Postmodern Criminology and CSI
Fact and Fiction
1. What are postmodern criminologists interested in examining?
2. Postmodernists tend to view ‘audiences’ as ‘active and creative meaning makers’; what do they mean by this?
3. Define hyperreality
4. Why are postmodernists interested in the blurriness of the distinction between information and entertainment?
5. Can you identify any media products that explicitly blur fact and fiction?
6. Is crime fiction a reflection of reality?
7. In what way might fiction help to shape reality?
8. How does crime fiction affect the way the audience views crime?
9. How does crime fiction affect the way the audience experiences crime?
10. How does crime fiction affect criminal behavior?
11. How might crime fiction affect how a labeled criminal views their crime and their self?
12. How might criminal justice practitioners, criminals, jurors, and so on become entangled in crime fiction or ‘reality’ TV show narratives?
13. Consider the fictional show, CSI: how does it affect your perception of crime detection? Do you think that it has had an impact of ‘reality’? Is so, how?
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3. Define hyperreality
ReplyDeleteHyperreality is the inability of a conscious mind to differentiate between fact and fiction. Hyperreality has to do with the media and how audiences believe everything they see is fact.
5. Can you identify any media products that explicitly blur fact and fiction?
Crime stories almost always blur fact and fiction. For example, look at the show "Law & Order." It is supposed to have some factual information but the factual things are always blown out of proportion. Almost all the crimes showed on Law & Order are sexual related incidents, which is not the case in the real world.
6. Is crime fiction a reflection of reality?
I think that crime fiction is an exaggeration of reality. It targets certain crimes that occurred once. It also can take a crime and turn it into a more complex story.
8. How does crime fiction affect the way the audience views crime?
Crime fiction makes audiences view crime as a huge ordeal that involves forensics and murder mysteries. Audiences think that all crimes are extremely dramatized. If you constantly watch Law & Order, you will think that all crimes occur like the ones on tv.
10. How does crime fiction affect criminal behavior?
Crime fiction can shape criminal behavior. Criminals can see things on certain crime fiction shows and try to act out that crime. It has been seen in some situations that robbers plan a robbery based on something they saw on a crime fiction or even on the news. Crime fictions greatly impact criminal behaviors.
12. How might criminal justice practitioners, criminals, jurors, and so on become entangled in crime fiction or ‘reality’ TV show narratives?
These people can be victims of the CSI effect, which states that people assume that all crimes will have a lot of evidence, usually forensics. On tv, there are always crimes that involve complicated forensics but this is not the case in the real world. People get caught up in that and assume that what they see on tv is what really happens in the court room.
1. They are interested in studying the human subject, human relationships, multiculturalism, and feminism.
ReplyDelete2. Audiences become active individuals who develop their own interpretation and meaning of what they see on TV shows or on the news.
3. Hyperreality is the inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from fantasy. There is no clear indication from where the former stops and the latter begins.
4. They are interested in the blurriness because they feel that this is what has the greatest effect on the audience and the behaviors that individuals develop. The blurriness is what helps shape an individual’s opinion of what they saw on TV or on the news.
5. I would say a majority of crime shows that are currently on TV constantly blur fact with fiction to make the show more interesting. This in turn makes the individual feel that these events happening in the crime shows could happen to them or what occurs in real life.
6. I feel that crime fiction such as CSI make it seem like crimes can be easily solved and all the pieces come together easily. In reality many crimes do not become solved quickly. There are many crime cases to this day that have not been solved yet.
7. I feel that fiction gives the background to reality. It helps to gain an understanding of what is capable of happening and what is not. I feel that in order for fiction to help shape reality an individual would have to first be able to distinguish between the two vs. hyperreality.
8. I feel that it can scare the audience. I feel that crime reality can make an individual paranoid and be constantly worried that a crime on TV that they saw could happen to them.
9. Crime fiction can make the audience feel that crimes can easily be solved and be solved in a few days. It puts the audience in the shows of the criminologist and trying to piece the clues together to solve a crime.
10. Crime fiction can excite criminal behavior. Crime fiction demonstrates crimes that could work and ones that are not successful and could result in a high likelihood of the individual to get caught. This in turn could result in individuals to reenact crimes and cause an increase in criminal behavior amongst individuals.
11. I feel that a labeled criminal who saw a criminal act on a TV show that they performed would be able to pick out the reality and fiction from the crime. I feel that the labeled criminal would start to look down upon himself once seeing how criminologists are able to put together the pieces of a crime.
12. By watching fiction TV shows criminals are given ideas about what might work for a crime and what type of crime would set them up for failure. For jurors I feel that these fiction shows would influence their ideas on how to persecute criminals.
13. Overall, I feel that CSI shows what a typical investigation might involve in a criminal case. I feel that some things in the show are far-fetched such as solving a crime in such a short amount of time or having employees listening to loud music while performing DNA sampling, etc.
1. It focuses on the identity of the human subject, multiculturalism, feminism, and human relationships to deal with the concepts of "difference" and "otherness" without essentialism or reductionism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernist_school)
ReplyDelete2. I think that they mean that people actively interpret the media. That each person individually interprets the meanings of media portrayal.
3. Hyperreality characterizes the inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from fantasy. It is a means to characterize the way consciousness defines what is actually "real" in a world where a multitude of media can radically shape and filter the original event.
4. They are most interested in the blurriness of the distinction between information and entertainment because they believe that everybody acts to interpret their own meanings from the media. So some people can be confused on what is being portrayed as information but is really entertainment. So they like to see how this blurry line effects different people and creates new panics.
5. I think that CSI, Law and Order, any of those crime fiction shows blur the line; as well as Cops and World's Dumbest Criminals.
6. I think that crime fiction is portrayed to be a reflection of reality. But in fact it is a dramatization of reality.
7. I think fiction helps to shape reality because it tells people what may happen. Then people can interpret this information how they want to, reacting to it in all different ways, shaping their own realities based off the fictions.
8. Crime fiction affects the way the audience views crime. It allows the imagination to soar and think that what they are showing could actually happen. The crime fiction shows the crimes as realistic as possible allowing for various interpretations and views to be formed.
9. Crime fiction also affects the way the audience experiences crime. Once they have their interpretation and view of the crime fiction they experience crime differently. Many think that the crimes they see are prevalent and become scared of becoming victims of those crimes and not worrying about crimes that are actually likely to effect them.
10. I think the crime fiction enhances criminal behavior. The criminals may take ideas from these shows and see if they can not get caught. It may intrigue criminals to try new things which could be dangerous for them and the victims. I think they may fall under believing the false ideas of persecution of criminals that are shown on TV.
11. I think that if labeled criminals see the crimes they commit on TV they would feel a sense of accomplishment. I think that they would feel like what they did was big enough to make TV, doesn't matter that they got caught. Also I think that criminals can learn from the TV about the crimes that have more of a chance to be caught.
12. Criminal justice practitioners, criminals,and jurors become entangled in crime fiction or reality TV show narratives. Criminal practitioners get entangled into believing the crimes on these shows are the ones that need to be prevented, they are the ones that are rising and causing chaos. Criminals learn from and get ideas from these shows. Jurors begin to believe that how the court process is on these shows is how it should be, with all the scientific evidence and sure win cases, but that's not how it usually is with real cases.
13. CSI used to impact my perception of crime detection because I used to think that they really did all of that for every case. I used to think that to be convicted you would need all of that evidence, because without it you don't have a case. I think that it has a little bit of an impact on reality. I think people follow the process of these types of detections. You even hear people say they want to go to school to be like a CSI guy.
1. Postmodern crimiologists focus on aspects of human social life. This includes reltaionships, concepts like feminist theory, and diversity.
ReplyDelete2. People develop their own meanings from ideas presented by the television shows they watch.
3. The inability for a person 's consciousness to distinguish reality from fantasy.
4. The bluriness in this distinction is a part of people creating their own meanings from the media they observe. If one can understand this bluriness they can better understand why people develop certain meanings.
5. An example from the CSI episode we watched in class was when Grissom claims "we will have the finger prints matched by lunchtime." This process that can take weeks is done much quicker on tv.
6. It is an imintation of reality and acts like what think reality may be.
7. By affecting the people's meanings, media influences decisions they make and therefore affects reality.
8. The audience can view crime in many ways. Crime fiction can make people paranoid, fearing that crime happens everywhere. They can also trivialize crime make it "no big deal."
9. The audience expects justice when they experience crime. Most crime fiction shows find the criminal but in real life, the criminal is not always caught.
10. Crime fiction does not only foster new ideas for crime, it can inspire new criminals. People can try to "copy-cat" the crimes they see on tv.
11. Crime fiction could give criminals a sense of entitlement. They complex, sometimes genius criminals describe in crime fiction act as compliments to the criminal label.
13. CSI has affected me in a different way. I am always questioning if the tests they run can be afforded in most labs in the United States. They become so deeply involved in every case that it makes me think of all the cases that do not receive the same vigorous focus.
1. they are interested in studying human relationships and social life, multiculturalism, diversity, feminism, etc.
ReplyDelete2. i think this means that the audience creates their own interpretation of what they are seeing in the media daily.
3. hyperreality is the inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from fantasy.
4. they are interested in the blurriness between information and entertainment because every person has their own personal interpretation of the media images that they are shown. by examining this blurriness, they can get a better idea of how and why certain people develop particular meanings of the media.
5. i think that all of the crime shows on television (CSI, Law and Order, NCIS, etc) blur the line between fact and fiction. the technology, information and amount of time that the characters have and utilize to help them solve their crimes is very unrealistic.
6. crime fiction is an over-exaggeration of reality. all the television shows make it seem like crime cases are very cut and dry and always solved by lunch. these shows also show rare crimes, such as stranger crime, as a common occurrence.
7. fiction may help shape reality by showing the audience scenarios that COULD happen. by seeing these scenarios the audience can make interpretations of reality seen on the news, etc.
8. crime fiction affects the way the audience views crime by scaring them. if someone watches these shows, they may become scared of reality and fear that something like what happened on these fictional shows can happen at anytime to them.
9. crime fiction affects the way that the audience experiences crime by giving them false pretenses. if someone experiences a crime similar to something they have seen on television, they expect the same kind of results in the same amount of time. in reality, this is rarely the case.
10. crime fiction affects criminal behavior by making crime more prominent. i feel like all of these fictional television shows that are committed to stopping crime only give ideas to people in reality. there are actually episodes of these shows, such as CSI, that are dedicated to people who have seen or heard about a criminal act somewhere else and wanted to do it themselves.
11. crime fiction can affect the way a criminal sees their crime and themselves in a few different ways. i think that they will see themselves as 'celebrities' and think that they did something worth being represented in a television show. this may also lead to an inflated sense of self and self-accomplishment.
12. criminal justice practioners, jurors and criminals become entangled in crime fiction by the CSI effect. everyone involved in a case feels that things should be cut and dry and that there should be a lot of forensic evidence and background information on the case. every case should be able to be solved just as it is in crime fiction.
13. a television show, such as CSI, does effect my perception of crime detection. before this class, i was confident in our criminal justice system and how we handle crime. i feel like television shows like CSI reinforce this feeling of security that i felt because of our criminal justice system. now that i have experienced this class, I question what I see in all of this shows because most of it is a huge dramatization of reality.