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shadowkatCurrently enjoying Dexter Season 4. This is actually better than I expected. S2 and S3 were sort of slow in places and not as gripping. This season so far is by turns hilarious and suspenseful. But I am not for some reason emotionally affected by the characters. I have yet to cry during this series. Of course - part of the problem was the disc I got kept freezing during Deb's breakdown over the FBI agent Lundy's death. And well, I'd been spoiled by TV Guide that Lundy was going to die - just didn't know how.
Dexter is a rather dark comedy. About a serial killer who goes after other serial killers. The character is a blood splatter specialist by day, killer by night. In Season 4 - he has married Rita, has a new baby, and has adopted her two kids, Astor and Cody. He's a family man working for the police. In a new neighborhood. With a neighborhood watch. Yet he refuses to give up his old apartment, which up to now has sort of served as a pseudo - bat cave. He's a modern version of Batman, or non-gothic take on the vampire vigilante. Angel without the metaphors. Even Julie Benze, Darla, plays his doomed wife - Rita, complete with baby boy, Harrison.
What fascinates me about Dexter is much the same thing that fascinated me about Farscape and to a degree Angel the Series - which is what violence, specifically traumatic violence does to the human soul. In Dexter - Dexter Morgan and his brother watched a man butcher their mother in a locker, and were later found with her remains, splattered with her blood, sitting in a pool of it. Dexter was about 3, maybe younger, his brother 10. Both became serial killers. Both butchered their victims like the killer butchered their mother. Both are fascinated by blood.
And both felt the need for control, sterile - no blood in their kills. A ritual re-enactment of their mother's horrific death, but they are the one's in control. In Season 1 - Dexter kills his brother - the ice-box killer, to save his adopted sister - to lean towards the light.
The choice he's given is either kill his brother, or let his brother kill his sister. His brother kills women like their mother, while Dexter has been trained to kill serial killers like himself like the man who butchered their mother in a drug deal gone bad. Likewise the Trinity killer in Dexter S4 - has become a serial killer in direct response to the horrific deaths of his family - his sister's suicide in a bathtub, his mother throwing herself off a building, and his father bludgeoned to death. He repeats their deaths - being the one in control. He was unable to prevent their deaths, so he recreates it. In effect he's become a vampire. The violence has turned him into a monster.
Angel - played with similar ideas. Particularly in the episodes Damage, In the Dark, Hellbound, The Sonambulist, The Prodigal, and Dear Boy. Each episode showed Angel (a vampire) dealing with
another vampire or monster similar to himself - attempting to take it out. In both cases - the other monster became that way in part because of violence, but also because there was something in him or her that made them react in that manner.
As with Dexter, Farscape and Angel - the message is the same - we cannot control what happens to us, but we can control how we choose to react to it. It is what Rita tells Debra in
the episode "I have a Hammer" - what happened, happened. It wasn't your fault. You had no control. But you can control how you react. And it is in Whistler's voice over in Becoming Part I in Buffy S2 - where he says, bad things happen that's inevitable, it's what we do after that matters. It's also in Farscape - where Crichton looks at himself and sees his innocence bled away, what have I become, he asks Aeryn in La Bomba, I blew up a field of flowers with a nuclear bomb today? Or in Damage - where Spike stares at his re-sewn on arms, and states, that he somehow doubts Dana can be saved. She was turned into a monster, just as we were. It's an interesting statement that haunts, much as Dexter's does - because what Spike says in that episode if you listen carefully is not in regards to Dana but to in regards to himself and Angel. Angel says - she was a victim, innocent. And Spike turns to him and states, so were we, once upon a time. He says - we are monsters. We chose to become monsters. We chose to give into the violence, to let it take us over, to follow its dictates. Gothic shows are easier for audiences to digest because you can excuse Angel and Spike's horrible actions because they are "vampires" and even better, "without souls". They aren't like us. Just as the horrible violence and actions of the characters in True Blood or Being Human are easier to digest and justify, because they are literal monsters - werewolves, vampires - they can't help it.
But human monsters sans metaphor, the real variety, like Dexter Morgan or even John Crichton's terrorist in the Farscape verse are harder to deal with. They hit closer to home. Batman we can handle - he's a super-hero, in a comic book universe. Dexter - is a satirical take on the real.
And Dexter's justifications for killing are becoming less and less clear to us. Less black and white and as a result, less justified. His solution is a violent one, and it is not to seek justice, but to appease his own sick desires. He is a vampire of sorts, who must get his fix.
An addict. Just like John Lithgow's Mitchell - an addict who must have his fix - must kill.
Or Angel - who must kill.
Not all victims of violence react in this manner. I know people, personally, who were victims of violence who chose not to, who chose to never hit, hurt, and abuse anyone. That turned their backs on violence and protest against its use. So - being a victim of violence is not an excuse.
There are other ways to survive. You can't blame your violent past for your present actions.
They may explain some of them, but they don't justify them and they certainly aren't the only reason for them. I remember my Granny used to get angry at people who said, so and so was a serial killer or beat their kids and wife because they'd been abused as children. She would say, your Grandfather was abused as a child and he never raised a hand to us, he never hurt anyone, never fought, never fired a gun. That's on them. They chose to be monsters. No one made them into monsters. We can claim that it is genetic, but I'm not sure that holds water either.
No, we choose how we react to events. And films and television seem to re-emphasize this point, from multiple perspectives. Angel chooses to be cursed with a soul, to be a violent man, to be an abuser, to find some higher power to save him or grant him redemption. He can't control his actions, others do. And likewise, he gets off on re-enacting his relationship with his father, with his family, over and over. Much like Dexter talks to his father, Harry Morgan, seeking his advice, his approval, redemption in his father's eyes - see I only killed those who deserve it.
Until, he doesn't. Until he kills the innocent man. And realizes the line between him and Trinity is far more blurred than he'd like. Angel in some respects is like Trinity, he feels guilty, but it doesn't stop him. He looks on in remorse, but he still kills. Dexter is perplexed by Trinity's inability to put the deer out of pain. "He can kill innocent people, but he can't kill Bambi?" And looks at Trinity and states, "the deer is in pain, put him out of his misery." You see it with Spike and Angel, the odd dichotomy, two monsters, yet different.
Spike seeks redemption, choice. While Angel wants redemption, but prefers not having autonomy or choice. The Spike/Angel debate often feels like the old college debate between the determinists and the free will factions. Just as like the Dexter/Trinity debate - Trinity is in control or so he thinks of his life and all those around him, while Dexter feels increasingly not in control - a puppet to a ghostly father.
While people may well fight over which character is the most evil - I personally find such questions a moot point or irrelevant, what interests me is the question being asked - do we control our fate? Do we control who we become? Are we puppets to events and experience? Do events create us? OR do we have choice?
Can a man and woman choose his/her own path? To change. To grow. To become a better person.
Spike chooses to win a soul. He chooses to fight to become a better man, a good man, to revert back to the man he was before violence entered his life. Yet, realizes on some level, that he can't. The best he can do is try to evolve beyond both, and learn from past mistakes. If we can't learn from our mistakes, then why stay alive? Are we doomed to repeat it all? Are we puppets to pre-determined fates? Are we born evil or born good? Or do we choose? Do events makes us evil or good, or do we decide what to do, and does it vary each day?
Trinity - Arthur Mitchell - Dexter learns is not all evil. He's not a black and white villian, any more than Santos, or Lily, or his brother were, or for that matter Dexter himself. Mitchell is not the Loner - Lundy believed. No Lundy ironically was the Loner with no life but the hunt.
Mitchell has a family, goes to church, builds homes for the poor. And he kills people. Dexter is a blood spatter specialist capturing killers, he is a good friend, brother, husband, father,
and son. And he kills people who kill other people. Is Dexter a monster? Depends on who you ask.
Angel similarly is not so black and white, any more than Spike is. They help Buffy save the world. They save others. Yet they also drink the blood of innocents, kill, rape, pillage.
They save children, yet have also killed them. The good and evil seem to war within them.
The soul and the demon. Which character you prefer is less based on which is worse, and more on which personality is more appealing - the brooding sourpuss or the snarky bastard.
Same here - Dexter and his roommate, his dark passenger. But we all have a dark passenger, a part of ourselves that would like to kick the dog, slap our co-worker, bitch about our best-friend, curse our boyfriend or girlfriend, or just think evil thoughts in our heads.
We choose not to act on it, most of the time. Each day is a battle between these two sides of our natures and our stories in a way are what-if tales on how to deal with them - what if we gave in and killed that co-worker, or what-if we gave in and robbed that bank. OR sought revenge? What would happen?
This fascinates me - that murky area between good and evil, right and wrong, the emotions in between. The internal landscape of the human soul or emotional landscape of it, as opposed to just the landscape of the human mind. Not just how we think, but also why and how we feel the way we do - and the degree to which that motivates us. Why does Gregory House decide one moment to turn his back on his patient, then the next risk his life for her? Why is he an ass one moment, yet kind the next? Or why does sexual predator Spike try to attempt to rape Buffy, then race half-way across the planet to get a soul to ensure he never does it again? Or why does stone-cold Dexter sink down a wall in abject remorse and pain when he realizes the horrible man he murdered was in reality innocent of the crime of murder, none of the other crimes, just that one? What makes us decide to hurt or help? What motivates us? And why do we feel remorse for one action and not another? Why can't Arthur Mitchell kill a deer, yet he has no problems forcing a crying mother to jump off a building? These shows don't provide answers, only more questions. We see that people aren't all one thing through them. That a mass murderer could jump in front of a bus to save a child, and a kind saintly mother might trip her neighbor or watch them get hit by a bus without batting an eyelash.
Please note before commenting that I have not watched past episode 7, the last episode I watched, was the one where Dex took his son on a sailing trip.
Dexter is a rather dark comedy. About a serial killer who goes after other serial killers. The character is a blood splatter specialist by day, killer by night. In Season 4 - he has married Rita, has a new baby, and has adopted her two kids, Astor and Cody. He's a family man working for the police. In a new neighborhood. With a neighborhood watch. Yet he refuses to give up his old apartment, which up to now has sort of served as a pseudo - bat cave. He's a modern version of Batman, or non-gothic take on the vampire vigilante. Angel without the metaphors. Even Julie Benze, Darla, plays his doomed wife - Rita, complete with baby boy, Harrison.
What fascinates me about Dexter is much the same thing that fascinated me about Farscape and to a degree Angel the Series - which is what violence, specifically traumatic violence does to the human soul. In Dexter - Dexter Morgan and his brother watched a man butcher their mother in a locker, and were later found with her remains, splattered with her blood, sitting in a pool of it. Dexter was about 3, maybe younger, his brother 10. Both became serial killers. Both butchered their victims like the killer butchered their mother. Both are fascinated by blood.
And both felt the need for control, sterile - no blood in their kills. A ritual re-enactment of their mother's horrific death, but they are the one's in control. In Season 1 - Dexter kills his brother - the ice-box killer, to save his adopted sister - to lean towards the light.
The choice he's given is either kill his brother, or let his brother kill his sister. His brother kills women like their mother, while Dexter has been trained to kill serial killers like himself like the man who butchered their mother in a drug deal gone bad. Likewise the Trinity killer in Dexter S4 - has become a serial killer in direct response to the horrific deaths of his family - his sister's suicide in a bathtub, his mother throwing herself off a building, and his father bludgeoned to death. He repeats their deaths - being the one in control. He was unable to prevent their deaths, so he recreates it. In effect he's become a vampire. The violence has turned him into a monster.
Angel - played with similar ideas. Particularly in the episodes Damage, In the Dark, Hellbound, The Sonambulist, The Prodigal, and Dear Boy. Each episode showed Angel (a vampire) dealing with
another vampire or monster similar to himself - attempting to take it out. In both cases - the other monster became that way in part because of violence, but also because there was something in him or her that made them react in that manner.
As with Dexter, Farscape and Angel - the message is the same - we cannot control what happens to us, but we can control how we choose to react to it. It is what Rita tells Debra in
the episode "I have a Hammer" - what happened, happened. It wasn't your fault. You had no control. But you can control how you react. And it is in Whistler's voice over in Becoming Part I in Buffy S2 - where he says, bad things happen that's inevitable, it's what we do after that matters. It's also in Farscape - where Crichton looks at himself and sees his innocence bled away, what have I become, he asks Aeryn in La Bomba, I blew up a field of flowers with a nuclear bomb today? Or in Damage - where Spike stares at his re-sewn on arms, and states, that he somehow doubts Dana can be saved. She was turned into a monster, just as we were. It's an interesting statement that haunts, much as Dexter's does - because what Spike says in that episode if you listen carefully is not in regards to Dana but to in regards to himself and Angel. Angel says - she was a victim, innocent. And Spike turns to him and states, so were we, once upon a time. He says - we are monsters. We chose to become monsters. We chose to give into the violence, to let it take us over, to follow its dictates. Gothic shows are easier for audiences to digest because you can excuse Angel and Spike's horrible actions because they are "vampires" and even better, "without souls". They aren't like us. Just as the horrible violence and actions of the characters in True Blood or Being Human are easier to digest and justify, because they are literal monsters - werewolves, vampires - they can't help it.
But human monsters sans metaphor, the real variety, like Dexter Morgan or even John Crichton's terrorist in the Farscape verse are harder to deal with. They hit closer to home. Batman we can handle - he's a super-hero, in a comic book universe. Dexter - is a satirical take on the real.
And Dexter's justifications for killing are becoming less and less clear to us. Less black and white and as a result, less justified. His solution is a violent one, and it is not to seek justice, but to appease his own sick desires. He is a vampire of sorts, who must get his fix.
An addict. Just like John Lithgow's Mitchell - an addict who must have his fix - must kill.
Or Angel - who must kill.
Not all victims of violence react in this manner. I know people, personally, who were victims of violence who chose not to, who chose to never hit, hurt, and abuse anyone. That turned their backs on violence and protest against its use. So - being a victim of violence is not an excuse.
There are other ways to survive. You can't blame your violent past for your present actions.
They may explain some of them, but they don't justify them and they certainly aren't the only reason for them. I remember my Granny used to get angry at people who said, so and so was a serial killer or beat their kids and wife because they'd been abused as children. She would say, your Grandfather was abused as a child and he never raised a hand to us, he never hurt anyone, never fought, never fired a gun. That's on them. They chose to be monsters. No one made them into monsters. We can claim that it is genetic, but I'm not sure that holds water either.
No, we choose how we react to events. And films and television seem to re-emphasize this point, from multiple perspectives. Angel chooses to be cursed with a soul, to be a violent man, to be an abuser, to find some higher power to save him or grant him redemption. He can't control his actions, others do. And likewise, he gets off on re-enacting his relationship with his father, with his family, over and over. Much like Dexter talks to his father, Harry Morgan, seeking his advice, his approval, redemption in his father's eyes - see I only killed those who deserve it.
Until, he doesn't. Until he kills the innocent man. And realizes the line between him and Trinity is far more blurred than he'd like. Angel in some respects is like Trinity, he feels guilty, but it doesn't stop him. He looks on in remorse, but he still kills. Dexter is perplexed by Trinity's inability to put the deer out of pain. "He can kill innocent people, but he can't kill Bambi?" And looks at Trinity and states, "the deer is in pain, put him out of his misery." You see it with Spike and Angel, the odd dichotomy, two monsters, yet different.
Spike seeks redemption, choice. While Angel wants redemption, but prefers not having autonomy or choice. The Spike/Angel debate often feels like the old college debate between the determinists and the free will factions. Just as like the Dexter/Trinity debate - Trinity is in control or so he thinks of his life and all those around him, while Dexter feels increasingly not in control - a puppet to a ghostly father.
While people may well fight over which character is the most evil - I personally find such questions a moot point or irrelevant, what interests me is the question being asked - do we control our fate? Do we control who we become? Are we puppets to events and experience? Do events create us? OR do we have choice?
Can a man and woman choose his/her own path? To change. To grow. To become a better person.
Spike chooses to win a soul. He chooses to fight to become a better man, a good man, to revert back to the man he was before violence entered his life. Yet, realizes on some level, that he can't. The best he can do is try to evolve beyond both, and learn from past mistakes. If we can't learn from our mistakes, then why stay alive? Are we doomed to repeat it all? Are we puppets to pre-determined fates? Are we born evil or born good? Or do we choose? Do events makes us evil or good, or do we decide what to do, and does it vary each day?
Trinity - Arthur Mitchell - Dexter learns is not all evil. He's not a black and white villian, any more than Santos, or Lily, or his brother were, or for that matter Dexter himself. Mitchell is not the Loner - Lundy believed. No Lundy ironically was the Loner with no life but the hunt.
Mitchell has a family, goes to church, builds homes for the poor. And he kills people. Dexter is a blood spatter specialist capturing killers, he is a good friend, brother, husband, father,
and son. And he kills people who kill other people. Is Dexter a monster? Depends on who you ask.
Angel similarly is not so black and white, any more than Spike is. They help Buffy save the world. They save others. Yet they also drink the blood of innocents, kill, rape, pillage.
They save children, yet have also killed them. The good and evil seem to war within them.
The soul and the demon. Which character you prefer is less based on which is worse, and more on which personality is more appealing - the brooding sourpuss or the snarky bastard.
Same here - Dexter and his roommate, his dark passenger. But we all have a dark passenger, a part of ourselves that would like to kick the dog, slap our co-worker, bitch about our best-friend, curse our boyfriend or girlfriend, or just think evil thoughts in our heads.
We choose not to act on it, most of the time. Each day is a battle between these two sides of our natures and our stories in a way are what-if tales on how to deal with them - what if we gave in and killed that co-worker, or what-if we gave in and robbed that bank. OR sought revenge? What would happen?
This fascinates me - that murky area between good and evil, right and wrong, the emotions in between. The internal landscape of the human soul or emotional landscape of it, as opposed to just the landscape of the human mind. Not just how we think, but also why and how we feel the way we do - and the degree to which that motivates us. Why does Gregory House decide one moment to turn his back on his patient, then the next risk his life for her? Why is he an ass one moment, yet kind the next? Or why does sexual predator Spike try to attempt to rape Buffy, then race half-way across the planet to get a soul to ensure he never does it again? Or why does stone-cold Dexter sink down a wall in abject remorse and pain when he realizes the horrible man he murdered was in reality innocent of the crime of murder, none of the other crimes, just that one? What makes us decide to hurt or help? What motivates us? And why do we feel remorse for one action and not another? Why can't Arthur Mitchell kill a deer, yet he has no problems forcing a crying mother to jump off a building? These shows don't provide answers, only more questions. We see that people aren't all one thing through them. That a mass murderer could jump in front of a bus to save a child, and a kind saintly mother might trip her neighbor or watch them get hit by a bus without batting an eyelash.
Please note before commenting that I have not watched past episode 7, the last episode I watched, was the one where Dex took his son on a sailing trip.