Out Side News Media-Unforgettable episode #2

The show is about a young lady named Carrie Wells who is a detective for the NY police station.  She has a rare condition that enables her to remember just about everything.  She pretty much has a photographic memory to where she can remember everything at a crime scene and in daily living.  This episode was about how a young boy saw his parents get murder and has a hard time talking about it.  The show has an emotional hook to where Carrie comforts the little boy and plays video games with him so he will end up feeling safe around her. The show also has a twist at the end where they thought  they had the killer, the kids uncle but then finds out it was the doctor who was a close friend to the family.  The boy saw the doctors plane on TV and freaked out and that's when they knew it wasn't his uncle. She is seen as the hero in the story line. The show portrays that the police would never solve any cases without her and her special ability. 

CSI episode and CSI and Moral Authority: The Police and science

The CSI episode was a very interesting show. I don't normally watch CSI because there are just too many of them and it would take me years to catch up.  The show was very dramatic which  I liked also, at the same time it was very weird with the whole octopus involvement.  I also liked how there was a turning point at the end which makes the audience more on their toes because they don't know what to expect next.   In CSI shows they always seem to have top of the line technology and always neat/clean to where there is no way they could lose evidence nor ever be wrong.  They also act like they have no budget to where they could always afford to work on 2 cases at once with no limitations. My least favorite part in the show was when they were disecting the dead body up close trying to gross out viewers like me.

The article talked about how CSI shows have emotional hooks, trying to draw us in and make us have feelings towards whatever is happening. Like in the CSI show we watched in class, an emotional hook would be when the guy was playing with the invisible ball to comfort the little boy and make him more abundance to telling what he saw at the train station. They also mentions that CSI science is always right and we need to trust in it. Also CSI tries to deliver that science is very complicated by the guys wearing white coats and them using words we have heard before. The shows also try to represent that work is a very happy place and you always want to be there because it is so spotless and organized. Overall CSI is so unrealistic with their science never being wrong and they don't need the police involvement to solve any case because they are all smart and can always recreate any crime scene easily. CSI projects the image that all cases are solvable by highly technical science but really so many problems are intractable.

Dirty Harry and Rafter: Chapter 4

Dirty Harry was another awesome movie to watch. Harry is known as a risk taker and also as a corrupt police officer who thinks he is never wrong and can do whatever he wants. The movie portrays him as invincible, like in the scene where he is eating a hot dog and just runs out in the street with no protection and guys are shooting at him and he doesn't get shot once and kills everyone with perfect aim and never misses. The movie also shows you that Harry is better than any cop in their field and he is in charge and never follows rules because he has his own. I also liked the scene where he gives up his badge at the end. This shows me that he doesn't need to deal with other peoples shit and that he doesn't need to be a police officer to show people he can still be a hero in his own mind. Also, thought the movie was very sexist in many ways.
Rafter:
Dirty Harry set the stage for all the cop films after that movie was released. Clint Eastwood is know for does western movies and was still able to put a western feel in Dirty Harry with scenes on who can draw their guns faster, which was always Harry of course.

Kasinsky Reading

My favorite part of the reading was "The Stuart Murder" case. When driving home from a birthing class his wife ends up being shot and killed. The husband tells police that she was shot by a unknown African American man who fled the scene. He gave the police a description of the man and the Police found a black man that fit his description and took him to jail. The detectives on the case were portrayed in the media as heroes. 3 months later Mr. Stuart was found dead in his home with a note saying he was the one who shot his wife. This just shows you how police aren't accurate in taking the right measurement in doing their job and how they are so quick at pointing their fingers at innocent people just to close a case. This also shows us that the media is willing to publish information that isn't true and backfires back in their face later on. But this also shows us how the media has to support the cops and their finding and how they couldn't work independently without the cops. They both have similar ways to project themselves.

Rafter: Chapter 2

I really enjoyed reading chapter 2. It was filled with a lot of information explaining if movies can cause someone to commit crimes and he also gave explanations to why someone might commit crimes with different criminological theories.  When Rafter mentions that many crime films show little interest in the causes of law breaking, I found it very true.  One movie that I've seen recently did show why she committed crimes. In Columbiana the reason why she committed crimes was because of abnormal psychology theory.  Her parents were killed right in front of her at a very young age. This traumatized her and made her grow up as an "assassin" getting revenge on all the people who were involved with her family's death. I think the best theories used today in explaining crime would have to be environmental theory and rational choice theory because there are many people in our society who lack opportunities in their life and they feel they have no other choice. Also, many people can influence people into committing crimes and I believe everything around you can shape you being a criminal, demographically, your friends and family members.

Menace to Society

When the film fist  starts it succeeds in painting a disturbing picture of violence in my head, one in which the characters have a lack of remorse but one thing I like is that most of the violence that is being filmed is realistic and unfolds in real time in LA. I can't image myself ever living in a place like that, where drugs and violence is happening daily.  Just the feeling of being unsafe and scared is frightening. One of the many things I noticed was that women in this film was totally excluded from the story.  I didn't really appreciate it ha ha. I also, didn't really understand why? I know many women suffer in the same kind of environment and it would have been nice to see them being representing. The movie represents an endless cycle of violence and the violent surroundings they lived and grew up in were difficult to escape and made survival harder as time went on. Human life for them had little value to them and they didn't really care if they died because they had nothing fortunate to live for. This movie is one of the few that does a good job at representing factual events happening all over and how it is a big social issue with drugs and violence.

Ray Surette Reading

Ray describes in his reading that crime isn't seen as a social issue but more as an individual issue. And when media is representing theses predators, it ignores the bigger person and is obsessed with individualism. In our media and culture, social problems are generated  and solved at the individual level and because of this we lack the cultural resources to deal with these problems. We perceive predators as a separate breed in society, encouraging the perception of social and economic factors as irrelevant. We as a person never want to get involved in crime and we leave it to the government, unless it effects us personally or someone we know. As long as it is founded on individualism, crime and justice policy is mostly a government concern. We see the justice system as a natural solution to crime problems in though it has been proven that it isn't working and predators most likely have a repeating cycle. The basic effects of the predator icon are to generate fear, degrade social networks, increase reliance on the media and foster social problems. We see actually more predator icons on TV, than we do in reality which misleads people perceptions on certain criminals.  Also, the media can make the icon more credible if they seem themselves on TV and it just shows us that we are the most violent country overall.