Extreme Makeover CSI edition: identity crimes, plastic bodies and genre hybridity in popular television
Extreme Makeover CSI edition: identity crimes, plastic bodies and genre hybridity in popular television
This article examines discourses on identity and bodily plasticity in the forensic crime drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2000–). It argues that CSI engages with the same cultural debates as makeover reality TV, but in ways that articulate a number of oppositional perspectives on self-transformation practices governed by the programme's investment in an essentialist and determinist understanding of genetics. The article traces CSI's reconfiguration of the motif of disguise and inverted use of generic tropes from makeover reality TV, as well as its tendency to worry about the increased possibilities for biomedical alterations of our bodies. It concludes that the programme problematises self-transformation practices as a new type of ‘identity crime’.
csi: crime scene investigation, makeover, identiy, forensic science, genre
1-16
Bull, Sofia
67e74291-8c1f-409e-8c84-0416544992b7
March 2015
Bull, Sofia
67e74291-8c1f-409e-8c84-0416544992b7
Bull, Sofia
(2015)
Extreme Makeover CSI edition: identity crimes, plastic bodies and genre hybridity in popular television.
Critical Studies in Television, 10 (1), .
(doi:10.7227/CST.10.1.4).
Abstract
This article examines discourses on identity and bodily plasticity in the forensic crime drama CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2000–). It argues that CSI engages with the same cultural debates as makeover reality TV, but in ways that articulate a number of oppositional perspectives on self-transformation practices governed by the programme's investment in an essentialist and determinist understanding of genetics. The article traces CSI's reconfiguration of the motif of disguise and inverted use of generic tropes from makeover reality TV, as well as its tendency to worry about the increased possibilities for biomedical alterations of our bodies. It concludes that the programme problematises self-transformation practices as a new type of ‘identity crime’.
Text
CST_Extreme Makeover CSI.pdf
- Accepted Manuscript
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Published date: March 2015
Keywords:
csi: crime scene investigation, makeover, identiy, forensic science, genre
Organisations:
Film
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Local EPrints ID: 385592
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/385592
ISSN: 1749-6020
PURE UUID: 5cbb69ee-5d60-42a2-a809-3eb525fcc69c
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Date deposited: 02 Mar 2016 14:14
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 22:20
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