Crime through Frontline

Last week our class talked about "infotainment" and we watched an episode of Dateline as an example of infotainment. This got me to thinking about other kinds of infotainment I watch that include crime in the media. The first thing that popped into my head was the Frontline documentary style of news entertainment. Though many of the Frontline shows that I have watched revolve around wars and natural disasters or revolutions in other countries, I watched an interesting one called "Rape in the Fields" about immigrant women who work in the fields to support their family and are raped.

Frontline documentaries are in-depth reported stories that usually focus on hot topic issues at hand or serious problems that happen around the world and in America. Many times what they are reporting on is even dangerous. I watched a Frontline show about the fighting in Palestine and Israel and the filmer was literally in the room with suicide bombers preparing to go out into the plaza.

In this particular Frontline documentary, primarily Hispanic female immigrants who are farm workers speak out about the sexual harassment and abuse that occurred out in the fields or around the farm and how they couldn't do anything about it because they were illegal. If the women refuse to give into the farmer they will be out of a job next season and their families will starve because the men cannot receive work.

There are a lot of shots where we see the women staring off into the horizon with their faced covered so you can only see their eyes and a lot of dialogue boxes since most of them do not speak English. This really emphasizes that they are victims and especially that they are victims that cannot escape- I believe that is part of the constant repetition of screen shots with the women wearing these cloths and concealing themselves. They also focus a lot on this cross necklace that hangs from a woman's rear-view mirror projecting her innocence.

I was trying to make sense of all the beautiful establishing shots of the fields and the sun setting over the horizon of these gorgeous fields with flowers, wheat, grape vines- and it didn't seem like these shots fit very well with this crime they were highlighting. The only thing I could think of was that they wanted to show the viewer how peaceful this place seemed to be, but that it was hiding the crime that happened daily. There were also shots of blurry lights at night and other establishing shots of location and crops.

The in-depth investigation with multiple interviews and being able to see the victims and even some suspects I think is was really makes this form of news entertaining for the viewer. We have a more personal connection to the crime when we can put a face to it and with the establishing shots and filmed interviews it makes it that much more entertaining to watch than if it were simply a news segment.

Personally, I love documentaries because you are receiving information in a more entertaining fashion, and crime documentaries resonate with the American culture because we like nudge our way into the nitty gritty of what people go through to commit crime or what victims who have been incriminated against feel about the crime. It is almost like how when we see a car accident we slow down because we just have to know if anyone got hurt or who was the nimrod that cause the accident to happen. We are obsessed with nosing into other peoples lives, and what better way to do that than to see/hear first hand interviews and get a picture of where it happened.