CSI, a real piece of… art?

CSI – Candid, Sincere, Introspective? Oh Please No.
 

Grissom: Make sure you document these skid marks.
Greg: (Smiles to himself) He said skid marks.

I have just one question – when are we going to run out of young, pretty, blonde actresses to kill, mutilate, and rape on crime shows? 

These shows are cancer for the brain, like sniffing giant sharpies for 45 minutes straight (not counting the 15 minutes of commercials, in which I wouldn’t be surprised if the viewership were in fact sniffing sharpies). 

Yet when I stop and think a bit (I promise just a little bit), a part of me wonders whether I’ve seen anything more honest than CSI.  I go to art school, and, to be blunt, most of the work produced in the art world, in general, drools with insincerity.  If I could describe the current state of art in one word it would be – “regurgitation.”  

CSI then might very well be the best example of a social study into the current state of society.  If I want to know what its really like to take heroin, do I ask a heroin addict or a scientist?  If I am a sociologist in the far future, studying American culture, I think CSI would intrigue me far more than, say, a Stan Douglas art film.  CSI is honest because its goal is to sell not to tell.  Why it sells, in fact the very reason that its goal is to sell, says more about our world than any piece of art ever could. 

 

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