Xenophobic Criminal Minds

The popular American television show, Criminal Minds, has recently spawned a spin-off show called Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders. Beyond borders sees a behavioural analyses unit of the FBI solve crimes overseas by assessing the psyche of a killer or kidnapper and then using that assessment to track them down.

One would think that this show would basically be a carbon copy of the first programme, just overseas. However, the show instead promotes huge xenophobia, particularly of the ‘orient’ with the crimes investigated always undergone by a foreign perpetrator. The crimes also often have a hugely exaggerated or misrepresented cultural reason behind them particular to whatever country the detectives find themselves in during that mission. This, along with many general negative comments about the people of particular countries by the detectives, builds up to a television show that others Asian, Middle-Eastern and South American peoples like no other.

Legit though, look at this ad where they’ve just pasted American faces over other continents:

In the very first episode, the team heads to Thailand where the women of the team are warned that the Thai men will not shake their hands and will likely ignore their presence in general. The Thai police are portrayed as unwelcoming and unhelpful, contrasting completely with accounts I’ve heard from friends and family who have been lucky enough to have gone to Thailand, all who say everyone they met was incredibly polite and welcoming, including the police. The killer here is, as expected, some crazy Thai guy who is trying to bring honour to his deceased relatives in some (apparently) Thai ritual. This is similar to most of the episodes in the series so far. A cultural belief is beyond misinterpreted and used as justification for the murder and/or kidnapping of white Americans.

This formula is more or less followed throughout the entire first season. (Usually white) Americans are kidnapped or murdered, the American FBI team are called in because obviously the local police can’t figure out anything by themselves, the team settles into the local police station, the local police are often hostile and always incompetent, the killer/kidnapper has some local ideological reason to have done what they did, the FBI team catches the perpetrator, asserts their superiority over the local police, and flies home happy.

Seriously, check out the promo for this episode in South America where the criminal believes he is an Aztec and cuts out the hearts of his victims and kidnaps women to be his multiple wives:

Because it was so totally essential for Aztecs to have more than one wife, right? Also, they generally only ate the hearts of prisoners of war and enemy tribes, they were not known to actively hunt down people just to eat their hearts. In the Japanese case, the killer stages his murders like suicides because “suicide is honourable in Japan”, In Turkey the perpetrators are trafficking young girls, here the show even manages to throw some insults at Romani culture, and in Egypt the murderer buries a man alive in a sarcophagus, and so on, you get the point.

These portrayals are obviously harmful and play into the idea of the orient, and encompass strong Eurocentric views.

The binary oppositions are clear from the open of the show which always begins with the line “over 68 million Americans leave the safety of our border every year.” This pushes the idea that every other country is dangerous, which is then confirmed in the episode where innocent Americans are murdered for some strange, barbaric cultural reason. Unlike many views of the orient in television, the non-American characters on the show are very rarely depicted as exotic, instead, the American characters provide the beauty while the foreigners are portrayed as mysterious and dangerous.

There are also hints of new racism, for example in the second episode where the team goes to India to investigate a case of organ harvesting, the captain deduces that a blue-eyed, white man was killed because the Indian people revere Germanic traits due to colonialism, implying that it is the problem of the Indian people that they cannot get over colonialism not of the white people. It also downplays the idea of colonialism where the worshipping of white features would imply the worshipping of their white invaders.

The necessity of an American team to save American victims in another country gives the programme a Eurocentric standpoint. It places western values and ideologies front and centre. Especially considering in many cases the values and ideologies of the other culture is what’s getting Americans killed. The non-American characters are nearly always portrayed negatively as incompetent and evil. Their misrepresented beliefs are the cause of murders and their police departments are useless.

… Please don’t watch this show.

Thanks for reading.