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.