I am Dexter Morgan

In the past few weeks I’ve burned through five seasons of Showtime’s Dexter. This is not my usual fare. I’m more of a sci-fi and comedy person. But something about this show hooked me so completely that at one point I was watching episode after episode until 4:00 in the morning. What is it about this show that has me pining for season six?

I’ve given it some thought, and here’s what I’ve concluded: I love this show because Dexter Morgan is me.

Don’t dial the police just yet. Let me explain.

Dexter is a character that introverts can identify with—his struggle to fit in, to develop relationships with other people, to fake his way through social interactions, and to produce the emotions and reactions that other people expect of him. We all deal with that at some point. I know I do.

My friends emote. They cry. They squeal over babies. They talk about their feelings. They say, “I love you!” and hug each other. None of these things come naturally to me. I’m as emotional as Spock and as huggable as a grammar book. I get by on pretense, much like Dexter does.

I don’t talk about feelings, certainly not mine, but I do a great deal of listening to other people’s woes and raptures. I force myself to hug people and say nice things to them, even though I would rather be elsewhere. I go to parties and try to blend in even though I hate parties. When other people are speaking in high-pitched voices to babies, I’d rather not join in, but in deference to social expectations, I briefly comment, “Your kid is cute.”

Maybe I’m just cold-hearted. I don’t react emotionally to a lot of things that other people do. So when I’m hugging a friend and saying something warm and fuzzy and friend-like, I feel like a fraud. Like Dexter. I’m trying to act like a normal human being, and I bet I’m not the only one.

But Dexter is not merely a void, a façade. He harbors something called the “Dark Passenger”—or rather, his Dark Passenger. Coiled inside him, this desire to kill, this sinister need, clamors to be fed. He loathes and loves it, fears and embraces it because he cannot get rid of it.

I would venture to say we all have Dark Passengers, the disturbing parts of us that we don’t want others to know about. The addictions, the anger, the prejudices, the desires, the fears, the lies, the secrets—our Dark Passengers are unique to each of us, and some are more socially acceptable than others, some more disquieting than others. But we have them, and this is why Dexter is so easy to identify with. I may not be a serial killer, but my Dark Passengers are as hungry as his.

Does this all sound rather depressing? It shouldn’t. Dexter is not a depressing show. You might be tempted to think the message is defeatist, that it’s impossible for people to change who they are, and the best we can do is pretend to be normal. But that’s not what I’ve taken from those 60 episodes.

Dexter sees himself as a fraud and a pretender, and he is. He’s a calculating killer, pretending to be an ordinary, nice guy. But through pretense Dexter becomes “more than the sum of his parts,” as it were. His social interactions may be nothing but a disguise to him, but to his sister Deb he is not a fake brother who fake loves her—he is a real source of stability and strength, a protector, a listening ear, a best friend. The role he plays in her life is absolutely genuine. Same goes for his other roles—friend to Camilla, husband to Rita, father to Harrison, Cody, and Astor, etc. In pretending to care for them, he actually cares for them.

In other words, even though emotionally retarded people like Dexter and me have to fake it sometimes, what matters is that we do our best to pretend, because our actions (not our feelings or lack thereof) make us real to other people. I may not feel an emotion when I hug my friend, but the hug is real and the comfort it gives is real, so I am in fact fulfilling the role of friend to her. That’s a good nugget to take away from a show about a serial killer.

As for the Dark Passenger, I don’t believe the show suggests that we should give free rein to our worst inclinations, simply because they are part of us. Dexter doesn’t do that. He knows that he has a desire to kill, so rather than let that desire control him, he fights constantly for control over it. That is the whole point of the code of Harry. It protects him from his Dark Passenger, like a cage around a hungry lion. Notice that Dexter, as much as possible, stays mellow in his interactions with others, because he knows that if he loses control, the beast will escape. I take all of this as a positive message—that even though we may never be completely rid of our Dark Passengers, we must strive to control them and not let them control us.

There is a reason Dexter is so popular, and I think it has something to do with the fact that we can identify with Dexter’s struggle to maintain his façade and control his Dark Passenger. He’s not some insane axe murderer. He’s me.

I’m betting he’s you too.

Clacked by Guest Clacker
on Jul 21, 2011 @ 13:00 EST5EDT