Abject and Liminal Bodies

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Abject and

Liminal Bodies

The Dead Body

in CSI: Miami and Six Feet Under

Stockholm University

Department of Journalism, Media and Communication

Thesis for the Degree of Master in Media and Communication Studies Kristina Stenström

May 26

^th

2010

Advisor: Karin Becker

Examiner: Sven Ross

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Abstract

Stockholm University

Department of Journalism, Media and Communication Master Thesis

Spring 2010

Title: Abject and Liminal Bodies: The Dead Body in CSI: Miami and Six Feet Under Author: Kristina Stenström

Advisor: Karin Becker

This study researches fictional representations of dead bodies in two television series in which representations of dead bodies are prominent features. The study introduces a brief history of the human body as a societal metaphor. The narrower theme of the study, the dead body as a cultural surface and carrier of meaning and ritual potential, is discussed through specific popular cultural television productions.

The two television series discussed in this study, CSI: Miami and Six Feet Under, are researched both through film analyses and focus group discussions. The film analyses have aimed to show to what use dead bodies are put in the narratives of the programs. The focus group discussions have sought to shed light on the audiences understanding of the meaning of the dead body, and also how this feature of the programs influence the audience and their experience of the programs.

The study shows that both series introduce and underline dead bodies as floating in-between subject and object status. A dead person is often introduced as a subject and then stripped of his or her cultural identity and reintroduced as an object or as having an uncertain cultural status which lies somewhere between object and subject. This borderline status of the body serves as a threat in the series, and the subject status of the body is reinstated in every case possible. Order is a central concept for the study and both series strive to reassert and maintain order, either in relationships or on a societal level. The reinstatement of order is reflected on the physical body as a metaphor and narrative device in both series. The reestablishment of the subject status of a dead body is part of this strive for order. The audience research concludes that all focus group members agree that the representations of dead bodies in the programs are important for their experience of the programs.

Some find them unpleasant while others think they are interesting. The audience also listed several other themes of the programs which they found important. The representations of dead bodies strike the audience members both as “real” and material, and as metaphors.

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1. Introduction

Mediated representations of human bodies surround us constantly. The human body put on display, dead or alive, is no new phenomenon and has been extensively investigated in media studies to this date. It is first and foremost representations of the gendered or racialized body that have received attention in media studies. The interest of this study is however to research another kind of bodily representations: fictional representations of dead bodies.

Human bodies are both biological machines and social constructions, and they have long been used as metaphors for political or societal processes. Human bodies have a social, communicative surface, and a depth, which is invisible, but vital for the social being to exist. Bodily order can exist on many levels. On a biological level order indicates a well-oiled machinery which runs smoothly, on a cultural level order indicates a surface, which presents an appearance which “makes sense” to our cultural understanding. The lack of bodily propriety could cause trouble to the function of the body, an illness of the physical body causes suffering or even death, the total stop of the bodily functions. It can also threaten the way our cultural understanding is molded to consider a particular bodily shape complete, healthy or even human, and other than merely material. Our understanding of the body thus contains a number of dichotomies, the most obvious ones being culture/nature and surface/depth. The meaning of “truth” and “order” which are concepts vital for this study will vary depending on which “kind of” body is considered, a social or biological one.

This is not to say that there is no state of being in-between, quite the contrary. Representations of dead bodies are particularly interesting, since these bodies are inevitably going through a transition, may it be cultural or natural. Dead bodies are a recurring element in television and film productions in the thriller and horror genres, and have been so for a long time. The two television series, CSI (Crime Scene Investigation): Miami and Six Feet Under, which this study will address, frequently present representations of dead bodies. It is no coincidence that the dead body has such a prominent place in these narratives, and they are used as narrative devices in a larger whole.

1.1 Aims

In this thesis I research the functions of the dead body in fiction television productions. For this purpose I have chosen two programs, CSI (Crime Scene Investigation): Miami and Six Feet Under.

Both programs present representations of dead bodies. In CSI: Miami the bodies are placed in a

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crime-lab/morgue and in Six Feet Under the bodies are at a funeral home, waiting to be prepared for the funeral. These are both “waiting areas”, where the dead body is prepared or investigated prior to its last journey – the burial.

According to Lynn Åkesson these liminal places are dense with meaning. The presence of a dead body portrays an opportunity for the reviewing and change of the individual identity as well as the societal values according to Åkesson.¹ Access to these waiting areas is rarely granted to people who are not professionals, and I am interested in looking more closely at the function of the representation of the body and the “waiting areas” for dead bodies, in the above mentioned media productions.

The two programs included in this study are to some extent separated by genre. CSI: Miami is part of the genre of crime solving television, with a “serious” undertone and a “tension seeking” story- line. Six Feet Under on the other hand is a television drama. Six Feet Under revolves around a family of undertakers and contains a lot of footage of “dead” bodies, but also a big portion of black humor. Why and how to research programs that appear so different from one another at the outset?

Both programs give the dead body a prominent place in the narrative. The fragility of the body is easily linked to themes of fear, safety and order. I want to investigate how these series with very different focuses in the narration of similar kinds of stories (death and the “summing up” of a life) on a symbolic level make use of the physical body. The dead bodies of Six Feet Under are not always victims of crimes, but some of them died violently and the surfaces of their bodies might be damaged and need to be restored – brought back to order. The theme of order need not necessarily be linked concretely to crime and disorder in the legal meaning of the word, but bodily disorder can also take place at the symbolic level of the dead body which is simply in its state of “deadness”

threatening the “natural order” as a dead body is in a state of uncontrollable decay. A “somatic society” is according to Bryan Turner, a society in which problems and tensions are manifested through bodies. Turner's discussion is to a great extent centered around the concept of societal order.² According to Turner's discussion the decay of the dead body would remind of and resemble the breakdown of cultural order. This concept will discussed in greater detail in the chapter Theory.

According to Jonathan Bignell and Jeremy Orlebar the genre of crime-solving television, also called

1 Åkesson, Lynn, 1997. Mellan levande och döda – Föreställningar om kropp och ritual. p. 10 2 Turner, Bryan, 1996. The Body and Society. p.103

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the “detective story”, often follows a clear pattern. Crime-solving television centers around the reinstation and maintenance of order. A typical episode starts out by a disruption of order – this disruption is often a violent crime, for example a murder. The rest of the program is after this devoted to solving this crime and through this reinstate order into the world.³ Order may not only be reasserted through the solving of a crime but may also be contested through the physical body. A pilot study conducted on CSI and Law and Order, indicated that both series follow the pattern that Bignell and Orlebar suggest. In Law and Order order is reasserted through catching and punishing the perpetrators, while order in CSI often is reestablished on a physical level through close interaction with the bodies that have been victimized.

Discussion will take its stance from these series in a twofold way. The representation of the dead body is the main issue for this study, but this system of representation carries strings to numerous surrounding elements that also will be investigated. CSI: Miami and Six Feet Under have been chosen as material for this study because of their position as part of a larger phenomenon. I argue that although the dead body has been shown and used as a narrative device for a long time, we are experiencing a shift, in which the (dead) body is becoming increasingly central to the narrative of certain kinds of television shows. This study aims to investigate how dead bodies are used as narrative devices and how the audiences of the programs make sense of the representations of dead bodies the programs present, and which other themes of the series these audiences find important.

Differences and similarities of the programs will be discussed in greater detail in the chapter Materials.

1.2 Research questions

 How is the dead body represented in CSI: Miami and Six Feet Under?

 What functions does the dead body serve in the disruption, reinstatement and restoring of cultural or biological order in CSI: Miami and Six Feet Under?

 Which themes of CSI: Miami and Sex Feet Under, in- or excluding those of the dead body, does the audience find important and why?

 What meanings and functions does the audience attribute to the dead body in CSI: Miami and Six Feet Under?

 What differences or similarities in the representation, meaning and function of the dead body does Six Feet Under and CSI: Miami offer?

3 Bignell, Jonathan & Orlebar, Jeremy, 2005. The Television Handbook. p. 64

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2. Theory

2.1 Culture, ideology and myth

According to Stuart Hall our common conceptual map of understanding consist of two parts, the mental representations we all carry to make meaning of the world around us and the language which is the device through which we represent and exchange meaning. Whether it be through words, sounds or images, we can call the devices of exchange signs. The relation between “things”, concepts and signs are together what builds representation.⁴ The constructivist approach to representation argues that meaning is created, but the material world of “things” and people do not create meaning. The symbolic practices and processes of representation, meaning and language together create meaning.⁵ As the process of representation requires interpretation to be complete, it is always separated from the material world.⁶ “(...) culture (…) is not so much a set of things – novels and paintings or TV programs and comics – as a process, a set of practices.”⁷.

According to Cynthia Weber, international relations theorist, we circulate our perception of the world in many ways, for example through stories. These stories are based on cultural myths which we perceive to be true. Weber uses the concept of myth as developed by Roland Barthes, philosopher and semiotician, who argued that cultural myths become naturalized as “truth” (See chapter 4.2.2 Semiotics). This use of the concept of myth is applicable beyond Weber's field of international relations to a more general view on how meaning is created and circulated. The myths that appear to be true, may be true or false, but most importantly they are unquestioned as facts that

“go without saying”. The system of these cultural myths is called unconscious ideologies by Weber.⁸ Unlike conscious ideologies like conservatism or liberalism, or the like, unconscious ideologies are as their name tells us invisible to the carrier as simple truths. Culture thus produces meaning, ideology transforms cultural meaning into myths which appear to be true.⁹

These myths, or this understanding of the world, occur and reoccur in the narratives of our time, for example the popular cultural fiction productions discussed in this study. Communication theorist Paul Cobley writes: “(...) the actions of a hero in a narrative are important: the hero's recurrent

4 Hall, Stuart, 2003. “Representation, meaning and language”. In: Hall, Stuart, ed. 2003. Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. p. 18-19

5 Ibid. p. 19 6 Ibid. p. 32

7 Weber, Cynthia, 2005. International Relations Theory – A Critical Introduction. p. 3 8 Ibid. p. 4

9 Ibid. p. 6

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failure or success in narratives indicates the legitimacy or otherwise of certain goals, outcomes or institutions within that society.”¹⁰

2.2 “The body of the state, the state of the body” - Metaphors of the body

During the 18^th century the medical sciences surpassed the church as an authority which highly influenced the treatment of the living as well as the dead body. Bodily symptoms were now dealt with through the medical sciences, which prioritized a biological exploration of the organs, tissues, cells and microstructures of the body. Furthermore, the “truth” about the body was now defined by an authority, the medical physician, who was considered better equipped to define the status of the body than the person who was suffering the illness. Medical physicians started functioning as the priesthood of the modern society. Michel Foucault argues, as cited in Kroppens tunna skal by Karin Johannisson, that this was the dawn of a new order and way to look at the body. According to Foucault there was a shift of focus from the sign (the person who was not well) to the signified (the illness itself).¹¹

The individual body of the “self” must be be cast under the societal body and the metaphors referring to bodies are an important part of the political rhetoric of the time.¹² The threat to the societal body was posed by the degeneration of individuals and their very bodies, which were now seen in a secular, materialized way.¹³ This threat could be reversed by good hygiene.¹⁴ Bryan Turner coined the term “somatic society”, a social order in which major public and personal problems are manifested through bodies. Turner's The Body and Society (1984) deals primarily with the problem of order in society. According to Turner the problem of societal order has divided sociology into two primary branches; conflict theory and consensus theory. While conflict theorists see social order as almost utopian and only achievable through constraint and discipline and threat of violence (discipline of the body), consensus theorists view social conflict and disorder as abnormal. This division is not clear cut; for example, the concept of hegemony is “a mixture of both cultural consensus and political coercion”.¹⁵

Social control and order has historically carried numerous connections to bodily control and order,

10 Cobley, Paul, 2001. Narrative. p. 184

11 Johannisson, Karin, 1998. Kroppens tunna skal. p. 199 12 Ibid. p. 245

13 Ibid. p. 227 14 Ibid. p. 30

15 Turner, Bryan, 1996. The Body and Society. p. 103

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and continues do so. As sexuality and reproduction are both societal and bodily issues, they have been and remain connected on these different levels of interpretation. Turner compares the 19^th century fear of physical harm through the “self abuse” of masturbation to the encouragement of capitalists not to spend their money on luxurious goods but to “save up”.¹⁶ Neither money nor sexual potential (to reproduction) should be wasted through unproductive activities.

The master image of what a body should be, reflected in the buildings and architecture of the city, is discussed by Richard Sennett in Flesh and Stone – The body and the City in Western Civilization.

Sennett quotes the 12^th century philosopher John of Salisbury who “connected the shape of the human body and the form of a city: the city's palace or cathedral he thought of as its head, the central market as its stomach, the city's hands and feet as its houses”¹⁷. Salisbury's ideas affected also his view of how people were to use and move in the city space. The cathedral was a suitable place for slow and reflective moments as the brain is a reflective organ, the marketplace on the other hand as more suitable for rapid motion as digestion in the stomach works in such a way.

Sennett writes further: “Our civilization, from its origins, has been challenged by the body in pain (…) Western civilization has refused to “naturalize” suffering, has either sought to treat pain as amendable to social control or to accept it as part of a conscious higher mental scheme. (..) The city has served as a site of power, its spaces made coherent and whole in the image of man himself”.¹⁸ Sennett goes on to underline the importance of the words wholeness, oneness and coherence, which according to him are the “vocabulary of power”. I would argue that these words also describe order or the making of order, both in the buildings of the city and the human body. Particularly CSI:

Miami, discussed in this study, offers an urban setting. I argue that urban spaces do not merely serve as a background for the stories of human remains, which are central to the narratives of the television series discussed in this study, particularly CSI: Miami. Neither are these narratives, and the representations of human remains which they contain, unrelated to the city space in which they are portrayed. The urban setting is effected and effects the representation of the human body, as they both serve as surfaces onto which cultural order or disorder may be ascribed.

The breakdown of order produces illness (of the societal body). Turner cited in Philip and Riley: “A sick body is not simply a body with something awry at the biological level; it is a body that has been marked culturally as insufficiently dedicated to reproduction, disorderly, unrestrained, or as an

16 Turner, Bryan, 1996. The Body and Society. p. 109

17 Sennett, Richard, 1994. Flesh and Stone – The Body and the City in Western Civilization. p. 23 18 Ibid. p. 25

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unhealthy representation.”¹⁹ Malicious viruses attacking the societal body as metaphors for crime (often seen as the breakdown of societal order) have been used much later too. Susan Sontag discusses in Illness as Metaphor more specifically how different diseases and their rampage in the human body have produced different metaphors. According to Sontag “Illnesses have always been used as metaphors to enliven charges that a society was corrupt or unjust (…) Disease imagery is used to express concern for social order (...)”²⁰ Expressions, like that of seeking a “vaccine against crime”, are common according to Alison Young, who in her book Imagining Crime further investigates and maps bodily metaphors of disease and crime.²¹ According to Young the construction of community is dependent on the the expulsion of the textual outlaws (the contained parts) of that community. This is how legal objects (healthy parts) are founded.²² Making criminals into Others, gives the pleasure of becoming a legal object.

Ethnologist Ingeborg Svensson describes the metaphors of one disease in particular, the HI-virus, which has created strings between bodily symptoms to unwanted, or according to some societal interpretations, unnatural behavior. Just as homo- and bisexual relationships were about to gain legal and social recognition, in a way unknown to history, in the late 70s and early 80s, the HI-virus boomed in the community among men who were having sex with other men. Ideas of a societal threat, if sexuality, all the way down to the physical act itself, was not handled and lived in a proper way, gained ground as the HI-virus spread in this particular community. The fact that the disease effects the defense mechanisms of the body in particular has made sense to the understanding that the gay man, and the gay community, self destruct as a direct consequence of the way in which they have lived.²³ Svensson's informants, who have a lived experience of the virus, either by being sick themselves or through someone they know or knew closely, also use societal metaphors when they describe the disease as “being at war”, never knowing who would get hit next, while the rest of society, outside of the gay community, remains peaceful.²⁴

Another vivid example of the somatic society that Bryan Turner describes is found through the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Bodily control as an expression of social control has been prominent in the telling and retelling of the assassination of Kennedy according to Barbie Zelizer.

Zelizer draws on medieval notions of the body of the king to explain the linkage between the the

19 Smith, Philip & Alexander Riley, 2009. Cultural Theory – An Introduction. pp. 263-264 20 Sontag, Susan, 1978. Illness as Metaphor. p. 72

21 Young, Alison, 1996. Imagining Crime. p. 8 22 Ibid. pp. 10-12

23 Svensson, Ingeborg, 2007. Liket i garderoben. p. 119 24 Ibid. p. 121

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political domain, which ensures balance, and body of the head of the state.²⁵ Kennedy's body is important as an embodied metaphor of political power, which means tremendous repercussions when the physical body is harmed. The (mis)treatment of the physical remains of Kennedy, that is when all life and power had left that body, caused public distress. According to Zelizer parts of Kennedy's body were lost after the autopsy, she writes: “(...) official inability to exercise control over the president's body matches a larger inability to exercise social control”.²⁶

Zelizer goes on to explain how the body of Kennedy has been used and reused to tell the story of the assassination, in different ways at different times. New parameters to examine the body have surfaced and changed the story while the physical body of Kennedy is long gone. I argue that the fiction television series researched for this study use the physical body to tell and retell stories of our current society. Which stories and through which metaphors remains to be seen. A discussion of the body and media in greater detail below.

2.3 Transition and ritual

I would argue that the example of the Kennedy assassination and the aftermath involving Kennedy's physical remains, can serve not only as an illustration of the important potential of the body as a social metaphor, but also links the discussion above to the narrower theme of this study: the dead body and the fact that the body in this state carries its own very particular metaphorical potential and meaning. Katharine Young writes: “The corpse portends a presence which is also an absence”.²⁷ Julia Kristeva, who calls the dead body “abject”, writes: “The corpse (…) is the utmost of abjection.

It is death infecting life. Abject. It is something rejected from which one does not part, from which one does not protect oneself as from an object”.²⁸ The dead body is in a position of subject turning into object in a unclear and uncontrollable process in which the steps are not traceable. The object body is not as problematic as the abject one according to Kristeva: “It is thus not lack of cleanliness or health that causes abjection but what disturbs identity, system, order. What does not respect borders, positions, rules. The in-between, the ambiguous, the composite”.²⁹ The most threatening aspect of the dead body is thus, according to Kristeva, not the object status per se, but the in- between and uncertain status of the dead body. A cultural subject turning into object.

25 Zelizer, Barbie, 1993. “From the body as evidence to the body of evidence”. In: Young, Katherine, ed. 1993.

Bodylore. p. 226 26 Ibid. p. 241

27 Young, Katharine, 1997. Presence in the Flesh – the Body in Medicine. p. 126 28 Kristeva, Julia, 1982. Powers of Horror – An Essay on Abjection. p. 5 29 Ibid. p. 4

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The dead body in a state of transition between object and subject and the idea of the dead body as a feeling entity has been discussed by among others Eva Åhrén Snickare, historian of ideas. When capital punishment was still in use (in Sweden), the death sentence was sometimes not considered enough, and the perpetrator could be sentenced to an additional physical punishment to be executed after death. An example of this could be nailing body parts onto walls. One must of course take into consideration that the only motive for these procedures might not be the punishment of the offender, but that these events most often must have been public and that there was an audience to consider.

Some of these actions might have been taken as precautionary efforts to stop crime. When anatomy later started to deal with and examine bodies, many however connected the dissection of the body to punishment.³⁰ This is interesting for my study for a reversed reason. If the body can be punished after death, it is also probable to think that it might be put to rest and “helped” after death. Historian Michael Sappol writes: “The self, prior to the triumph of anatomy, refused or exceeded the material body; the self was identified with spirit.”³¹

This does by no means indicate that “the self” would be ascribed the same value in any body, quite the contrary. Those people who were identified with body, the classes working with their hands, were reckoned as lacking selfhood altogether.³² Medical grave robbery was a common occurrence from the late 18^th century to the late 19^th century. Remains of people who had suffered special and rare diseases became especially sought after commodities. This was protested most vigorously by those who had been denied full participation in the community in life. According to Sappol the weakest members of the society regarded the dissection of their bodies as “the final and definite annulment of their social being”.³³

This is understandable considering the numerous rituals of exclusion and inclusion closely tied to the actual, physical body which we practice to this date. Bryan Turner maps these in Body and Society, and reminds us that being born into a society seldom has been a guarantee for social membership. Rituals such as baptism and circumcision mark the transition of the body from nature to culture. Like birth, death is a social process. The dead are buried, cremated or embalmed.³⁴ Ingeborg Svensson describes the rituals surrounding death, the burial in particular, as a kind of

30 Åhrén Snickare, Eva, 2002. Döden, kroppen och moderniteten. p.68

31 Sappol, Michael, 2002. A Traffic of Dead Bodies – Anatomy and Embodied Social Identity in Nineteenth-Century America. p. 22

32 Ibid. p. 22 33 Ibid. p. 16-20

34 Turner, Bryan, 1996. The Body and Society. p. 197-198

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memento mori for those who attend the ritual. In a general way of being human, all can identify and contemplate over the fact that they could, and one day will, be dead. In Svensson's text, which focuses on the rituals of death in the HIV-positive gay community, the rituals surrounding death carry further dimensions as many of those who attend these rituals are preparing for their own death. One could argue that attending rituals of death, while planning for the rituals of one ones death is to start the rituals before the actual death.³⁵

British cultural anthropologist Victor Turner discusses at length in his The Ritual Process – Structure and Anti-Structure, originally published in 1969, the rituals connected to persons in a liminal state. This liminality need not necessarily be connected to death but can be the marking of another transition in life, from one phase to another. Victor Turner refers to Arnold van Gennep who has characterized the “liminal phase” as always consisting of three phases. The first phase is separation, which is characterized by symbolic behavior which signifies the detachment of the person or the group from its current social or cultural position. The second phase is the “liminal period” in which the characteristics of the ritual subject are ambiguous; “he passes through a cultural realm that has few or none of the attributes of the past or coming state”, the third phase

“aggregation” completes the passage and the ritual subject is once again stable.³⁶

The concept of liminality is central to this study as both series researched present representations of liminal bodies as well as liminal spaces. Dead bodies are liminal by their very nature as they resemble, sometimes misleadingly vividly, a life ended which they can however never return to. As Åkesson notes the places in which dead bodies are held inevitably become dense with meaning themselves. Furthermore are the places represented in the researched series liminal in themselves as no one is meant to stay in them for long. Bodies come to be prepared for the burial, or to be investigated, but they are always in-between two more stabile conditions, life and death. The bodies which enter these liminal spaces have obviously left life in the biological sense of the word.

Nevertheless, I would argue that, the cultural body's last stop in life would be the burial. There is an interesting intersection of the biological and cultural bodies which takes place at the very liminal spaces represented in the series included in this study.

35 Svensson, Ingeborg, 2007. Liket i garderoben. p.122

36 Turner, Victor, 2009. The Ritual Process – Structure and Anti-structure. p. 94-95

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2.4 The body and media

The human body has throughout history been subject for different exhibitions, alive as well as dead.

Numerous are the so-called “freak shows” that have exhibited “deviant” bodies or body parts for curious audiences. This has continued throughout the development of modern media. Beyond the discussion of sexualized or racialized bodies, societal metaphors (concerning the body) have been absorbed, mirrored and reproduced in our media productions. When these issues are concerned the multilayered and dichotomous nature of the body has already been brought up – as the body as

“nature”, collides with body as “culture”. This can be seen, for example, in the fact that a certain sex or color of skin produces stereotypes of gender- and race-specific behavior in media productions.

Beverly Skeggs argues in Class, Self, Culture that all bodies are inscribed with a certain value. The bodies of individuals from different classes and races are inscribed with different values. Skeggs is here focusing on bodily inscriptions as restrictive and limiting for the individual who carries them.

Bodily inscriptions are however also readable to the surrounding world. According to Lynn Åkesson the body can be seen as a surface on which identities are constructed or deconstructed, written or erased.³⁷ The dead body has its own inscriptions, and carries certain meanings in the narrative of our time whenever it participates.

All fiction media is in some respect mirroring “reality”. The series which this study will discuss are all retellings – not of specific events, but nevertheless mirror images of the structure of embodiment which prevails in our society (See chapter 2.1 Culture, ideology and myth). I argue, as the previous chapter has suggested, that who dies and how, and how the body is treated, is far from coincidental in a fiction production.

The centrality of the body is in itself an important aspect. Fiction media furthermore offers a rich collection of metaphorical descriptions of bodies which are connected to the very same fear of “the Other”, such as representations of bodies that partly or altogether lack status as human. Bodies like these are all the aliens, vampires and monsters which often share human traits but that go through a metamorphosis or that have a dark side. These stories often work to keep different bodies apart in order for the human race to survive. This hierarchy of difference is discussed by communication theorist Patricia Molloy. Who might kill and who (which bodies) can be killed without serious harm

37 Åkesson, Lynn, 1997. Mellan levande och döda – Föreställningar om kropp och ritual. p. 16

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is displayed constantly in science fiction texts. Patricia Molloy parallels this with the hierarchies of modern sovereignty.³⁸ We fear, or are thought to fear, the invasion of not only our bodies but also our minds, a metaphorical image of the fear of cultural or geographical Otherness. Visible difference is the most easily graspable, but this may be applied to other bodies, such as the societal body and the borders of countries or systems of belief.

This study focuses on the human body, and its representation in what is intended to be a realistic way. The realistic representation of the body can however be manifested in a number of ways.

Katharine Young quotes Mikhail Bakhtin, Russian philosopher, scholar and semiotician, who coined the term “grotesque realism”, in the following way: “The grotesque ignores the impenetrable surface that closes and limits the body as a separate and completed phenomenon. The grotesque body image displays not only the outward but the inner features of the body: blood, bowels, heart and other organs. The outward and inward features are often merged into one.”³⁹

Bakhtin contrasts the grotesque body to the classical body, which for example Greek statues display.

According to Bakhtin the grotesque body is displayed through the emphasis on “(...) those parts of the body that are open to the outside world, that is, the parts through which the world enters the body or emerges from it, or through which the body itself goes out to meet the world.”⁴⁰ These would be the openings and orifices of the body, everything that makes the body a sum of parts, not a collected and completed entity. The most distinctive feature of the grotesque body is “its open unfinished nature, its interaction with the world” according to Bakhtin⁴¹. The bodies discussed in this study have often lost their bodily order, like in Six Feet Under, or this order is violated, as in CSI: Miami where the bodies are often represented “from the inside out” - discussing injuries for example. Adam Roberts describes this in a very clarifying way: “(...) the camera becomes the bullet as it thrusts through the rubber and computer-generated imagery of muscles, organs, blood vessels.

(…) We see blood welling out, or perhaps some yucky yellow goo (…) We are inside the body.”⁴²

38 Molloy, Patricia, 2003. “Demon Diasporas: Confronting the Other and the Other-Worldly in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel.” In: Weldes, Jutta, ed. To Seek Out New Worlds. Science Fiction and World Politics. p. 104 39 Young, Katharine, 1997. Presence in the Flesh – the Body in Medicine. p. 108

40 Ibid. p. 110 41 Ibid. p. 113

42 Roberts, Adam, 2006. “CSI: Camera slams inside... “. In: Cortez, Donn, ed. 2006. CSI: An Unauthorized Look Inside the Crime Labs of Las Vegas, Miami and New York.

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2.5 Representations of dead bodies and the television audience

Graham Clarke describes the chain of interpretation and reaction to bodily representations in photographs in the following way: “Whenever we look at an image of the body, be it ours, someone else's or even a dead body, we enter into a highly charged area which, if invariably sexual in content, concerns a dense set of signifiers and attitudes which constitute the terms of reference by which we judge and respond to the image before us (…) The body, especially the nude body (…) replicates visually those cultural, social, and aesthetic aspects which give it meaning in the first place.”⁴³ The photograph, which is Clarke's focus, offers a new kind of “liveness” compared to the older forms of art, such as paintings. The moving image again offers a further illusion of “liveness”

and reality. The moving image does not allow time to watch each frame as closely as the photograph, however. The moving images of the television series concerned in this study offer detailed and interesting, but inevitably fleeting representations of dead bodies which are always part of a whole.

Previous studies of dying and death in audiovisual media have mainly concentrated on representations of violent forms of death. Early media studies were mostly preoccupied with the

“degrading effect” media material was feared to have on its audience. According to film scholar Andreas Jacobsson there is a paradoxical development between media texts and social reality. Death as a lived experience is disappearing, while representations of death have exploded in media texts.

British sociologist Geoffrey Gorer claimed in his 1955 article “The pornography of death” that the

“natural” death had become taboo during the 20^th century and had taken over as “the inappropriate subject”, following sexuality. Later studies have used similar terms to describe the rich occurrence of deaths in the audiovisual media to this date similarly, for example “corpse porn”.⁴⁴ As always, there is a historical connection to the physical suffering, or death of others, as entertainment.

Examples of this date back to gladiator battles, public executions and so forth.⁴⁵ Today entertainment of this sort does not require the audience to be physically present, and concerning fiction media, no real victims of violence are seen.

According to Yvonne Jewkes, crime reporting of real crimes evoke “voyeuristic elements in all of us, while at the same time reinforcing a sense of horror, revulsion and powerlessness”.⁴⁶ I do not find it far fetched that dramatizations of crimes and dead bodies could have the same effect on the

43 Clarke, Graham, 1997. The Photograph. p. 130

44 Jacobsson, Andreas, 2009. Döden på film – En motivstudie med världsfilmsperspektiv. p. 23

45 Nilsson, Louise, 2008. “En underhållande död – seriemördaren som nöjesikon”. In: Nilsson, Louise & Mathias Persson, ed. 2008. Den mediala döden – Idéhistoriska variationer. p. 201-202

46 Jewkes, Yvonne, 2004. Media and Crime. p. 56

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audience. Although no member of an audience would probably mistake an episode of a television series for reality, I would still argue that the intimate nature of the footage mimics authencity. The fact that footage even can even go beyond the normal borders of the body, penetrating the skin, is easily linked to Jewke's description of “a sense of power at being privileged to see that which was meant to remain unseen: the point at which the private(...)goes public”.⁴⁷

Mathias Persson quotes Yvonne Leffler on why the audience is willing, even longing, to see that which would be considered repelling or scary: “The horrific is objectified and concretized and thereby rendered manageable.”⁴⁸ Alison Young on the other hand writes: “Imagination, the process by which we make images of the crime, recalls the drive of spectatorship; the desire to see which in turn touches the desire to be seen. Seeing the Other is a form of self-representation.”⁴⁹ Although Young here intends the criminal as Other, rather than the victim of the crime, Young's text is still useful for the purposes of this study. The images of crime and the construction of Other is hardly restricted to the portrait of the physical offender, but, I would argue, could also be applicable to representation of the dead body, as a possible source of self-representation.

Immanuel Kant, among other aesthetic theorists, argued that the sublime can evoke both fear and pleasure in the person who is watching, fear as it portraits something threatening, pleasure as this threat is fictional. Kant writes in Critique of Judgement, originally published in 1790: “This agitation (above all at its inception) can be compared with a vibration, i.e., with a rapid alteration of repulsion from, and attraction to, one and the same object. If a (thing) is excessive for the imagination (and the imagination is driven to (such excess) as it apprehends (the thing) in intuition), then (the thing) is, as it were, an abyss in which the imagination is afraid to lose itself. (…) Hence (the thing) is now attractive to the same degree to which (formerly) it was repulsive to mere sensibility.”⁵⁰

Alison Young echoes this as follows applied to modern television entertainment: “The reader is comforted by the sense that, whatever happens, the excursion into the fearful world of criminality will be followed by a return from fear, as the detective solves the crime and reveals the identity of the criminal (…) Victimization can operate as a source of horror and pleasure, the one intertwined

47 Ibid. p: 190

48 Persson, Mathias, 2008. “Konspiration: Snuff – Pornografiska mord och publika hemligheter”. In: Nilsson, Louise

& Mathias Persson, ed. 2008. Den mediala döden – Idéhistoriska variationer. p. 187 49 Young, Alison, 1996. Imagining Crime: p. 15

50 Kant, Immanuel, 1987. Critique of Judgement. p. 115

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with the other.”⁵¹ If we agree that the places (the morgue and the funeral home) represented in the television series discussed in this study are sites of transition and potentially of ritual, I think it is fair to assume that fictitious representations of them are in themselves potential continuous sites of ritual and as Lynn Åkesson writes, also these cultural representations become “places dense with meaning”.

51 Young, Alison, 1996. Imagining Crime. pp. 79-80

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3. Materials

Both programs will be researched both through a narrative film analysis which uses semiotics to approach and interpret the material, and a focus group discussion. The researched issues have been separated first by the research questions presented on page 5, and secondly by method (See Methods chapter.)

3.1 Film material

This study includes one season of each program, which makes a total of twelve episodes each.

Season 8 (2009) of CSI: Miami and season 1 (2001) of Six Feet Under are analyzed. This study aims to discuss to which functions representations of dead bodies can be put, not to give a exhaustive account of any thinkable use. CSI: Miami has been chosen because of its position as part of a larger phenomenon. CSI has been produced in other versions and several other series have a similar approach to the dead body, such as Crossing Jordan, Bones or Criminal Minds. These series contain a kind of footage of dead bodies which separates them from “traditional crime solving entertainment”. I will not argue that all these series give identical or even similar representations of the dead body. What unites these series is the “close up” and detailed representation of the (dead) body, and the centrality of that body over all. This representation may again carry different meanings, in the different versions, but that is beyond this study. Six Feet Under is more unique in its approach to the dead body, but the dead body is given a prominent place and is present in every episode.

3.1.1 Selection of material for analysis

Six Feet Under and CSI: Miami have somewhat different narrative structures which has influenced my choice of seasons. CSI:Miami presents episodes which are quite independent and which do not require knowledge of events in previous episodes, suspense is created in each episode, independent of surrounding “stable elements”, such as the investigators. Six Feet Under on the other hand presents a narrative which spans over several episodes and which presents a constant development of the characters at hand. Six Feet Under is thus most beneficially followed from the very beginning, this is why I chose season one of Six Feet Under. CSI: Miami does not require the same regularity and knowledge of events in previous episodes, or seasons, which allowed to research the very latest season of CSI: Miami without concerning the earlier seasons in this study (See also Methods chapter).

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3.2 Discussion transcripts

Two focus group discussions were conducted for this study, one about CSI: Miami and one about Six Feet Under (For details see Methods chapter/ Focus group discussion). The group discussions dealt with the group's perceptions of the series over all, and their perception of the representations of dead bodies in the series in particular. The discussions were recorded and transcribed. The discussions were conducted in Swedish (available as appendixes), quotes by the informants have been translated into english and are presented in the Results chapter. The transcripts along with notes gathered during the discussions were used to identify the primary themes addressed by the group and how the group felt about these themes. These are presented in the Results chapter.

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4. Methods

4.1 Combining film analysis and focus group discussions

Before describing the methods used for this study in greater detail, a few words on their different focuses. By combining two methods, narrative film analysis and focus group discussions, this study aims to reach breadth and depth in understanding in two different ways. The two methods chosen target the same material in different ways and with different focuses. The film analysis looks at the material as such, and strives for breadth by focusing on one aspect (the dead body) but running it across several representational platforms; looking for the same thing in a wider phenomenon.

Designing method in this way is supported by Norman Denzin's account of data triangulation⁵². The second method, the focus group discussion, mirrors the material in its audience, which according to Denzin is a more clear cut method triangulation⁵³. The focus group discussions also reach for breadth – trying to widen the horizon for which broader use these forms of entertainment might be put, which might be totally separate from the themes of the body, and also discussing different interpretations of the dead bodies. This means broadness in the sense of taking several aspects in audience behavior and interpretation into consideration, but exemplifying by particular series.

The primary goal for this study is of course to tie together the results of the two different methods and their somewhat separate focus into one coherent end result, which gives way to a discussion which is as exhaustive as possible concerning both aspects, the encoding and decoding of this particular fiction media. I think and hope that this is most successfully done by separating the researched issues first by concrete research questions and secondly by method.

4.2 Narrative

Chapter 2.1 Culture, ideology and myth discusses the basic features of a worldview in which “truth”

is understood as relative and constantly recreated, through the different narratives of our time. Paul Cobley writes about the very medium which this study discusses: “(...) television became a central institution of society, circulating and reinforcing commonly held views, acting as the foremost producer of “consensus narrative”.”⁵⁴ The analysis of the film material strives to identify the narrative features of the series and to which use the dead body is put in this narrative.

52 Denzin, Norman, K. ,1978. The Research Act: p. 295 53 Ibid. p. 301

54 Cobley, Paul, 2001. Narrative. p. 193

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4.2.1 Film narrative

The narrative of a film consists of several layers according to film scholar David Bordwell.

Bordwell's model will not be used in detail but his description of narrative layers is helpful as to shed light on the structure of this study. Bordwell describes the fabula as “the imaginary construct we create progressively and retroactively” as we are watching a film, or using any other medium.

The fabula is the viewer's interpretation of the events on the screen, therefore the fabula is never materially present in the film or soundtrack. The actual arrangement and presentation of the fabula, the events which lead us to make certain interpretations in the process of creating a fabula, is the plot (also called syuzhet). How the plot is patterned to present the fabula is fitted according to medium.⁵⁵ As this study looks at both the film material as such and at the viewers interpretations of this material Bordwell's account may function as a model and in a way clarify how different methods may target somewhat different parts of the material.

Another important factor which effects the viewer's experience and interpretation is the style used, here style is intended merely as the cinematic devices such as mise-en-scène, editing and sound, not broader interpretations of the word such as genre.⁵⁶ Plot and style, which both add to the process of interpretation, coexist as a film is both a dramaturgical and technical product, or process if you will.

The building-blocks of both plot and style are beneficially analyzed through a semiotic approach.

4.2.2 Semiotics

Semiotics is the science of signs. A sign consists of two parts, a material expression and an immaterial (interpreted) content.⁵⁷ The connection between expression and content in language is based on codes, which are generally accepted rules and conventions on how things are connected.⁵⁸ Another important aspect of semiotics is the two levels of meaning, the denotative and the connotative. According to Roland Barthes the denotation is the first, immediate meaning, while connotation is the cultural and contextual interpretation discussed above.⁵⁹ (See chapter 2.1 Culture, ideology and myth)

4.2.2.1 Critique of semiotics

The semiotic approach is occupied with the creation of meaning. Both Pierre Bourdieu and Michel

55 Bordwell, David, 1985. Narration in the Fiction Film. pp. 49-50 56 Ibid. p. 50

57 Gripsrud, Jostein, 2000. Mediekultur – Mediesamhälle. p. 138 58 Östbye, Helge, 2004. Metodbok för medievetenskap. p. 67 59 Barthes, Roland, 1977. Image, Music, Text. p. 42

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Foucault have critiqued the semiotic approach. Bourdieu has claimed that both semiotics and discourse analysis isolated fail to understand the richness of what is investigated “(...) all such attempts (…) take for granted but fail to take account of the sociohistorical conditions within which the object of analysis is produced, constructed and received.”⁶⁰ Foucault finds the semiotic approach preoccupied with meaning to such an extent that it fails to take into account the broader themes of power and knowledge.⁶¹

This study only makes truth-claims tied to specific individuals and moments of time. Both the film analysis and the analysis of focus group discussion are highly dependent on the researcher as an interpreter. The film analyses are highly charged with my own cultural preconceptions. As the accounts of the focus group discussion are interpreted by me as a researcher, inevitably they too are to some extent contaminated by my cultural and contextual understanding and preconceptions.

Cultural geographer Gillian Rose, specialized in visual culture, writes: “...the significance of an object does not pre-exist its social life. Any object is always actualized in a specific moment of use, which produces both the object and the sort of person looking at it.”⁶²

4.2.3 Implementation

All episodes of both series were first viewed in their entirety. Scenes that contained dead bodies were thereafter reviewed and analyzed. Traits that recurred were identified and interpreted. This procedure gives the opportunity to do a careful and detailed analysis. The weakness of this procedure is that the fleeting nature of television viewing is ignored as the frame is frozen and scenes are reviewed, which alters the interpretation and distances it from the experience of a regular television audience.

Research questions for this section

 How is the dead body represented in CSI: Miami and Six Feet Under?

 What functions does the dead body serve in the disruption, reinstatement and restoring of cultural or biological order in CSI: Miami and Six Feet Under?

 What differences or similarities in the representation, meaning and function of the dead body does Six Feet Under and CSI: Miami offer?

60 Fairclough, Norman, 1998. “Political Discourse in the Media: An Analytical Framework”. In: Bell, Allan & Peter Garrett, ed. 1998. Approaches to Media Discourse. p. 143

61 Hall, Stuart, 2003. “Representation, meaning and language”. In: Hall, Stuart, ed. 2003. Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. pp. 41-42

62 Rose, Gillian, 2007. Visual Methodologies – An Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materials. p. 220

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4.3 Focus group discussions

To conduct a group interview or discussion rather than to conduct one or several individual interviews can offer several advantages in the field investigated in this study. Uwe Flick argues that the situation of gathering a group to discuss offers a different dynamic – and a milieu which resembles the one in which “opinions are produced, expressed and exchanged” in everyday life.⁶³ The group dynamic does at its best stimulate the group to become aware of and express all their thoughts and ideas, when hearing others express theirs, may they agree or disagree. As all individuals have their own process of interpretation, hopefully all will be able to bring forward to the group what they find most interesting, and as a consequence of that, create an interesting and vivid discussion which addresses several themes that might have been neglected in individual interviews.

In order to obtain optimal results the group dynamic must function. Flick suggests that the group should include rather homogenous participants considering socioeconomic status and educational background. Even though different backgrounds could be argued to benefit the results as to making them as interesting and diverse as possible, differences which are too great can potentially disturb the dynamics of the group and make communication difficult “and the reserve of individual participants will be broken down by the confrontation...”.⁶⁴

4.3.1 Implementation

The group discussing CSI included four participants, three female and one male. The group discussing Six Feet Under included five participants, three males and two females. In both groups all members were in their mid 20s or early 30s, except for one participant in the CSI group who was in her late 40s. In both groups all participants had met before which would make them part of a

“real group”, not artificially created for the sake of the interview. Gathering participants for the CSI group did not require much effort and all of the participants were acquaintances of mine, all of whom I asked seemed to have some first hand knowledge about CSI. Gathering a focus group to discuss Six Feet Under was more difficult, after some fruitless efforts to find participants among my own acquaintances I turned to a snowball gathering and asked participants who had agreed to take part to think of friends or acquaintances who might watch Six Feet Under.⁶⁵

63 Flick, Uwe, 2006. An Introduction to Qualitative Research. p. 191 64 Ibid. p. 192

65 The different approach required for the focus group discussion on Six Feet Under might be connected to the different narrative structures the two series offer. CSI:Miami presents episodes which are quite independent and

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The groups could be classified as homogenous in some respects. All participants were ethnic Swedes and could be classified as “middle class”, which could influence their view of death and the dead body. All participants had higher education, two university graduates and two undergraduates in the CSI group, which probably affects analytical strategies and the way in which interpretation is presented and argued, and which probably is connected to familiarity with analyzing ones own and other's behavior. Last but not least, all participants shared some interest for CSI or Six Feet Under, which was a basic characteristic that had to be filled in order for a meaningful discussion to take place. This does not mean that the participants could (or should) be called fans of the shows, but rather that they were familiar with the concepts of the shows and had seen enough episodes in order to know what to expect as typical for an episode.

The discussions were carried out in the home of one of the discussants, in the TV-sofa of the livingroom. First the series were discussed over all, the discussants were asked to explain their primary associations with the shows, why they liked to watch the shows and also what they thought about other people's motives for watching the shows. After this the discussion moved on to the primary interest of this paper; the body. Neither the discussion of CSI nor that of Six Feet Under needed much help from me as a moderator as the primary theme of this paper was brought up instantly by some of the respondents, as their first association with these series was in fact, the dead body. The respondents steered the conversation and there was no strict plan for the discussion, beside discussing the “right” subjects – the dead body and its function.

The interviews were recorded for best access to detailed information. Afterwards the interviews were transcribed and through the transcripts and notes made during the discussions I identified the themes which dominated the discussions and what was said about these.

Research questions for this section:

 Which themes of CSI: Miami and Sex Feet Under, in- or excluding that of the dead body does the audience find important and why?

 What meaning and function does the audience attribute to the dead body in CSI: Miami and Six Feet Under?

which do not require knowledge of events in previous episodes, suspense is created in each episode. Six Feet Under on the other hand has a narrative which spans over several episodes. This would in turn mean that following Six Feet Under requires a different kind of dedication and regularity, which in turn must mean if not fewer, at least more

“specialized” viewers.

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5. Results

5.1. Film analysis of CSI:Miami

The film analysis of CSI: Miami aims to research the representation of the dead body as a narrative device in the series, and further to which use this body is put in the disruption and reinstatement of cultural or biological order.

Results

 The bodies on CSI: Miami are intrusively filmed. The camera penetrates the surfaces of the bodies, which lets the inside of the body, organs and vessels, take part in the storytelling.

 CSI depends and relies on the body as a biological entity, not only to tell the story of a particular episode, but also to tell a story about the restoring of order and safety on a metaphorical level.

 Bodily order in CSI: Miami indicates biological order in the sense that the investigators are able to determine what the person died from and who is guilty of this death. CSI: Miami also relies on cultural order, in the sense that the dead bodies regain their status as individuals and as subjects as their case is investigated and solved. The body as object, or abject, serve as a threat to order. This is manifested at a more basic level of corporality, the dead bodies are cleaned up and their hair is combed. Perfectly white sheets which cover the bodies connote purity and order.

 CSI: Miami uses some filmic techniques which both centralize the body further, and others which make the investigation of the body seem like a private situation.

5.1.1 Centrality of the dead body

As the title reveals CSI depicts crime scene investigation, therefore the dead body as a biological entity is central to the story. As the pilot study on Law and Order and CSI indicated, CSI belongs to a new tradition of crime solving television which gives the dead body a more prominent place in the narrative than its earlier counterparts, which have relied to a higher degree on other evidence when solving the crimes. Although dead bodies have occurred and reoccurred in television- and film- productions for a long time, also in the genre of crime solving television, CSI relies more on the dead body as a narrative device than for example Law and Order, both in solving the crimes and in reinstating metaphorical order.

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The centrality of the body is underlined by filmic techniques. In the episode Kill Clause, a body is laid out on the table and both body and investigators are filmed from a distance. The camera moves in a circular motion around the room and goes behind the interiors of the room, so that the body and the investigation of it are seen through glass jars and behind chairs (Pictures 1 and 9). This pattern is renewed in almost all other episodes. This could add to the feeling that the viewer is watching something private or secret, something to which access is rarely granted. The circular movement around the room furthermore adds to the feeling that the body is at the center of the room, and that this room is a space which exists for and expands from that body. The body is dense with meaning.

Signs could be read off of the surface of the body and the treatment of the body is treated, but also the body in itself functions as a sign in the greater narrative of CSI: Miami.

Each episode of CSI: Miami presents a new case to be solved, which most often involves an investigation of a dead body. The episodes can be viewed independently as suspense and a new case is created for each episode. The parallel narratives which run over several episodes, such as the relationships of the investigators are not in focus.

5.1.2 Body as order

Both Lynn Åkesson and Victor Turner discuss the ritual potential of the dead, liminal body and the liminal space which this body is kept in. In episodes of CSI: Miami the dead body typically functions as a site of transition, and through this, reinstation of order. The dead bodies which come in to the Miami crime-lab are used as materialized markers of disorder. The bodies are not only used as devices through which the crimes can be solved, and eventually are, but also as sites of disorder and order in themselves. The crimes investigated in CSI: Miami are disruptions of societal order, and threaten the status quo. The material entities, the dead bodies, which remain of the victims of these crimes are used in the television series to illustrate the progress, and eventual solving, of the investigation. Julia Kristeva called the corpse an abject, something which used to belong to a cultural symbolic order, but which now is cast outside of it, which causes the viewer to feel disgust or unease. Every episode of CSI: Miami strives to let the victim regain its status as cultural subject.

Each episode works to let the victim be identified as a cultural subject, rather than a material object, or anything in-between – abject. When a body is successfully brought through the rituals surrounding death, order is regained, both on a bodily and social level. CSI: Miami circulates the cultural myth that it is important to care for the remains of a deceased person in a certain way. The abject status of the body is thus refused or reversed in the episodes of CSI: Miami, which connotes

Abject and Liminal Bodies

Abject and

Liminal Bodies

The Dead Body

in CSI: Miami and Six Feet Under

Stockholm University

Department of Journalism, Media and Communication

Thesis for the Degree of Master in Media and Communication Studies Kristina Stenström

May 26

2010

Advisor: Karin Becker

Examiner: Sven Ross

Abstract

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. Theory

3. Materials

4. Methods

5. Results