rest of the nation by a thick purple fog that surrounds the state at every border. No one can come in or leave. No communications are available with the rest of the world. Such a disappearance in reality would not have had merely statewide, but also national repercussions. But those issues also cannot be engaged.

Satire ought to be a challenging look at society, but there is no real challenge here for anyone who has paid the least amount of attention to demographics. Many communities now have Hispanic pluralities or majorities. Hispanic culture is seen in every aspect of life. Just telling us that Hispanics are a key part of our society is not news.

On top of that, the film itself isn't really all that impressive. The characters are too cartoonish to be at all believable. At first, the film tries to be a mockumentary, but then it trails off into narrative plot lines and never really makes up its mind what it wants to be. Even the humor is not all that funny.

In the end, A Day Without a Mexican missed its opportunity to add anything significant to the discussion of how different cultures can live together in a diverse society.

Fahrenheit 9/11

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I made it to see the F911 today. I have a generally positive opinion of it.

It's pulling in loads of dough (do you think Eisner is slapping his forehead?)

As I've said early on, I'm planning on combining my thoughts on this with my thoughts on America's Heart and Soul -- not so much as opposing visions, but, I think, complementary.

That said, a few of my impressions. It's about what I expected. There are certainly some cheap shots. There is some questionable interpretation. There is some tugging on heart strings. I think it also offers an effective indictment of the Administration as well as some charges against Congress and the Press.

Indictment is a key word. What Moore is doing here is much like a prosecutor presenting a case to a grand jury. In a grand jury, there is only one side of the case presented. The prosecutor is not required to present all the evidence - only what (s)he needs to show there is cause to say that charges are justified. The prosecutor only brings forth the witnesses that (s)he thinks will bolster the case.

Much of Moore's case is circumstantial. But circumstantial evidence can be very powerful, especially if one connects the dots as Moore suggests. There are some dots that probably really don't belong, but overall, I think there are some connections to be made. (Of course, it's easy for me to do, I've opposed the war from the beginning, so I start out in agreement with him.)

BTW, I like the way you all have been responding to the comment in the Forum. I often have difficulty knowing where to start.

Continue:

Coffee and Cigarettes

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In 1986 Jim Jarmusch shot a short black and white film for Saturday Night Live showing Steven Wright and Roberto Benigni meeting over some coffee and cigarettes. Since that time he has added ten more shorts with the same motif and style, and even some of the same jokes or lines of dialogue, but each its own story. Some of the films feature either actors or musicians Jarmusch was working with on other films; some are people he just wanted to work with. In many of the scenes, the actors seem to be playing themselves, but each scene is a fictionalized or exaggerated version of the people. Although filmed over a 17-year period, the filming itself really didn't take that long: two of the segments were filmed in a single day, while the final six were filmed in two weeks.

Coffee and Cigarettes is a compilation of these short films. It is possible to look at it as a collection and judge each as a separate entity. However, these short films do fit together well, making an overall watching experience.

Although coffee and cigarettes play an important role in each of the shorts, the overall film is really much more about the interaction that takes place between the characters. Nearly all the segments are characterized by a high degree of awkwardness. When people meet for the first time, they may not know what to talk about, so they focus on their coffee or their smoking rituals. Even when they speak to one another there is often misunderstanding. There are times when two characters are each looking in a different direction as they both carry on their conversation. This social dimension of the film is what is intriguing about it. It mirrors the awkwardness people often feel in a way that we are able to laugh at ourselves as we laugh at the actors.

I should note that this film won't appeal to everyone. I saw it at an art house theater where the audience would all expect off-beat films. There were over a dozen people who walked out at various places in the middle of the film. I don't know what they expected from the film, but their expectations were obviously not met. This is a talking movie. It occasionally involves some physical humor, but for the most part it is scenes with two or more people sitting, drinking coffee, smoking and talking. It is an exercise in people watching.

Yet, in spite of the exodus from the theater, my wife and I were enthralled with the film. On the way home, we kept mentioning the vignettes that appealed to us and found that we touched on most of them. To be sure, some are better than others, but each story brings its own humor and pathos to share with the viewer.

With the summer film season gearing up, there are plenty of films. Many of those are sequels or formula movies that can all blend together. For those who dare to take a chance on a film that is different from the standard multiplex fare, Coffee and Cigarettes can be very rewarding.