Comments | criminalxminds: Cross-Racial Serial Predators / woc victims

gsyh in criminalxminds

Cross-Racial Serial Predators / woc victims

Dec 20, 2011 14:35

What do you make of Criminal Minds's repeated assertions that the serial killer in question have to be in the same race as that of his(/her) victims, to the point of completely ignoring other possibilities, like in "Fear and Loathing"? I haven't seen all the episodes yet (is there one or more that featured a cross racial serial sex killer?)

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discussion: series

Comments 24

limpycsiwombat December 20 2011, 19:53:27 UTC

I agree with you that yes it is possible for cross-racial serial sex killers. And yes women tend to look more like victims on the show even though in real life the most likely to be victimized are white males ( ... )

I really wish I'll know where to look on stats gsyh December 20 2011, 20:21:15 UTC

...cause I have been working on ancedotes, which was

1. quite a few cases I came across feature white serial killers with minority victims

2. in colonial studies, sexual abuse was covered as a part of colonial abuse, that's cross racial sexual predation

On the male versus female victims of violence thing, that's another need more stats but what stats do we have to work with here? Men are more likely than women to be murdered, but what about violence where there was no body? Such as sexual assault - which tend to not be taken seriously until there was a body ( ... )

hippediva December 20 2011, 20:06:29 UTC

Anything is possible. The allegation is based on criminal history. Anything else is a waste of time---it's a fictional tv show. If you really want reality shows, watch INDIS or History channel.

define_serenity December 20 2011, 20:10:24 UTC

in episode 4 of season 1 the team briefly argues this point, because they arrest a young black guy for the rape and murder of white surburban housewives (but he does turn out to be a rapist). one of them (Morgan I think) says that this being their UnSub is highly unlikely, because that would be cross-racial, but then Reid argues that there have been examples of this happening. i do believe Hotch or Gideon quickly puts this conversation to an end.

i do believe Hotch or Gideon quickly puts this conversation to an end. gsyh December 20 2011, 20:57:33 UTC

Ha, I like Hotch and Gideon, but I'm of the opinion that while their experience is vastly useful and right most of the time, unlike Reid, they are sometimes blind to outlying possibilities.

"Plain Sight" eh? That's actually another episode in which cross racial predation would have made sense (but I guess it's been avoided so far because of the Molotov quality of the subject matter). It was already a socio-politically driven murder - motivated by resentment in class difference.

It's just, maybe it's because I live in Toronto, in Canada, but from the daily news coverage, assumption of same-race predation would be very frequently proven wrong.

emploding December 20 2011, 20:18:56 UTC

As someone up there said, it's a fictional show and although they take real things into account, they make up whatever they want for the sake of a fictional TV show.

They also use overly simplified versions of things for their "profiles".

In the end, they probably aren't too interested in spending a lot of time on minor details like that.

Um, I don't think THIS details is minor though gsyh December 20 2011, 21:00:41 UTC

...for all the reason stated in the post, and one of the above comments.

...because I know it is fictional, I'm not going to question The Jet! Or even the realism of Tobias Hankel because it made for such compelling storytelling.

Being fictional doesn't mean it gets an all pass, just as being fictional didn't stop Criminal Minds from ribbing on the Stranger Danger myth!

derangedfangirl December 20 2011, 21:15:38 UTC

You bring up a lot of really good points. Fundamentally, I think that CM occasionally.. makes problematic assumptions about race, unintentionally. Likely it's related to the fact that the majority of the writers (or perhaps all? I can't remember) are white. I object to the idea that we, as fans, shouldn't be analyzing this shit because it's a fictional TV show or whatever- this stuff impacts us, and it impacts the way we view race and how we view crime and victimhood in real life. This stuff is important. The fact that it's not intentional doesn't make it less problematic. Thanks for your thoughts!

analysis gsyh December 20 2011, 21:36:17 UTC

I object to the idea that we, as fans, shouldn't be analyzing this shit because it's a fictional TV show or whatever- this stuff impacts usDing Ding Ding Ding Ding ( ... )