Hi Elizabeth,
Thanks for your post! Your observations about CSi's right-wing
undertones are very interesting; I never really thought about true-
crime programs as backing the conservative agenda, but that observation
seems quite accurate. I must confess that I don't watch CSi (though I
might soon start!), but CSi sounds quite a bit like COPS.
COPS is a popular American 'reality' show about police enforcement
officers who interrupt criminals during the scene-of-the-crime, and
then make sure that justice is served. There are many comic episodes,
often featuring drug dealers and/or stolen cars, and lots of cursing
and tantrums. Many of the featured criminals are either African-
American men, or male 'white trash.' Viewers can experience
satisfaction at knowing the law is always watching, always at work.
My personal favorites in the genre of making sure that justice is
served is DARK HEART/IRON HAND. It's a program about cases of real-life
murder that are very difficult to prove. The criminals are extremely
intelligent sociopaths, often deceiving survivors for years, and
leaving almost nothing to link them to the heinous crimes they have
committed. But through determination, hard work, luck, and years of
patient waiting, justice is always served. All it takes is a shred of
evidence, and the case that seemed impossible to crack can suddenly
burst open at the seams.
I don't know why I love these programs so much, but I always watch till
the bitter end and take great pleasure when the horrible killer or
rapist is finally caught! I guess this must be compensation for knowing
that so mnay cases are never solved in real-life.
New Yorkers *are* pretty cynical, but it's a strangely open city at
times.
----- Original Message -----
From: Elizabeth Carnegie <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thursday, November 17, 2005 9:53 am
Subject: Re: Miserable Affairs Museum in Thailand
> actually I think a lot of CSI's success - apart from the obvious
> that all
> women of a certain age (myself included) want to save Grishom and
> ... well
> run away with Warrick- is that it is an extremely right-wing
> programme where
> everyone upholds what is right and what is right is that the bad
> guys get
> caught through science with a soul - Miami is even worse with
> Horatio's
> moral message to camera as he don's his shades and rides off in
> his car
> equivalent of a charger (my teenage son's idea of cool-essentially
> family
> viewing this in my house)....not to mention a pathologist who
> reinforces the
> dignity in death message by (surely excessive) hair-stroking and
> corpse
> fondling...actually New York is growing on me because it is much
> more
> cynical....----- Original Message -----
> From: "Theresa K Smalec" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Thursday, November 17, 2005 2:44 PM
> Subject: Re: Miserable Affairs Museum in Thailand
>
>
> > Thanks for the articles, Bryn.
> >
> > The one about people's reluctance to kill other people is very
> > interesting. Perhaps the theory that it is hard for people to kill
> > other people helps to account for the frequency of PTSDs among
> > veterans? However, with the help of new technologies, military
> killing> seems to become more and more like playing a video game:
> pressing a
> > button and not really having to witness the results from close-
> range.>
> > As for the Neilsen ratings article/survey, it makes me a little
> > nervous. I haven't had time to read it carefully yet, though, so I
> > can;t quite tell you why I feel that way. Something I find funny
> is the
> > survey's report that African-Americans watch a
> disproportionately high
> > number of FOX affiliates. If African-American voting patterns
> are any
> > indication of the 'success' of FOX's concertedly right-wing agenda,
> > then maybe more Americans should start watching FOX? Perhaps more
> > people would wake up, smell the coffee, and vote Democrat? :)
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: Bryn Parry <[log in to unmask]>
> > Date: Thursday, November 17, 2005 8:24 am
> > Subject: Re: Miserable Affairs Museum in Thailand
> >
> >> As a sidebar to the several observations about motivation of
> >> original
> >> events and Dark Tourism.
> >>
> >> A recent TV series looked at research indicating that only 20% of
> >> US
> >> soldiers in WWII actively tried to kill opposing soldiers and how
> >> the
> >> military had set about training soldiers in later conflicts, so
> >> that this
> >> level was raised.
> >>
> >> It is said that, at Gettysburg, around 20% of recovered muskets
> >> had 3-10
> >> musket balls in the barrel; meaning that people were standing
> >> their ground
> >> and going through the motions but not actually shooting at anyone
> >>
> >> Having been fortunate to remain a non-combatant, I wouldn't like
> >> to comment
> >> but the programme website gives more detail and has links to the
> >> research
> >> it used:
> >>
> >>
> >
>
http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/S/science/society/killing.htm
> l
> >> As to CSI, which I'd always assumed people watched for Grissom's
> >> jokes,
> >> when Nielsen began to rank TV audiences by Ethnicity it noticed
> >> marked
> >> variations and that it was `Top 10' shows like CSI, ER, etc. that
> >> had the
> >> more pronounced variations. P.31 [slide32] of these 2004 ratings
> >> helps to
> >> illustrate this:
> >> http://www.nielsenmedia.com/E-letters/African-AmericanTVA-
> final.pdf>>
> >> Whilst Dark Tourism is too new to have the depth of segmented
> >> research that
> >> mainstream Tourism enjoys, it does seem as if all the same
> >> characteristics
> >> are at play in its motivation
> >>
> >> All the best
> >>
> >> Bryn
> >>
> >
>
|
