Dexter & The Rage for Serial Killers
Tonight Dexter returns to Showtime. I will be among the millions of viewers glued to my seat, snacks and refreshments at hand, watching murder after murder unfold eerily over the next few weeks. I enjoyed the series last season and am quite sure I will enjoy it equally as much this year. That is due in no small part to the witty and often wildly unpredictable script, the canny acting of some of the performers (my favorite is Lauren Velez as the Lieutenant) and the fact that I have always been fascinated by serial killers.
And yet, I find my own interest in Dexter and that of my compatriots to be disturbing, symptomatic of a strange malaise in our culture that focuses on the darkest elements in our society. While I was looking on the internet to research this post, I found that Showtime has carefully placed ads for the premiere of Dexter on websites devoted to real life serial killers. Talk about pinpoint marketing! Should we really be applauding the return of a new series glamorizing the world of serial killers? The way it is being promoted, too, eerily underscores the fine line between poking fun at grand guignol and making murder and mayhem chic.
Yes, I know that Dexter is an anti-hero. He is the serial killer with a heart of gold. That is what makes him so appealing and devilishly cute. But the greater issues surrounding this highly stylized series revolve around our culture’s increasing fascination with the personas of these killers. By constantly covering them in the media, are we not encouraging people to become serial killers? Since we as a nation addicted to celebrity do not distinguish between a no-talent star like Paris Hilton, and a stellar talent like Pavarotti, who just died, it is not surprising that murderers are given as much airplay. Serial killers are big money.
People have always been mesmerized by psycho killers (and long before Talking Heads made them as catchy as bubble gum music). In ancient cultures, they were idolized. Mythic heroes. Hercules was the first superman, but he also slew a lot of people, and not always for noble purposes. In Medieval times, serial killers were simply part of the lethal landscape. Vlad the Impaler comes down to us as the inspiration for Dracula, but let’s not forget he was a brutal killer, not the sexy batman of Hollywood glamour.
Gilles de Rais, who was accused of killing hundreds of young boys, was one of Joan of Arc’s great supporters and a hero in his country, until he was discovered to be a mass murderer. And yet, as Bluebeard, he is reverently invoked as a symbol of evil for the ages.
King Henry, the VIII may have been a charismatic leader, but what he did to several of his six wives was nothing more than sanctioned murder. In the 19th century, Jack the Ripper became an icon in our culture due in no small part to the fact that he never got caught. Each year another book comes out claiming to prove his identity. For a good laugh, you might read Patricia Cornwell’s Jack the Ripper: Case Closed in which she lays the blame on British artist Walter Sickert who by some reputable accounts was not even in England at the time of the murders.
But very few people, I think, would cosy up to Jack. Perhaps because he does not yet have a face. He lacks the approachability of so many of modern times’ celebrated psychos, such as John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, Son of Sam, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ed Gein, and Henry Lee Lucas, some of whom have websites devoted to them, complete with photographs of people posing for fan photos and getting autographs. With the freedom provided by the internet, the cult of “sickos” has reached a new fever pitch. People sell “funny” clown-themed John Wayne Gacy t-shirts on eBay.
My concern is that shows like Dexter, no matter how amusing, or the intense media coverage that we give to each new serial killer (and old — the Boston Strangler and the Zodiac Killer have been revived for further exploitation), only encourages other demented souls out there, who really aren’t that different from you and me, to go out and outdo their predecessors. Isn’t that the American Way? Competition? I once wanted to write a novel entitled The Tally about a guy so obsessed with serial killers that he becomes one himself, just to get into the Guinness Book of World Records for outkilling the others. When the focus is more on the number of people slain, and the people doing the killing, rather than the victims themselves, we have lost touch with something basic in our society. Celebrating death and murder as the latest entertainment is really no different than what the Romans did at the end of their civilization when the powers-that-be staged gruesome blood spectacles in the Colosseum to distract the mobs. What’s next? A reality show about serial killers? Stranded on a desert island together? Which one will get out alive? Stay tuned. 
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