CSI Synthesis Essay

Specifically, crime shows have given us, the TV audience as a whole, scripts or an expectation of what will/should happen in a variety of situations. It leads people to think about what is appropriate and what isn’t in terms of how the results of these situations play out. For example, in the CSI franchise, as the plot unfolds in each episode, it takes forensic evidence, such as DNA or fingerprints, to convict the villain. Before the technological breakthroughs made in the fields of biology and forensics, juries relied more on circumstantial evidence, and eyewitness accounts to prove someone was guilty. This is just one example of how crime shows have changed the general representations of what is the “correct” way to solve a crime.

Audience

theory is another great way to analyze my topic. I used the pragmatic theoretical approach to genre here, as I could analyze how television content was taken up by viewers. It is important for me to understand how the violence contained in shows and programs on television helps to shape the audience’s perception of American society as one that is unsafe and violent. It makes it easy to identify entertainment programming as crime related programs through the use of predictable plots contained in the narrative of the story that ultimately lead to a resolution of the conflict for the protagonists. The themes are relatively consistent for this genre of “crime show” with the elements of mystery, suspense, and horror having a predictable subject matter and outcome related to crime in each episode of the story.
It is very easy to use the effect model of passive audiences to show how these ideas are taken by the audience. This theory, though developed by a group of Marxists about Nazi propaganda, still has relevance to this topic. This theory states that the viewer audience is susceptible to the messages that are present in the media. When viewers are constantly exposed to something on television, they begin to normalize this event and begin to think of it as common. Podlas argues that according to this cultivation theory, “if a viewer constantly sees a lot of "x" on television, the viewer will presume that "x" is common. Thus, if a viewer sees a great deal of violence on television, the viewer will presume that society is violent.” Ultimately, this helps to defend my argument that I am trying to make over the course of this paper.
This supports the passive audience idea of a hypodermic syringe influencing the audience. As television shows are consumed by the audience, the beliefs and ideas shown in the show are subconsciously “injected” into their brains. They begin to accept the thoughts and beliefs held in these shows as their own without even knowing that this phenomena is occurring. So as they begin to see the society as violent, they associate how the crimes are solved on television to be the “correct” and “only” ways they can be solved. This leads to other issues in the decision making skills and ideologies of those who watch CSI and other crime shows.
Perhaps one of the best ways to see the results of crime shows on society is the criminal justice system.

Since its debute, Kimberlianne Podlas discusses how “CSI has been attributed with causing a rash of unjustified acquittals, exerting on trials what is called the CSI Effect.” This refers to how CSI influences or impacts a jury’s interpretation of a case. She goes on to say that, “Even though forensic evidence is prevalent on CSI, it is a factor in only a small portion of real-life cases.” Additionally, “many of the techniques shown on CSI do not exist, and this has led “forensic scientists to complain of the near infallibility of forensic science after watching a few episodes of CSI.” The CSI Effect has caused these viewers of the program, who have gone onto become jurors, to expect the presentation of forensic evidence in order to prove their cases, and without it, they are unlikely to reach a guilty verdict. This has led prosecutors to expect the need to present forensic evidence as a prerequisite to conviction. Even with eyewitnesses and other findings to offset this lack of forensic evidence, many unjustified acquittals have resulted from this mindset as jurors do not believe a case can be proven beyond reasonable

doubt.
One important piece of information that the CSI television franchise masks from the television viewing audience is that the Crime Scene Investigation teams are not the law, but rather they work for the law enforcement. For example, after watching the pilot episode of the original CSI, I took note in how the first crime was solved, and how that specific story ended. The main character, Gil Grissom, takes over the case, and uses his forensic knowhow in order to determine the killer. He finds the husband’s toenail clippings and with the help of Catherine Willow’s earlier findings, matches the broken nail in the shoe to those of the husband. He then imagines a scenario in his head, and as almost every CSI episode goes the protagonist is able to picture exactly how the murder or crime scene went down. Grissom comes to the conclusion that the husband had murdered the victim with a gun, and in order to cover his tracks and avoid being caught, he kicks down the front door of the house. This was to make the murder look like it was conducted by someone else breaking into the household, and the death and damage to the victim’s body to be the result of self-defense. However, the show does not show what happens after the team comes to this conclusion. The episode, or the series for that matter, does not show the accused being taken to court. They only show the accused being arrested, and do not show how the evidence ways out in a court of law. In reality, the husband would not be convicted until a jury of his peers finds him to be guilty. The defense would also likely have evidence, possibly forensic, for his side of the story too, adding an extra obstacle that could keep the suspect from going to jail. However, as these parts of a murder are not quite as exciting or flashy as the fabricated forensic portion of the storylines, they are conveniently left out of the storyline.