The CSI Effect

Television, Crime, and Governance

Contributions by Gail Anderson, Kevin Bonnycastle, Michele Byers, Linda Derksen, Nichola Dobson, Basil Glynn, Liz Harvey, Kurt Hohenstein, Jeongmee Kim, Lawrence Kramer, Mythili Rajiva, William Turkel, Sherah VanLaerhoven, Patrick West Edited by Michele Byers, Val Marie Johnson

Publication date:

16 August 2009

Length of book:

310 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

Dimensions:

239x162mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9780739124703

CSI has been heralded in many spheres of public discourse as a televisual revolution, its effects on the public unprecedented. The CSI Effect: Television, Crime, and Governance demonstrates that CSI's appeal cannot be disentangled from either its production as a televisual text or the broader discourses and practices that circulate within our social landscape. This interdisciplinary collection bridges the gap between the study of media, particularly popular culture media, and the study of crime. The contributors consider the points of intersection between these very different realms of scholarship and in so doing foster the development of a new set of theoretical languages in which the mediated spectacle of crime and criminalization can be carefully considered. This timely and groundbreaking volume is bound to intrigue both scholars and CSI enthusiasts alike.

Part 1 CSI as Neoliberalism: An Introduction
Part 2 TheCSI Effect: Producing Justice, Science, and Television Drama
Chapter 3 Chapter 1: TheCSI Effect: "Science" Fiction?
Chapter 4 Chapter 2: The Science and Careers ofCSI
Chapter 5 Chapter 3: CSI andLaw and Order: Dueling Representations of Science and the Law in the Criminal Justice System
Chapter 6 Chapter 4: Generic Difference and Hybridisation in CSI
Part 7 Bodies of Evidence
Chapter 8 Chapter 5: The Body as Abject and Object in CSI
Chapter 9 Chapter 6: The City of Our Times: Space, Identity and the Body in CSI: Miami
Chapter 10 Chapter 7: Crime Scene Investigation as Applied Environmental History
Part 11 Late Modern Subjects
Chapter 12 Chapter 8: Not the Usual Suspects: The Obfuscation of Political Economy and Race in CSI
Chapter 13 Chapter 9: Troping Mr. Johnson: Reading Phallic Mastery and Anxiety on Season One of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Chapter 14 Chapter 10: Forensic Music: Channeling the Dead on Post-9/11 TV

What the 'CSI shot'—the CBS drama's signature microphotographic probe beneath the skin and into the body—did for television forensics, Michele Byers' and Val Marie Johnson's excellent collection does for television studies. This multi-voiced subcutaneous investigation into the world's most popular small screen franchise discovers significant and new political, sociological, and aesthetic evidence concerning why Anthony Zuicker's creation remains at the end of the first decade of the 21st Century anything but a corpse.