A scene in the “new hit series” The Killing seemed déjà-vu familiar, until I realized it’s a standard moment in crime dramas. The victim’s parents are in the police station to answer some questions, and they accidentally come across the crime scene photos. The warm body of the daughter they knew and loved has become the cold corpse the police treat casually. Maybe they overhear a callous gallows-humor joke made by a detective. Their daughter’s dismembered body is cut into even smaller pieces by the police camera as it zooms in on her bound wrists, her broken nails left bloody stumps from trying to claw her way out of captivity, the petechial hemorrhage pinking the white of her eyes. The viewer is not allowed the same reaction as the parents. What they see as defilement, we see as aesthetics. When the body of the young girl is discovered, her body glows angelically through the water that fills the trunk of the car just pulled from the bottom of the lake. The position of her body — curled up in the fetal position — is meant to imply lost innocence and highlight her childish state. With the dramatic lighting and the Twin Peaks-ish score droning in the background, she’s shot more like a misplaced water nymph than a dead teenage girl.