Me, Myself and The Macabre

Growing up, I was fascinated with the macabre, the bloody, the horrifying.

I read Steven King voraciously and couldn't get enough of horror movies, even after not being able to sleep a full six months after a viewing of Children of the Corn during a sleepover in the sixth grade at Jodi Chadwick's house. Through high school and college, I devoured true crime books, was fascinated with The Manson murders and once I discovered Truman Capote's In Cold Blood I couldn't get enough of literary journalism, from Michael Herr to Joan Didion.


Somewhere along the line, my attention turned from books to TV within this genre, and I became a 48 Hours :Mystery junkie, and with the explosion of cable came Cold Case Files, City Confidential, and Snapped (a personal favorite, featuring solely stories about women who lose their shit and kill people). Then my sister got cancer, and my taste for these horrific true life tales waned, I'm guessing because real life was horrific enough, and I focused instead on the intensely dramatic and sometimes bloody tales of The Sopranos, Six Feet Under and Deadwood.

Which brings me to my latest guilty pleasure: Dexter.

I was sort of opposed to the whole idea of a series based around a serial killer - I mean what well-adjusted person would want to watch that, right? - so I waited a few years to check it out, guiltily putting it on my Netflix queue, and then moving other things ahead of it, thoughtful indie movies and such. When I finally did start watching it, I was torn. I felt totally creeped out and voyeuristic, which seems to be exactly the aim of Dexter and it's creators; they then bank on the fact that although you might feel a little dirty after watching, you won't feel so dirty as to not sit down and watch another episode.

If you've never watched it, the basic premise is this: Dexter is a serial killer who works as a blood spatter expert in the Miami police department, who only kills people who "deserve" it - mainly those who have gotten away with heinous crimes. Therefore, in satisfying his need to kill, Dexter also feels that he is evening out things in society, and in turn, you feel a little better about watching him do it.


And so it goes. The acting is often marginal at best (aside from Michael C. Hall, who plays Dexter, and whom always sort of made me uncomfortable on Six Feet Under) the plots dramatic and very, very bloody. However, it just sort of works, perhaps because the premise itself is so outrageous. Also, the writers spare the viewer little or nothing when Dexter kills, and they want you to feel the fear and pain that his victims do, and rightly so, otherwise, we would be just as depraved as Dexter, and feel no ambivalence about his actions.

The cast has grown stronger over the last few seasons, and I for one, can't stop watching it. It provides an outlandish escape to what's happening in my life at the moment (mainly my mother's brain cancer) by allowing me to step inside the mind of someone so twisted I just sort of want to understand him.

In short, watching Dexter, you feel a little like the promo photo of Michael C. Hall above, that is, happily entertained and only slightly splattered in blood.