Crime Drama

Crime drama. For some, these two words induce groans of annoyance. For others, their first thought is of gory violence. For many people, they make a look of excitement. Few people however first think “conformity” when they hear crime drama. Perhaps they should though because crime dramas can almost be defined as battling deviant behavior, as most crime is considered deviant. The T.V. show Criminal Minds is no different. It has a group of non-deviants chasing and capturing the multitude of violent deviants in the world. This, along with the fact that the non-deviants always triumph over the deviants and that viewers of the show root for the conforming group, shows that Criminal Minds is telling us that there are many dangerous deviants in our society and that most people want them removed.

Criminal Minds addresses a specific type of deviance that has become extremely popular on T.V. known as violent crime. Several T.V. shows focus on this type of deviance but Criminal Minds specializes in serial killers and follows the FBI team assigned to catch them. Most of the deviant behavior in the show comes from the criminals. Every week the team is seen trying to catch a new killer or a particularly clever one from a previous episode. The method of murder changes from episode to episode but usually involves some ingenious form of physical or mental torture. Torture and murder are two of the most disturbing forms of deviance in many cultures, but since they are displayed on T.V. so often, Criminal Minds has had to get creative. In one episode, the main characters are pitted against a man who has been kidnapping homeless people. After taking them, he would perform experiments on them and try to get stem cells from their bodies before killing them. Once he was done with the body, he would feed it to the pigs on his farm. This is just one example of the violent crimes shown, as there are many other forms of torture depicted on the show as well as rape and human trafficking. These crimes are seen as deviant in many cultures throughout the world due to pain and suffering they inflict on other human beings. In contrast to this, the main characters show little to no deviant behavior at all. One character was a computer hacker before joining the FBI but now uses her skill for good. The only time she breaks the law or commits objectionable acts is when she is trying to help someone. A different team member became addicted to Dilaudid, a strong opiate, but only because he was injected with it repeatedly after being kidnapped by the episode’s antagonist. He later kicked the habit. This seems to draw a fine line