It's not TV, it's HBO article: McCabe/Akass

Ok so we had a lot of articles to read for this week, and my computer wouldn't let me open a couple of them...so today I'm going to start off by talking about the McCabe article for the most part, and briefly touch base on the Sharma article.  The Sharma article was a little confusing---at least for me.  From what I understand, the beginning of this article was a conversation between "thugs" who were critiquing and watching the Wire, and voicing their opionion to whoever was writing this article?  In that case, I don't think they believe that The Wire was a true depiction of what the ghetto is and how it is represented.  One thing that stuck out to me when reading this article was when Sharma says that "Part of the enjoyment of the series is the requirement to sustain an unfaltering drive to grasp the various interweaving plot-lines and social issues being presented" (Sharma 3).  Right away in my mind, I thought immediately to Lost.  I will admit, I haven't gotten a chance to watch The Wire yet for class, but I plan on it in the next day or 2, but Lost has the same characteristics of interweaving plot-lines.  It made me think, if The Wire's producer wanted to make it similar to Lost?  Wanted viewers to be so entangled in the show, that it's something you can just watch lightly and you have to take each episode seriously so it hooks you for more episodes to come.

With that being said about the Sharma article, I want to talk more about the HBO article because I find it very interesting on how they keep talking up so much when it comes to how great HBO is compared to regular tv shows.  I will say this, HBO has made phenomenal shows, and miniseries, that I have been fortunate to watch----anytime I go home to my parents house in Indy, because my poor college ass can't afford to pay for the premium channels, like HBO and Showtime.  Which is weird because in the article, they were talking about how HBO has become so popular to watch if you're a college student...well, every college student that I know does not have a subscription service to watch shows on them.  I think that HBO will lose the abililty to have to charge people in order to use their channel and watch programs because there are 1. so many ways to get around watching these shows online for free, and 2. network/cable television is really stepping it up with their shows and dramas that they have tough competition.  The only time I ever was so anxious to want HBO subscribed to my house here at IU, was so that I can watch the miniseries "The Pacific" last year.  I love movies and anything on WWII so I was really bummed I couldn't watch it.  Luckily, my parents have U-Verse in Indy so they were able to tape the series for me for when I went home on weekends/breaks.  Most shows now that were once on HBO are now on regular network stations.  For example, I watch Curb Your Enthusiasm and Sex and the City all the time, but never did I once watch it when they played on HBO.  HBO isn't a bad thing to have, because I will agree with McCabe when he stated at the very end of the article that "It is still HBO, but television has caught up" (McCabe 92).  I completely agree, and I also agree with him when he said that HBO set the bar for network shows to have better programming and drama series. 

S. Cohan article- CH.4&5

So we read the first couple chapters of the Cohan article a few classes ago, and now we're back into the fourth and fifth chapter.  In this article, Cohan talks about CSI and how stylized they made the series.  He then goes on to tell us about two key points of making CSI the way that it is.  In the very beginning of the article Cohan points out to us the two styles which happen to be 

"the trademark 'CSI shots', which illustrate cutting edge forensic technology at work, display trace evidence in microscopic close-ups or probe the interior of a victims body; and second, the highly selective use of colour separations that render a darker but also more unrealistic look that usual for TV crime shows" (50).

The majority of this article focuses on the colour, I feel like, in each episode of the series.  I must admit, watching them just for fun on TV randomly, and then having to watch them for class, I never really payed that close of attention to the colors and how they are used in each series.  I will so what I did notice, color wise, was that they always have a blue hue of color in the labs.  Cohan talks about the blue color as being a staple color in the show, and how different colors may change for each season or show, but the blue hue never changes in the lab.  Now that I know the shows producers and writers focus so much on how the color looks for the visual aspect, I'm going to pay a lot more attention to what they are talking about. 

They also talk a lot about the style being the biggest part of how they wanted to series to run with their famous "CSI shots".  We may know these shots as the famous flashbacks in the scenes where they show us how the crime started and got to the point it did, or you see the bullet going right through a persons flesh when they recreate how the crime scene took place--- all characteristics that set it apart from other crime drama series.  Knowing now that the shows writers wanted everything in the series to be so stylized and focused so much on the shots and the color, rather so much than the storyline, I take a deeper appreciation for how this show has been able to do so well and capture so much attention from viewers.

Turnbull, Hohenstein Articles

OK, so after reading these articles, I'm starting to realize that a lot of people in America just really aren't that smart.  If you think that shows like CSI and Law and Order are really how the criminal justice system works, you've been watching to many TV shows like that, and not enough shows...for example, the news.  Or better yet, just living your life and observing things without relying on television shows to tell you how the world works.  All of this is just purely entertainment.  I get it that they try to make shows like this close to how they do it in real life..but people need to keep in mind, that each crime usually takes longer than 45 minutes to an hour to figure out what really happened.  Seriously guys, what is wrong with you?

Take the Turnbull article, for instance.  They started off in the article by showing a response from a viewer on wikipedia on how CSI functions.  The viewer was upset and didn't like the way that CSI viewed their episodes because it was too fast paced and things kept changing.  So then Turnbull started comparing CSI to the crime show Dragnet back in the 50's and 60's.  He even says that "generalizing about a TV series may hold inherent problems, since the object of study can be such an amorphous creature, changing direction, style and mood just when you think you got a grip on it" (21).  I think honestly, that is what makes shows like CSI work.  It reminded me how similar CSI and Lost are. We just watched the CSI episode for class with Justin Beiber in it.  You think that the episode is resolved and that it's over with, but at the end of the show, you see another bomb take place, and it completely throws the audience off guard which is what works for that show.  It's keeps the audience interested.  Also, with Lost, you never have one thing remain the same in the episodes.  Each episode moves fast paced, and something is always changing around, especially the story line.  But Lost proves that in doing so, it can become one of the most watched TV series out there on television. 

Now let's take a look at the Hohenstein article.  This article is what really kills me about people not believing what is just for television entertainment and what is real.  Hohenstein compares the show Law and Order and CSI.  Both shows are Crime series, except Law and Order focus their attention more in the court room, and CSI focuses more on forensic science.  Both shows, shows some realistic qualities, but not much.  And now people in America believe that the judicial system in America is terrible, and most people don't trust the system.  Hohenstein argues that shows like CSI "perceived to have created unrealistic perceptions that forensic science can replace the work of lawyers, judges, and juries" (Hohenstein 63).  OF COURSE IT'S UNREALISTIC PEOPLE!--- you can' figure out a murder in an hour, like they do in these shows!  It's made to entertain people!  People just need to learn that you watch drama TV series like that for entertainment purposes only, don't go exactly by what they're saying to determine how laws need to work in America, because if you do that, we would have one messed up judicial system.

Byers Article, Dobson Article---CSI

So tonight I read the final two article of the week for class.  Both were about CSI--- the Byers article was really hard to read, probably because it was probably the first article that we've read that I have found boring, unfortunately.  In this article. Byers talks about CSI as being neoliberal... well, what the hell does that even mean exactly?  I mean, when I see that they say that in the article, it makes me think of the CSI effect that was talked about in our earlier article on CSI.  I got a sense of the author feeling like people love to watch CSI because it was only starting season two around the time that 9/11 happened.  They also talked about in the article about how the series is a cliche with 9/11... the audience likes the "real-ness" of watching CSI figure everything out and solve the mysteries while the audience doesn't have to deal with the real situations going on in our country?  I don't know, I feel like CSI is just like any other crime scene drama... the only thing that is different about it is their special affects vs. other shows' special affects, or lack there-of.  Which is a good time to talk about the better of the two articles, in my opinion. 

In the Dobson article, the author compares CSI and other crime scene drama, and argues on whether or not the series is considered just a generic crime scene drama.  I would have to say that CSI is just like any other crime scene show that I know of, just with better special affects.  To be honest, I don't really watch or have seen a lot of CSI, but I really enjoy watching Criminal Minds, which also happens to air on CBS.  Criminal Minds and CSI to be are both really similar.  I feel like in todays world, many crime scene drama focus more on the crime solving and science behind it, more than the actual criminal justice system.  If you compare Criminal Minds and CSI, they both focus more on the crime scene.  With CSI, its more science based on finding evidence and putting all the pieces together.  It's pretty much the same thing with Criminal Minds, expect they tend to view it more psychologically.  Either way, both shows are paying more attention to the clues and putting pieces together to solve the mystery more so than anything else.  Even in Dobsons article, the author says that "The gathering of clues and examination of evidence provides the basis of most of the CSI narrative" (Dobson 82).  The right there tells you that its just like any other crime scene drama.  Maybe back in the day, it was more about the criminal justice system, but people like this type of drama better, so that is what the networks have started opening up too. 

Cohan Article-About CSI

Now that we've ventured away from talking about Lost for now, I feel sad that I'll be blogging about another show now.  I have to say I never thought I would be hooked on watching Lost, but it got me.  I'm still watching the seasons on Hulu and as of right now I'm almost finished with season 2...so far so good! :) But now it's time to turn our direction to our next case study, which is the very famous show on CBS...CSI!  The one thing about this show that I like, is the mystery to it all for most of the hour, until the crime gets resolved 15 minutes before the program ends.  What really bugs me about this shows, and other shows like this is that once I catch the first 5 minutes of what happens in the murder, I automatically have to sit and watch the other 55 minutes of it just because I need to know what happens at the end, and how they solved the mystery.  The Cohan article that we had to read for class has pretty much 3 distinct parts to it: the introduction, chapter 1 "It's all about the evidence" and Chaper 2 "The CSI Effect". 

The introduction in this article basically gives you a little background history of how CSI came to be on television.  It first aired in October of 2000 on CBS Friday nights, and to be honest, not many people thought it was going to be a hit television series, because their was a director who was a no-name from Las Vegas, and they didn't have well known actors playing the main characters in the series.  However, it became so big for their first season, by the second season they moved it to Thursday night to compete with NBC's popular Thursday night prime time TV and succeeded to be popular.  In the introduction, Cohan talks about the type of drama that CSI is by stating that

"CSI resists the trends in serialised drama and strong continuing character arcs that help to stimulate appointment television" (4).

In the first chapter, "It's all about the evidence" Cohan goes into explaining how well the shows works, by introducing them to the two main characters who are known as Gil Grissom, and Catherine Willows.  I will say that there are more than one version of CSI.  They have the original series, which is set in Las Vegas, and then they have knockoffs in Miami, and New York.  I personally like the New York series better, just because I don't feel like the characters in the New York program are as cheesy with the puns and jokes as the other ones of the Las Vegas and Miami.  This program gets you with the teaser in the begginning of each episode.  The way that they make everything with the murder so dramatic, it clinches you to want to keep watching.  What Lost does in their drama series is to get you with a teaser and help clinch you at the end of every episode to continue watching.  CSI, however, teases you right in the beginning to keep watching the rest of the episode.  I feel like this kind of drama series works so well because its more about how these crime scenes are solved, by technique in labs, rather than good cop, bad cop running around chasing criminals down. 

In the final chapter of the article, "The CSI Effect," Cohan talks about how shows like CSI are really affecting the way that people view crimes.  They are mixing reality with television.  In Chapter 2, Cohan says that

"The CSI Effect has resulted in real life juries unrealistically expecting definitive DNA and similar trace evidence at every trial" (25) and that there are more college courses about CSI type stuff being taught at different universities around the US (24). 

People should be aware that this isn't exactly how scientists figure out how a murder is solved.  What the writers are doing for this show is abandoning realism for the sake of good television (24).  If people don't seem to get that through their head, than I think that the writers have done a very good job at getting people to love watching this show, because they make it seem so realistic.  I like these shows not only for the realism to it, but because I just love crimes shows that solves mysteries, and CSI makes sure to hook you with how they show their story.