Rachel Velody - CSI

I found a paper online which partially talks about the representation of women in CSI. I am trying to get hold of the whole paper but this is just the beginning. Enjoy reading it

Rachel Velody
Goldsmith's College, London
If Looks Could Kill: The Abject Gaze of Crime Scene Investigation
http://www.wickedness.net/e3s9.htm
In this paper I want to re-situate the term Abjection, looking at both the functions and dilemmas of its usage, within the popular American television series, C.S.I. (Crime Scene Investigation).
The c.s.i. team function much as a homicide detective squad, but forensics is the core of their work, consequently the body of the victim becomes the prime location of crime solving. C.S.I. is a recent addition, then, to the spectrum of Anglo-American television crime dramas that focus on forensics as the location of modern and authentic detective work. This shift to the body legitimates an explicit-ness in its processes of re-representation of murder. Much of C.S.I. is devoted to sequences in which the corpse is apparently dissected in front of us.
This paper takes a three-fold argument; with abjection positioned between the discourses of taste and gender. In the first instance will be looking at how C.S.I. operates on the one hand as a site of repulsion, and risks distancing the viewer. In this dual mode however, it also makes a demand that the viewer joins in its particular, (and pleasurable), rhetoric of violence. I argue in this first section that forensics is structured through a hyper-masculine rhetoric. Here the dynamic re-representation of the body and the processes of pathology are depicted through a kind of assault on the body, visceral, and frenzied - repulsive yet powerful and inviting. To position ourselves in the mode of detective in C.S.I. means subjugating ourselves to this 'macho' address.
I will then move on to analyse more closely two related ways in which the text is able to counter the risks associated with abjection. In the first instance I want to give a comparative account. Objective and scientific signs within the text are discussed as a critical mode of address working to exorcise the 'abject gaze'. There are of course, other American sub-genres contemporaneous to C.S.I. that can act as interesting contrast. Rather than cross to other sub-genres, however, I want to make a comparison of C.S.I. against recent British crime drams in which forensic pathology is dominant. I will therefore be considering the similarities to, and distinctions between C.S.I. and British texts such as Waking the Dead (dates) and Silent Witness (1996 onwards); to see how concepts of taste impact on the ways that crime drama is positioned in broadcasting. In the second part of the argument the concept of a hyper-masculine rhetoric emerges again.
Here, however, the focus looks at the ways that abjection functions in relation to the women of C.S.I. This is because the text produces a range of strong and active femininities in the roles of the forensics 'personnel', Katherine and Sarah. In this context of gender I want to look at the ways in which abjection both contributes to and contains the concept of a strong female in the text itself. The relationship between forensics and femininity is a particularly resonant theme in discussions of contemporary female representation, because of the traditional representation of women in crime, and the ways that C.S.I. appears to challenge this. At the same time, the sign of femininity is extremely useful, helping to conflate abjection with the female signifier of the pastoral. I want to look the extent to which this is the case.