July 22, 2005

Facing Death in a Culture of War

By MARIANNA TORGOVNICK

Week after week on CBS's CSI and its spinoffs, millions of Americans view a hands-on immersion in the dead or, to be precise -- for the difference is important -- in the pseudodead. The shows, which intensify the transition between life and death so crucial to television stalwarts like ER, have helped make the morgue a regular stop on TV. With their graphic autopsies and computer-generated images of how people die, the CSI series can be hard to watch, although America is clearly

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