Forensic Science in Contemporary American Popular Culture

Intertextualidad y género policíaco en España (1990-2010). Evolución del ámbito literario al metatelevisivo y recurrencia de la víctima femenina como motivo

“…Its importance as a motif stems from the updating of myth, as well the lower passions. The continuing popularity of the victimisation of women (in the form of abduction, disappearance, rape, mutilation and murder) by men as a television motif (Steenberg, 2013;Klinger, 2018) and a leitmotif of the genre is mainly due to the contemporary success of this thematic recurrence 4 . Klinger stresses the importance of the motif in galvanizing idiosyncrasies, a transnational commercial vehicle (Klinger, 2018, p. 518).…”

Silk blouses and fedoras: The female detective, contemporary TV crime drama and the predicaments of postfeminism

“…Intellectually, as a feminist scholar, I can identify the elements of The Fall that enable a feminist reading of it, and my intention here is not at all to reproach viewers who have enjoyed the series partly for having interpreted it this way as being ‘bad feminists’ (Gay, 2014), or to suggest they have ‘misunderstood’ it. It is the disingenuous nature of the ‘double-entanglement’ (McRobbie, 2007: 255) of postfeminism, after all, that facilitates such simultaneous and conflictual responses to the feminist claims of popular culture, and numerous previous theorists have adroitly traced the complex push-pull appeal of the female investigator to/within feminism (see Mizejewski, 2004; Steenberg, 2011, 2013). Nevertheless, as a woman tired of negotiating endless media violence against women, I do not feel at all convinced by claims to the series’ feminism.…”

Sensation/investigation: crime television and the action aesthetic

“…Analyses of crime drama have explored in detail the narrative structures organised around investigation, the legacy of a realist mode of programme making, the significance of the forensic turn and the extent to which the genre engages with or circumvents societal and political concerns with policing, justice and inequality. 4 This paper was originally developed as part of a symposium organised around an idea of the "post," specifically reflecting on the characteristics of crime television post-CSI, 5 following from and yet shaped by what has been cast as a forensic moment or a forensic turn (Steenberg, 2013). If the forensic moment has past, and certainly it is no longer novel, its legacy clearly remains.…”