 Starring: Emily Deschanel, David Boreanaz, Michaela Conlin, T.J. Thyne
Director: Various
Year Of Release: 2005-2008
Plot: Dr. Temperance Brennan is the leading forensic anthropologist at the Jefferson institute in Washington DC. She’s called in by the FBI whenever a body is found and the flesh has been stripped away, as she and her team can often work out what happened just from the bones. Along with agent Seeley Booth, Temperance investigates all manner of gruesome crimes. |
I love Bones. Although it is rather silly and like most supposedly science based crime shows (like CSI), it pushes what it’s currently possible to do way past breaking point, it’s immensely fun, often rather gory and has two excellent leads in Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz.
However the one thing about Bones and all crime shows – let alone films about serial killers – is the question of why people find murder so entertaining. I don’t really have a full answer, because it is a rather odd thing. In real life, murder is amongst the worst thing that can happen, but put it in a TV show or movie, and suddenly it’s the height of amusement.
You’d think that we ought to be shocked and horrified by shows that try to make light of such a serious situation. This is particularly true of Bones, which is nearly a comedy, despite being about the investigation of some impressively gruesome and terrible crimes.
While modern TV and film is filled with shows about the investigation of murders, from Bones to CSI, a fascination with death in entertainment is certainly nothing new. After all Shakespeare’s tragedies are awash with blood, and Hamlet is almost a reverse murder investigation, about whether somebody ought to kill someone else.
However there are a few things that I think make murder shows such a staple part of the TV diet. The first is that human beings do seem to have a strange fascination with death. The fact murder is pretty much society’s ultimate taboo makes it oddly fascinating to people as it’s something they don’t truly understand. There are actually a few psychologists who say that people’s interest in murder is hardwired into our DNA and by extension society. This isn’t to say that secretly everyone wants to kill everyone else, but that in order to create a world where people generally actively go out of their way not to kill other, we have instinctive, strong feelings about murder, and these need to be engaged with in order to reinforce them. Society as a whole then strengthens the idea that we can’t go around killing one another, by incorporating it into stories that underline how it’s the ultimate betrayal of the social contract.
It’s also true that because most people find it difficult imagine themselves being in a situation where they deliberately took someone else’s life, there’s an endless fascination with trying to understand the hows and whys of murder, which the likes of Bones trade on (that said, most crime shows are fairly fantastical compared to real life, but even that one step remove is important, so that it seems close enough to reality to be interesting, while far enough removed not to be uncomfortable viewing).
Drama also thrives on conflict, and so murder is an easy way to make sure the stakes are high. The idea that murderers ought to be caught and brought to justice is something most people can agree upon, and so a show that takes this as its basic concept can ensure that there’s always a central conflict that it tries to resolve each episode. It’s one of the reasons why shows like Lost and Desperate Housewives have their ups and downs, while crime shows stay comparatively level (even if it difficult for them to reach truly great highs).
A murder to investigate each episode makes sure that no matter what else is happening, there’s always a strong conflict to hang the entire episode on and keep people watching. If you don’t have something like that, you’re going to have to invent constant new and different conflicts, and you can never be sure the audience will respond to them – hence why individual episode of shows like Lost can swing from being absolutely riveting one week to amazingly tedious the next, as the key drama it’s based on is constantly shifting. It’s the same reason medical shows are popular, because the endless series of injuries and sicknesses, keeps a constant supply of high-stakes drama no matter what’s happening elsewhere. Murder and medicine may be a way to slightly cheat in creating drama, as the conflict is inherent rather than coming from the characters, but it certainly works.
The other main reason shows like Bones are so popular is the comfort of familiarity. A murder investigation automatically sets up a story arc that people know and are comfortable with. There’s the crime, the investigation into what happened, the lining up of suspects and finally the unmasking of the killer. As an audience member you know with Bones what you’re getting. You’re not going to watch an episode and at the end be disappointed because it was something completely different to what you expected. After all, the reason they call then police procedurals is because they follow a set pattern, and they do that because a lot of viewers don’t want surprises, they want the familiar and a show they know they can be relatively sure they’re going to enjoy.
There’ll be a body (or in Bones at a least skeleton), an investigation and at the end the catharsis of a killer being captured. In fact it’s the capturing of the killer that may be the biggest reason that we find shows about murder so entertaining. Basically murder is a breakdown of society, but catching the perpetrator restores the balance. The result is that crime shows present an oddly comforting notion of a world where terrible things might happen, but any transgressions will ultimately be punished and the threat removed. It is probably this above all else that makes these shows so popular. Like most mainstream entertainment, they are a sort of wish fulfilment of a world where no crime goes unpunished, and the good guys are always better and cleverer than the bad guys.
It’s also worth mentioning the idea that the fact a lot of screen entertainment is based around violence and murder is because it’s like a modern version of ancient Roman gladiatorial games. Most older civilisations had some sort of organised outlet for our aggressive tendencies, normally with strict rules governing them that said what was seen as just and what wasn’t in these battles, so that even if they ended in one of the participants dying, it’s cathartic and an affirmation of the rules of society. Now we’ve set up a system where we get the same results, but through simulated on-screen violence rather than real. Shows like Bones are an outlet for our aggressive tendencies, while simultaneously reinforcing society’s idealised notions of justice. However that’s a pretty broad subject, and so rather than going into depth here, it’ll have to wait for another Movie-A-Day article.
I still think it’s peculiar that shows about murder are endlessly popular, and that nobody objects to even something like Bones, which is both gruesome and seems to make light of such a serious subject, but there do seem to be at least some reasons why we like these shows so much.
TIM ISAAC
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