THE CSI EFFECT

CSI Miami

There’s an acknowledgement of the effects of combining facts, esp. “scientific facts”, with narrative and graphics.  It’s called the CSI effect and means that people are learning a lot of pop science -- we can all say “allele” and “petechia” with confidence.  And if you haven’t learned how to test for trace by swabbing with a Q-tip and then cutting off the cotton tip to immerse it in a little vessel of fluid and put it in a mysterious machine -- you just aren’t paying attention!  People seem to be obsessed, at least for the decades-each run duration of the variations among CSI, though the actual story lines are pretty much congruent.  

My fav is “CSI Miami.”  One of the three “creators”, Anthony Zuiker says he intended it to be “ridiculously gorgeous” and that it is.  But in spite of the name, it is mostly shot in California.  It’s clear that the females are bikini-ready, but I did not realize that the Crayola-colored Leggo buildings were also California.  The locations, ranging from sub-sordid to glass-glamorous, are the same we see in movies, managed by scouts and agents.

Zuiker

Zuiker, the son of a maitre d’ and a blackjack dealer, looks exactly like that.  The two women, Carol Mendelsohn and Ann Donohue, are also Hollywood writer types, many of whom make their living creating “idea” scripts that are never produced.  They often act as “show runners.”

Jerry Bruckheimer

Jerry Bruckheimer is the top of the CSI heap, a Repub (a McCain donor), a do-gooder, and a producer of commercials before he went to action (violence) and police films with great success, and then added the CSI serieses, of which there are four.  

I’m going back to this again because of one show, the 5th episode in the 8th season of CSI Miami.  But it really stands out: in fact, enough that I think you can
watch it as a free-standing vid.  Even as a classroom discussion starter or for an enviro activist group.

Brian Davidson

Here’s a review from an online info source:  

http://www.csifiles.com/content/2009/10/review-csi-miami-bad-seed/

“Brian Davidson‘s script feels like a progression for the show, and I hope it’s a herald of things to come rather than a departure. There was a real energy to this story, a personal stake for the characters that was more appealing than fancy plot twists or high-energy shootouts. The episode felt really fresh, something that’s not that easy to achieve after seven full seasons.”

The importance from my point of view is that this show managed to get across some things about industrial food production in this country that we all should be thinking about.  A pretty young girl is killed by e coli on a chopped salad in a restaurant.  Her about-to-be fiancé is killed because at the same meal he had corn-on-the-cob that had been genetically altered to make it more digestible for cattle, who quickly get big and fat on corn but develop nasty feces that are a perfect home for e coli.  

The mutant gene was introduced to the corn in the next place over from a gene that when mixed -- which can happen -- makes the corn lethal.  (I’m not sure that this last is real rather than theoretical, but the rest of it certainly is, and has made many people go vegetarian.)

The next bit of science is that frankencorn -- mutant grain -- is in pollen which drifts uncontrollably.  If you are raising corn next to an industrialist farmer using gene-altered grain, some of your own grain will also be mutant, inseminated by the wind.  The altered seed is patented so you will be sued for patent infringement.   This is real and happens here.  If you have neither the stomach nor the cash for a high powered lawyer, your only option will be to sell, though the actual culprit was just the wind.

The CSI team works their way back through this information far enough to turn the tables: the parents of the young man, who are capable of suing, can start a civil wrongful death claim against the industrialists who KNEW that in a small percentage of cases, their mutant corn could kill.  They say, shrugging, “This is like building a bridge or a dam.  It’s always known that some people will die, but it’s considered a legitimate price to pay for the greater good of the construction.”

By the time the episode plot sends out their three “trace” finders, the three include the handsome and aggressive guy who is now filling David Caruso’s slot so Caruso can use more energy on producing; the snarky little “Wolfe” who thinks he’s a shark; and the newest, a big black man with a child’s round face who happens to have a degree in Art History as well as his scientific training.  He’s the one who presents as a kind of naive dummy, good only for heavy-lifting, but turns out to find the crucial clue.  The three guys, arguing and deducing, find the smoking gun just over a berm: a huge feed lot with water run-off supplying e coli to the irrigation system of the truck garden.

feedlot

This is good story-telling, but I can tell you that a feedlot that size is a very noisy and unmistakably reeking place at a great distance.  A little berm wouldn’t be able to conceal it.

“CSI Miami” is the most Disneyland of the versions: sentimental, ghastly (The one where the bad guy dissolved in a swimming pool full of intense alkali must have been fun for the special effects guys.), and based on a population where “bad things happen” for a lot of good old American reasons like greed, failure to bond, sex as a form of cash, and total loss of contact with reality.  

“CSI New York” has the same combination of horror and sentimentality but also a cast that’s a little more intelligent and better at the bitter jokes.  The plot lines in all CSI shows are based on today’s headlines and established practices, but just pushed a little bit.  The "CSI Effect" in negative terms leads to juries expecting more evidence, clearer, more cutting edge.  The truth is that the numbers of bodies are so great, the circumstances so ambiguous, the money so scarce and the motivation so slight that what we’ve got in the end is science fiction.

"CSI Effect" in positive terms is that the characters model diligence, dedication, and true caring about their fellow human beings.  Caruso plays his alpha male role as the compassionate protector.  Sinise plays his as the seeker of justice.  He’s a bit of a fool when it comes to love, but then, the Caruso character gets entangled with much more dubious women and stands by the ensuing sons.

Sometimes I think that the screenwriters are the true preachers of our times and far more effective theologians and ethicists than the college professors.

CSI AND "THE CODE"

I'M GOING TO SEND THIS EARLY IN CASE NOTHING WORKS AT 10PM.

Since I’ve used up all my creative energy trying to understand how to survive Yosemite, I’ll just write a short review of a series I marathon-watched last night.  The series was “The Code,” an Aussie production in 6 episodes, pursuing one storyline and intended to have a second year, which looks as though it will happen.

The deal is that there are two brothers, one a rational and responsible journalist (Dan Spielman) and the other a brain-atypical computer genius (Ashley Zukerman).  They are confronting government collusion with evil people (poison and nuclear plotting).  It sort of a conflation of “The Constant Gardener” with the CSI kind of plot.  With an extra sauce of “House of Cards.”   But what I liked best was the indigenous bits which were neither smarmy nor preachy.

Aussie films, like Norwegian detective shows, are always worth watching, partly because they pay attention to plot beyond the simple “hook” on American CSI shows and partly because the actors are truly skillful.  But also because the location generally pitches urban sterility against the powerful beyond-human landscape.  (That capital building is as strict and bleak as any I've seen.)  Also, they generally manage to avoid sentimentality.  Remember “Breaker Morant”?  Pushes you against moral dilemmas without relief.  Mostly.

The other gimmick on this series is that anything on the computer screens in the story are overlays on the “movie” narrative.  I’ve seen this before, but it is deftly done and justified by the subjects of internet hacking v. encoding and the constant webbing of smart phone communication.  It was just sophisticated enough that I understood it but it implied more than I know.  (Not very hard.)  Beyond that the camera work is excellent.

I rotate “CSI Miami”, “CSI NY,” “NCSI,” and “Poirot.”  A new contender is “Vexed” but I lasted about 30 seconds with it.  The gimmick is that they are so hardened to ghastly crime that they barely notice it -- the man/woman team only relates to each other and they are both stooooopid.

“CSI Miami” is by far the more glamorous show (the sheet glass lab has got to be the world’s most flashy) and has the most outrageous crimes (It’s alligator country.) but wonderful aerial overviews.  David Caruso always does the tenderness and morality, which is sometimes more of a schtick than an insight.  The number of fabulous near-nude women is unbelievable.  None of these people are street cops, but some of them act as if they were -- not only that, but the only cops in the department.

“CSI NY” has Gary Sinise as the alpha.  Since he’s a bit of a right-wing righteous man, that whole show takes on that flavor.  In contrast to the crayola geometry of Miami the New York aerials are black and white and the white-tile arches of the morgue are grim.  Even the blood is sometimes black.  "NCSI" has ships.   And a female punk goth technician. The quips of the pretty boy are tiresome, but with Mark Harmon as the alpha, what do you expect?

Poirot has Art Deco Paris, and intelligent scripts with real dialogue. 

Enough of that. Back to “The Code.”

The hinge, or rather interacting hinges, turn on contrasting moralities.  The indigenous values of family and education against the venality of criminals for hire, protective brotherhood struggling with a heedless and headlong plunge into human individual knowledge, the careless out-of-marriage sex that slips into outright sedition.  Nation vs. citizens. 

The acting of Ashley Zuckerman lifts the whole thing onto the plane of “Equus” or “Tea and Sympathy” -- I mean, the ability to be a little weird and off-center while still making you want to be close to him, help him, like Anthony Perkins or Benedict Cumberbach.  Zuckerman in “Rush”, another cop series, is not particularly distinctive in the clip I saw.  The Rainman part of "The Code" is a role that either transforms an actor or just goes flat.  I hope to heck they don't "heal" him.

The effect on the viewer of a quiet summer half-day spent immersed in an Aussie thriller is disturbing to cats who want their dinner NOW.  At least it kept me from obsessing about Yosemite a while.  But it left me wishing I had the same syndrome as Zuckerman so I could solve this stuff.

This is not my usual goal of 1,000 words or more, but I don’t care.

EXAMINING CSI FRANCHISES FOR TRACE

Vancouver, BC

“Da Vinci’s Inquest”, a Canadian series, was the first CSI show I watched regularly.  That was decades ago.  At the beginning the hero would declare, “I speak for the dead.”  He did so well that he became Mayor of Vancouver, BC.  Well, on the show -- not in reality.

The cluster of recent American CSI shows (CSI:Crime Scene Investigation; CSI:Miami; CSI:NY; CSI:Cyber; NCIS:Naval) are structured very much like those Fifties cowboy shows we all used to love: Gunsmoke, Paladin, Rawhide, Wagon Train -- but I hadn’t really thought about it much until I ran across someone commenting that CSI shows are the “comfort food” of series.  This is not a literal comment, since there are often autopsy scenes that are not meant to be watched while you eat lunch.

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation  (Las Vegas)

Each has a strong central character, glamorous females (a little more adult than is usual), and bantering buddies -- at least in terms of the team members.  The “vics” as they say on CSI Miami, but we are cautioned it's an undignified term on NCSI.  In spite of female characters who demand respect, the vics and the background women tend to be Hollywood cannon fodder willing to do anything, even wear nothing but sushi or a g-string.  That version also has the most spectacular homes and fabulous tropical ocean clouds.  I have yet to notice any academics like those who populate Morse and Lewis.  No matter.  Though it’s interesting to speculate about CSI Harvard vs. CSI Berkeley, if they were to invented.

I read recently that the conviction rate for murder has sunk from maybe half to one-third.  Of course, the really successful murderers are never detected in the first place: it's the murder itself that is never detected.  On a rez there are never accurate statistics about most anything.  I wonder whether a CSI Rez could fly.  Maybe Longmire has it covered.  That program really IS a resurrection of the Fifties formula except WITH Indians.

Longmire

All these shows (except the Cyber one) revolve around the main man, who explicitly defends respect for human life and justice.  The whole conceit is that technology means we can know much more about how people do bad things.  There have been two real world consequences.  Juries today have no tolerance for technicians who don’t come through and criminals are fascinated by all the neat tricks they can learn.  Evidently there has been no change in the level of funding for technical criminal investigations.  Nor has it affected the tendency of juries to decide whom they like, who looks dodgy, and to base their decision on that rather than any evidence.

Most of the plots are ripped from the headlines by educated writers with an taste for contradictions and philosophical quandaries.  They’re in league with the media, esp. the part that is barely separated from “Ripley’s Believe It or Not.”  Here are two powerful local cases, one for "CSI Park Ranger," and a second for "CSI Great Falls." The July 5, 2015, GF Tribune features a story about criminal cannibals -- not Bar Jonah but rather two scruffy and deranged young men who killed and a third young man who gave them a ride when they were hitchhiking.  It was July 5, 1970.  

Three years earlier, 1967, was the “Night of the Grizzlies” in Glacier Park, and the descriptions of the two events are very similar: night, sleeping, sultry weather, thunderstorm, and eating the victims.  The two men were supposedly taking LSD and the bears were suspected of having been shot with PCP in tranquilizer guns.  These are vampire stories that need magic.

The bears were killed.  One of the deranged hitchhikers, now 65, is today serving eight years for intent to distribute meth.  He served two years for the dismemberment murder.  The other guy claimed he did it all, in fact had the vic's fingers in his pocket, and was convicted of manslaughter.  He served sixteen years and died of liver cancer in 1994.  (I was going to link to this story, but I’ll just let you do it.)

This is a time in history in America when we have no consensus about grievous harm -- even when the vics or perps are animals.  We find juries guilty of wrong convictions, don’t trust ANY authorities, and are from a hundred cultures and subcultures.  Law and Order is another franchise that operates in the same formulaic terms as the CSI shows, and since our high schools no longer teach civics, they are a needed educational tool, particularly the ones that deal with sex crimes since high schools don’t teach sex education in any thorough way either.  Anyway, both democracy and sex are being sharply questioned and revised.

The investigators are the ones we respect and they show it by being beautiful and enhanced by excellent makeup.  (Even Caruso wears a little dab of mascara.)  Even the Medical Examiners on these shows mostly give up the English model of crusty old seen-everything philosophers.  I love the one on CSI Miami, a beautiful woman who is actually a fine dancer, tenderly holds the vic’s heads and talks to them, calling them “baby.”  The shows rely on “trace,” which at first thought was the name of a character:  “I’ll take this swab to Trace!”

All the CSI’s are in cities with gorgeous helicopter views at dawn and dusk.  Modern crime seems to be a creature of population density, while the problems of the Westerns happen out in open country with harsh weather that destroys “trace.”  More Westerns are about politics and personal relationships.  CSI Cyber was supposed to move in this direction but evidently the producers were getting bored because the reviews were scathing.

The discussions of what’s right in terms of justice at the heart of “Law and Order,” are replaced in the CSI shows by the explanations of evidence and how it is handled, illustrated with pulsing graphics of guts and wires. There are just enough car or boat chases and shootouts to keep the jejune watching and give the rest of us a chance to go check the refrigerator.  Once in a while there is something that’s a bit preposterous: like a tsunami that is deliberately used to enable the theft of gold bars that would be almost impossible to transport otherwise.  But it was mixed with actual post-tsunami and hurricane footage -- very real.  I liked the one about the world's most toxic snake venom (Australian) being infused via DSMO into newly cleaned uniforms.

Lately there’s been a buzz about “dad bods.”  These are at their heart "dad shows" -- “Father Knows Best”.  We miss dads.  The impossible bosses are replaced by heartless FBI agents.  David Caruso is a straight connection to NYPD Blue, but there is no equivalent to the Dennis Frantz politically incorrect wild man unless you count the ditsy Pauley Perrette.  Mark Harmon links to hospital franchise serieses.Gary Sinise was unknown to me and I see that’s because he’s been “doing” astronauts and sci-fi.

I'd be tempted to say these men are fantasies, that men in charge these days are neither compassionate nor just.  But my experience is different.  They do exist -- they’re just not school administrators nor are they likely to be pastors.  Strange considering the contexts.  The most vicious and incompetent bosses I’ve had were female.  I’ve always fled from management roles.

The tentpole men in these CSI stories are top management.  Even Morse was held back by a boss.  They are products of experience.  Mr. Favor from Rawhide was the reflective one who considered all possible solutions -- in those days Rowdy Yates (Clint Eastwood) required a LOT of management.  

“Wishbone” provided wise but salty commentary to Mr. Favor.  There is no such character in the CSI series.  I suspect it’s because there’s no such thing among the writers these days as freedom.  I wonder what Canada is doing in terms of CSI right now.  There is an abundance of characters who comment on “Game of Thrones.”  Those English are so self-reflexive.  More likely the good crime shows are Swedish.