The River of Life
Of all the serial killers ever recorded, Dexter Morgan is by far my favorite. Before you start freaking out and assuming I am some sort of lunatic, let me assure you that he is entirely fictional. The character Dexter Morgan is the star of the Showtime TV show Dexter. The show is currently on it’s sixth season and it is doing very well. So far, every season has outperformed it’s predecessor and has incorporated copious amounts of blood. Season One of Dexter revolves around the idea of blood and what it means to a serial killer. The viewer is thrown into a gruesome dilemma where they don’t know if they should cringe or applaud Dexter’s behavior. After a while, Dexter fans begin to view blood in a new way. Dexter has changed the ways people view blood, helping viewers see it as a profession as a bloodstain pattern analyst and as an inner calling to a serial killer.
Many real life serial killers claim to have an “inner calling” that tells them what to do and how to do it. Real life serial killers have an M.O. or Modus Operandi (latin for Method of Operating) and Dexter has one as well. He binds his victims to a table with cling wrap and “teaches them a lesson” by telling them the monster that they are by hurting innocent people. Next, Dexter slices his victims’ right cheek with a scalpel in order to collect a blood sample for his collection. Finally, he kills his victim (usually with a single stab to the chest). After the victim is dead, Dexter cuts the victim into pieces, wraps him or her in garbage bags, and dumps them into the ocean. The most crucial part of this ritual is the collecting of the blood. Dexter collects the blood so that he can later look upon the slides and remember all of his intimate moments with his victims. These slides are his trophies and without them, he can become hostile.
For example, in the book Darkly Dreaming Dexter, the book that the first season was based on, Dexter impulsively kills a man who rapes and murders women. In order to escape his own crime scene undetected, he is unable to complete his ritual and take a blood sample as a trophy. Dexter’s becomes hostile, uneasy, and extremely anxious because he doesn’t have that blood sample to add to his blood slide collection. He becomes so uneasy without that blood slide that he ends up stealing a sample from his workplace. Many of Dexter’s actions are directly related to blood, fueled by bloodlust, ending in bloodshed.
Dexter’s bloodlust sometimes puts me on edge. As his inner calling to kill becomes stronger, the show becomes more intense. After the tension becomes unbearable, Dexter kills another guilty victim, and the climax drops off into peaceful bliss. In these situations, the flourishing of blood becomes crucial. As the tension rises, less blood is shown so that your immunity to it decreases. Than all at once, a grisly bloody scene shock and horrify you. Surprise bloody twists sometimes happen as well. In the end of the fourth season, the climax occurs as Dexter kills his nemesis serial killer, and I felt relieved. Then in a bloody twist, Dexter comes home to find his wife brutally and shockingly murdered. After watching that scene, I was so confused and furious. No television show had ever made me feel that way. If these scenes were made to be family friendly without any blood, the shock factor would significantly diminish.
Dexter’s profession happens to be perfect for a serial killer. As a bloodstain analyst for the Miami Metro Police Department, he has access to suspects files and records. With these files, Dexter can find and kill the guilty people who have successfully escaped the justice system. This allows him to feed his inner demon which keeps him satisfied. When he is at work, he analyzes different murders. The camera always focuses on the gruesome murder and the surrounding blood. This can make the show hard to watch at times when the murders deal with amputation or skinning people alive.
Dexter benefits from being a bloodstain pattern analyst because he is able to work with and talk about blood all day without seeming strange. Although the show does not say this, but Dexter would be a less efficient serial killer without his job. Without dealing with blood every day, I think that Dexter would feel a stronger need to kill, thus increasing his chances of getting caught. Instead, he temporarily replaces his need to kill by working with blood and catching murderers with the police department.
The first time I watched the show Dexter, I was horrified by the concept. I could not imagine enjoying a show that glorifies a serial killer. After a few episodes, however, I slowly began to change my mind. The violence seeped its way in and numbed me to the horrific murders that took place. While I still may be horrified sometimes by the thought of blood, Dexter will always be fascinated, consumed, and compelled by it. In the first season, a serial killer know as the Ice Truck Killer kills prostitutes, drains their blood, cuts them up into pieces and leaves them out in public. When the I first saw this, I was horrified while Dexter on the other hand began to get excited. Someone is killing prostitutes the same way he kills the guilty citizens of Miami. Only this person kills without any blood. Dexter’s head starts to spin and he says, “No blood. No sticky, hot, messy, awful blood; no blood at all. Why hadn't I thought of that? No blood. What a beautiful idea!”
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