Ignoring the evidence on "Dexter"

I see that Slate is giving Dexter publicity (again.)   It's funny how certain TV shows are deemed so important as to gain continual assessment on certain liberal media outlets, isn't it?   The Guardian does it with Doctor Who; Slate with various Showtime or other cable shows.

In any case, I've never watched more than 20 minutes or so of the show, but I've always had reservations about it thematically:  a man with a compulsion to kill who channels it only towards those who deserve to be killed.   The psychological set up for it is pure comic book:  as a kiddie he saw his own mother murdered and sat in her blood for days.

Apparently, the show did have its critics at the start who worried about it encouraging empathy with a serial murderer, as this discussion in the article linked above notes:

Waldman: I'm interested in the way the show portrays people stressed to the breaking point. Everyone has an idiosyncratic coping strategy. Quinn and Batista knock back doubles at the bar. Deb runs alone on her treadmill. Dexter murders people. Do you think the show is trying to normalize Dexter's kills? By showing us all these dysfunctional outlets for stress in other characters?

Bosch: I've always thought that this is less about normalizing serial killing—when the show debuted, many critics were disgusted at being asked to empathize with a murderer—than about trauma. How Dexter might have been a normal person had he not been subjected to the unthinkable trauma of witnessing his mother being murdered, then sitting in her blood for days. Really, the show tackles PTSD—and its lesser forms—in a spectacular way.

Waldman: Yes. I think you’ve nailed the show’s philosophy. But in its throwaway details, I sometimes feel we’re asked to believe that Dex isn’t that bad. And then there’s the question of whether he could be a vigilante hero.

But such quibbles seemed to stop worrying critics (and the studio) a long time ago.

Therefore, I was surprised to read a few months ago (it previously had some publicity apparently, but I had missed it) about a Canadian murderer who, it was clear, drew inspiration from the show: 

Twitchell, 31, was found guilty by a jury last April 12 in the October 2008 slaying of Johnny Altinger. He is serving a life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years.

Altinger, 38, was lured to a southeast Edmonton garage by an ad on an internet dating site. He was bludgeoned and dismembered.

Twitchell's fondness for the television show Dexter was well documented during the trial, and he had a Facebook profile under the name of protagonist Dexter Morgan, a vigilante serial killer who masters the perfect crime.

Here's the article in the Fairfax weekend magazine that fills in more detail the highly imitative aspects of this gruesome murder.  It's a really horrifying read.

Googling around, this is not the only murder (or planned murder) associated with the show:   a 17 year old who strangled his 10 year old brother claimed to have felt "just like Dexter";   a 21 year old was committed to psychiatric care amidst allegations that he was directly inspired by Dexter to kill people who he thought had committed crime;   murderers in Sweden and Norway claimed similar inspiration; and a woman who killed and dismembered another in Los Angeles was very clear about the connection:

In a profanity-laced note in which she described in grisly detail how she killed a 22-year-old Marine wife, one of the three people now charged with murder says she patterned the killing after the television show "Dexter," about a serial killer.

In the note to police, Jessica Lopez describes strangling Brittany Dawn Killgore "as if my idol Dexter had spoken directly to me."

Lopez, 25, wrote that she then decided to dismember Killgore's body: "I made a few attempts to chop her up like Dexter with Masters power tools but I was afraid it was too loud and it sucked at cutting flesh."

Killing Killgore was not as easy as the television show, Lopez wrote: "I thought I was defending the family and it would be simple like Dexter."

Yet has this effect of the show received the attention that it deserves?  No.

Is it really necessary for there to be dozens of victims of a murderer imitating a movie villain (as in the "Batman" shootings) before people think hard about the effects of making fictional violence "cool", or deserving of empathy?

I've always been leery of movies that make "bad" cool, or darkly attractive in any way really.  "Silence of the Lambs" left me cold;  "Pulp Fiction" I have frequently complained about; and I can't think of another good example right now, since the genre is not one I am keen to see anyway.  But at least any individual movie is a short lived experience, compared to (what will end up as) 8 seasons of a TV show all about a serial killer.  How many hours of living in the mind of a serial killer is that for the psychologically disturbed viewer?

Now some people will say that this is an over-reaction: if it wasn't Dexter, a mad person might claim inspiration by something else, or indeed may find it convenient when caught to claim fictional inspiration.   (On the other hand, are there psycho killers out there who haven't mentioned to the investigators how they felt Dexter gave them ideas?)

I'm not convinced.   Basically, I think the makers of this show, the critics who got over their doubts about the "empathy with a serial killer" question, and the audience that is care free about its clear, demonstrated and repeated effect on encouraging psychos to attempt to imitate it,  all have something to be a bit ashamed of.