Have y'all seen that show "Criminal Minds"? It's on right now. I have no idea if this is a rerun or what, as I don't normally watch this show. I did, for a while, and sometimes I'll still watch it if noting else is on (I don't have cable), but it usually leaves me unsettled. Let me tell you why.
Criminal Minds is a procedural-style show that follows a team of FBI profilers from the Behavioral Analysis Unit in Quantico, Virginia. The show has been on for six seasons, so it must be doing something that audiences like.
The show follows the criminal, and focuses on them and their behavior, rather than the crime. The team tries to figure out what sort of deviant they're dealing with, and it seems like most of the time, it's someone with a mental illness. The team members come from various backgrounds, including law enforcement and psychology. They profile the criminal, figure out what kind of mental disorder they have, and proceed to catch them. But the show just can't help throwing out lots of words picked up from a college Psych 101 class and portraying these illnesses in the most fear-mongering way possible.
For example, in an episode I happened to see from March of this year, which featured a serial killer who heard three different voices in his head. One of the team members begins to fear turning into a similar kind of person, because his mother was mentally ill (she has paranoid schizophrenia and the character in question committed his mother to an institution when he was 18). The serial killer, as it turns out, committed crimes before he was diagnosed with mental illness, so the implication is that he was born inherently evil. The killer ends up in a mental hospital and appears to be getting better, so the hospital staff become more lenient with him, but in the end, the voices return to him, and the episode ends with the implication that he will return again. DUN DUN DUN.
And that's just one example. Nearly every episode features at least one of the following: trauma, sexual abuse, compulsive disorders, dissociation, antisocial or narcissistic behavior, and goodness knows what else. The major recurring serial killers have been labeled as Psychotic and one had Multiple Personality Disorder after suffering childhood trauma.
As if that weren't bad enough, CBS decided that there needed to be a spin-off, titled Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior. I have thoughts on that one as well, but as with most things I have Feelings About, someone else has already said it better. I'm gonna let Salon.com take this one:
Mercifully, this one was canceled in May of 2011. But the original Criminal Minds continues to live on, perpetuating the idea that all violent offenders are mentally ill.
"Like most CBS procedurals, this one is mainly interested in seeing how much perversity and fear it can serve up while maintaining the pretense of clinical distance. No dice: This is one sick piece of trash. Between its plasticized pseudo-characters, compositionally indifferent camerawork, “Real dialogue to be inserted later” lines, and lingering images of cruelty and pain masquerading as portraits of man’s inhumanity to man, “Suspect Intentions” plays like a Thomas Harris novel adapted by Ed Wood. For those of you compiling lists of the worst new TV series of 2011: Pencils down, y’all. We have a winner."
This show is certainly not the only one to do this, and CBS is not the only network to do so. But that doesn't make it right. I'm calling this show out because it focuses so closely on the criminal, and portrays them as such caricatures of people with real mental illness. These shows drum up fear and try to make the crimes as disturbing as possible. The criminals are portrayed as mentally ill because it is frightening to think that someone who is NOT mentally ill could do so. "Of course a crazy person did it, they're crazy." And so the stigma continues to grow, and people who are mentally ill feel ashamed and weak, because it's not something we can control. The shame is often so great that it overshadows all other symptoms, and usually just exacerbates things.
Thank you so much for this. I’ve watched a few episodes of this show and I was appalled how they used mental illness in this sensationalist and vilifying way. I looked in vain for an official backlash in America, but you guys seem to be way behind in advocacy for the mentally ill. I am schizophrenic and live in Australia and we have many successful and well-funded groups to fight the sort of stigma this trash perpetuates. Where is the advocacy in America?
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