The
psychokiller genre is one of the most successful genres, both in films and television.
However, rarely do serial killers occupy the leading roles (American Psychopath, Hannibal); in fact they
usually play supporting parts, since the story is invariably told from the point
of view of their unavoidable Nemesis, the policeman or group of policemen who try
to catch him (The Silence of the lambs, Red
Dragon, Citizen X, Copycat, Seven, Zodiac). However, when the time comes to
recognized these movies, we do so by the proper name of the serial killer: Hannibal
Lecter, John “Jigsaw” Kramer, Norman Bates, Patrick Bateman or Ted Bundy. Reality
and fiction enter a zone of indifference.[i]
In
the case of the television series, until the appearance of Dexter, the serial killers had to content themselves with supporting
roles, (Wired in the Blood, Wallander)
or, in the best of cases being guest stars (Michael Emerson in The Inside) and there are occasions when
they do not have even a supporting role (White
Chapel). On television the protagonists are always policemen, the most paradigmatic
cases being, in this sense Criminal Minds
or Profiler. In detective or forensic
series some episode is devoted to the chase of a serial killer who may even appear
more than once (Natalie David in The Miniature
Killer, Arthur Blisterman in The Mannekiller
and Nathan Haskell The Dick and Jane Killer
in CSI Las Vegas) but in these cases
they always appear as supporting actors. Nevertheless whether we deal with films
or television series, all the plots have something in common, and it is the way
in which the serial killer is represented.
In
fiction, serial killers have the following profile: outstanding intelligence combined
with extreme sadism; they enjoy inflicting on their victims the most original a
varied forms of suffering before murdering them; they are beings who live in isolation
in lugubrious places, have a daily routine that is structured in an obsessive way
and pay attention to the most minute details; we almost never get to know how they
earn their living and they have suffered a family trauma in their childhood. They
are also characterized by offering themselves as informants or cooperating with
the police, and are practically unknown by their neighbours, friends, and even in
full sight of the police investigators; have a sophisticated code or pattern of
behaviour from which they choose their victims; they invent a ritual of death to
sacrifice them, and have the fetishist habit of collecting trophies or leaving marks,
clues, signs or riddles on the scene of the crime. Sometimes they even send letters
to the police or newspapers to make their philosophy known.
To
sum up, they don’t have any personality trait which produces empathy among the audience
who, may perhaps feel pity, or sorrow when they see that, as a child, he was abused
by his parents or suffered some traumatic event, but even so, we never justify or
understand him. Apart from some exceptions, they are all men and they act on their
own.
Perhaps
this is due to the cinematographic or television fiction which has taken on Jack
the Ripper as a model to build their ideal types of murderers and policemen; he
was the symbolic figure who opened the way for the discourse of the serial killer
in literature, cinema and television generating a mass phenomenon and a subculture
which does not cease reproducing and re-inventing itself even in television series
whose genre is not detective story or the psychokiller.[ii]
But, besides, it is worth mentioning the participation of script advisers, of
formers FBI investigators, or former American police agents, who offer their experiences
to build their counterparts in fiction.[iii]
If
the killer is a monster, evil incarnate, a misfit, irredeemable, irrational and
hateful, the policemen is represented as his absolute Nemesis, that is to say, the
embodiment of absolute good, who sacrifices his own private life for the service
of the police corps and society, who combines rationality with empathy towards his
victims with whom he gets personally involved. In some cases, these representations
include more or less explicit suggestions or implicit ones which propose to the
spectator the idea that the policeman carries within him or catches something from
the serial killer; in other cases the policeman is himself the serial killer (Righteous Kill). It is true that this description
is schematic, that there exists dozens of variants in which some traits may or may
not be present, or do not even appear, but it is evident, whatever the case, that
the spectator does not have too many alternatives to decide on which of either character
he is going to identify with, or project into.
For
the purposes of my analysis it does not matter here if these representations have
a correlation with reality, since what interests me is not to know what serial killers
and policemen who truly and in effect do exist are really like, and with whom surely
(let us hope so!) we shall never meet face to face, but those we see daily –and
increasingly– on the cinema or television screens, which, in the last instance,
are those which act in a performative way on our subjectivity, turning fiction into
the only reality. Neither am I interested in analyzing the effects of power, knowledge
and truth that these types of representations have or may have in moral terms, or
in the portrayal of order or social control of the spectator; all these aspects
are, without doubt, relevant and important, and some day those analysis will have
to be made but it will not be on this occasion.
The
purpose of this article consists in analyzing a television series, Dexter, which breaks away from these stereotypes
and structures beginning a new discourse on the serial killer whose principal effect
has been to produce a subject spectator who not only empathizes and sympathizes
with the monster, but who has also made popular the phrase “Dexter, our favourite
serial killer”.
This
particular breach of the language has had a counterpart in re-kindling the old discussions
on the negative aspects of television on the audience, the appearance of militant
campaigns opposing the broadcast of the series on the part of journalists, psychiatrics,
social scientists, groups, associations and civilian associations both, in the USA[iv]
and in other countries in the world and has been divided politicians, Republicans
and Democrats.[v]
The
argument also reached the Emmy Awards and the Golden Globe Awards since Dexter has been, ever since its release in
2006, nominated as “Best TV Drama” but has never obtained the trophy. It has, however,
obtained prizes in other categories including that of “Best Actor in Drama”, in
2009 edition, awarded to Michael Hall, its protagonist.[vi]
Where
there does not exist any polemic with regard to the series is in the social networks,
the blogs on television series, the theme forums and the hundred of web sites devoted
to commenting , making inventories informing and interpreting or debating the series
which have culminated in its own wiki encyclopedia “Dexterpedia”. Furthermore a
prequel has appeared in the format of webisodes entitled Dexter: Early Cuts made in animated cartoons of short duration in which
the adolescence of our anti-hero is narrated.[vii]
Shall
we, all those who watch the series, become serial killers? How significant is it
to consider Dexter Morgan “Our favourite serial killer?” What does this tell us
about the society we live in?
[i]
The term psychokiller was coined at the beginning of the 1970 by
Robert Ressler, an FBI investigator who drew an analogy between the episodic aspect
of certain murders and television series A serial killer is a person who murders
three or more persons in a period of more than thirty days, allowing for a period
of cooling down between each murder, and whose motivation is based on the psychological
gratification afforded by the act. The expression became popular owing to the publicity
given to the crimes committed by Ted Bundy and David Berkowitz in the middle of
that decade.
[ii]
For example in the fiction series Babylon
[iii]
The most famous one is Robert K. Ressler, former FBI agent who
has written numerous books on the subject and who has worked extensively as adviser
of films of the genre. The character Jack Crawford, the FBI chief who pursues the
awful Hannibal Lecter is based on Ressler.
[iv]
Poniewozik, James (2008) Dexter,
Decency and DVRs on Time on line.
http://tunedin.blogs.time.com/2008/01/30/dexter_decency_and_dvrs/
[v]
Republicans love Modern Family,
Democrats favor Dexter on TV Squad,
10th November, 2010.
[vi]
On http://www.imdb.com/title/tt077362/awards
the list of nominations an awards obtained by the series Dexter all over the world can be consulted.
[vii]
Without exaggerating it is possible to state that Dexter is a series whose success is as linked
to Internet as was also the case of Lost
; in discharges via P2P for example, the record sum of 3.8 million spectators has
been reached which is practically equivalent to its television audience on “Showtime”
–on cable- which averages 5 million viewers. Besides, the series is broadcast by
CBS in the U.S. , Fox in Latinamerica
and Quatro in Spain , and by HBO
all over the world; in the U.K.
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