5. Conclusion

Chapter 5 considers the recent and massive global success of literary and televisual fictions centering on autopsy. Although best-selling novel series by Kathy Reichs and Patricia Cornwell challenge the traditional gendering of the forensic pathologist as male, conservative gender ideology persists in television dramas that perpetuate the distinctive sexualization of the cadavers of young white female victims for commercial purposes. Examples of forensic-science-themed television series include CBS’s CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, which was for several years the world’s most popular scripted television drama, and the BBC’s Ripper Street, both of which have presented plotlines centering on snuff film. This chapter relates such heavily capitalized and marketed mainstream entertainments to marginal and more extreme necropornographic products such as “shockumentary” video compilations of female corpse images.