Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Exploit Detroit on TV


I recently caught wind of a new fictional murder investigation TV show that debuted September 21, 2010 on ABC called Detroit 1 8 7.
According to wikipedia, the pilot episode was shot in Atlanta, but all other episodes to date were shot in Detroit. Right off the bat, the opening segment of the pilot (which doesn't appear in any other episode) has a view of Windsor behind a zoom of the ren-cen, with a voiceover saying "Detroit Michigan: birthplace of Motown, and once the heart of the automobile industry. Now, it has one of the highest murder rates in the country."

I won't give away much of the plot, but spectacle and exploitation of the city and the 'type of people' that live there seem to be at the heart of this TV show.

I can't help but think about the recent media uproar over the filming of A&E's The First 48 in Detroit. The film crew had been following Detroit homicide police for several months when they witnessed and caught on tape the killing of a 7 year old girl.

This makes me think about the article we read in class, Vigilant Visualities. In this case, a TV crew made to exploit and produce a spectacle of the real tensions and crimes in Detroit is now called to produce video evidence of a crime committed by the police.

Hmmm....what do you think?


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