Thoughts 3

Why is Dexter a relatable character? He’s a freaking psycho and yet, he’s not all that hard to root for as a main character. Of course he is killing ‘for good’, which is a debatable topic. Often my mind drifts to a similar topic of the military and it is interesting to argue the differences between killing criminals as a private citizen and killing as a soldier for one’s country. But that is a tangent that I do not see any profit in continuing. What makes him seem relatable to normal people is that his thoughts are always talking about how he is different and how he needs to put on different ‘masks’ in order to fit in. People like to think that there is something different about them that sets them apart from everyone else. It’s how we perceive ourselves. We naturally value ourselves more than others. A friend of my once said that the reason why we value ourselves more than others is because we spend more time with ourselves. It is an interesting idea. A scary thought for me however is, is our vision of ourselves overly distorted compared with how others perceive us? And distorted can mean two different things: either we lift ourselves up more than we actually are or we tear ourselves down in a strange attempt to reach the levels of the less talented or less intelligent. Both I would say are poor choices. I would aim more for humility rather than trying to reach lower levels, because there is a difference. How we perceive ourselves can be completely different to how others perceive us. I always liked the song “Behind Blue Eyes” by The Who because it shows the perspective of someone who is hated, someone who is looked down upon for being higher than everyone else and because of the terrible decisions that he (or she I guess) has had to make. One aspect of Dexter’s character which is interesting is the fact that he has given in to his dark psychotic tendencies. Is this to say that resisting one’s nature is wrong, or is it to say that if you cannot resist doing something wrong, do it right? And this aspect of the show is something that does not appeal to me so much. Dexter satisfies his bloodlust and I guess that’s that. He does not really try to hold back in the show and it is sort of acceptable by the show’s standards. I guess one does have to make compromises however, when writing about a psycho who hunts psychos. His social awkwardness interests me. Many people have felt socially awkward but I’m not sure that characteristic is very relatable. But I guess since he’s one of the few (perhaps the only) characters that really delves into the realms of social awkwardness and is learning how to deal with everyday people, he’s sort of unique. He feeds that demographic. Dexter also fits the model for a psycho. He does not feel as much as everyone else and he seems more logical in what he does. He has a hard time with emotion; it’s as if he were a machine that was programmed with a small amount of morality; he was given a moral code to follow.