Dexter is one of those truly American television programs that’s central question both illuminates and exposes the psyche of the viewing public. At its core this Showtime drama explores our convoluted, and often contradictory, relationships with violence and justice and in this process it exposes more about the viewer than it does about its fictional protagonist.
Are killers born or bred? Is there something inherently wrong with those that maim kill and rape, or does their psychosis emerge from the cauldron of a young life awash in violence?
Loosely adapted from the novel Dexter Dreaming Darkly by Jeff Lindsay, Dexter has recently begun an acclaimed fourth season. The show follows title character Dexter Morgan, a blood spatter analyst for the Miami Metro Police Dept. who aims his psychotic and sociopathic need to kill at killers who have managed to beat the system.
A classic antihero archetype, Dexter spends his nights hunting and executing, in a very meticulous and ritualistic fashion, those killers who have evaded justice. Dexter is a cold-blooded murderer. If he were ever caught his actions would condemn him both in a court of law and by the tenets of any reasonable religion. Yet, as an audience we cheer him on. We follow along as he hunts and we wish him well. We want Dexter to be real and truly believe that if he were the world would be a better place.
What makes Dexter unique, both as show and character, is that it does he does not experience moral quandaries. He does not question what he does? Is it right? Is it wrong? For Dexter it is simply necessary. The orphaned Dexter has always needed to kill. What separates him from the Son of Sam, Ted Bundy and the Hannibal Lecter’s of the world is the “Code of Harry.”
Immersed in the Code by his adopted father Harry, a Miami Metro Detective who discovered then three year old Dexter in two inches of his mother’s blood, Dexter follows this stringent and powerful, if twisted, moral code as fervently as the most devout religious believer.
Sensing that his son would always need to kill, and likely end his days in the harsh, sterile glow of an execution chamber, Harry taught Dexter only to kill other killers. In the years since Dexter has become one of the most successful serial killers in history, fictional or real.
Perhaps it is our love for frontier justice, our respect for the meticulous execution of a task or our own deep rooted desire to possess the will to live our lives by our own code that makes Dexter, man and show, so appealing. He gets the one who got away. He is so good he hasn’t, won’t we hope, be caught. He has the courage to risk his career, reputation, family and very life to fulfill his mission.
Yet he is a killer, a murderer and by all the codes we claim to hold dear this hero, this man we root onward is destined for Hell. It is very telling indeed that each and every viewer wishes to some extent that they were a little like Dexter.
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