This week we had to read an article that came out in 2004 called, Beyond Gentrification: Mobilizing Communities and Claiming Space, written by James C. Fraser. The article is about the gentrification in cities like Washington D.C. and Chattanooga, Tennessee. Within those cities the article wrote about the violence that occured because of gentrification. While reading this article, I would keep on getting reminded of an episode of Criminal Minds. Criminal Minds is about the Behavior Analyst Unit team of the FBI and they go to mostly different places in the United States saving crimes. The episode that it kept reminding me of is in the fifth season and episode four called Hopeless. The episode starts with some vandalism in a neighborhood in Washington D.C. area then it escalates to two couples being brutally murdered. It then shows the killers afterwards and they are watching the video that one of them took during the kill. The killers are a group of three guys that live and work together. Where the killers work is as construction workers so not only are they getting slowly forced out with gentrification but they are building the homes that are replacing their neighborhood. Their next murder is after one of them was scolded at work for not having more of the house build. After being scolded, that night the group went out and murdered a random waitress and her boyfriend. The next murder is bartender and a customer at the bar. The customer's hands were nailed to the bar by a nail gun. The team also finds their first killing at this time since one of the members of the team thought about the vandalism that was occured and remembered a new townhouse being vandalised but one room. Once some of the team got there, they were able to open one of the walls and find their first killing. Knowing that the killers work in construction they were able to build a profile and catch the killers. I believe that this episode is a perfect example of the violence that gentrification causes. Not everyone is going to brutally murder people but shows how angry the residents are.
Article: https://learn-us-east-1-prod-fleet02-xythos.content.blackboardcdn.com/5c1270dbb5a74/8277643?X-Blackboard-Expiration=1635271200000&X-Blackboard-Signature=610jh8GM9ENSccLSx7F5kw%2BG066yaxNdEaxe%2FRzJdj8%3D&X-Blackboard-Client-Id=100342&response-cache-control=private%2C%20max-age%3D21600&response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%2A%3DUTF-8%27%27beyond%2520gentrification.pdf&response-content-type=application%2Fpdf&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Date=20211026T120000Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=21600&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAZH6WM4PL5SJBSTP6%2F20211026%2Fus-east-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Signature=244ffab12ee037c9f3e90e8355b9de85adc4f7e947d31b062a22e34e78cb68f6
Summary of episode: https://criminalminds.fandom.com/wiki/Turner%27s_Group
I think it is cool that you were able to connect themes of a TV show to what we are learning about in class. Another example of gentrification in fictional media that your post made me think about is in the show Shameless. The whole show is about a group of siblings who live in a low-income neighborhood in Chicago. In a particular episode I watched, I remember a lesbian couple offered the people in the neighborhood substantial amounts of money for their property in an attempt to get them to leave. They also labelled the area as "up and coming" and there was talk about building a Starbucks in the area where an old nursing home used to be. I could easily connect it with the real-life events we watched in Flag Wars, and what was discussed in class about marginalized groups often being the ones who gentrify because they have not always had a place to call their own in society. It is sad and unfair to see, but I'm glad popular TV shows are bringing it to viewers' attention at least a little bit. Thank you for your eye-opening post!
ReplyDeleteElizabeth-- thank you for this interesting post about the portrayal of gentrification in television. I have never seen "Criminal Minds," but after reading the summary of the episode that you posted, I became fascinated with how the show portrayed the gentrified. Like you mentioned, the "Hopeless" episode seems to embody the idea that gentrified neighborhoods are a site of spatial struggle-- conflicting claims to the place are laid both by those moving in and those being forced out. Additionally, Cahill discussed in her 2006 article how the portrayal of "the gentrified" as dangerous and "a risk" is often used by "the gentrifying" (as well as the government and private companies) to justify their "invasion" of a neighborhood. However, one part of the show's portrayal of the gentrifying process that seemed to contrast what we had read in Cahill's research was that the people visibly affected by the gentrification process were these three white men. In reality, gentrification has a disparate effect on already-marginalized people, which Cahill discusses through the experiences of Black women and girls. Cahill also examines how representation of the process impacts how gentrification is executed in reality. That made me wonder-- what was the impact of the portrayal of gentrification in "Criminal Minds"? And, why did they chose violent white men to play the part of the gentrified?
ReplyDeleteI really liked that you were able to connect this to a tv show because It’s something that I do very often. It could either be that remembering a character helped me remember something on a test or it could be that I use an example of the tv show to defend something. As someone who watches a lot of TV I can say that before maybe 2017 it was very rare to see a show on national television actually take about serious issues or if they did, correctly. Television has been doing a lot better at talking about current events since around 2017 and I think that’s because before then while things effected different groups of people it her applied to so many people at once, so it was never really given the recognition that it might deserve. But then there was Trump’s presidency and how that effected so many people, then the BLM movement , then COVID-19. So if TV shows wanted to keep being relatable and talk about real issues they always incorporate that. When it comes to the pandemic I think a lot about shows like Grey’s Anatomy and Station 19 that talk about the impact on the medical community and the people they serve. The BLM protests were a big part of shows like The Rookie and 911, because they focused on the police and their interactions with others (especially those of color). And when it comes to gentrification I immediately thought about the show Shameless but a personal favorite of mine is the movie Blindspotting. It not only talks about racism, police issues but the gentrification of their city. It’s not a musical per se but it does incorporate a lot of powerful spoken word pieces that I genuinely listen too sometimes like regular music haha. So I strongly suggest people to watch Blindspotting (its streaming for 1.99 so why not).
ReplyDeleteThe link below is an article that discusses Blindspotting and all the social issues they tackle and also has a trailer for the movie :)
https://www.kqed.org/arts/13837184/blindspotting-is-a-spot-on-portrait-of-an-oakland-in-flux