posted
I heard about the CSI effect the other day. If you haven't heard about it, basically it is the problem some attorneys think CSI causes in trials by jury. They claim that since everyone sees all of the fancy gadgets and ways to collect data, it causes jurors to question the way evidence was collected and processed.
I know we don't write a lot of mysteries around here, but wanted to ask the question anyway.
Do you think the CSI effect will make readers expect more from mystery writers? Will they expect detective characters to use a bunch of gadgets?
Could it help us because the population knows the lingo?
Is it the one where people watch CSI and get idiotic notions about what forensic science can and can't accomplish, or the one where they laugh until internal injuries occur?
posted
I have never watched CSI. But this could be closely linked to the fact that I neither read nor write mysteries. I wish I could say there is nothing wrong with people who do. But it is alien -at best- to my mind. It seems a rather prudish approach to death and violence.
How do I know if I don't read/watch them? I catch a Perry Mason here and there. Every now and then Angelina Jolie or someone similarly compelling is in a mystery and my husband rents it.
[This message has been edited by franc li (edited June 04, 2005).]
posted
I understand where you're coming from. I'm a mystery lover, but I enjoy the old-fashioned "logical deducement" variety. I'd rather read through Poirot's reasoning than watch (or read about, I'm sure) some guy picking up some hairs and looking through a magnifying glass.
I tend to think that CSI-type investigation lends itself more to the visual medium of television-- and that good ole' brain problem solving works better on the written page.
JMHO, ~LL
[This message has been edited by Lullaby Lady (edited June 04, 2005).]
posted
Apologies to any mystery writers here. I mean, Card is always critiquing mysteries. He has also proclaimed a distressing number of books that I have not read necessary to have an understanding of this, that or the other thing that I apparently don't understand. So you can safely assume that I don't know what I'm talking about.
But by prudish, I meant in the way that some cultures seem very proper but are secretly perverted. I'll name Victorian England since I'm hopeful that no one here identifies themselves as part of that culture.
posted
I think it would depend on the time period your book is based on.
If it's present day, you might want to keep up to date with all the latest advances into crime investigation technology. While reading your book, someone might think, "Why doesn't the detective just use a *insert latest gadget here*?".
If you don't want to put up with that, your novel could take place at an earlier time, or in the future, and you could make up your own gadgets. "Hey Eddy! The new Blood-Discombobulator-3000 just came in!".
posted
In defense of the mystery genre, there is as wide a range of mysteries as anything else. They range from "cozies" which are the kind you read with bunny slippers by the fire, curled up in your blanket. If anything is "prudish" it is these...the ones that look at murder but don't really look at murder. They wouldn't want to get their hands dirty.
On the other extreme, there are hard-core blood and guts style mysteries that hold nothing back. These can even treat murder as it really is (at least if they are well done). They are in no way prudish. They know what their material is and they write about it like erotic romance novels.
I've never heard of the CSI efffect but I do think it haunts us a bit. Especially when it comes ot modern-day mysteries, people do expect the detective to be able to use forensic science to figure things out. So the mystery writer must understand forensic science and its limitations and come up with plausible reasons why, in this case, it's leading the investigator in the wrong direction. (At least in a satisfying novel.) Personally, I find forensic science a bit dry, though. It takes all the fun out of a mystery.
I also think the expectations are far too high. I see reports of murders on TV all the time that aren't combed over for traces of DNA evidence. I have a feeling that this usually happens when rich or otherwise high-profile people are killed. Furthermore, I don't think forensic science is as good as people think from watching CSI.
But you're right, when murders are set now people expect results from a single hair found on the floor. It almost makes it easier to set mysteries in olden days.
quote: I see reports of murders on TV all the time that aren't combed over for traces of DNA evidence. I have a feeling that this usually happens when rich or otherwise high-profile people are killed.
Actually, this is not true. It's now a standard forensic tool. Even before DNA sequencing became a standard forensic tool, combing a scene for traces of the murderer's blood/hair/semen/etc was standard, for the past few decades at any rate.
The reason that you don't see it on the news is because it is just that standard, like fingerprints. When was the last time you saw a news report where they mentioned that the investigators were combing the scene for fingerprints? Probably not in your lifetime (or mine, I'm not that old). Also, police release information to the media that they think is going to be useful in helping generate tips, composite sketches, descriptions of suspicious vehicles, sometimes a "profile" of the probable killer (all these can be entirely mistaken, of course). It would be stretching the imagination to suggest that releasing fingerprints to the media could generate a tip (what, people are going to start visually checking the fingerprints of everyone they meet?) but it would be basically impossible for the public to use a DNA sequence. Besides, it makes more sense to save the evidence (DNA testing uses tiny amounts of material, but it is fundamentally a destructive test) for when they have a high probability suspect to test it against.
You'd only hear about DNA evidence in real cases when several conditions obtain. First, there has to be a trial, where the defendent is basically claiming innocence. Second, the trial has to be a media circus involving a famous person or a notorious case. Third, there must be DNA evidence that strongly implicates the suspect.
You'll notice that the second condition mostly does limit times you'll hear about DNA evidence to the trials of rich defendents and high profile cases (wealthy defendents tend to have wealthy victims, the same tends to be true of high profile cases generally). That doesn't mean that DNA evidence isn't used in other cases, you simply don't hear about it that often (you almost never hear about cases where DNA evidence exonerates the accused, though this actually happens more often than cases where it convicts anyone).
Also, the intersection of the first and third conditions are pretty rare in reality. Suspects who face really solid evidence tend to try and find alternatives to a trial, and DA's typically do plea-bargain if the case isn't fairly high profile. The line "We've got the attacker's blood under the victim's fingernails; if we test it, will it be yours?" may be cheesy, but the police sometimes do say that (or words to the same effect) to a suspect and get a confession deal without having to go to trial. The sad truth is that a murderer doesn't face much in the way of punishment in most cases. Our system functionally treats claiming innocence as a more serious crime (even in some cases where it is apparent that this claim is true).
I really got to thinking about this when we were talking about hiding information from the reader. We were discussing ways to misdirect the reader with information, and it occurred to me that it will get harder and harder to misdirect the reader, while still allowing the detective character to look intelligent. Odds are that the average reader also watches CSI, so they will probably get frustrated with that sort of technique. Will they think the character a poor detective if they don't immediately see the clues?
I agree with Lullaby Lady that problem solving is still going to be intriguing to them, but will they be satisfied with that alone? We will need to create a reason why forensic science was not available (time period) or used. Or, maybe explain that they were inconclusive.
I guess another way to write a mystery is to make a common person the investigator.
posted
To clarify my initial post, the "CSI effect" doesn't exist to any meaningful degree in an intelligent audience. It's a problem for real life prosecuters because the whole point of jury selection is to weed out anyone that doesn't seem pretty gullible, so juries are always packed with the sort of people who get all their "critical thinking" skills by watching TV.
quote:"When I tell someone what I do, I never have to explain it now," he says. "They know what a crime-scene (technician) does. At least, they think they do."
Doesn't that just say it all?
As an SF/Fantasy writer, I've never worried about the "StarTrek effect" or the "Xena: Warrior Princess effect". Mystery writers don't need to worry about the "CSI effect". If you're making real forensic science errors, intelligent readers will catch you anyway. If you're not, who cares about the thoughts of drooling slobs who think CSI is representative of the realities of forensic science?
posted
NewsBys: I've heard about this a lot the past couple of years (pretty much since CSI's been on)... I actually think that this may be one of the reasons CourtTV thought to have a show about real CSI, so that the effect might be reduced a bit...
Do I think that it effects what people expect from mysteries? I'd say that depends on your reader... I'm personally smart enough to know how inaccurate the show CSI is, but not everyone is (obviously, otherwise the effect wouldn't exist)... but you have to realize, that this should just be called, the TV effect, or the Couch Potato effect... these people really are just forgetting the difference between reality and fiction... they're the type of people that actually only get their "knowledge" from fiction sources (commonly TV or movies), and that makes their *real* knowledge very limited. So the real question being whether or not you should worry about it... I'd say no… because if you had to worry about that effecting your audience, then you should worry about humanity itself... I don't think the world is quite to that scale of dumbing down yet... or at least, I hope it's not...
quote:Do you think the CSI effect will make readers expect more from mystery writers? Will they expect detective characters to use a bunch of gadgets?
Could it help us because the population knows the lingo?
Forensic detective stories have been popular for more than a century and CSI is more a product of them than it is likely to have an effect on the way writers write, imo. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle practically invented forensic mysteries (invented might be the wrong term, perhaps popularized would be the better). It is probably due mostly to him that forensics in fiction - written or visual - is so popular even today.
CSI is just the lastest and greatest incarnation. The popularity of shows like CSI and the J.A.G. spin-off, NCIS, probably means that there is a bandwagon that writers could jump on and automatically find a market regardless of overall writing quality.
quote:because the whole point of jury selection is to weed out anyone that doesn't seem pretty gullible...
Is THAT the point? I wouldn't have guessed it after the Oliver North trial (oh so many years ago) when they selected one juror who had never heard of Oliver North, and at the time, had also never heard of Ronald Reagan who was then the current President of the United States.
quote:I guess another way to write a mystery is to make a common person the investigator.
Another case of "write what you know." I'd guess that is why there are so many mysteries with sleuths who are not police or forensic investigators. Even private eyes don't have access to as much data.
[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited June 07, 2005).]
posted
Also, public servants don't...they don't follow a case all the way through in the same way as a private detective, who probably only is involved with one big case at any given time (if ever). It's just a job, lots of largely unconnected tasks that you do in a day.
Posts: 8322 | Registered: Aug 1999
|
posted
Kids still play "ring around the rosie". It's new to them, after all.
The astonishing thing is that my brother still points out no parking signs with delight and comments on how important it is that we not pee there.
And I'm not talking about a younger brother here (though that one...stood on his head, waved his legs about in a spasmodic fashion, and was apparently under the impression that because this was difficult, it was therefore also impressive--you probably had to be there to appreciate this one).
Printer-friendly view of this topic
