Alan Ball’s California and Louisiana Series, Six Feet Under & True Blood: a Troubled State of the Nation

• Main Author: Anne-Marie Paquet-Deyris
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Groupe de Recherche Identités et Cultures 2012-05-01
• Series: TV Series
• Subjects: Six Feet Under; True Blood; Ball Alan; death; vampire; aesthetics
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/tvseries/1195

Alan Ball, the critically-acclaimed screenwriter of American Beauty, launched his first series project in 2001 with Six Feet Under. His somber but humorous account of the dysfunctional Fisher family’s life and death in suburban Los Angeles held a fascinating mirror to contemporary American culture, ideology and alternative lifestyles. Talking to the Dead, while providing a direct access to the characters’ inner consciousness, allowed the characters to broach all kinds of taboo motifs and notions. When Ball’s latest series True Blood came out on HBO in 2008, the same sense of broken taboos and overstepped limits held the spectator captive. This time, the Dead were talking and fighting back to integrate into human society. Adapted from Charlaine Harris’ “Southern Vampire” collection of books, Ball’s protagonists even as vampires struggling for the Vampire Rights Amendment were only too human, riddled with coming-of-age worries and plain Angst. How then does Alan Ball inscribe the evils of simply living in contemporary America? Which subtle and not so subtle games of echoes unfold between the two widely successful and creative shows?