Crime drama...what's the attraction anyway?

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

it is not crime drama as such, nor thrillers and spy stuff, nor scince fiction, nor period &c .... it is always the work that transcends the genre and just becomes art .... Le Carre is not really about spies; Tour of Duty was not about crime .... it is always the playing out of lives and personality in the press of circumstance .... the play of irreconcilable values ....

at root the breaking of attachments [in Bowlby's usage of that term] is always featured in such tales; the ending of relationships and the separation of the Famous Five and can they get back together [is the family intact] is a recurrent and pervasive device ... and the sheer vicarious joy of getting away with it or giving it back better or harder [all those mirror neurons eh]

but i do find the explicit portrayal of sex and conflict gratuitous and often profoundly mistaken ... not so much pornography as bad art, stupidity or laziness masquerading as dramatic authority or the Murdoch ploy of bare tits = £££$$$ ...

the attention given to crime drama/soap &c reflects the real distortion of attention away from road deaths/infant mortality/poverty into horrific acts against very small numbers of people in our society [try arousing attention to the plight of disabled individuals after the DWP gets to work on their income and bedrooms]

[muzzer]

It's the attraction of the safe horrorshow innit. I agree that the graphic portrayal of ritualised killings is disgusting, and imho society needs to ask itself serious questions about the acceptability of allowing that sort of stuff to be broadcast. A finely-paced whodunnit is a different beast entirely.

[vinteuil]

it is not crime drama as such, nor thrillers and spy stuff, nor scince fiction, nor period &c .... it is always the work that transcends the genre and just becomes art .... Le Carre is not really about spies; Tour of Duty was not about crime .... it is always the playing out of lives and personality in the press of circumstance .... the play of irreconcilable values ....

... yes indeedy

And like wot I said in #10 above -

... the human dramas, moral complexities, political realities, deft and intricate plots, witty and elegant writing, supreme acting of a 'crime drama' series like "Spiral"...

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

... yes indeedy

And like wot I said in #20 above -

[teamsaint]

It's the attraction of the safe horrorshow innit. I agree that the graphic portrayal of ritualised killings is disgusting, and imho society needs to ask itself serious questions about the acceptability of allowing that sort of stuff to be broadcast. A finely-paced whodunnit is a different beast entirely.

I agree.
It worries me that we are continually ( well frequently at any rate) bombarded with examples of the worst of which humans are capable, and which are in fact extreme rarities.
the cynical side of me thinks that this is connected to a general trend from above that tells that we need controlling.

Just because there are plenty of Psychopaths at the top, doesn't mean most of us are like that.

Rant ends......

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

Prof Pinker argues we are less violent quite plausibly i feel, ISIS notwithstanding ... [we may be on average less violent but just as cruel eh]

[eighthobstruction]

OTopic....Did anyone see Fortitude on Sky Atlantic....??

[Karafan]

The one time-wasting pastime that always makes me seethe is people spending hours on wretched jigsaws, just to smash them all up again and return them to a box. A stultifyingly mindless activity. Give me a BluRay boxset of The Killing any day of the week!

[Alain Maréchal]

The one time-wasting pastime that always makes me seethe is people spending hours on wretched jigsaws, just to smash them all up again and return them to a box. A stultifyingly mindless activity. Give me a BluRay boxset of The Killing any day of the week!

Do you know "La Vie:Mode d'emploi" by Georges Perec? There is a character who spends ten years learning to paint landscapes, and travels across the globe doing so, sending them back to Paris to be laminated and turned into jigsaws. He returns home, assembles the jigsaws, has the the paint removed and reassembles them as plain kraft paper. (I may have one or two of the processes dislocated, its complicated). Somehow it doesn't seem to be stultifying or mindless. Its a facinating novel (if it is a novel - I'm never quite sure). Come to think of it, far more interesting than watching a crime drama. I must read it again soon.

[richardfinegold]

I've never understood the pleasure to be had in watching murder, rape, villains, police, death, injury, hospitals, courtrooms, mortuaries; especially not week in week out with the same characters....and now the current obsession with subtitled malfeasance? I am clearly unusual in finding it all rather sad. Does the attraction lie in seeing justice triumphing (maybe in the form of a hunky cop) over evil, or is there more to it than that?

Do you read Sherlock Homes, ardcarp? Most great crime fiction features interesting characters and characterizations, on both sides of the divide. Try Elmore Leonard.

[jayne lee wilson]

Yes, rfg - I used to love the American tv Classics of the genre - NYPD Blue, Homicide, but it was for the characters not the crime... Bobby and Andy, Diane and Connie in NYPD, Frank Pembleton in Homicide...
The episode featuring Bobby Simone's death was one of the most powerful pieces of TV you'll ever see... I often think about it even now, those scenes up on the roof with his pigeons and visions of his friends...

But as they wound down or faded off UK screens, my interest faded too...

[ardcarp]

Do you read Sherlock Homes, ardcarp?

Yes but not since the age of around 14. I was more keen on Father Brown (in a wholesome sort of way, you understand ).

[richardfinegold]

You may want to try a few stories again. I was 14 when my literature teacher pushed Holmes on me, thinking I would like it, and it was a great call by him.
For me, Conan Doyle's London will always be Victorian London. the stories are really more about setting and characterization (per jlw post) and the details of the crimes were an excuse to launch the proceedings.
Crime Fiction now wants to emphasize the gore and cruelty of the Criminal Act, more Jack The Ripper than Holmes and Watson, and the characterizations have less complex, more stereotyped.

[Pabmusic]

You may want to try a few stories again. I was 14 when my literature teacher pushed Holmes on me, thinking I would like it, and it was a great call by him.
For me, Conan Doyle's London will always be Victorian London. the stories are really more about setting and characterization (per jlw post) and the details of the crimes were an excuse to launch the proceedings.
Crime Fiction now wants to emphasize the gore and cruelty of the Criminal Act, more Jack The Ripper than Holmes and Watson, and the characterizations have less complex, more stereotyped.

Sherlock Holmes stories alway stand slightly apart from most crime writing, since they are not entirely 'good-v-bad'. I think it's a great characteristic of Holmes that he (admittedly, very unrealistically) works independently of the authorities. It allows him to come to different conclusions in broadly similar cases: sometimes he lets the 'villain' off, other times he chooses not to report his conclusions to the police (Abbey Grange, for instance); sometimes he acts illegally (Charles Augustus Milverton). Ofen the cases don't involve clear crimes, either. There's certainly greaer scope for moral examination with Holmes than there is with anything Christie (eg) ever wrote.

[Ferretfancy]

Do you read Sherlock Homes, ardcarp? Most great crime fiction features interesting characters and characterizations, on both sides of the divide. Try Elmore Leonard.

I have quite a stash of Elmore Leonards and I'm slowly re-reading them. Not only are they great crime stories, but he conveys the inner thoughts and uncertainties of the characters so well. Another favourite is Donald E Westlake, writing under the name of Richards Stark. Unlike Elmore Leonard, Stark has just one anti-hero. His chief protagonist, Parker, is much more of a mystery as a character in a cold ,calculating, murderous way, but he fascinates us. He was memorably captured on screen by Lee Marvin in Point Blank.
Westlake published a series of comic crime novels featuring a pretty hopeless bunch of losers where every carefully planned heist goes wrong. Probably the best known of these is The Hot Rock, which was filmed with Robert Redford as a rather unsuitably cast lead.