9
A Very Special Kind of Monster
AARON C. ANDERSON
Season 4 of Dexter opens with a cruel bang: a long, intimate, and graphic murder. Called “Living the Dream,” the first episode finds Dexter trying to fit into the suburban “dream” and the Trinity Killer ritually re-enacting the nightmares of his childhood. We see Trinity brutally murder Lisa Bell and we see Dexter stalk and kill Benny Gomez. This is one of the only times we see Dexter dismembering a victim, albeit in a few quick cuts (and in “Remains to Be Seen” we briefly see Gomez’s dismembered body stuffed into a heavy bag).
“Living the Dream” opens by playing with our expectations and showing some of Dexter’s dark humor. We see Dexter driving home, speaking, through voice-over, of being called by a “primal sacred need.” While Dexter’s “need” is sleep at this point, the Trinity Killer desires something else entirely.
Dexter’s arrival home is crosscut with an image of a nude Trinity Killer setting up his own version of a kill room in his soon-to-be victim’s house: towels on the floor, a half-filled bathtub. Lisa Bell comes home, enters her bathroom and sees Trinity in her bathroom mirror. He chokes her unconscious and we see a long shot of Trinity’s fully nude body from behind, violently choking his victim.
The show crosscuts to Dexter’s child, Harrison, crying, then cuts back to Trinity and his victim. The camera pans up across their bodies revealing Trinity seated behind his victim in the bathtub. She is crying, begging for her life, over a foreboding score. As weekly viewers of Dexter know, this scene is far from Dexter’s “clean,” detached killings. This is not “taking out the garbage.” This is intimate, violating, and abject.
We see a close-up of the victim’s face, still in a choke-hold. We are forced to see her in close-up, to witness her struggling. While she struggles, the camera pans up to a close-up of Trinity who looks rather indifferent in the face of the violence he inflicts. The camera punches out to an overhead shot. Trinity keeps his hold on his victim as she pleads. Trinity hushes her, choking her and she loses consciousness. Trinity, in a sense, re-assuring her, but also speaking of Vera’s death says, “It’s already over.”
The scene already feels extremely long. It’s difficult to watch and only gets worse as Trinity grabs an open straight razor. An overhead shot shows him bringing the blade underwater. An extreme close-up shows Lisa Bell’s leg as the razor penetrates her skin and cuts her femoral artery. Blood begins to flood the bathtub and spill over as Trinity’s victim struggles. Finally, Trinity grabs a hand mirror showing us the face of this vicious murderer, as he kills, in close-up.
Trinity’s slow, meditated movements contrast sharply with the movements of his struggling, dying victim. We see her face in the hand mirror, crying, dying. She stops struggling, becomes a corpse, her body penetrated by a blade. The “border” of the skin destroyed and the body deprived of life and meaning. An overhead shot cranes back and we see Trinity and his latest victim, in the blood-and-waterfilled tub. Trinity holds her and his ritual nears its end. Cut to black.
While this cross-cut scene lasts just over three minutes it provides a stark contrast to normally quick kills we see come at the hands of Dexter. In these scenes the camera tends to cut away quickly after Dexter inflicts the death blow. Within moments, Dexter disposes of the body. The shock of being forced to witness the brutal murder of Lisa Bell, can, in many ways, be likened to the feeling of “abjection” that philosopher Julia Kristeva writes of in her book Powers of Horror: we want to, need to, turn away from this violence and the corpse that it leaves behind but we are, in a sense, being forced to watch.25
Corpses and Nothingness
In Powers of Horror, Kristeva draws on a huge body of philosophical and psychological work to provide a sweeping, lyrical account of fear of the self’s destruction. She introduces the terms “abject” and “abjection” to describe the psychological foundations of this fear, coming from those things that threaten us and our understandings of our selves with destruction. This “sensation” of “abjection” is a defense against these frightening, “loathsome,” and “separate,” things and the knowledge of meaninglessness that they bring.
The sensation of abjection is like the “gagging sensation” that one has when something disgusting is seen, thought about, tasted, etc. It is similar to the experience of encountering a loathed “item of food, a piece of filth, waste, or dung.” As Kristeva describes it, abjection appears as “the spasms and vomiting that protect me. The repugnance, the retching that thrusts me to the side and turns me away from defilement, sewage, and muck.”
Far from mere “lack of cleanliness or health,” Kristeva notes, the abject “disturbs identity, system, order.” It “does not respect borders, positions, rules. The in-between, the ambiguous, the composite.” It is the “traitor, the liar, the criminal with a good conscience, the shameless rapist, the killer who claims he is a savior” as well as crime in general that “draws attention to the fragility of the law.” However, “premeditated crime, cunning murder, hypocritical revenge are even more [abject] because they heighten the display of such fragility.” They “confront us . . . with those fragile states where man strays on the territories of animal.”
One of the most striking causes of abjection is the corpse. According to Kristeva, the corpse confronts us with our own deaths, our own meaninglessness. Seeing a corpse pushes Kristeva to “the border of my condition as a living being.” The corpse is “the most sickening of wastes,” it is “a border that has encroached upon everything.” Kristeva writes: “The corpse, seen without God and outside of science, is the utmost of abjection. It is death infecting life. Abject. It is something rejected from which one does not part, from which one does not protect oneself as from an object. Imaginary uncanniness and real threat, it beckons to us and ends up engulfing us” (pp. 3–4).
Violence and the Return of the Abject
In the flashbacks and fantasy sequences of the vicious killing of Dexter’s mother, Laura Moser, Dexter faces the abject at a formative age. He also seems to face the abject when he discovers Rita’s corpse at the end of Season 4 (“The Getaway”). Dexter, however, also kills, creates corpses, destroys meaning, and does not experience abjection, nor do his killings seem to cause abjection in the audience.
Experiencing abjection might be the “normal” reaction to these horrific killings and dismemberments. Dexter has, however, encountered the abject once, at the scene of his mother’s murder, and he continually re-experiences parts of this through flashbacks and fantasy sequences. Without using Kristeva’s terminology, Dexter has a fantasy conversation with Harry while searching for the remains of Benny Gomez that touches on this very issue (“Remains to Be Seen,” Season 4). Harry asks Dexter when was the last time his “memory was a blank,” to which Dexter replies that it was at his mother’s murder scene. The reason? In Dexter’s words: “Because not remembering saved me.”
In other words, the experience of witnessing his mother’s murder and seeing his mother’s corpse forced Dexter to confront the abject and his only defense against the abject was to turn away, to forget, to allow meaning to be destroyed. Dexter faced the abject as a child and does not face it again, except in flashback or fantasy, even at his own crime scenes and even as he dismembers his victims. However, the abject, for Dexter and the audience, returns with a new nastiness at the site of Rita’s murder in the final episode of Season 4 (“The Getaway”).
So, for instance, we see the Skinner literally take skin off of Anton’s body and we see the partially-skinned corpses of his other victims. This is a literal sort of breaking the boundary between inside and outside that skin creates for the body. But we always need to remember that Dexter does this as well, in a sense, when he literally butchers his victims after killing them, although prior to Season 5 we rarely get glimpses of this. We are repulsed when we get quick cuts of the Skinner’s victims and this repulsion shares something with the sensation of abjection, in some ways defending
against the knowledge that our bodies can be cut, broken, opened up, killed, dismembered, and emptied of meaning.
The abject follows Dexter as well as the detectives of Miami Metro wherever they go. It follows us, as well. We’re regularly given glimpses of the abject through flashes of murder victims and crime scene photos. We see corpses, whether missing skin and laying out in the sun or butchered into doll-like pieces or in bloodfilled bathtubs or having leaped off of ledges. Yet when Dexter kills, prior to the more graphic killings at Dexter’s hands in Season 5, we rarely see corpses, only neatly wrapped black garbage bags (at least until we see the remains of the Bay Harbor Butcher’s victims and again later when Dexter deals with the remains of Benny Gomez).
In contrast, with the Ice Truck Killer, we see the corpses, drained of blood, posed. With the Skinner, we see victims murdered, their skin cut off, and decomposing. With Trinity, we see the killing and the bloody aftermath.
Taking Out the (Six) Garbage (Bags)
While those that Dexter stalks and kills are active, aggressive monsters, tormenting society and somehow getting away with it, it seems there is no more active “monster” than Dexter himself. In this, he seems to embody a part of ourselves that, as a society, we may partially repress: the revenge-minded vigilante. Think of the newspaper headline asking if the Bay Harbor Butcher is Miami’s “Friend” or “Foe” (“The Dark Defender,” Season 2).
Dexter’s kills are clean and clinical but monstrous nonetheless. He stabs his victims in the chest, or, if appropriate, finds some other sort of object with which to break their bodies open, in a form of what might be called “poetic justice.” We do see blood—sometimes more, sometimes less—but we do not see the dismemberments and other violations of the body that follow—at least not until Season 5. With a few exceptions, the first four seasons of Dexter repeatedly refuse to show us what happens in between the kill and the disposal of the evidence.
Dexter uses kill rooms, portable, covered in plastic sheeting, and always designed to “avoid a crime scene.” The bodies of victims laid out, immobilized by plastic wrap. When he cleans them up, his actions are “automatic.” They are a ritual. In this, Dexter truly is a monster. But he’s also someone who can use rituals to avoid the abjection that his kills might and should inspire. They also allow him to avoid the abjection he experienced as a young child who witnessed his mother’s murder and was forced to lie in her blood for days.
When he disposes of his victims, we see nondescript black garbage bags that, from the outside, can no longer be identified as human. The evidence is disposed of and Dexter relaxes. With a few exceptions, we do not see crime scenes or crime scene photos from Dexter’s premeditated kills. Although these killings are “abject,” in Kristeva’s terminology, the evidence is quickly done away with and the audience is spared the abjection that might come with watching, in gruesome detail, Dexter killing and dismembering one of his victims.
This manipulation of our experience of the abject is showcased when Dexter kills Trinity (“The Getaway,” Season 4). This kill scene contrasts with the Trinity killings that we have witnessed—or seen the aftermaths of—over the course of Season 4. This scene also provides flashes of Dexter’s “conscience,” even if it is one only acquired through training. While images of Trinity’s victims line the wall, Dexter’s killing of Trinity actually seems more motivated by a sort of revenge for Trinity’s family as, in a flash of conscience, Dexter reminds Arthur: “You destroyed your own family.”
The depiction of the kill is brief. Dexter turns on the model train at Arthur’s request. “Venus” by Johnny Tillotson kicks on the turntable. Arthur mumbles lyrics. Dexter dons a splash-guard mask. We see a close-up of a hammer and recognize that this will not be a knife-kill but rather one of “poetic justice” sort.
Next, a close-up of Dexter’s face and the camera pans to the hammer in Dexter’s hand hovering above Arthur’s head. Dexter flips the hammer over as we saw Trinity do earlier in the season. We then see Arthur’s shoulders and face, in a sort of ecstasy, with the hammer’s shadow over him. A couple of quick cuts, a loud splat sound effect, and a cut to black. Short of the taking of the blood sample, we never see Arthur’s skin penetrated. We don’t see his skin, his “boundary,” broken by the hammer, although we did, earlier in the season, through surveillance cameras, see Arthur break someone else’s body in a similar way. With the exception of briefly witnessing a crime, we never see the abject. We do not have to experience abjection.
The camera fades in to Dexter’s boat, the Slice of Life. The sky is blood red. Dexter dumps black garbage bags over the side of his boat and we hear a musical score of relief and resolution. The season is over and our hero has prevailed—and all this without subjecting his audience to the abject. He has tracked and killed his “prey,” dismembered him, and “taken out the garbage,” without exposing us to too much of the violence. We see no corpse. We see no butchering. We only see the six garbage bags that, according to Dexter, it takes to hold a body.
Kicking the Dark Passenger
Following his last encounter with Trinity, Dexter heads home, making voice-over plans to change his life, to make his “getaway” from the Dark Passenger. The music of resolution from the previous scene in which Dexter disposes of Trinity continues as Dexter walks into the house that he shares with Rita and their children. He focuses on the images of his wedding and his family that cover the wall. The upbeat music drops out when Dexter gets a message from Rita saying that she had to return home for her ID. He calls Rita back and becomes distressed when her phone rings right there, inside the house.
Against the noises of a child crying, Dexter runs in slow motion toward the sound. As he dims on the bathroom light, foreboding music comes up. We see Dexter’s reaction to the murder scene before we actually see it. It’s a reaction packed with fear and meaninglessness. Then we see what Dexter sees: his son, Harrison, in a pool of blood on the floor of the bathroom. A close-up shows Dexter’s shocked face. Cutting back and forth between Dexter and his son we see Dexter experiencing abjection for perhaps the first time since his mother’s murder.
The camera punches in closer to Dexter’s son, the image blurs, and a flashback takes over the screen, familiar flashbacks of Dexter as a child, the blood spatter of chainsaws across his body, “born in blood,” at his mother’s murder scene. This is the beginning of a sort of dissolution of the self for Dexter. Meaning begins to collapse. To survive, he experiences abjection, violently turning away from the knowledge of dissolution of the self that Rita’s corpse confronts him with.
The sounds of children crying now become odd and hallucinatory as the flashback sounds of Dexter as a child and his own child meld together. Dexter gets down on his knees to help his son and glances over to see Rita’s corpse in the bathtub, here eyes open, lifeless, in a tub filled with blood. An overhead camera follows Dexter as he moves to the side of the tub where we only see her arm, her shoulder, her head. The rest is a very deep blood red running over the sides of the tub.
Dexter checks Rita’s pulse and we see his reaction of shock, disbelief, abjection. This is something that must be turned away from, not seen. In an extreme close-up, Dexter closes Rita’s eyes with his fingers. But we see it all—an extreme close-up of Rita’s bloody hand, her wedding ring resting on the lip of the bathtub.
Rita’s corpse is abject in a way that we aren’t used to seeing. We don’t see this with Dexter’s killings, the show’s “regular” killings. Though we do not see Rita’s murder, we do see her corpse, the abject evidence of an abject crime. It forces us to see the abject, forces us to experience abjection, and the apprehend the knowledge that this brings for both us and Dexter. For Dexter, this may be only the second time in his life that he experiences abjection, the first being his mother’s murder.
Up to this point in his life, however, Dexter has a problem with abjection: he says he can’t feel anything. This problem is intricately related to his ongoing “identity crisis,” a conflict
between the self and an “other” that is both outside the self and a part of the self. In Dexter’s understanding of himself, this may be the “Dark Passenger,” or memories and fantasies of Harry Morgan. But it also boils down to a more profound and existential crisis. Not only the “Dark Passenger” versus “Dexter Morgan,” or employee of the Miami Metro Police Department versus criminal, good versus bad, virtuous versus evil, or human versus animal. Dexter is all of these things at once. So it is a not a matter of being one or another, it is a matter of that which is inside of him but also threatens to “annihilate” him—and controlling it through the ritual of the Code.
Rule Number One
Harry’s Code begins, “Don’t get caught.” It seems this rule even holds up when it comes to Dexter’s relationship to us, his audience. Our experience of Dexter Morgan is, before the candidly vicious nature of Season 5, dictated by the avoidance of showing us the abject results of his kills—as well as dark humor when we do occasionally see these things. In a sense then, we don’t “catch” Dexter at his most vicious. We aren’t forced to experience anything like abjection in order to cope with the knowledge that Dexter’s killings could bring.
Instead, when we do see dismembered body parts of Dexter’s victims, as we do with Benny Gomez, we only get glimpses of them and Dexter uses dark humor to soften us up, to re-assure us, to put us on Dexter’s side. As Dexter kills and disposes of his victims’ corpses, our horror is put to rest, at least partially, by avoiding images of the abject. By not having to see dismembered bodies, we are not forced to confront the abject, to feel abjection. We may feel conflicted about Dexter’s actions, but we are allowed to feel this way because we are not forced to watch him at his most ruthless. We can safely identify with, and perhaps empathize with, a vicious serial killer from the comfort of our living rooms. There is also Dexter’s soothing voice-over, always filled with dark humor, bringing us over to his side of every story and episode. Even when we are finally threatened with the experience of abjection, as we are with Rita’s murder, we still experience it frame-by-frame with Dexter, our very special monster.26
Dexter and Philosophy Page 12
