Dexter Dissected

The other day, one of my professors casually mentioned before class began that he was looking for a new television series to watch, and asked if anyone had any suggestions. The students who replied were unanimous in their answer, telling him that he should see the Showtime series Dexter."Don't listen to the haters," one young lady advised, "buy the first season and cherish every moment of it."

Though I've watched a few episodes of the show when it was in its first season, I did so with the feeling that there was something not necessarily immoral, but skewed or innacurate about the way the show's serial-killer protagonist, Dexter Morgan was portrayed.

For those who have not seen any episodes of Dexter, or read any of the Jeff Lindsay novels that the series is based off of, the show can be described as centering on a serial killing police-officer (played by Michael C. Hall) with a code of conduct; he allows himself to kill only other murderers.

Before I go further on the subject, let me say that I understand that the general public is not forced to consume any kind of entertainment, (much less accept it) and as such I can respect people's right to enjoy things that don't appeal to me. Within certain limitations, I'm a believer in the oft-stated belief that "to each his own." For this reason, the only question I really feel entitled to raise concerning Showtime's critically acclaimed series is what that very acclaim says about the people giving it.

To get right to the point, what bothers me about Dexter is not the fact that a premium-priced cable television network decided to produce a show about a sympathetic, honor-bound serial killer; after all, such a network's only real responsibility is to provide programming that will get watched. What bothers me is that almost every opinion I've seen or heard offered on the subject of the show, through T.V., internet, and radio has been one of unreserved praise. In my opinion, the phenomenon of Dexter's success is symptomatic of a cultural addiction to retribution. The kind of logic that deems a man like Dexter "a necessary evil" is the same kind that fails to understand why something like a prison renovation should be necessary; after all, the point of prisons is to make bad people suffer, right?

Showtime offered people a show premised with the idea that a sociopath who relishes the killing of serial-killers might be just the thing to tie up our justice-system's loose ends, and people ate it up.

The problem I see with this premise stems from one of its implications; namely, the idea that the ends (dead serial killers) justify the means (a living serial killer). Even in a world in which a sociopath had the self-control or moral compass to kill only "bad guys," (an idea I
find absurd in the extreme) it is vital to recognize that the character of the people he murders is incidental to the homicidal aspect of his nature.

Dexter Morgan kills bad people not because because they are bad, but because they are human beings in the same sense that you, my reader, are a human being. If you watch this show some time in the near future, I would urge you to remember that.