"The series unfolds within an almost totally interiorised world, a clue to its real significance. The crimes - they are all homicides - take place in anonymous hotel rooms and in the tract housing of the Vegas and Miami suburbs, almost never in a casino or druglord's gaudy palace. A brutal realism prevails, the grimmest in any crime series. Suburban lounges and that modern station of the cross, the hotel bathroom, are the settings of horrific murders, which thankfully are over by the time each episode begins. Gloves donned, the cast dismantle u-bends and plunge up to their elbows in toilet bowls, retrieving condoms, diaphragms and bullet casings, syringes, phials and other signs of the contemporary zodiac. Faecal matter and toilet paper are never shown, perhaps reflecting American squeamishness, though evidence of anal intercourse and vaginal bruising is snapped out like the tennis scores." (Via Beyond the Beyond.)
4 comments:
Once they have been dissected - their ribcages opened like suitcases, brains lifted from their craniums, tissues analysed into their basic components - they have nothing left, not even the faintest claim on existence.
I will now quote Anthony Hopkins & Cuba Gooding Jr. from the movie Instinct:
"...After all, you've lost nothing but your illusions and a little bit of skin"
I hate CSI... can't even stand to be in the room if someone is watching it. This is a bit of a conflict with my wife who loves the damn show. Personally, I think it is a sign that American TV has hit rock bottom- there is no way to go but up.
WMB--
I thought the same thing re. the alien autopsy. There might be a doctoral thesis somewhere in that . . .
RJU--
You're incorrect. As impossible as it may seem, we can *always* sink lower.
Remember "Network"...regularly scheduled murder for ratings would be a step down...not a huge step, mind you... :)
"Howard Beale...the first TV star killed for low ratings".
CSI enjoys the same morbid curiosity factor as another hit show about death...Quincy. While no match in the effects area, Quincy was hugely popular for offering a glimpse into the world of crime scenes. autopsies, and the field of forensic pathology.
Quincy, and now CSI, are the TV equivalent of car wrecks on the freeway...we hate to look but can't look away. A safe glimpse of our own mortality, surely.
I don't expend enough energy on TV shows to produce love or hate, although I have to admit that the "L Word" is on my Tivo season pass list. And my feelings for "The Daily Show" come very close to love....I'd probably call it addiction, though. :)
Kyle
UFOreflections.blogspot.com
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