Detective tv programmes and lingering shots of dead naked women

[msrisotto]

So, i'm watching The Fall (only on the second episode but rotten tomatoes gave it 100% so i'm expecting it to be decent!) and am struggling to look at the screen much of the time as the serial killer is washing his latest victim's dead body and posing her on the bed and there is just so much footage of this naked dead woman. Full length, wide shots with only body positioning hiding her vag. Lots of full on boobs and ass on display. This is more graphic than i've seen before but it is very similar in loads of other programmes like CSI - dead woman head shots that show cleavage.

It's almost always women too. Am i missing something? This is sick isn't it?

I've heard of the 'disposable woman' tv trope before, but i'm not sure it quite covers it.

Me too. Am fed up with watching women being tortured and murdered and naked for 'entertainment'.

With The Fall, at least it is in the story. It's still very uncomfortable but it is the killer's "deliberate behaviour" as opposed to incidental lingering as often happens.

If you want to persist with it, I think that's the worst episode for it.

Me too. You don't often get dead naked men, but I don't think there needs to be that high a dead naked body count at all, most of the time.

I'm very uncomfortable anyway with serial killers as entertainment (Midsomer Murders excepted) but I agree I don't see the need for lingering naked dead body shots.

It's definitely got worse in recent years. If you compare for example the original Jonathan Creek to the ones they made a few years ago.

I hate to jump to a conclusion but I wonder if the widespread accepted nature of violent porn is contributing, actually.

I think there might be some truth in that Bertie

There's been a very significant shift since the golden age of crime fiction. Agatha Christie's victims are often old, unpleasant men. They're almost always people who are dislikable in some way - they have a lot of enemies, hence the mystery. I don't think I've ever read a Christie novel with an innocent, sexy young woman as victim (and my oh my have I read a lot of Christie novels!).

I think porn might be a part of it. Or perhaps male crime writers always wanted to rape and mutilate young women in fantasy, but it's only now that they can get away with it because of loosening up of government regulation?

I refused to watch The Fall for this precise reason

Murder porn. Not really my idea of entertainment.

I'm another fan of the golden age style where either bad people get bumped off because they deserve it or people who aren't actually bad but have to be bumped off for reasons relating to lost wills/disclosure of guilty secrets/bigamous marriages/illegitimate children/ and both always in fiendishly inventive methods frequently referencing poems or other literary references. And the plot makes no sense at all by the end.

I haven't read her but isn't Val Macdermid fairly grim?

An awful lot of tv has gone a lot more 'shock factor' than say ten years ago. I do wonder whether gaming is driving it in part? Violence is normalised. Is there not an argument that the majority of RL serial killers are men targeting women, and often in a way that includes sexual violence as well as murder? So that would explain the template of serial killers on tv targeting women although not the trend of increased footage of dead women etc.

What bothers me is the number of these shows that include a strip club. The cinematography is always the same - lingering, long-focus shots of girls strutting around, swinging hair etc. In no other setting is there ever anywhere near the same tendency to shoot the background - it's entirely gratuitous. It's just an excuse to have women wandering around in pants. Pathetic.

Yep, strip clubs presented as just "ordinary" background. Like the chip shop or summat.

No.

It's not "ordinary". Fuck off.

I had to delete the fall too, couldn't bear it.

The Fall is a really interesting one. I found it troubling for exactly those reasons. There's a scene in one episode where consensual sex is cut together with another scene of a woman being attacked. I think the intention is contrast but instead it felt like it was comparing in a horrible, horrible way.
However... there are some fantastically feminist lines about women and victimisation which were really refreshing.
Both the writer and Gillian Anderson identify as feminist and found the criticism troubling, but I think your concerns are justified. The second season was much better than the first though I think.

Crazy two thirds of murder victims are men in the real world therefore it would be realistic if more men were to be shown as victims. The shock value of women being killed and being victims does make one think about agendas behind agendas.

I agree, Vashta. Trying to be spoiler free in case OP keeps watching but the scene in series 2 with Stella's ex was handled very well.

Still, absolutely, Val McDermid is awful for sexualisation of violence.

Her factual book on forensics is quite a good overview and she sometimes has male victims but otherwise...

Her cold case books are a bit more bearable.

Look for the early Val McDermids about Kate Brannigan and Lindsay Gordon, StillLost. I've avoided Her later ones but they were great. Also the Kinsey Millhone series by Sue Grafton.

Yep totally agree I watch a lot of US glossy detective stuff because , well, I like it but I have been saying for years that it's almost like, they aren't allowed to show consensual sex with partial nudity, they aren't allowed to show semi-naked people much apart from there seems to be a get-out clause that it's OK if they're being attacked or are dead Is it to do with some kind of "gratuitous" rules or soemthing?

So it goes:

Woman having cheerful consensual sex = no
Woman being sexually attacked / raped = yes

In one of the early series of CSI they used to linger lovingly on the skin and bottom and breasts of women, wait for it, while they were being hosed down on the mortuary slab. All the time. You'd get these loving shots of fingers stroking over skin with water running down, sensual erotic stylie, and OH LOOK SHE'S DEAD.

You NEVER have these prolonged scenes with lots of nudity and sexual violence , the loving body shots etc, with child or male victims.

It is really rank TBH.

At the moment I am enjoying Criminal Minds but I have renamed it in our household "Women Being Horribly Murdered" because most of the time that is what it is, although in later series they seem to mix it up a bit more. Watched it last night though and said to DH that if you believed US telly the Only people who ever get murdered are attractive (usually) young women and everyone else can relax

I'm not sure why I watch it. There is something to do with fairy tales and horror films and things reflecting our fears isn't there and certainly women and girls are taught to be very afraid of the types of extreme stranger sexually motivated attacks often depicted in these progs.

Things like CSI, Criminal Minds, The Fall (not seen it) what is the demographic of the viewers? Do women watch it more than men? It's be interesting to find out.

Yep x 3. My first exposure to this was Presumed Innocent - a film from decades ago. The plot hinges on a forensic examination of a murdered woman's vagina. I remember thinking "hmm they don't do this to men's bodies in films". Men's bodies are untouched. Hate it and can't watch any crime stuff as a result.

Yy pilchard.

Karen Pirie is the detective in Val McDermid's cold case books.

I don't really understand why people read/watch this kind of really grim murder stuff at all, especially when it's just mediocre and doesn't have any redeeming aesthetic value.

It's like nobody cares that hundreds of thousands of people are being slaughtered and raped in terrible wars that we're not doing anything about but millions of people will watch young blondes be slaughtered and raped on TV. Something is wrong with us.

?Seems like tacit approval of necrophilia :( ?

Not necrophilia so much but it's the ultimate in objectification isn't it. The woman as a person is totally and completely unimportant, all that matters is that she is sexually appealing and her body is on display.