Dexter 'S Critique of Contemporary American Society
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Masaryk University Faculty of Arts Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Radka Hulvová Dexter 's Critique of Contemporary American Society Bachelor’s Diploma Thesis Supervisor: Stephen Paul Hardy, Ph.D. 2014 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. …………………………………………….. Author’s signature Acknowledgement I would like to thank my supervisor Stephen Paul Hardy, Ph.D. for his exemplary attitude, guidance, and helpful feedback. I would also like to thank my family and the closest friends for encouraging me throughout the process of writing. Table of Contents Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 5 Chapter One: Relevant Contextual Elements .................................................................. 9 1.1 Dexter Series ................................................................................................... 9 1.2 Television, Film and Literary Predecessors .................................................. 10 Chapter Two: The Critical Aspect of Dexter .................................................................. 23 2.1 Duality in Dexter ........................................................................................... 23 a) Dexter Morgan .......................................................................................... 23 b) Black Humor ............................................................................................ 32 c) Other Characters ………………………………………………………. 35 2.2 Ruthless Society ............................................................................................ 41 a) Neoliberalism and the Narcissistic society ............................................... 41 b) Dexter‟s Narcissist‟s - Maria LaGuerta and Captain Matthews ............... 46 2.3 Vigilante Thinking ........................................................................................ 51 a) Audience Identification ............................................................................ 51 b) The Code of Harry .................................................................................... 56 c) Vigilante Justice in Dexter and the American People .............................. 59 Conclusions ..................................................................................................................... 64 Works Cited .................................................................................................................... 68 Résumé ............................................................................................................................ 74 Resumé ............................................................................................................................ 75 Introduction The Dexter series – can be characterized as an American police television drama, or detective television series, but it is most importantly a series that features a serial killer as its main protagonist. Despite the fact that he takes pleasure in killing human beings, the viewers of the show generally root for him and, to some extent, even identify with him. This unexpected reaction seems to indicate some tendencies that could be deemed as disturbing in a modern twenty-first-century society. The popularity of the show can be surely ascribed partly to its comic aspect, its mostly dark humor that brings fun into otherwise often very serious situations. And yet again, this humor that comes mostly from the funny remarks of Dexter Morgan, the serial killer himself, appears to be not only making fun of the inability of other characters to see Dexter‟s true self but it also appears to be indirectly criticizing the American society and its hypocrisy which arises from the double lives of its citizens. This thesis will explore the critical aspect of this television show, in order to answer three research questions that will specify my main argument, the argument that the Dexter series challenges the moral state of the American nation, some of its stereotypical values, and the drives that lead the actions of many American people. The questions are: To which negative traits of the American society does the show draw attention to? To what events and developments led to the creation of these traits and what means did the creators of the show use to criticize these traits? The thesis focuses on the first four seasons of the series. Apart from the information retrieved directly from Dexter and other primary sources, the thesis is also based on the following secondary sources: The Modern Gothic and Literary Doubles, a book by Linda Dryden; Daily Life in Victorian England by Sally Mitchell; The American Dream: A Cultural History by Lawrence R. Samuel; The Culture of ~ 5 ~ Narcissism, a book written by a well-known American cultural historian, social critic, and moralist Christopher Lash; and A Brief History of Neoliberalism by a distinguished British social theorist David Harvey. The Modern Gothic and Literary Doubles is concerned with the nineteenth century fin de siècle literature, namely with the urban Gothic literature of Oscar Wilde, H. G. Wells and Robert Louis Stevenson. It speaks of a literature that depicted the pessimistic spirit of its age and reflected many anxieties that plagued the contemporary society. One of them being an anxiety about the duality of the metropolis, as well as its people. In the book, Dryden compares the tales of doubling and doppelgängers to the actual situation in the British society of that time. The individuals from the upper classes often led double lives and secretly indulged in morally questionable behavior, while on the outside keeping the appearance of highly civilized beings. It shows that London was not divided into the upper-class world of wealth and virtue, and the lower- class world of vice – as was the general view of the Victorian Londoners, but that the corrupted and imperfect human nature was very much inclusive of all classes of the society. This source will be used in the first chapter of the thesis dedicated to the predecessors of Dexter along with the chapter “Victorian Morals” from the book Daily Life in Victorian England, which describes the strict moral rules that were imposed on the members of the Victorian society. It will be used to introduce the issue of duality, a subject that links some of the selected literary works of the past to Dexter, as the series also deals with this matter. The book American Dream: A Cultural History is a field guide to the evolution of the American Dream ideology, a product of American collective imagination and one of the core mythologies of the nation. The author covers the history of this mythology from 1931, when the phrase was coined, to the first decade of the twenty-first century. ~ 6 ~ He also provides various interpretations of the Dream that American people have, one of the most persistent ones being the ownership of a single-unit family home. The book will be used in the subchapter about the duality in Dexter to explain the significance of the place Dexter lives in with the relation to what it represents. The Culture of Narcissism and A Brief History of Neoliberalism will serve as foundations and main sources of information for the chapter dealing with the certain sense of ruthlessness that appears to be widespread in the western society. The first of the books mentioned explores economic, political, and social developments which led to the state of cultural crisis in 1970s America and describes the consequences that arose from the anxieties that Americans experienced at that time. The consequences including, for instance, the normalizing of pathological narcissism, the extreme preoccupation with the self, the obsession with self-realization, the indifference towards predecessors and posterity, or the extremely competitive nature of the society that creates a feeling of “war of all against all” (Lash 40). The second book mentioned examines in more detail what appears to be the guiding principle of the economic though from the mid-1970s to the present day - neoliberalism. An ideology which through its emphasis on the value of free market further encourages competitiveness in the society. This thesis has two chapters. The first part of chapter one provides the reader with some basic information about Dexter and serves as a necessary starting point for any further research. The second part contains an overview of the literary, television and film works that can be considered as Dexter‟s predecessors, in a sense that they either belong to a similar genre, have similar features, or address and criticize similar social issues. The works include literary classics, such as Edgar Allan Poe‟s short story The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841), a gothic novella Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr ~ 7 ~ Hyde (1886) written by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle‟s books about a fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, Patricia Highsmith‟s psychological thriller novel called The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955), suspense novels and films about the serial killer Hannibal Lecter, or the American crime drama television series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. The second chapter of the paper focuses on the critical aspect of the Dexter series and it is divided into three subsections. The first subsection analyses Dexter in terms of its depiction of dual nature of the American society.