MySpace as a plot device for horror
Forget the matrix. Justice is our new consensual hallucination.
On the one hand: Mass corporate profits, mercenary armies, overpaid CEOs, underpaid Wal-Mart clerks, a corrupt World Bank, a disingenuous attorney general, rampant poppy fields, rising crime, falling wages.
On the other hand: CSI, Law and Order, Cold Case, Bones. Television shows in which no evildoer can escape the batarang of judgment because there's always a hair follicle or a splatter pattern to incriminate him, and the unblinking eye of science and justice -- Always hot scientists! Always scowling judges! -- to spot it.
This is live action Scooby-Doo, the villian always unmasked by the meddling kids. Or: The indefatigable Perry Mason, updated with microscopes and a functioning magnetic resonator whatsahoosit. And where once societal tension begot the sparkling wonderments of Sci-Fi, these days it's Sci-Fi horror. ER + CSI = $$$$. How thin the line between a decomposing corpse on a lab table and the torture pr0n of Hostel?
Even better: Including MySpace in the mix. Here's real horror -- and yes, there have been real murders investigated on MySpace -- only clicks away. So last night, when the Bones squint squad perused MySpace for clues to the killer, what was the lesson? Is this the online version of the William Bass Body Farm? Six degrees of separation from a serial killer? My Top 8 as the usual suspects? Social networks as lineups?
My favorite scene: While scanning MySpace pages, Dr. Temperance Brennan (temperance?!) paused. She had met the dead woman only briefly, but now she knew her Top 8, too. She furrowed her pretty brow: "I'm so used to victims being strangers."
I gave up on Bones not long after it began, despite David Boreanaz being in it (big fan of "Angel"). I found the whole thing too formulaic and, dare I say it, insipid.
This episode I'm interested to see though. As you say, MySpace has already had its own share of the macabre, so adding plot elements that play the augmented angle will be interesting to see. I guess it's like holding a horror film festival in a cemetery.
Just don't tell me how it ended.
:-)
Posted by: Leonard | May 10, 2007 at 07:04 PM