Biopsy: "Six Feet Under"

My brother-in-law, Jason Mittell, is a media scholar at Middlebury College, specializing in television.  Last month, on his JustTV blog, Jason put together three separate lists of the best television shows of the decade 2000-2009.  His top two shows of the decade, Lost and The Wire, are shows I haven't watched.  In fact, I watch so little television that of his 35 or so best shows, I've watched the complete series of only three: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly.  This makes it seem as if I am less a fan of television as a medium than I am of Joss Whedon as an auteur.  But on New Year's Day, I started watching (at a rate of an episode a night) the first season of Six Feet Under, which originally aired on HBO from 2001 to 2005, and it looks as if Joss has company.  

In his retrospective of the "aughts," Jason writes of Six Feet Under: "I vacillate between thinking that this show is over- and under-rated; it certainly wasn’t as subversive, deep and profound as it often seemed to think it was. But it also was groundbreaking in its integration of black humor and drama, its treatment of adult subject matter like death, drugs, and sex in new ways for serial television, and its presentation of arguably the most mature and compelling gay relationship ever seen on American television."  I'm only six episodes into the series, but I would like to go on record with a few of the reasons why I think it will take its place on my own list of "the best of the aughts." 

1.  The Creator.  Alan Ball, the creator of Six Feet Under, wrote the screenplay for one of my favorite films of the decade prior to the "aughts," American Beauty (1999).  I found that film breathtaking, and remember extravagantly comparing it to Euripides and Ibsen.  You can see the hand of the writer of American Beauty in Six Feet Under, in its awareness of the fragile beauty of life, the contingent nature of happiness, the curious blend of light and dark, mature sophistication and innocent vulnerability.  

2.  The Dark Humor.  I loved Buffy the Vampire Slayer because of the brilliantly successful mixture of drama and comedy, of seriousness and humor, of darkness and light.  In both Buffy and  Six Feet Under, death features prominently, along with the accoutrements of death—cemeteries, caskets, dead bodies.  In both shows, the dead speak to the living, and the inevitability—the omnipresence—of death contrasts with the fugitive beauties and pleasures of life.  It's interesting that, after the fifth and final season of Six Feet Under, Ball went on to create a new vampire show, True Blood.  

3.  The Ensemble.  The triad of Whedon shows that I mentioned above had strong ensemble casts in which each character was a distinct and interesting individual, right down to the mannerisms and patterns of speech.  One of the reasons that I found The West Wing tiresome was that all the characters seemed like avatars for Aaron Sorkin, like well-tailored machines for generating clever dialogue.  After the first episode of Six Feet Under, I already had a sense of the distinct personalities of the Fisher family, and I was already invested in them. 

 

4.  The Theme Music.  A brilliant minimalist earworm that beautifully sets the tone for the series.  I should add that I love how the show begins, after the theme music, with a nod to television formula, and then bends that formula: like Law & Order, each episode starts with a death, but instead of following the implications of that death through the legal system, it makes the aftermath of that death the context for an exploration of the psyches and relationships of the Fisher family.    

5.  The Gay Couple.  David and Keith are a compelling couple.   After the first few episodes, both their attraction to each other and the conflicts in their relationship already feel real and complex, as does their religion.  It's fascinating and moving to watch David struggle with being both gay and an essentially conservative, church-going, middle-class family man.  

6.  The Cute Red-Head.  Lauren Ambrose, Alyson Hannigan, Jayma Mays.  The reason color television was invented.    

I'll be back with a postmortem after fifty-seven more episodes. 

A Forum on Education Funding

About 75 people gathered in the big room at ARTech charter school on Tuesday, January 5, for an evening of conversation with State Senator Kevin Dahle and State Representative David Bly. The main topic of the evening was education funding, and the impact on Minnesota public schools, and charter schools in particular, of the state budget crisis and the 27.5% holdback of state general education funds.

What is the 27% Holdback?

By statute, 10% of state per pupil education funding is held back from public schools in the state of Minnesota until after final enrollment figures are available for the school year. The money is generally paid to the schools in the first half of the following school year. This year, in an effort to address the state budget shortfall without raising taxes, Gov. Pawlenty increased the holdback to 27%. This means that 27% of the amount that schools have budgeted, and to which they are entitled according to the per pupil funding formula, is held back—payment to the schools is deferred.

This has put charter schools into a bind. Because 27% of their general education funding is being held back, schools are finding it necessary to secure loans in order to meet their expenses—to pay teachers. The interest payments then have to be included the school’s general education budget. In effect, funds that should have gone into the classroom are going into interest payments to banks—if, that is, the schools can secure loans at a time when banks are tightening credit.

The Impact of Charter Schools

The evening at ARTech was moderated by ARTech school board chair Joe Pahr, who also teaches at the school, and began with testimonials from parents and students about the importance of charter schools. All of those who spoke stressed the importance of the sense of community that charter schools create. Bo Aylin, a parent of two children at Prairie Creek, spoke of the “nurturing community” that charter schools create, in which fostering a love of learning is a priority. Jan Rowher, an ARTech parent, stressed the importance of a small school community that provides students with options and that recognizes individual learning styles. Amelia Schmelzer, an extremely poised and articulate ninth-grader from ARTech, described her school as being “like a big family gathering every day.” ARTech, she said, is a diverse and dynamic school community that prepares its students to live in a diverse and dynamic world.

The Fiscal Realities

Both legislators expressed their strong support for charter schools. The hard reality is that the state budget is facing a projected $5 billion shortfall in the next biennium. To this point, the stategy of Gov. Pawlenty has been to make cuts and accounting shifts, rather than to raise additional revenue.

Rep. Bly pointed out that this crisis has been brewing for some time. A decade ago, under Gov. Ventura, the primary responsibility for funding public education was shifted from local taxpayers to the state, but no permanent mechanism for funding the shift was enacted, creating a $1 billion “hole” in education funding. This was easier to fill at a time of state budget surpluses, as there were at the time. It has become impossible to fill in an recession.

Both Dahle and Bly stressed that the budget crisis cannot be addressed with spending cuts alone.

“We need more revenue,” Sen. Dahle said.

He argued that it has begun to reach the point at which the cuts will be more painful than the effects of raising taxes. He said that even with additional revenue, more cuts will be necessary. Without additional revenue, more jobs will be lost—especially teaching jobs.

Rep. Bly said that a bonding bill to stimulate job creation would be part of the coming legislative session. But with no end to the fiscal crisis in sight, and with Gov. Pawlenty holding firm in his refusal to raise taxes, Bly predicted that “this is probably going to be one of the most difficult sessions” in recent memory.

A Call to Action

Both Sen. Dahle and Rep. Bly stressed the importance of contacting legislators and mobilizing grassroots support for action on the issue of education funding. Concerned citizens need to “speak up,” Bly said, and let the legislature and the governor know that there’s support for raising taxes to fund services, like public education, that benefit the entire community.

Cold

Wet Christmas, Part II

Merry Christmas!

Weather note: The Christmas storm of 2009 has mostly fizzled.  Last night, when the predictions were for an inch of snow an hour, we took Pippi out for a Christmas Eve walk in the rain.  More rain today has made it a slushy Christmas.   

White Christmas, Part I

Our house on the morning of Christmas Eve 2009

On Halloween 1991, I was in St. Peter, Minnesota, for a classics lecture at Gustavus Adolphus College, where I was a visiting assistant professor of classics.  The heavy snow had begun to fall as I came out of the lecture.  I spent that night in St. Peter, and in the morning I took advantage of a lull in the blizzard to shovel my car out of the driveway where I had parked it.  It would have been wiser to stay in St. Peter, but classes at Gustavus had been cancelled, and I was eager to get home to Northfield, where Clara was alone with two-month old Will.  So, as the snow began to fall more heavily again, I started out.  Fortunately, I found myself behind a snowplow between St. Peter and Montgomery, and after two or three hours managed to make it home safely. When the snow finally stopped falling, there was more than 28 inches of snow on the ground.  

This morning, we woke to nearly 8 inches of fresh snow—the official amount for Northfield was 7.50 inches—and another 8-12 inches is on its way tonight.  The second wave of snow started a few minutes ago, right on schedule.  This is predicted to be the heaviest snowfall in Minnesota since that Halloween Blizzard of 1991.  Our usual Christmas plans—my brother-in-law's family down here from Roseville for Christmas Eve, and our family in Roseville on Christmas afternoon—have been scrapped.  For the first time that we can remember, it'll be just the four of us at Christmas.  

Books Reviewed in 2009

Mary Cholmondeley, Red Pottage

Storm Jameson, The Georgian Novel and Mr. Robinson
Elina Hirvonen, When I Forgot
Tove Jansson, The True Deceiver
Sylvia Townsend Warner, Summer Will Show
Mrs. Humphry Ward, Robert Elsmere
Rhoda Broughton, Belinda
Edmund Burke, Conciliation with America
George Eliot, Middlemarch
Jon Meacham, American Lion
Jane & Mary Findlater, Crossriggs
John Williams, Stoner
Louis De Bernières, A Partisan's Daughter
Victoria Clayton, Out of Love
John Ferling, The Ascent of George Washington
Nancy Mitford, The Pursuit of Love
Sylvia Townsend Warner, Mr. Fortune's Maggot
Jetta Carleton, The Moonflower Vine
Elizabeth Bowen, The Last September
Jessica Mitford, Hons and Rebels
Virginia Woolf, Jacob's Room
David Quammen, The Reluctant Mr. Darwin
Stefan Zweig, The Post-Office Girl
V.S. Naipaul, The Enigma of Arrival
James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom
Olivia Manning, School for Love
Sylvia Townsend Warner, The True Heart
Helen Humphreys, Coventry
Edith Henrietta Fowler, The Young Pretenders
Susan Glaspell, Fugitive's Return
Nella Larsen, Passing
Barry Unsworth, Land of Marvels
Jessie Redmon Fauset, Plum Bun
Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

Reading Journal: "Red Pottage"

Mary Cholmondeley, Red Pottage. Virago Modern Classics 1985.  Originally published in 1899. 

Early in Red Pottage, Lord Newhaven confronts his unfaithful wife.  During their conversation, which takes place in her bedroom, Lord Newhaven picks up a book—"an Imitation of Christ, bound in that peculiar shade of lilac which at that moment prevailed."  It's a small, but telling detail, since Cholmondeley's novel is about what is real and what is imitation, what is true Christian behavior and what is pious cant, what is genuine and what is merely fashionable.  

In a few pages, we are introduced to Sybell Loftus, a superficial woman who, Cholmondeley tells us archly, "had not the horrid perception of difference between the real and the imitation which spoils the lives of many."  At Sybell's party, the conversation turns to Hester Gresley, a young woman who has written a popular novel set in the slums of east London.  One of the pseudo-intellectuals at the party condemns the novel, saying, "it is a misfortune to the cause of suffering humanity—to our cause—when the books which pretend to set forth certain phases of its existence are written by persons entirely ignorant of the life they describe."

"To me they seem real," says Miss Gresley's friend, Rachel West.  

Rachel has lived for many years in the slums of east London, working as a seamstress, before receiving an unexpected inheritance.  An unexpected inheritance, an affair, a suicide pact—Cholmondeley's novel is full of elements of late Victorian sensation novels , but it's also a biting satire of society, a romance, and a novel of ideas.  Cholmondeley is interested in the truth of art, the power of sympathy, and the plight of unmarried women. 

At the heart of the novel is the theme of friendship between women.  In a particularly heartfelt passage, Cholmondeley writes: "Here and there among its numberless counterfeits a friendship rises up between two women which sustains the life of both, which is still young when life is waning, which man's love and motherhood cannot displace nor death annihilate; a friendship which is not the solitary affection of an empty heart nor the deepest affection of a full one, but which nevertheless lightens the burdens of this world and lays its pure hand on the next."  Red Pottage is dedicated to Cholmondeley's sister Victoria.   It is interesting to see how sustaining the bond of sisterhood was to the New Women of the 1890s as they tested their independence, and began to claim their rights as individuals and their voices as writers.*  

In Red Pottage, Hester dedicates her second novel, which she describes as being like a child to her, to Rachel.  There is almost a kind of spiritual and intellectual marriage between the two women that sustains them through all of the sensations and setbacks of the novel's ingenious plot.  

One other of Cholmondeley's novels is currently in print, her 1893 novel Diana Tempest, published by Valancourt Press.  Red Pottage was a massive bestseller in both England and America in 1899.  Like many of the novels I review on this blog, I believe it should still be more widely read.  

*The Cholmondeley sisters were also intimate friends with the novelist sisters Jane and Mary Findlater.