Watching the Unwatchable

Death is a sensitive open wound in modern society’s delusion that we have progressed beyond the limits of nature. Death repels us even as it enthralls us. It is hidden from view yet promoted as entertainment. This article examines the way traditional discourse around death is challenged and reshaped through the HBO series Six Feet Under. It examines the conflicting manner in which death and violence is addressed, beginning with, on the one hand, the desensitization to prolific and explicit representations of death and violence in film and television—deaths that occur ‘out there’—and on the other, the private, painful and taboo discussion of death, where emotions and existential fears are suppressed (or at least heavily regulated)—deaths that occur ‘in here’. This article uses close analysis of the deaths that occur in the opening scenes of each episode of Six Feet Under to argue that there is a Six Feet Under kind of death, where the contradictory elements of death discourse are brought together, not for any kind of resolution, but rather to emphasize the confusion and ambiguity that is the human experience of death and grieving.