CSI Epistemology

It came to me suddenly why we're enamored with all the CSIs and SUVs (or SVUs, as one of the Law and Order franchise is labeled), with all the Criminal Minds and Mentalists and Psychs. I was reading Stephen King's short story, "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption" in which he turns the premise of those shows on its ear. King does this almost too easily really: he sets up motive, evidence, and outcome for the main character to kill his wife and her lover. Everything points to the main character's guilt except for one thing: he didn't do it. The lesson, I suppose, is how easily we can be deceived, how easily the truth can be made a lie.

Meanwhile, of course, the above shows' collective premise is that "the evidence never lies." In fact, I think that was the slogan of the head agent in the original CSI: Las Vegas--that is, the head agent two head agents before the current head agent on that show. Since the time of that head agent, these shows have proliferated like none other, all of them with this premise: the evidence doesn't lie.

Oh sure, Psych and The Mentalist have added more peripheral evidence like psychology, and my wife's favorite show, Castle has even added a writer to emphasize, perhaps, that violent crime is always wrapped up in a story, but at base they're still all about the truth of 20th century epistemology: the evidence never lies.

Because that's what these shows are about: objectivist, scientific, logical positivist epistemology. In a world where people get bludgeoned to death nightly, at least we can follow the trail of bread crumbs that becomes so clear and overwhelming that the perps will confess every time. They are shows, really, about trails of bread crumbs. And in this way they are somewhat logical positivist and naturalistic: the universe they set up is determined and I suppose just in a mechanical sort of way. It is also an amoral world filled with little joy or true festivity, where the best we can hope for is the capitalist dream of some property and some parties.

It wasn't always this way. Remember the trend of supernatural cop shows, epitomized by the X Files? That spat of Twilight Zone spinoffs even included Baywatch Nights. Notice. It didn't last. With the loss of Lost a couple of seasons ago, logical positivism and "the evidence never lies" seems to have triumphed completely. The idea that human characters can navigate a more unpredictable world based on virtues and our sense of a larger story than evolutionary science seems to have bitten the dust.

On the horizon now, however, is the Inception spinoff Awake, where the lead character can't tell his real life from his dream life. The premise of Awake is no doubt driven by psychology, but it's no Lost. In fact, it looks like it's kind of revisiting Descartes "Evil Genius"--how will the main character know which world is true? Perhaps by recognizing his most "clear and distinct perceptions," the foundation for Descartes cogito ergo sum ("I think, therefore I am"). In the end, if the show bends toward this kind of answer, it will fall into the camp of enshrining our logical positivist epistemology.

Mass culture is a fascinating thing. Our collective impulses tell us how our moral and, even more to the point, our epistemological compasses--how we've conditioned our minds to think--are oriented. While the challenge of postmodernity has put some terribly interesting stories in front of us, like Lost, in the largest category of mass culture we still seem to tend toward the modern, a tradition which stretches at least from Descartes to CSI: the evidence never lies.

Ah, but it does and it can. But a bigger truth than logical positivism can break into the world and reorient it to a larger, less tyrannical truth. What can be a bigger truth?

The Word.