Long belated response...

[altivo]

Well, I finally saw that controversial episode of CSI last night. The one where they found the dead guy in a raccoon suit beside the road. (I can't help but snicker at the idea of finding a dead raccoon beside the road. Where else would you find one? It's way too common around here.)

On the whole, I found it more amusing than irritating, and didn't have the huge dramatic reaction to it that some did. It's television, it's exaggerated and shallow and typical television fare. Yes, no doubt there are millions of drooling idiots who watch CSI and think it's real, believing everything they see, but frankly, an accurate program about furry fandom wouldn't hold their attention long enough to get any information through to them.

Now I'm not normally a watcher of cable or network TV, and I know nothing about CSI as a series. So forgive me for not knowing the actors or the roles they play. I found the woman investigator to be shallow and unimaginative, with all her posturing and complaints about how weird and disgusting it all was, yet she could predict exactly the sequence of steps in the fight Rocky Raccoon had with Linda Lamb. I found that just as weird and distasteful, but she thought it was perfectly normal and predictable. Maybe being gay just means I don't understand women, but I suspect that's not it.

The male investigator who kept making very reasonable statements about furries and how he thought their psychology and social realm worked wasn't so bad. A lot of the time he was pretty accurate.

The main flaw in the thing as far as I was concerned would be the same as the flawed news coverage that gay pride events get: focus on the weird and sensational, while downplaying all the ordinary activities that would have been going on as well. Is there sex at furry cons? Sure, I don't doubt it, though it's outside my personal experience. Is there sex at science fiction cons? I'm willing to bet on it. Is there sex at the Republican National Convention or a meeting of Lutheran Church delegates? If you think not, you're mentally defective. So what?

At any furry gathering, the thing most noticeable to the outsider will be the number of people in fursuits. The program certainly made that point. What they missed is that any furry gathering, by my observation, only some 15% to 20% at attendees will be active fursuiters. All the other people just didn't exist as far as this script writer was concerned. Of those who wear fursuits, a fair number are not going to be actively involved in some of the things that the show seemed to assume all of them do. But that's normal television. Go for the sensational and go for the simplified generalization.

Are all gay men drag queens? Certainly not. Do people who watch television as their main window on the world believe that all gay men are drag queens? Many probably do. And again, if you put on a television program about the reality of ordinary gay life, most would find it so boring they wouldn't watch it for long. The same applies to furry, pagan, otherkin, or any other fringe element in our culture. So I don't think the silly CSI program was all that damaging. It was just silly. People who will take it as a source of truth that they can cite for proof are not within the subset of people who could be convinced otherwise, in any case. They will believe what they want to believe.

Comments

[mymaimary.livejournal.com]

I've never seen CSI, but I know what you mean about cons. Anime cons are full of people who dress up, but if everyone dressed up, what would be special about it? And sex, heck yeah, you know that when that many people get together there will be normal and abnormal of every catagory. Except the Republican National Convention. I assume there it's all by the Book, but I'm probably biased..

Not the Voice of Experience

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

Except the Republican National Convention.

Ever hear "It's always the quiet ones."?

Re: Not the Voice of Experience

[mymaimary.livejournal.com]

*snort and chortle* you're right...stop blowing my generalities...they're all that exist today. ;>

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Heh. Being Republican is already a sign of some kind of abnormality in my thinking. It's just the tip of the iceberg. Sorta like J. Edgar Hoover or Roy Cohn.

[heavens-steed.livejournal.com]

You know, I'm a registered Republican, Tivo. Although I meaning to change to independent but haven't done it yet. Does what you say about abnormality apply to me too?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Only if you behave like the individuals I named there, pretending to be "normal" and perfect, persecuting others who are in the minority, and all the while actually hiding your own peculiarities. I haven't seen you doing that quite.

[darkhorseman.livejournal.com]

You got the roles down right. Grissom (the older guy with the bear on his desk at the end) is usually quite open minded about things and theres hints he had a thing going with a BDSM chick.

Overall I found the episode amusing and exactly what I expected. They found a way to include a sticky fursuit and ofcourse the words furpile, yiff and scritch.

I thought little of it as it is everything you would see at a furry con and that I have seen at a furry con. They just amplified the strange and played up the stereotypes. It was perfectly believable as what you would see if you walked around any con with a camera.. take the camera away and look at the bigger picture then you will see the 80% of the rest of us who look... mostly normal and are just hanging out

[altivo.livejournal.com]

What was most objectionable was the attitude of the woman character and the guy who I take it is her (and Grissom's) boss. Obviously they belong to the Republican Party or to some straitlaced religious sect if they think furry is as bizarre and perverse as all that.

[darkhorseman.livejournal.com]

you know not all of us republicans are bad.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

The ones who are running the country are pretty bad in my opinion. As in, really, really bad. Now if you don't want that to reflect on you, it's time to make some changes in the party.

[darkhorseman.livejournal.com]

What we need is a new party. Somthing more middle of the road. The conservitives expecially the faith based ones scare me yet the left is so far left now they would damn near make stalin look like a moderate.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Stalin was no leftist. He was a fascist, just with the twist that the government owned everything rather than private corporations.

I have to point out that the Democratic party (I an NOT a member) has really not moved anywhere much at all. It is not leftist or even very liberal. If it were, it would have spoken out much more strongly against some things that have happened in the last decade or so. It is still the party of FDR, and JFK pretty much, and hasn't moved far from that point. There are, of course, moderate Republicans, but they are not the ones in power. And they are not speaking out loudly against the abuses of those in power, which I find incriminating in the extreme. It is their job to correct those abuses, rather than meekly rubber stamping them out of fear of attracting some rightwing Christian or fascist lightning bolt.

[darkhorseman.livejournal.com]

Right left or anywhere the job of the government is to serve the American people... true legal us citizens I might add. The government has lost sight of this and I dont care what side they are on.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

I saw the final 15 minutes or so of that episode when it first aired and from that sample it didn't seem too bad. Certainly nothing great, but nothing getting very riled about. I've been watching CSI: Las Vegas a bit now when I'm on the treadmill. It's often the least annoying show on that I haven't already seen every episode too many times that can still be engaging enough to distract me from watching the counters. I've been sort of hoping for 'Fur and Loathing' to come on when I was watching so I could see the whole thing and either cringe or laugh at it.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Well, I'd write it off as "mostly harmless" except for the brain damage that I find is inevitable from any kind of television.

I agreed to watch it because a non-furry friend asked me for my comments on it, and of course I'd never seen it.

[hellmutt.livejournal.com]

Ah, the programme that taught my nice very-Christian-Christian friend the word "yiff". When I heard her use the term the furst time, I nearly choked on my tongue. :D

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yes it does use the word, somewhat inaccurately in my opinion. ;p

[hellmutt.livejournal.com]

Darn.

Wish I'd seen it. *g*

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I'm sure you'll get a chance. The thing has been circulating and recirculating very persistently. It must have been rerun here in the US a dozen times now.

Essentially, one of the furries who was being "interviewed" by the police used the word "yiff" in a way I find rather unbelievable. He was obviously a white middle class individual who wouldn't probably use such slang in answering a question from a police officer. What he said was that no one would yiff him unless he was wearing a fursuit. Of course the female investigator, who was so disgusted by everything the least "abnormal," siezed on the term immediately and demanded an explanation. He defined it as "having sex" if I remember correctly, which misses the specific implications of the term and also restricts it to a real word meaning when in fact it has much more subtle meanings that are largely limited to virtual environments in my opinion. And that's where they went with it from then on. It was used (with distaste) a couple more times, and each time just as a synonym for "fornicate."

[wolfgrowl.livejournal.com]

I have to admit I enjoyed that episode. While distorted it doesn't do as much damage as something like the "Vanity fair" article. And there are some priceless moments. Including his apartment full of plush raccoons, and the female investigator's comment wondering why someone would like to boff a six foot raccoon. Sort of a parody.

The awkward part is when I visited my Mom and she was watching that very episode. I asked her what she was watching. She said it was some complicated plot she couldn't follow about people dressing up like animals to have sex. *lol* She changed the channel to Judge Judy.

A friend's parents know he's furry and their reaction when he was going up to Feral was to tell him not to roll around the side of the road in his costume.

And no-one who was wearing a fursuit would wear the suit home in the car, let alone if they weren't feeling well. And you'd have needed a 12 inch tongue to lick the ipecac from the costume in that suit. Tons of errors.

I'm just glad when I first heard of furry I found Aerofox's website before I saw the episode!

[altivo.livejournal.com]

The ipecac thing was just beyond believable, I agree. And you're right too about wearing the fursuit under those conditions, and feeling ill and all. That guy would have indeed been some very strange and twisted character. They had the suit lined with latex too, which would just be too hot for most anyone to wear for very long. Maybe he was already dying of heatstroke when the guy with the rifle shot him.

The thing I found most objectionable? They didn't seem to charge the shooter with manslaughter. Surely that would have been necessary, even in Nevada. Shooting random moving objects from that distance and "accidentally" killing someone is certainly an offense against the law.

[duskwuff.livejournal.com]

There's something important a lot of furries forgot when they went apeshit over that episode. And it was this:

CSI is a TV show. It isn't meant to reflect real life.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

I've had to explain it this way, to some who aren't furry:

Think of something you know and know very well. You don't have to tell me what it is. Ok, now think of the last time you saw that featured in a TV show or covered on the news. Know what? They get everything else just as wrong.

[duskwuff.livejournal.com]

Even more so because CSI likes to exaggerate. The generic plot on the show is "someone dies while doing something icky, and our intrepid team has to figure out what it was". So they take every opportunity to exaggerate the ickiness.

[quickcasey.livejournal.com]

I showed that episode to my friend that accepts the furry fandom, and he had more comments on how it was written, than how furs were portrayed. He found the show rather simplistic.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Television usually IS simplistic. That's because not only are the viewers simple minded for the most part, but the writers and producers aren't much better off. Showing the real complexity of the situation wouldn't fit in an hour show with two other subplots like that. Let alone room for 25 minutes or so of commercials. I saw it on tape, so I fast forwarded through all the ads. My god, the actual show was less than 40 minutes. All the rest was commercials.

[dakhun.livejournal.com]

So I don't think the silly CSI program was all that damaging. It was just silly. People who will take it as a source of truth that they can cite for proof are not within the subset of people who could be convinced otherwise, in any case. They will believe what they want to believe.

Not everyone who saw the CSI episode and mistakenly thought it was an accurate representation of all furries saw it as a bad thing, though. There are furries in the fandom today who decided to join when they found out (or thought they found out) that furries were like this from the CSI episode. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.

They might have actually been disappointed to find that not all furries were like that. And they may have had to search for a few minutes longer than they expected to find what they were looking for, but I'm sure they found it in fairly short order. Most likely they ended up happy with the fandom, and I can only hope that they were also pleasantly surprised to find the non-sexual aspects of the fandom amusing too.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Well, to be perfectly honest and as you might expect since you know a fair amount about me, I'm not happy to have such lurid material serving as anyone's introduction to furry. I'm certainly not happy with the idea of people choosing to "join" the fandom because they believed that trash was actually true, either. Those are probably not people I particularly want to rub shoulders with, and certainly not people I want to have trying to get their hands (or tongues) inside my fursuit. ;p

The whole thing was so utterly unbelievable though, and so extremely exaggerated, that quite frankly, I don't think anyone who would take it seriously is quite right in the head.

[dakhun.livejournal.com]

I'm not happy to have such lurid material serving as anyone's introduction to furry

I'm not happy about that either. The show is a distortion of furries, because not all furries are like that. However I think that the suggestion that viewing the show would always lead to bad consequences is a distortion of the impact of the show, because not everyone who sees it will react negatively. The show certainly hasn't slowed down the growth of furry cons. Mind you, they had to haul someone off at 2004 MFF, and I've heard tell that the person in question was there because he saw the show. :-P

All people need to do to know that CSI is full of crap is to watch just one show that covers a subject close to their heart. They once did a show on Canada. 'Nuff said. :-P

[altivo.livejournal.com]

All people just need to know that CSI is crap, period. It's tabloid stuff, no different from the ones they display next to the supermarket checkout.

Unfortunately and to my amazement, people read those and believe them too. "Hilary Clinton adopts space alien baby" and "Elvis sighted working at McDonald's" and all that garbage. They just eat it up. After all, anything put into print must be true, right? "They" wouldn't let "them" do it if it wasn't the truth. Same for television, or even moreso, in what some people call minds.

Just as with those junky tabloids, so with television. It doesn't pay to put effort into denying that crap. The people who choose to believe it will just say that you are trying to cover up the truth or whatever. They are going to believe what they want to believe, and that's the end of it.

[captpackrat.livejournal.com]

I watched the show with my grandparents. They couldn't understand why I was laughing so hard at some of the scenes.

I thought it was a great episode.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Well, I would not say it was "great", just as I said silly. Anyone who would take that seriously would believe that the moon is made of green cheese or the UFOs were coming to take them away tomorrow if they saw it on television.

[rigelkitty.livejournal.com]

I guess I'm one of those crazy people who thought it did the community significant harm. Perhaps it's because I do Technorati searches on "furries" and see the livid disgust for us referenced to the CSI episode. Perhaps it's because I run a convention and have to deal with people who won't work with us because they accuse us of being perverts like they saw on the CSI episode. Perhaps I'm just looking at the big picture instead of examining how the episode affected me personally.

The vast majority of the time, the source of the definition of "furries" being "people who have sex in animal costumes" derives from Vanity Fair or CSI. Furries know it's a fictional tv show - it's the rest of the public who doesn't seem to get that, and many reactions to the fandom have been colored by it. For many people outside the community, it is *the* definition of the fandom. Considering we all agree that it was a significant distortion, then I can't understand why imparting such a distorted view could be anything but harmful to us.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Well, I didn't actually call you crazy and I agree your view of it is valid.

I have been reading and listening to rants about this program for what, a year now? I just feel that they amounted to an overreaction. Television is ALL schlock, and this was neither worse nor better than the rest of it in my opinion. I have read the Vanity Fair article that is often cited and it is far worse, in my own view, than this silly show was.

I agree, the show is not good, any more than the stupid TV news coverage of gay pride parades is usually good. But I also think that the kind of people to whom you refer here would still be prejudiced and have the same intolerant views even without such shows. It's always something, and there was Vanity Fair and also a show on MTV that were both apparently much worse.

[rigelkitty.livejournal.com]

I called myself crazy because I must be if I'm the only one standing up for the community here.

You keep reading rants about it because that episode is one of CBS's favorites to rerun to death. Not only is it rerun every Halloween, but it's rerun every couple months during the off-season and has started getting airtime on TNT or whatever third-tier cable channel they're showing old episodes on now. People keep ranting because they keep broadcasting it over and over, to some for the first time and others for the tenth time. It's not a one-time thing, the negative stereotype is being perpetuated repeatedly.

Other TV is irrelevant, there's no good reason to compare or even reference it. Same with whether people would hate us with it or without it - irrelevant. The show morally vilified us and it has had real, negative repercussions for people, for cons, and for the community - that's the issue. Just because it's not the #1 worst exposure we've ever had doesn't make it excuseable or defensible.

It's a disservice to the community to defend it.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Really, I haven't defended it. I just find all television pretty crappy and amoral at best. It does seem to me that furries can find better places to put their energy than complaining about this stuff, especially since complaining will not make the media quit pushing it. After all, it sells. We can't beat that.

Vanity Fair v. CSI

[ankhorite.livejournal.com]

The Vanity Fair article was bounded on all sides by the SM-flavored ads that make up mainstream haute couture. It was edgy 15 or 20 years ago; now it's routine to show bondage-style outfits as high fashion.

The CSI episode was equivalently hypocritically amusing in that the female investigator making all the snide remarks is a former sex worker, right? Her backstory is something about being an "exotic dancer"? Or was it the brunette instead of the redhead assigned to this particular subplot?

Every issue or episode of both VF and CSI are staged in highly sexualized settings -- settings which are intentionally sordid. It's ludicrous for either venue to take an editorial position that furry cons are orgiastic gatherings of the perverse.

[pioneer11.livejournal.com]

The thing that bothered me about that episode of CSI
was the awkward scene in the con where /everyone/ was
a fursuiter giving scritches right out in the lobby.

That just doesn't happen!

I think, socially, people like that hit of;

"Aren't you glad your not a freak like /those/ people?"

Honestly? I really really don't care whose
zoomin' whom. The politics drives me to froth at
the mouth wether its Act Up! or John Hagee. Its
all just another way to fragment us into little
warring sects, a psychopoliticalsexual Bahgdad.

But most of us are not those awkward stilted
CSI fursuiters giving scritches and being analyzed
as "a tribe".

Most of us work or go to school and try and make
life work as best we can.

That I can get behind.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yes, ultimately that is the major error in that thing, and in television in general. I really do equate television, both the news and the entertainment stuff, with tabloid newspapers. In order to sell to the audience that has shown the most willingness to accept, they tailor the presentation to their taste: sensational, exaggerated, simplified, and so forth. The resulting distortion is horrendous.

My main complaint about the CSI thing, or the Vanity Fair article, is exactly what you say: it depicts all of furry fandom in the image of a tiny minority of extreme cases who just happen to be the most sensational to look at and hear about. But of course it will do so, because that tiny minority makes the best story that holds the morbid fascination of the selected audience, who WANT to be horrified and titillated in just that manner. Feedback loop.

[heavens-steed.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. I'm not that into CSI and I don't even watch that much television in general but I have seen a few episodes but I've never seen that one. It's interesting to see how the furry community is gradually becoming more visible in the eyes of mainstream entertainment.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Well, I do have to agree with those who say we could use a better image than the one being presented. Furry is most definitely NOT a sexual perversion. For some small number, I don't doubt that it ties into fetishes or other unusual sexual orientations, but that can be true of a lot of things. Certainly sexuality is not the core of furry fandom, as suggested by most of the media representations.

[gldm.livejournal.com]

Well it was better than that MTV Sex 2K episode at least. Oh and BTW I'd say 15-20% fursuiters is a very high estimtae. Anthrocon stats put it around 5-7% consistently. Even if we count people who suit (regularly) but not at the con or don't participated in the suited events there, I doubt it'd hit 10%.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

My personal experience is limited to MFF, which hit 15% last year. I have the impression that fursuits are more popular on the West Coast, too. (Seems at least believable.)

But I'll be happy to accept 10%. So, if a con attracts 1000 people (MFF) and 100 of them are fursuiters, I'd frankly guess that no more than 10 would be likely to carry it as far as CSI suggested was the "ordinary" among furries.

As I said, though, that's what I always expect from television. Go for sensational, especially if it is imagery rather than words. If it's controversial or polarizing, so much the better.

The Presence of Prostitutes

[ankhorite.livejournal.com]

I'm willing to bet on it. Is there sex at the Republican National Convention or a meeting of Lutheran Church delegates?

I can't speak to the Lutheran issue, but every Republican National Convention for the past 25 years (the extent of my adult memory) has produced hordes of out-of-town and local sex workers descending en masse on the convention site, surrounding bars, and area hotels.

First, the gathering of the prostitutes piques mild and giggly media interest. Then, the local mayor's desperate efforts to make them disappear sets off a media feeding frenzy. Finally, pundits pile on, trying to compare and contrast the number of Democratic doxies versus Republican courtesans... and so it goes, every four years. (The GOP tends to "win" the hooker count because they have more men, and more money, at their conventions than the Dems do. Streetwalkers, call girls, and midnight cowboys may be desperate, but they're not stupid. They follow the money).

This flocking of the floozies is not something that happens at Anthrocon, MFF, or FurtherConfusion. Not at Trekkie gatherings nor Otakon, either.

Re: The Presence of Prostitutes

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure how accurate those facts are, but they are certainly amusing. Yes, political conventions of any sort have always attracted this sort of following. It's just more amusing when the actual party represented is so straight-laced and intolerant of "sin".

[kaysho.livejournal.com]

The one difference between a furry con and the Republican National Convention that way is that we don't provide a huge temporary market for prostitutes. :)

I did laugh that the sexual fursuiters in the CSI episode were all heterosexual professionals around age 40 to 50. Somewhat demographically challenged, methinks ... but it shows what the target audience of the show is.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I thought that too, but now I wonder if we agree about the target audience. I felt that the audience would be mostly people of lower economic status than the fursuiters shown, and the type of people who tend to dislike or resent professionals because they "make too much money without getting their hands dirty." Yes, I do believe that television writers pander to that sort of attitude, because it draws in their largest audiences.

That fits with my belief that most viewers really wouldn't be much influenced by the show's content. Their minds are already made up that anything outside their own norms of behavior is sick and disgusting.