I didn't like itWhat's Right and Wrong with DEXTER
September 25th 2008 04:25
Been reading a few posts going around complaining about how Dexter is a rip-off and pale imitation of genuinely edgy HBO shows such as The Sopranos and Six Feet Under (from which actor Michael C Hall was blatantly stolen to play Dexter). Chief concern seems to be that the Dexter character doesn't revel in his 'outsiderness' and is an 'insipid, nerdy vigilante desperate for a white picket fence'.
Here's what's wrong with that:
Seems to me these critics are missing what pushes Dexter beyond the boundaries of films beloved of liberals (the kind who hold up, say, American Beauty as an model of challenging and non-conformist work) into territory not explored in even the most daring American cinema. Dexter is a far more interesting anti-hero than what has come before precisely because he is so devoid of the charming, entertaining and lovable qualities Hollywood usually endows its most violent heroes with. ln the past, Hollywood has taken a variety of approaches to make its psycho-killers more palatable to mainstream audiences, with the general attitude seeming to be that ok, we're going to have a psychopath as a main character, but he's going to be multi-dimensional and we're going to give him a side that the audience can really relate to. Tony Soprano may be a monster, but he's really not that different to the rest of us, looking after his family the best way he knows how. Indeed the same underlying existential message can be found in most gangster films; a mix of social and personal obligations and circumstances combine to practically force the killer to commit his misdeeds. You get the feeling, watching their fate, that it could easily have been oh so different for them.
When the killer is portrayed as an artist, who isn't really responsible for what they're doing anyway, the effect is to further distance the character (and the audience) from responsibility for their actions. Heath Ledger's Joker is a dangerous psycho, but he's totally nuts in a fun kind of way. Ditto for Jack Nicholson hamming it up running around the empty haunted Overlook Hotel in The Shining. And remember, Jack may want to slice up his family, but really it was the evil spirits that drove him to it, wasn't it? Edward Norton in Fight Club had a plan for mass murder, but it was his evil alter ego driving him, and really who wouldn't be seduced by a super-cut Brad Pitt? The higher the glamour factor, the less confronting the killers, and the more the filmmakers disassociate themselves from the violent deeds depicted in their films.
Not so with Dexter. Here is a killer with no redeeming features. Here is a hero you would not want to invite to a dinner party, only because he'd be so boring. Finally, a genuine misanthrope, fighting seemingly every moment of his existence to hide from the world the thoughts and desires in his head. Dexter is different: he kills not so much for kicks but out of compulsion. He isn't a 'creative' serial killer, he kills people in the same way, over and over, like a true obsessive-compulsive. Dexter is not a deluded lunatic, he knows what he is and what he is doing and he goes on doing it anyway. He is not interested in 'curing' himself, he just doesn't want to be found out. In the final episode of Season 1 the Ice Truck Killer scoffs at Dexter
s 'code' and his vigilante heroism ("You can't be a killer and a hero"), echoing what the viewer must have felt numerous times during the series. Dexter's code, instilled in him by his foster father, is pathetic and ridiculous, but what's good is that it is all he has. It's this stupid little thing that keeps him together, and gives the show its tension (not that the Ice Truck Killer is dating his sister - but more on that later); every episode, it seems, Dexter is hanging on by a thread, his world of lies and deception threatening to unravel around him.
I have heard some people complain that Dexter is nerdy and unlikable, well, duh!, that is precisely the point. He is a loner, a misfit, you wouldn't want to know him and if you did you wouldn't show him off to your friends. What Dexter's detractors want is what Hollywood has always allowed them: to have their cake and eat it too. We want a villain who is a misfit and an outsider, but at the same time likable. And if this isn't possible, there are other ways to obscure the nastiness of what is going on; cool and distanced ironic poses Badlands)/, inscrutable artists (Silence of the Lambs , or mindless and faceless automatons (Halloween). The criticisms leveled on various forums are all true: Dexter is bland, nerdy and boring. One blogger claims Dexter represents 'The illusion of edgy'. Dexter's crime is not to balance his killer self with a hip and edgy persona the audience can laugh along with (Natural Born Killers). Nowhere before in American TV or cinema has the sense of otherness been pushed to such an extreme. He's not likable, and he is relatable in a way that is confronting, not reassuring. When you feel for Dexter, you don't feel for the positive things he does, you relate to his sense of not connecting with others, of walking through life playing a charade to fit in, and of constantly fearing his true, very unlikeable 'shadow self' will be discovered by others. This double negative, the fact that he is a killer and a social fuck-up, is what is new and brave about Dexter.
Dexter's killer profile contains the requisite childhood trauma, but again it is not used in the usual way as an excuse for the killer's damaged psyche (Friday the 13th, Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, Texas Chainsaw Massacre). With Dexter, there is no justification or rationalization. He just is. He kills, and he can't help it. He wants and craves it, like you and I crave chocolate or ice-cream. Sure, he witnessed his father murder his family as a child, but Dexter is not a killer because of the trauma of seeing his family slaughtered by his father with a chainsaw. Dexter kills for the same reason as his father and brother, because it is in his genes, because he can't help it, and it is for this reason that Dexter, far from being a mainstream rip-off of the HBO urtext, is the most interesting and subversive treatment of a serial killer ever put on screen.
Having said all this, the show is by no means perfect. The second half of Season 1 sags considerably once the identity of the Ice-Truck Killer is revealed, and the whole 'ohmygod the killer is dating my sister!' schtick really drags down all the solid groundwork of the few episodes. I'm sure the writers/producers were convinced they were really ratcheting up the tension with this, but all that is achieved is to make the characters look dumb (how many clues do you need before you realize who the killer is for Christ's sake?) and the writers look unimaginative.
But overall, hats off to the show's creators. I don't know who is responsible for all this (there doesn't seem to be a main creative force behind it as is usually the case with American TV shows) but everyone involved should be commended for doing something that hasn't been done before (or at least certainly not sustained over a full feature feature length or TV series): humanizing a killer. In all art forms, the question always is how far can you push something before it becomes too much, and now that the 'torture porn' pictures (Saw, Hostel) have already answered the question, how violent can you make a movie? (as violent as you want, apparently), it remains to be seen what the answer to Dexter's far more interesting question is: can a show about a serial killer told from the killers point of view allow us to still like the killer? How far can they take this thing? Can we keep watching the show if he doesn't only kill other serial killers who deserve to be 'put down'? Will we ever see Dexter break his code and in a moment of weakness allow himself to kill a random, innocent person? What if someone threatens to discover his secrets, as both his sister, his girlfriend and Sergeant Doakes have all threatened to do during the course of Season 1?
Bring on Season 2.
Oh, and one more thing. In episode 7 Dexter's voiceover claims that ' the FBI estimates that there are less than 50 serial killers active in the United States today.' How long can this show go on before viewers start asking themselves how come they all seem to be based in Miami?
Here's what's wrong with that:
Seems to me these critics are missing what pushes Dexter beyond the boundaries of films beloved of liberals (the kind who hold up, say, American Beauty as an model of challenging and non-conformist work) into territory not explored in even the most daring American cinema. Dexter is a far more interesting anti-hero than what has come before precisely because he is so devoid of the charming, entertaining and lovable qualities Hollywood usually endows its most violent heroes with. ln the past, Hollywood has taken a variety of approaches to make its psycho-killers more palatable to mainstream audiences, with the general attitude seeming to be that ok, we're going to have a psychopath as a main character, but he's going to be multi-dimensional and we're going to give him a side that the audience can really relate to. Tony Soprano may be a monster, but he's really not that different to the rest of us, looking after his family the best way he knows how. Indeed the same underlying existential message can be found in most gangster films; a mix of social and personal obligations and circumstances combine to practically force the killer to commit his misdeeds. You get the feeling, watching their fate, that it could easily have been oh so different for them.
When the killer is portrayed as an artist, who isn't really responsible for what they're doing anyway, the effect is to further distance the character (and the audience) from responsibility for their actions. Heath Ledger's Joker is a dangerous psycho, but he's totally nuts in a fun kind of way. Ditto for Jack Nicholson hamming it up running around the empty haunted Overlook Hotel in The Shining. And remember, Jack may want to slice up his family, but really it was the evil spirits that drove him to it, wasn't it? Edward Norton in Fight Club had a plan for mass murder, but it was his evil alter ego driving him, and really who wouldn't be seduced by a super-cut Brad Pitt? The higher the glamour factor, the less confronting the killers, and the more the filmmakers disassociate themselves from the violent deeds depicted in their films.
Not so with Dexter. Here is a killer with no redeeming features. Here is a hero you would not want to invite to a dinner party, only because he'd be so boring. Finally, a genuine misanthrope, fighting seemingly every moment of his existence to hide from the world the thoughts and desires in his head. Dexter is different: he kills not so much for kicks but out of compulsion. He isn't a 'creative' serial killer, he kills people in the same way, over and over, like a true obsessive-compulsive. Dexter is not a deluded lunatic, he knows what he is and what he is doing and he goes on doing it anyway. He is not interested in 'curing' himself, he just doesn't want to be found out. In the final episode of Season 1 the Ice Truck Killer scoffs at Dexter
s 'code' and his vigilante heroism ("You can't be a killer and a hero"), echoing what the viewer must have felt numerous times during the series. Dexter's code, instilled in him by his foster father, is pathetic and ridiculous, but what's good is that it is all he has. It's this stupid little thing that keeps him together, and gives the show its tension (not that the Ice Truck Killer is dating his sister - but more on that later); every episode, it seems, Dexter is hanging on by a thread, his world of lies and deception threatening to unravel around him.
I have heard some people complain that Dexter is nerdy and unlikable, well, duh!, that is precisely the point. He is a loner, a misfit, you wouldn't want to know him and if you did you wouldn't show him off to your friends. What Dexter's detractors want is what Hollywood has always allowed them: to have their cake and eat it too. We want a villain who is a misfit and an outsider, but at the same time likable. And if this isn't possible, there are other ways to obscure the nastiness of what is going on; cool and distanced ironic poses Badlands)/, inscrutable artists (Silence of the Lambs , or mindless and faceless automatons (Halloween). The criticisms leveled on various forums are all true: Dexter is bland, nerdy and boring. One blogger claims Dexter represents 'The illusion of edgy'. Dexter's crime is not to balance his killer self with a hip and edgy persona the audience can laugh along with (Natural Born Killers). Nowhere before in American TV or cinema has the sense of otherness been pushed to such an extreme. He's not likable, and he is relatable in a way that is confronting, not reassuring. When you feel for Dexter, you don't feel for the positive things he does, you relate to his sense of not connecting with others, of walking through life playing a charade to fit in, and of constantly fearing his true, very unlikeable 'shadow self' will be discovered by others. This double negative, the fact that he is a killer and a social fuck-up, is what is new and brave about Dexter.
Dexter's killer profile contains the requisite childhood trauma, but again it is not used in the usual way as an excuse for the killer's damaged psyche (Friday the 13th, Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, Texas Chainsaw Massacre). With Dexter, there is no justification or rationalization. He just is. He kills, and he can't help it. He wants and craves it, like you and I crave chocolate or ice-cream. Sure, he witnessed his father murder his family as a child, but Dexter is not a killer because of the trauma of seeing his family slaughtered by his father with a chainsaw. Dexter kills for the same reason as his father and brother, because it is in his genes, because he can't help it, and it is for this reason that Dexter, far from being a mainstream rip-off of the HBO urtext, is the most interesting and subversive treatment of a serial killer ever put on screen.
Having said all this, the show is by no means perfect. The second half of Season 1 sags considerably once the identity of the Ice-Truck Killer is revealed, and the whole 'ohmygod the killer is dating my sister!' schtick really drags down all the solid groundwork of the few episodes. I'm sure the writers/producers were convinced they were really ratcheting up the tension with this, but all that is achieved is to make the characters look dumb (how many clues do you need before you realize who the killer is for Christ's sake?) and the writers look unimaginative.
But overall, hats off to the show's creators. I don't know who is responsible for all this (there doesn't seem to be a main creative force behind it as is usually the case with American TV shows) but everyone involved should be commended for doing something that hasn't been done before (or at least certainly not sustained over a full feature feature length or TV series): humanizing a killer. In all art forms, the question always is how far can you push something before it becomes too much, and now that the 'torture porn' pictures (Saw, Hostel) have already answered the question, how violent can you make a movie? (as violent as you want, apparently), it remains to be seen what the answer to Dexter's far more interesting question is: can a show about a serial killer told from the killers point of view allow us to still like the killer? How far can they take this thing? Can we keep watching the show if he doesn't only kill other serial killers who deserve to be 'put down'? Will we ever see Dexter break his code and in a moment of weakness allow himself to kill a random, innocent person? What if someone threatens to discover his secrets, as both his sister, his girlfriend and Sergeant Doakes have all threatened to do during the course of Season 1?
Bring on Season 2.
Oh, and one more thing. In episode 7 Dexter's voiceover claims that ' the FBI estimates that there are less than 50 serial killers active in the United States today.' How long can this show go on before viewers start asking themselves how come they all seem to be based in Miami?
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