I'm sorry you're sick, but if it gets you out of a long meeting AND the carnival, might be a fair trade, eh?
As for TV, I've enjoyed some of the shows you mentioned, at least in their early days. And the Beloved still watches some, so I still see bits of them, alas.
The CSI shows have become almost pornographic in their treatment of dead bodies. Where we used to get a fast zoom into the body, now someone casually shoves a stick through a gunshot wound while chatting. Where we used to get a glimpse, we now have lingering shots of mutilated bodies. "Subtle" seems to have fallen from the director's visual vocabulary.
Navy CSI - too lame for comment.
House I still enjoy when I catch it, mostly because I like watching Hugh Laurie play a brilliant man who has no redeeming personal traits. That takes discipline and guts as an actor.
I am *not* head-over-heels for Criminal Minds: endless psychopath-of-the-week and Patinkin endlessly looking constipated.
The original Law & Order series was interesting. And some of its clones feature actors I have enjoyed in other work. Sam Waterston was in a well-done TV series called "I'll Fly Away," set in the US South in the '50s. The cop played by Richard Belzer, your "ugly old man," originated in "Homicide: Life on the Street," groundbreaking TV in its time. But even good actors aren't enough to keep me wading through the swamp of sleazy/perverted people doing sleazy/perverted things.
I have a couple larger issues with these crime shows as a whole. Besides the corpse-porn, I worry about how they affect the audience's beliefs about US crime and our criminal justice system. Nationally, most violent crimes are declining, but you wouldn't know it from these shows, which may leave folks fearing they'll be grabbed, tortured and murdered by some evil stranger when they're far more likely to die in a car accident.
We *do* have escalating murder rates in specific populations. I live in one of "those" neighborhoods and am horrified that our children are killing each other. But they aren't doing it because they are psychos - it's far more complex. Crime shows rarely bother to look deeply at the economic and social conditions that drive much of the violence in urban America today.
As for the psycho child-molesting stranger stories, enough already! Most victims know their abuser, and it is often someone within the family. Scaring parents with the sadistic-molester-of-the-week encourages them scream for sex offender registries while ignoring Uncle Bob or the priest.
I do wonder *why* we choose these kinds of stories. We choose to sit through tale after tale in which horrible and highly improbable, violent things happen to (usually) innocent people. "Evidence" is plentiful and clear-cut, collected and analyzed by senior-level, designer-dressed CSIs who spend days on a single case with nary a hairnet in sight. And they almost always get the bad guy. In Real Life, most crime labs are overworked, understaffed, short on funding, have old equipment and certainly do not work in skylit, glass-walled labs with mood lighting. Prosectors' offices AND court-provided criminal defense lawyers are overloaded and underpaid. Yet there are anecdotal reports that juries are coming to expect evidence to be as readily available and unambiguous as on TV. It's being called "the CSI effect"!
Personally, I'm ready for some different "crime" stories. How about a show focussed on the crime prevention unit of the NYC/Miami/LA police force? Or one about a group that tries to help former convicts re-enter the community after they've done their time (BIG issue in my city as guys put away under 1980s drug laws get out)? Or one about families struggling to manage life after one of their own is incarcerated? Or a show about a victim-offender reconciliation program? Lots of potential for drama, and we could even work in some sex, cute kids, ex-spouse issues, bad dates, great clothes, gorgeous hair and product placement.
But, alas, there would be no autopsies, very few psychotic killers. Just the reality of the rest of the picture of how crime touches people's lives and affects society as a whole. REAL reality...what a concept.
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branchandroot
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-06 07:17 pm (UTC)As for TV, I've enjoyed some of the shows you mentioned, at least in their early days. And the Beloved still watches some, so I still see bits of them, alas.
The CSI shows have become almost pornographic in their treatment of dead bodies. Where we used to get a fast zoom into the body, now someone casually shoves a stick through a gunshot wound while chatting. Where we used to get a glimpse, we now have lingering shots of mutilated bodies. "Subtle" seems to have fallen from the director's visual vocabulary.
Navy CSI - too lame for comment.
House I still enjoy when I catch it, mostly because I like watching Hugh Laurie play a brilliant man who has no redeeming personal traits. That takes discipline and guts as an actor.
I am *not* head-over-heels for Criminal Minds: endless psychopath-of-the-week and Patinkin endlessly looking constipated.
The original Law & Order series was interesting. And some of its clones feature actors I have enjoyed in other work. Sam Waterston was in a well-done TV series called "I'll Fly Away," set in the US South in the '50s. The cop played by Richard Belzer, your "ugly old man," originated in "Homicide: Life on the Street," groundbreaking TV in its time. But even good actors aren't enough to keep me wading through the swamp of sleazy/perverted people doing sleazy/perverted things.
I have a couple larger issues with these crime shows as a whole. Besides the corpse-porn, I worry about how they affect the audience's beliefs about US crime and our criminal justice system. Nationally, most violent crimes are declining, but you wouldn't know it from these shows, which may leave folks fearing they'll be grabbed, tortured and murdered by some evil stranger when they're far more likely to die in a car accident.
We *do* have escalating murder rates in specific populations. I live in one of "those" neighborhoods and am horrified that our children are killing each other. But they aren't doing it because they are psychos - it's far more complex. Crime shows rarely bother to look deeply at the economic and social conditions that drive much of the violence in urban America today.
As for the psycho child-molesting stranger stories, enough already! Most victims know their abuser, and it is often someone within the family. Scaring parents with the sadistic-molester-of-the-week encourages them scream for sex offender registries while ignoring Uncle Bob or the priest.
I do wonder *why* we choose these kinds of stories. We choose to sit through tale after tale in which horrible and highly improbable, violent things happen to (usually) innocent people. "Evidence" is plentiful and clear-cut, collected and analyzed by senior-level, designer-dressed CSIs who spend days on a single case with nary a hairnet in sight. And they almost always get the bad guy. In Real Life, most crime labs are overworked, understaffed, short on funding, have old equipment and certainly do not work in skylit, glass-walled labs with mood lighting. Prosectors' offices AND court-provided criminal defense lawyers are overloaded and underpaid. Yet there are anecdotal reports that juries are coming to expect evidence to be as readily available and unambiguous as on TV. It's being called "the CSI effect"!
Personally, I'm ready for some different "crime" stories. How about a show focussed on the crime prevention unit of the NYC/Miami/LA police force? Or one about a group that tries to help former convicts re-enter the community after they've done their time (BIG issue in my city as guys put away under 1980s drug laws get out)? Or one about families struggling to manage life after one of their own is incarcerated? Or a show about a victim-offender reconciliation program? Lots of potential for drama, and we could even work in some sex, cute kids, ex-spouse issues, bad dates, great clothes, gorgeous hair and product placement.
But, alas, there would be no autopsies, very few psychotic killers. Just the reality of the rest of the picture of how crime touches people's lives and affects society as a whole. REAL reality...what a concept.
[Here endeth my rant.]