Reconstruction 8.3 (2008)
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Bones to Read: An Interpretation of Forensic Crime Fiction / Ingrida Povidiša
From "The Man
in the SUV", Season 1, episode 102
(Click image for larger version.)
One of the most striking features of the new visual culture is the growing tendency to visualize things that are not in themselves visual.
(Mirzoeff: 5)
Abstract: The anthropological forensic crime fiction is a detective genre which is primarily concerned with investigating human bodies. In the hermeneutical process of reading the bones (i.e. studying, interpreting, understanding, embodying), the most enduring record carrier of one's individuality, supported by a rhizoid network of scientific disciplines, the anonymous corpse becomes a personalized victim. The present discussion is based on the novels of Kathy Reichs. Specific characteristics of the materiality and mediality of representation can be traced through a juxtaposition of Reichs' novels with the serial Bones (Twentieth Century Fox, 2005 - Present) and the novel by Max Allan Collins Bones ™ Buried Deep.
<1> Sooner or later, the corpse in a detective story (like everywhere else) becomes mere bones, but in one particular form of detective fiction, bones become men. I am particularly interested here in Kathy Reichs and her successful Temperance Brennan series. Reichs' novels are interesting for several reasons: on the one hand, they are admittedly simply a captivating read, on the other hand, however, the novels undergo a peculiar de-formation. The novels were adapted for the Bones series by Twentieth Century Fox, on which the author herself collaborated [1]. In 2006 Max Allan Collins [2] published a novel "based on the Fox television series . . . featuring the character created by Kathy Reichs" (according to the dust jacket) with the title Bones ™ Buried Deep, which displays a curious mixture of the novels of Kathy Reichs and the serial. In this article, I propose to examine the narrative interconnections and permutations, as well as this genre of anthropological forensic crime fiction more generally, juxtaposing it with the Crime Scene Investigation franchise (CBS, 2000 - Present) [3]. The Bones series appeared on a television market which had already been conditioned by CSI and forerunners such as Quincy and Prime Suspect. A relatively stable format of the forensic crime TV-(soap)novel [4] had thus established itself with representative types of characters, investigative methods, and techniques of visualizing (places, procedural methods etc.), which resonate as reference points in all subsequent productions in this genre.
<2> The title Bones to Read - like the verb to read - implies several aspects: first, the primary literal meaning, then the cognitive interpretation, and finally, a certain instrumental "reading-off". Bones assume a central position within the texture of the narrative and in the visual depiction of the stories, they are read - understood, interpreted, exploited and embodied/in-bodied. This reading of bones is amplified in the context of the hermeneutical principle, so that the reading is not simply a process but also includes the material itself which is read; the forensic specialist is a hermeneutical reader, and the forensic laboratory is a hermeneutical laboratory. From the phenomenological point of view, this process is nearly corporeal, thus also associating it, for example, with pornography or the horror genre [5]. Here, however, I am primarily interested in the aspect of embodiment, which can be described by the rhetorical figure of Prosopopoeia, a feigned presentation of characters and things through the attribution of qualities such as speaking and listening, thereby giving a face to the absent and dead [6].
<3> To these aspects of "reading" may be added reception by viewing – that which has been labeled the "CSI effect" – and which I take to be the pretension of understanding of the layperson.
<4> In his programmatic novel A Study in Scarlet, the first Sherlock Holmes story, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote about The Book of Life:
From a drop of water ... a logician infers the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other. So all life is a great chain, the nature of which is known whenever we are shown a single link of it. (Doyle: 23)
All of us can read in this Book of Life, but the ability to understand what one sees does not lie within everybody's range of abilities. Sherlock Holmes is the epitome of the paradigm of seeing plus understanding plus interpreting correctly plus combining to constitute a knowledge of what one sees. He is the embodiment of a desire for experience of the world ("Begehrungen nach Welterfahrung") (Blumenberg: 10), where legibility stands as a metaphor for the capacity to experience:
The ability to gain experience of the world, as one does through a book or a letter, assumes not only literacy, not only the primacy of the desire for access to sense through writing and books, but also the cultural idea of the book as such, inasmuch as this is not merely the instrument of that access. [my translation] [7]
Holmes was the first in a long line of knowing characters, which also includes Temperance Brennan. Indeed, Hans Richard Brittnacher has observed that the forensic detective is a reincarnation of Sherlock Holmes (Brittnacher: 113).
<5> One difference between CSI and the Brennan-series (i.e. both the novels and the Bones television series) lies in the fact that Bones is an adaptation of the novels, whereas CSI produces novels, comics, video games etc. Collins' novel represents an interesting juncture between these two points. Beginning from the adaptation of Reichs' novels into film, I wish to consider here the characteristic features of the anthropological forensic detective, and the manner of his transformation from book to film and the implications of this transformation. I begin, then, with this characterization of the anthropological forensic detective (in many points the forensic detective in general), with particular reference to Kathy Reichs' novels, which I take here to be exemplary. Second, I discuss the Bones series and Max Collins' novel, and attempt to interpret the devices of the transformation of text into film, and from film into book (à la Collins); finally, I examine the reading practice associated with the so called CSI-effect.
I:
What do I do? I dig up bodies. I look at bones.
(Reichs 1998: 160)
<6> The (anthropological) forensic crime novel is a relatively young form of crime fiction. The following elements are characteristic for this genre: as a rule, the discovery of a more or less decayed body or of a skeleton precipitates the investigation. The crime scene or place where the bones or possible organic remains are found in some sense retains the body even if it is no longer there. The identity of the remains is always investigated by the forensic pathologist (or forensic archaeologist). During the investigation, a network of several scientific disciplines [8] is created in order to discover the cause of death and, if possible, the identity of the body. The anonymous body becomes a personalized victim, who is the centre of the investigation - he or she is the reason for and the object of the investigation. At the same time, however, the body is present in a sense only indirectly; on the surface of the "plot", there is science, an instrument of investigation, which is also itself a character in the forensic crime novel. The most minute clues are significant, yet these cannot be seen with the naked eye, so that in order to make them visible, one often has recourse to complex technical equipment. The scientific procedures are described in detail, usually in the words of the specialist explaining them to someone less skilled. It is important that such an investigation is never conducted by one person alone, but always by a team [9].
<7> The victim is situated at the centre of the story not only because it is not especially concerned with the criminal [10], but also as a result of a cultural perception: social status and the right to have the truth revealed are ascribed to the victims, human rights and a face are conferred on them. Paradoxically, though, there is also a changing conception of the human body: the lifeless body is in effect little more than organic material to be investigated, dissected, cooked and scanned. The way in which this matter is treated might readily appear to contradict the very values which motivate it. Ronald Thomas says about the 19th century that "it succeeded in creating this elaborate social machinery to examine, classify, and analyze every conceivable variety of bodily activity and anatomical aberration" (Thomas: 17). The body was in a sense pulled together, "encyclopaedized", and imploded. Yet in contrast to the detective novel of the 19th century, in the forensic novel, the body decays, directly and indirectly. It ex-plodes. The "practical gaze" [11], the device of the detective in the 19th century, which merely stroked the surface, now turns inward, it discloses the invisible, it wanders about, separating the body into independent segments, a process which produces a complete visible picture and the solution to the puzzle. In order to confirm the "identity of a man," the forensic scientist grasps not the hat or the cane, the pince-nez or the pipe. The truth no longer lies in the extensions of the body, as was the case for Holmes, but rather in the body itself. The decaying corpse, no longer otherwise identifiable, is cooked in order to remove the flesh, which gives the person their inimitable features, and to expose the bones, the structure, which is ostensibly the same in every body.
<8> Test samples are taken from the bones, for example, for genetic or biochemical analysis, evidence of violence is sought, such as the use of a saw. The bones are placed under the microscope, sent to different laboratories, marked and measured, and thereby various information is obtained: who or what the person was, their age, where and how they had lived. Teeth also afford important information, whether all or only a few. In her first book, Déjà Dead, Kathy Reichs made the marks of a saw a key to the investigation. One after another, five dismembered bodies of women in various stages of decomposition are found in different places in Montreal. The forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan examines the bones minutely and arrives at the conclusion that all of the women were murdered by the same person. She explains this to a policeman involved in the case. An entire chapter (Ch. 13) describes how Dr. Brennan examined the bones in the histopathology laboratory, from which I quote only a fragment:
I laid the first bone down, cleaned the spatula and syringe, tore off the used sheet, and began the process anew with another bone. As each mold hardened I removed it, marked it as to case number, anatomical site, side, and date, and placed it next to the bone on which it had been formed. I repeated the procedure until a rubbery blue mold sat next to each of the bones in front of me. It took over two hours.
Next I turned to the microscope. I set the magnification and adjusted the fiber-optic light to angle across the viewing plate. Starting with Isabelle Gagnon's right femur I began a meticulous examination of each of the small nicks and scratches I had just cast.
The cut marks seemed to be of two types. Each arm bone had a series of trench-like troughs lying parallel to its joint surfaces. The walls of their floors were straight and dropped to meet their floors at ninety-degree angles. Most of the trench-like cuts were less than a quarter of an inch in length and averaged five hundredths of an inch across. The leg bones were circled by similar grooves (Reichs 1998: 162).
From this passage, we can observe that it is no longer human beings who are the subject of the narrative, but bones and pieces of bones. The pieces of bones are handled in a particular way,
and then observed with the aid of a microscope, whereupon the results are compared and a conclusion is drawn: the marks on the bones were made with a saw. [12]
<9> The marks of the saw, which provide detailed and decisive information about the death and the murderer, are not on but in the body. The human body has the same importance as other clues such as dust particles, hair or photography. The clues are fragments of a decaying body rather than material traces of the murderer himself. Ultimately, the body becomes an integral part of the scene of the crime, in which the course of the crime can be read. The evidence is read off the bones long after the crime, long after the soft tissue is gone, long after the person with his or her unique life story is buried in the literal sense of the word. This one last untold story lies embedded in a texture which survives longer than anything else of man, longer than his name, the memory of him, in the most resistant record carrier, in the longest and the least eradicable memory - in his bones.
II.
Television produces "reality" rather than reflects it.
(Fiske: 21)
<10> The object of the principal occupation of the forensic anthropologist becomes a name and a character of the series - Bones. Dr. Temperance Brennan incarnates the name, or vice versa, as she is called Bones by her partner in the investigation, FBI agent Seeley Booth. Whether or not the script writers intended this word play around the word and name Bones and the job of the forensic anthropologist (this "What do I do?") and the resonant meaning of the incarnation vs. the de-carnation of the dead to the bones is less significant than the fact that the serial thereby develops a quality and standard unknown to CSI. Unfortunately, the script writers scarcely seem to make use of this additional qualitative layer.
<11> Bones already mark the serial in the opening credits: the viewer sees eyeless sculls and single bare bones next to the faces and bodies of living actors and actresses making gestures and in motion.
From "Pilot",
Season 1, episode 079
(Click image for larger version.)
Bones are also pictorially meaningful: rooms of the laboratory, where much of the stories take place and which is an anti-world to the "real" one outside in the "mean streets", are not only places where the bones are studied but also a space for exhibiting them [13]. Bones constitute the space, since the walls in some of the workrooms consist of shelves where bones are stored behind plexiglas in a milk-colored light. They gleam through the walls and almost give the impression that the lab is inside the body of a huge creature. Bones both occupy and create spaces. The space and the mise-en-scène in the lab is similar to the style of science fiction, as Collins describes in his novel:
Unlike the staid, academic quality of the rest of the museum, the lab had an other-worldly air. The Medico-Legal Laboratory - which had the ability to seal itself in airtight plexiglas in case of a bio-hazard emergency - gave off a science-fiction vibe with its stainless-steel framing, plexiglas backlit worktables, and translucent storage units consuming several walls (Collins: 126).
The other characters in the serial form a close-knit unit of brilliant experts, almost another League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or The Incredibles or any other comic-team of the overqualified: Dr. Jack Hodgins, an entomologist who (according to Collins) "knew more about spores and minerals than the science department of your average university" (Collins: 156); the young, talented assistant to Brennan, Zach Addy, who is on his way to a double doctor title; and Angela Montenegro, Brennan's artistically gifted best friend, who is "the lab's true computer whiz" (Collins: 61). Their private lives and interests are scarcely depicted, so that as characters they are constructed as Roberta Pearson describes:
the televisual character's paradoxical personhood lies precisely in his abstraction from the rest of the design. Each tiny fragment does not contain the sum of the whole, but rather becomes fully intelligible only when juxtaposed with all the other tiny fragments in all the other scenes in all the other episodes in which the character appears (Pearson: 42).
Not only are the characters formed from the entire narrative of the series, they incarnate institutions: Science, or the laboratory, which pars pro toto is Brennan, while her counterpart or her partner is another institution which is embodied by Agent Booth, namely the State, legislature, executive and judiciary in one. In the serial, both institutions are encoded and marked by spaces, Brennan by the lab, Booth by the FBI office.
<13> Both the serial and Collins' novel devote attention to the staging of spaces, including bodily spaces, and the body itself. This can be seen especially well in Collins' novel; in the television series, one reads what the viewer is shown. Each time a new character enters a scene and thus becomes "visible" (with the exception of reported telephone conversations), Collins describes her or his appearance in detail, especially the suits of the men, so that the style gives clues as to the character's qualities or his or her vocation [14]. This is what we first see of a character, and it conditions how we see them. An interesting signification of physicality occurs here with the opposition of this "dressed" condition of the series characters to the down to the bones "undressed" state of the victims. It is precisely at this point that the difference between the novels of Kathy Reichs and the much more visually oriented medium of television becomes clear: the first person perspective in Reichs' novels allows the character of Temperance Brennan to merge with the background, although she is continually present; the main focus of the story lies on the bodiless victim, not least because of the attempt to "re-produce" the victim's body, to trace it, to read off the bones, to resurrect as it were the man with his human rights, to finally give him back his name.
<14> The serial transforms this literary reconstruction into the visual. It has to be pointed out that here, Bones walks in the footprints of its forerunners, although there are indeed only two alternatives: either to deploy the already well-established visual motifs, or to invent something new, while allowing the familiar elements to resonate with the new. Thus, Bones is also largely a platform for "displaying" science, for satisfying the viewer's eyes.
<15> One of the "inventions" in Bones is the 3-D simulation, or, as it is called by Collins, the 3-D imaging process, which reconstructs the sequence of events or the face of the victim as criminalistics does with clay or special computer programs (and here, one inevitably thinks of the so-called CSI shot). Those visualizations are prepared by Angela with a program which she developed herself; certain interpretive and artistic abilities are required here, and this is her domain. She is also responsible for the hypothetical reconstruction of the face of the victim by drawing. In the episode The Boy in the Bush (Season 1, Episode 105), she comes to the verge of quitting her job, because this time the victim is a child and she struggles to observe his face and body as closely as if she were touching him and at the same time to distance herself emotionally from the tragedy of the death of a child. Dr. Goodman, (obviously) a director of the Jeffersonian anthropology institute, asks her how she would describe her duties. She answers: "I draw death masks," to which the director replies:
You discern humanity in the rack of the ruin of the human body. You give victims back their faces, their identities, you remind us all of why we're here. In the first place, because we treasure human life.
From "Pilot",
Season 1, episode 079
(Click image for larger version.)
He is not speaking simply of her: he is at the same time placing her back within the team, which she wanted to leave; and he speaks of the institution. Those 3-D imagings, with their touch of the unreal and the far-fetched, are a sign of the free artistic interpretation of a reading of evidence. They are a vision, which is made observable and which must convince. They create a simulacrum, for the person they display is not there anymore. This is not a reconstruction but a construction, which must work the wonder of convincing the viewer of the reality of the displayed. The guarantee of that reality is the institutional frame of the scientific laboratory. The 3-D simulations re-establish once again the science-fictional character of the space in the serial. This space unites the real and the impossible under the promise of science, and the simulations suggest a high technical standard and the infallibility of the investigation, almost a divine power with the aid of technology and science. This is a "divine" laboratory, where the dead awake, tell their story and then lie down again in peace [15].
<16> Other aspects of the series, however, suggest the seeming inhumanity of science, for example, the amputation of a finger from the hand of a mummified corpse, so that the finger can be treated with a conventional fabric softener to soften the dried skin and so gain a fingerprint for the identification of the victim; or the army of bugs which are responsible for "cleaning" the bones from the organic remains in record time and which themselves reveal particular substances in the tissue of the victim. This "inhumanity" is a trait of the science that governs the serial almost as a character in its own right and whose body parts are the scientists. Any mistakes which are made are those of the human agents and reveal their limitations, not the limitations of science itself. Unlike CSI which, as Sue Turnball writes, "not only fascinates, but which also promises knowledge, truth and certainty" (Turnball: 32), Bones promises only the visual.
III.
The most important problem facing the semiology of images: can analogical representation (the "copy") produce true systems of signs and not merely simple agglutinations of symbols?(Barthes: 135)
<17> The viewer is invited, his view is confined to that which is displayed, and he sees essentially the same as that which the characters of the series see. Sue Turnball writes about CSI, that "in an era when the goal of audience participation is more usually assumed to occur via an interactive telephone or computer link-up, CSI beckons its viewers into the show by inviting them into the world of the Crime Scene Investigators to participate in the solving the crime by looking at the evidence" (Turnball: 30). Here, I would demur. In his We Must Have Certainty: Four Essays on the Detective Story, Kenneth Van Dover describes "seeing" as the duty of the positivist detective:
In all cases, the basic assumption was that if the detective looked clearly at the physical evidence, listened carefully to what was said, and thought about it, he could infallibly discover whodunit (Van Dover: 23).
Sherlock Holmes embodies not merely this ability to see, but also possesses knowledge of what he sees (I refer once more to the "practical gaze"). The classic detective novels of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle presuppose the divide between the "scientific gaze" and the "casual glance" [16], which becomes clear in the forensic television series and in forensic crime fiction generally: the viewer is allowed to see the evidence, but he does not yet know to what the evidence that he is looking at, points. This is why we should speak of him not as "participating by seeing the evidence" but as "participating by looking at the evidence".
<18> According to David Bordwell, film and television viewers are not passive in the perception of the shown text, but based on the information given, they attempt to interpret what is shown to them. In order to understand a narrative film, viewers must understand the displayed not only on the literal level, they have to cognitively construct a story which makes sense. In the case of investigative serials, especially forensic series based on science, the required understanding goes beyond the literal. Viewers and readers participate not only through their construction of a coherent story, they also inspect their own knowledge and examine the evidence presented according to this knowledge. Naturally, the serials – as well as the novels of Kathy Reichs – are constructed in such a way that different fields and forensic methods are illustrated in the various episodes or stories. In their minds, viewers suggest methods of investigation and detection according to their supposed knowledge [17]. The authentic universe of crime fiction with a scientific background requires first, thorough research and second, a terminology that is made familiar to readers and viewers in the course of the story. This gives the audience the impression that they know and understand how the specialist is proceeding; single steps of the investigation become plausible. Specific scientific knowledge and its rhetoric are being "adapted" to the level of the layperson; it becomes laïcised. This laïcising of scientific knowledge in fact creates, or fails to fully bridge, a gap between science and laypersons, a gap which might be described as an illusionary image of transparence. There is only an apparent participation in institutional proceedings like the investigation of crime; the layperson does not really become a scientist [18].
<19> Sue Turnball has studied the phenomenon of the fascination with the CSI franchise, and explains it in terms of the Early Modern pursuit to make the invisible visible: CSI "clearly participates in such an Enlightenment project in an era when, for most people, science is a discourse to which they have no access except through the popular medium of a television programme which not only tells but shows as well" (Turnball: 31). Turnball seems to overlook the vast mass of popular science literature, including pseudo-scientific forensic manuals [19]. The knowledge which is presented there is indeed accessible, it is told and shown, for pictures (as in children's books) play a strong explicative role. Admittedly, however, she is right in observing that such knowledge is accessible only in a very selective and digested form, and it is characterized by a very specific rhetoric [20]. Knowledge is thereby suggested, but not really made accessible. Newspapers call this phenomenon the "CSI-effect", while authors like Kathy Reichs also make it a theme in their novels. At the beginning of her Bare Bones, human remains are found during a picnic and children feel themselves to be "experts":
"Might be best to take the kids back," I said to Sarah's father. "No!" the boy yelped. "It's a dead guy, right? We want to see you dig up the DOA." His face was flushed and glossy with perspiration. "We want to know who you like for the hit." "Yeah!" The younger girl looked like Shirley Temple in pink denim coveralls. "We want to see the DOA!" Inwardly cursing TV crime shows, I chose my words carefully. "It would be most useful to the case if you'd collect your thoughts, talk over your observations, and then give a statement. Could you do that?" The two looked at each other, eyes grown from saucers to plates. "Yeah," said Shirley Temple, clapping chubby hands. "We'll give cool statements" (Reichs 2004: 48). [21]
<20> While the Bones series employs simulations and the visualization of the scientific proceedings in the serial is particularly significant, CSI uses pictorial presentations - the so-called "CSI-shots" [22]. These also play an explicative and central role in the CSI series, and are described by Weissmann and Boyle as follows:
"CSI-shots" . . . are granted a demonstrative power within the text providing a visual model of the scientist's spoken explanation. Their scientific "authenticity" is underlined both in the extra-textual claims repeatedly made about their credibility by those involved with the programme and . . . by the increasing use of similarly animated visual sequences in public science displays and scientific documentaries….
For the viewer, though, this is a body without boundaries. It is a body that leaks, erupts, dissolves, rots, stinks. It is a dead body that is reanimated by the camera's movement or by the blood and thus rushes towards the camera lens, catching us off guard. It is a dead body that is made to "speak" by the investigators, both thematically, as the scientists use the body to tell the story of the crime, and aurally in the squelching, slurping, gushing sounds made when it is opened, penetrated, dissected (Weissmann/Boyle: 94).
<21> The viewer sees something that looks like a corpse, precisely in order to show a corpse, but it is not a corpse; it is an actor or a dummy, and the viewer knows that real corpses are not shown in a fictional serial (compare the black bar which conceals the unshowable in pornography or authentic crime reports). If he does believe, he becomes completely involved in the game of television in which, surely, he should believe. The effect of authenticity is based on a kind of bilateral pact between the viewer and the institution of television (including the actors, the script writers, special effects and make up departments etc.): the success of television is predicated on the belief of the viewer – or on his suspended disbelief -and the viewer believes that television would not show something which is inauthentic if authenticity is promised [23]. That which is shown is both authentic and fake at the same time. We might contrast such depictions with a genuine forensic manual for the specialists [24]. It is not easy to look at a real corpse; one has to learn it. Those manuals and presentations for forensic specialists in other media do not assume a pact of authenticity or suspended disbelief, or require any other auditive boosts for an effect; only the serial needs requires these, because it is fiction.
<22> The glance of the viewer or reader (and these are not identical) learns to bear a sight which is hard to describe: the plain scientific methods of forensics presuppose contact with the body freed of any ethical reservations, i.e. the body is merely something to be investigated. [25] The presentation of such a science is adjusted for the non-scientific standards of the viewer or reader: it must be "authentic", and it has to shock, but if it disgusts, it will have failed. This dilemma illustrates the ambivalence between a desire to appear scientific, and the exclusion of scientific dimensions. Bones shows this bipolar, conflicting tendency, as for the most part, only bones are the object of investigation. Perhaps it is easier to look at bones, since corpses have human features which are incorrect, wrong, displaced, while bones are by contrast anonymous and neutral, and they can be more easily artificially replicated than an entire human body.
<23> The novels of Kathy Reichs depict science as an instrument, central and, as mentioned, on the surface of the narrative, dominant, yet it remains only an instrument. In the television series, it has become a character, and the series is its show, the character science displays itself in its different forms, it surprises, disappoints, scares, shocks. In the novels, humanity is the central element, the humanity of the body, which extends to include the frailties of the protagonist, such as an indulgence in alcohol, her affections and resentments, impulsive behavior, and so on, which contrast with the inhumanity of the crime. The series is in such respects far more impersonal, and gives no knowledge but only pictures of knowledge; it offers no truth. In temporarily believing, one is merely entertained.
<24> It has not been my intention here to place the authenticity or plausibility of the series, by way of contrast with the novels, in question. Rather, I have sought to highlight aspects of the complexity of the process of comprehension in the genre of forensic-anthropological crime fiction in both its filmed and literary forms.
Works Cited
Allen, Michael, ed., Reading CSI: Crime TV Under the Microscope, London/NY: IB Tauris, 2007.
Barthes, Roland, Rhetoric of the Image, in Nicholas Mirzoeff, (ed.), The Visual Culture Reader. 2nd edition. London/NY: Routledge. pp. 135-138, 2004.
Blumenberg, Hans, Die Lesbarkeit der Welt, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1983.
Bordwell, David, Narration and the Fiction Film, London: Routledge, 1997.
Brittnacher, Hans Richard, Die Engel der Morgue: Über den Trend zur Forensik im amerikanischen Kriminalroman, in B. Franceschini/C. Würmann, (eds.), Verbrechen als Passion: Neue Untersuchungen zum Kriminalgenre, Berlin: Weidler Buchverlag, pp. 101-118, 2004..
Collins, Max Allan, Bones™. Buried Deep, NY: Pocket Star Books, 2006.
Doyle, Arthur Conan, Complete Sherlock Holmes, London: Penguin, 1981.
Fiske, John, Television Culture, London/NY: Routledge, 2002.
Mirzoeff, Nicholas, An Introduction to Visual Culture, London: Routledge, 2004.
Pearson, Roberta, Anatomising Gilbert Grissom: The Structure and Function of the Televisual Character, in Michael Allen, (ed.), Reading CSI, London/NY: IB Tauris, pp. 39-56, 2007.
Reichs, Kathy, Déjà Dead, NY/London/Toronto/Sydney: Pocket Star Books, 1998.
Reichs, Kathy, Bare Bones, London: Arrow Books, 2004.
Thomas, Ronald R., Detective Fiction and the Rise of the Forensic Science, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Turnball, Sue, The Hook and The Look: CSI and the Aesthetics of the Television Crime Series, in Michael Allen, (ed.), Reading CSI, London/NY: IB Tauris, pp. 15-33, 2007.
Van Dover, Kenneth, We must have certainty: Four essays on the detective story, Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press, 2005.
Weissmann, Elke, Boyle, Karen, Evidence of Things Unseen: The Pornographic Aesthetic and the Search for Truth in CSI, in Michael Allen, (ed.), Reading CSI, London/NY: IB Tauris, pp. 90-102, 2007.
Notes
[1] The serial is unfortunately not as successful as the novels, and apparently suffered from the monopoly of CSI. [^]
[2] Max Allan Collins has also published the graphic novel "Bad Rap. CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" (2004) together with Gabriel Rodriguez und Ashley Wood. [^]
[3] CSI stands exemplary for other representatives of the forensic crime genre. Such a delineation is useful especially because through CSI, some specifically forensic approaches have been popularised and are now associated with it (see on the CSI-effect in e.g. USA Today, 08.05.2004., CBS News, 21.03.2005. etc.). [^]
[4] See Sue Turnball (see works cited). [^]
[5] See e.g. Linda Williams (1989), Hard Core: Power, Pleasure and the Frenzy of the Visible, Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, Isabelle Christina Pinedo (1997), Recreational Terror: Women and the Pleasures of Horror Film Viewing, Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, etc., especially in the context of gender discussions; Elke Weissmann/Karen Boyle (see works cited) [^]
[6] I owe this reference to Eva Erdmann; Bettina Menke (2000), Prosopopoiia: Stimme und Text bei Brentano, Hoffmann, Kleist und Kafka, München: Fink Verl.. On the rhetorical figure, see Thomas O. Sloane, ed. (2001), Encyclopedia of Rhetoric. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press; Walter Jost/Wendy Olmsted, eds. (2004), A Companion to Rhetoric and Rhetorical Criticism, Malden: Blackwell. [^][7] Hans Blumenbrg (see works cited), pp. 10: „Von der Welt Erfahrung zu machen, wie man sie einem Buch oder einem Brief verdanken kann, setzt nicht nur Alphabetismus, nicht nur die Vorprägung der Wünsche auf Sinnzugang durch Schrift und Buch voraus, sondern auch die kulturelle Idee des Buches selbst, insofern es nicht mehr bloßes Instrument des Zugangs ist." [^]
[8] See, for example, an acknowledgement from the first novel by Kathy Reichs Déjà Dead: "In an attempt to create accurate fiction, I consulted experts in many fields." Experts in specific fields which assume importance in the stories are also named, who could be consulted by one not possessed of their knowledge. Acknowledgements in general exemplify this network of knowledge in forensic crime fiction, while the television series require the collaboration of scientific experts in order to achieve an authentic effect. [^]
[9] Thus forensic experts have access to information such as crime scene pictures or other material evidence, to which they would otherwise have no direct access. [^]
[10] The last innovative development in crime fiction, the figure of the profiler, set the accent on the psyche of the criminal. [^]
[11] The "practical gaze" is a tool of the detective/criminalist in the 19th century, and denotes a trained gaze at the crime scene and towards other evidence. See Peter Becker (2005), Dem Täter auf der Spur: Eine Geschichte der Kriminalistik. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft; Peter Becker (1993), Auf der Suche nach dem Verbrecher: Polizeiliche Praxis im 19. Jahrhundert, in: Forschung. Mitteilungen der DFG 2/93. pp. 18-20; Peter Becker (1995), Der Verbrecher als „monstruoser Typus": Zur kriminologischen Semiotik der Jahrhundertwende, in: M. Hagner, ed.: Der falsche Körper. Beiträge zu einer Geschichte der Monstrositäten. Göttingen: Wallsten Verl. p. 147-173; Peter Becker (2002), Verderbnis und Entartung. Eine Geschichte der Kriminologie des 19. Jahrhunderts als Diskurs und Praxis. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht. [^][12] Other novels by Kathy Reichs play with various procedures of forensic science. In Cross Bones, an alleged genealogy of Jesus' family is reconstructed on the basis of genetic investigation. In Monday Mourning, a procedure for examining geology and the biochemical composition of bones is central for the identification of a person's place of origin, and so on. [^]
[13] To some extent, the space of the novels by Beverly Connor with her protagonist Diane Fallon, a forensic anthropologist, is constructed similarly. Diane Fallon is the director of a history museum where skeletons of dinosaurs are exhibited, and in the course of the story she arranges there a room for her forensic investigations. (B. Connor, One Grave Too Many) [^]
[14] The figures in the Sherlock Holmes novels are also introduced to the reader and constructed within the narrative in the same way. The vestimentary code ("das Vestimentäre") builds a system of significations in the text frame on several levels: it constructs the figures in their character features and physiognomics (like Miss Morstan in The Sign of Four), and it is an element in the narrative. To give only several examples: the violet dress in The Adventure of the Copper Beeches is a constructive detail of the story and leads to the solution of the mystery; the suit of Sir Henry Baskerville, which was carried by the murderer Selden and was the reason for his death, in The Hounds of the Baskervilles; and the dressing in The Case of Identity was the crucial factor in the construction of the identity. On the level of discourse, these are relevant details for the sociological and psychological dimensions of the figures. See also Anna König (2007), Who Are They? Style Codes of the CSI Investigators, in Michael Allen, (ed.), Reading CSI, London/NY: Tauris. pp. 103-106; Ulrike Landfester (1995), Der Dichtung Schleier: Zur poetischen Funktion von Kleidung in Goethes Frühwerk, Freiburg im Breisgau: Rombach. [^]
[15] I would like to draw attention here to the animation movie Corpse Bride (2005) by Tim Burton and to ghost stories in general, in which the dead do not rest until justice has been done and the perpetrator has been punished. [^]
[16] See Norman Bryson (1983), Vision and Painting: The Logic of the Gaze. New Haven/London: Yale Univ. Press. Joseph Pugliese (2002), "Super Visum Corporis": Visuality, Race, Narrativity and the Body of Forensic Pathology, in: Law and Literature, 14:2 (2002 Summer). pp. 367-96. [^][17] The CSI video game is based on the same strategy: "The process of finding fragments of evidence, on which educated (or not, in this case) guesswork is then based, forms the central dynamic in the playing of any of the CSI video games." Michael Allen (2007), So many different ways to tell it: Multi-Platform Storytelling in CSI, in Michael Allen, (ed.), Reading CSI, London/NY: Tauris. p 71. [^]
[18] See CSI-Effekt (see n. 3 above) [^]
[19] Another example of this kind of literature are the memoirs of experts, such as Death's Acre by Bill Bass (to name but one), an American anthropologist, professor, and the founder of the notorious experimental research facility, the Body Farm, where the different stages of decaying of bodies and organic material in general were studied, and whose findings were also very significant for institutional crime investigation. Bass's book is indeed fascinating, at the same time grisly, and describes in a quasi-scientific manner the stages of decay as well as the different fields and history of forensics. [^]
[20] See e.g. Greg Myers (1990), Writing Biology: Texts in the construction of scientific knowledge, Madison, Wisconsin: Univ. of Wisconsin Press.; John Battalio, ed. (1998), Essays in the Study of Scientific Discourse London/Stamford: Ablex Publ.; Alan G. Gross (1996), The Rhetoric of Science, Cambridge/London: Harvard Univ. Press. [^]
[21] See also a project at one school on http://www.forensicmag.com/articles.asp?pid=11, Demi De Soto (2004), From the Screen to the Scene, in Forensic Magazine, Issue Summer 2004. [^][22] CSI-shot: "the sequence that apparently recreates, through the use of prosthetics, models and computer-generated images, the impact of criminal (and, less often, accidental) violence on the body of the victim." Weissmann/Boyle: 90 (see works cited). [^]
[23] Cf. Jean-Louis Comolli (2005), Machines of the Visible, in Andrew Utterson, ed., Technology and Culture, London: Routledge. pp. 37-51 (esp. 49-51). [^]
[24] This is one of the most striking differences between genuine forensic manuals and pseudo-manuals for laymen. In the latter, one would normally never find pictures of actual corpses or their parts, but typically only computer-generated or posed pictures. [^]
[25] The Body Farm, an academic research facility in Knoxville, Tennessee, was a controversial issue in the media. See e.g. Bill Bass, Jon Jefferson (2003), Death's Acre, NY: G.P. Putnam's Son, or Bill Bass, Jon Jefferson, William M. Bass (2007): Beyond the Body Farm, NY: HarperCollins Publ. [^]
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