Posted by Michael Kanatake
Who sympathizes with a serial killer? In Showtime’s hit television
drama series Dexter, the audience does just that. The series centers
on Dexter Morgan, a serial killer who works for the Miami Metro Police
Department as a blood spatter analyst. Dexter is a sociopath. He is
unable to feel any type of human emotion except for when he kills his
victims. His inability to experience emotions is due to a traumatic
childhood event as he witnessed the brutal murder of his mother and
was locked in a shipping container for three days with his mother’s
body. Harry Morgan, the police officer who rescued Dexter from the
bloody shipping container, adopted Dexter and realized early on that
Dexter had sociopathic tendencies. Harry understood that because of
Dexter’s past, he would become a serial killer and thus teaches Dexter
a set of rules and principles that Dexter should abide by in order to
avoid killing innocent people and getting arrested. Harry teaches
Dexter to only kill criminals who slip through the cracks of our legal
system so that Dexter’s bloodthirsty cravings can somehow result in a
public good. He teaches him to create a façade, a false personality
that will prevent those who surround him from learning his truth.
The result is a hollow and empty man. Dexter simply cannot feel or
experience anything human and can only temporarily fill the gaping
voids in his life by killing rapists and murderers in a cold and
sadistic fashion. What is strange is that as an audience member, you
find yourself rooting for Dexter, hoping he doesn’t get caught.
Through Dexter’s back-story, you understand Dexter’s idiosyncrasies
and realize he is simply a man trying to get by in a society within
which he does not fit. Yet our legal system could never account for a
man like Dexter. Because our legal system is unable to account for
the back-story of the individuals being tried, a person like Dexter
would quickly be discarded as a psycho serial killer who needs to be
executed.
Now I am in no way condoning Dexter’s actions in the TV series as
killing individuals is always unjustified in my eyes. Yet the show
does highlight the importance of back-story and how opinions of
individuals can change once such individuals are afforded the
opportunity to tell their story. If the back-story of a fictional
serial killer can result in feelings of sympathy towards that serial
killer, then our legal system is undeniably ignorant for failing to
introduce back-stories into our courthouses in any meaningful
capacity.
