A few weeks ago, the old man who lived across the hall from me died. He lived alone, so no one heard the thud his body made when he landed on the floor. His daily New York Times had been sitting on his door mat for a few hours, when the neighbors started to worry. I came home around 6, only to find two police officers sitting outside his door. When the old man didn't answer the door, the police had broken the lock, and now, they had to wait for someone to collect the body and put green tape paper signs over the locks. I thought about the old man's still, lifeless body and that I didn't even know his first name. But then I got curious. Why are there two police officers sitting outside this door instead of "fighting crime in the streets? Is it technically a crime scene until a cause of death has been determined? Is that why they're sitting outside the apartment?
That same night, I was pretty bored, so i started flipping channels and came across Law and Order. The detectives were at a crime scene where an old woman was found dead in her apartment. The people who were going over the body had gloves on, and a tool bag and were kind of probing her, but the detectives were walking around looking at different parts of the apartment and touching things. I thought to myself- are they going to do that to the man's apartment? Are they going to probe his body and possessions?
I decided to do a little background research on these shows. A lot of the negative focus was on the inaccurate portrayal of data. In real life, testing of bodily fluids can take up to three weeks, depending on the amount of cases a lab needs to process. But in contrast, I discovered that a lot of these shows have a people on staff who act as fact-checkers and verifiers.
To further my knowledge on how these shows portray the dead, I got in contact with Stacey Beneville, who is a first assistant director on the show "Criminal Minds". Our conversation was relatively short, but I learned a lot from our discussion. I started off asking her about the accuracy of the show, I told her that I had read online that a lot of shows have really inaccurate time-lines. Stacey said that "We figure out what all of the real steps might be, but sometimes there's a, b, and c. But if we showed a, b, and c, people would get bored, so to speed things up, we might only show steps a and c". With that said though, a lot of research goes into making things on the show accurate. There is an FBI tech analyst on staff, as well as a researcher, but the research doesn't stop with them. "We do a lot of that here. We make sure we know what the cops look like for each area we film in, we want things to look as realistic as possible". To move our conversation back to care of the dead, I asked her if she thought that the dead bodies they have on the show were over-dramatized. "If anything, it's the opposite". I was confused. "We've seen some real dead bodies, we've been to the New York City morgue". She then went on to talk about the different types of dead bodies there are. If someone on the show has just died, pretty much all they need is some fake blood. But let's say a body was drowned, that takes a little more work, "Sometimes the bodies who have drowned or decayed in real life are actually less graphic than the bodies we have on the show". There are a few reasons behind that; one being that there are certain things that can't be shown on public television, the second being that they simply don't want to gross out the audience.
This project gave me a lot of information to process. I went in thinking that crime shows were completely and totally inaccurate representations. But one thing Stacey said to me really stuck in my mind, "We don't want to contaminate our own crime scene". It showed me that she truly cared about getting accurate information, and while timelines may be sped up, and bodies may be grossed down, not everything is completely and totally off. I will however keep in mind that Criminal Minds is more about the psychology of killing than the actual care of corpses. Overall, I thought that my interview with Stacey was a surprising one, but it didn't really change my perspective on the accuracy of these shows.
This project gave me a lot of information to process. I went in thinking that crime shows were completely and totally inaccurate representations. But one thing Stacey said to me really stuck in my mind, "We don't want to contaminate our own crime scene". It showed me that she truly cared about getting accurate information, and while timelines may be sped up, and bodies may be grossed down, not everything is completely and totally off. I will however keep in mind that Criminal Minds is more about the psychology of killing than the actual care of corpses. Overall, I thought that my interview with Stacey was a surprising one, but it didn't really change my perspective on the accuracy of these shows.
I really enjoyed reading your post. It was both personal and informative. The interview was the most interesting part. I do always wonder how accurate those crime shows are. I noticed that you started questioning if the police should be fighting crime instead of waiting outside the homes of the recently deceased, but you never answered your own question. I would have been very interested to read the information you would have found on the ethics on the job of a police officer.
ReplyDeleteSo the old man across the hall dies. I guess the possibility that foul play may or may not have been the cause of his demise would have made for some great Law and Order episode. But it appears that you discovered that sometimes life and death is just well, kind of boring.
ReplyDeleteInteresting how Stacey from Criminal Minds points out that they sometimes show you a, then c while skipping b even if it makes for an inaccurate timeline because people would get bored. I was surprised to learn that sometimes the real dead body is not as gross as what’s on the show. I guess entertainment is entertainment and holding the interest of the audience is number one. But it sounds like even though there’s a responsibility to advertisers to bring in viewers, there’s at least a desire to get it right. I would have liked to have gotten some insight into the operations of another television show regarding the dead to see how their approach measures up against Criminal Minds.