If you've watched CSI Miami on television the striking feature is the splendid high tech headquarters the crime unit goes to in order to solve their crimes. Glass walls and giant computer screens with unrealistic software that works very fast and proficient. All the detectives on occasion wear lab coats and look into microscopes with trendy music in the backdrop.
Being a television drama there is no sense and even a redundancy to be critical of the shows unrealistic world of crime. But what it does show is that the makers do have, or at least seem to have, a world view that given enough resources in government -in this case crime scene investigation--it can catch the bad guys all the time.
The problem here is the bad guys are always wealthy white people who are either psychologically unstable or greedy. That is not to say that crimes are not committed by this demographic but in Dade County Miami or New Haven or HartfordCounty, the reality is no where near the fiction. It is so far apart that you have to wonder if the makers have an ideological axe to grind, for one thing, or if they have a politically correct propaganda mission.
Most of the crime we experience comes from inner-city poor neighborhoods and motives are either drug related, frivolous or simply random shootings. Police departments have their CSI mechanisms but those units don't take over the entire case. Police departments resemble insurance or accounting offices by contrast the CSI set looks like an ESPN studio.
As stated before the crime drama series is fictional and makes no pretensions on reconstructing reality. The show works and people watch it and that's enough. We like the diversion of television and for some reason crime solving makes for good drama. In the case of CSI with it's juxtaposition of seemingly unlimited resources of the counties crime unit along with the over the top depiction of bad rich people, you get the feeling we're being had.
Comments