Always
late to the party, I just finished watching the final season of Showtime’s Dexter last night. Like many fans who watched all eight seasons,
I, too, am disappointed in how it ended.
(For those who have not finished the show and do not want a SPOILER,
stop reading here).
For
those unfamiliar with the program, the main premise behind it is that the main character, Dexter
Morgan, a blood splatter pattern analyst for the fictional Miami Metro Police
Department, moonlights as a serial killer bound by a moral code (similar to
that of many vigilantes). He was trained
by his deceased father, Harry, a homicide detective, to work through his
violent impulses by becoming an avenger of violent crimes – murdering those who
the justice system fails to put away. The
major narrative arch of the program tracks Dexter’s progression as a sociopath
who has little desire for human connection, or capacity for emotion, to that of
a person struggling to rid himself of his demons and seek out a (relatively)
normal life for him and his loved ones.
As expected, the final season teased viewers with this very possibility
of redemption and a traditional “happily ever after ending.”
Even
up until the final episode, this looked possible. Dexter was just one step away from starting a
new life with his girlfriend (and former serial killer), Hannah, and his son,
Harrison, in Argentina. He had captured
the bad guy of the season, Oliver Saxon, and for the first time happily turned
him over to the officials instead of bringing him to justice himself. And then everything went wrong. Saxon shot Deb (Dexter’s sister) and went on
the run; Dexter had to send Hannah and Harrison off on their escape without
them; after a promised full-recovery, Deb experienced complications from the
gunshot and was pronounced brain dead; and Dexter was forced to murder Saxon
himself (while he was in custody no less).
The death of Deb sent him over the edge and as he removed her from life
support and snuck her body out of the hospital for a seaside burial on his
boat, The Slice of Life, viewers quickly understood that this was not just a
final, sad familial act before heading off into the sunset with his lover and
child. If viewers had still been hoping
for that, the final phone call with his son where he pleaded with him to always
remember that he loved him, should have been the clearest indication. So, Dexter, instead, vowed not to expose
Hannah and Harrison to his endless cycle of hurting the ones he loved, and
drove his boat off into the tropical storm in an apparent suicide attempt. What looked to be the final scene of the
program was Hannah learning via a web article of Dexter’s death and putting on
a good face for Harrison and taking him off to eat ice cream walking
hand-in-hand through the picturesque streets of Buenos Aires. It was a bittersweet happily ever after as it
implied that their lives would be happy, even if Dexter was not a part of
it. Then, however, the series gave
viewers the real final scene: a shot of
a bearded Dexter who survived the destruction of his boat at sea (perhaps a
purposeful faking of his own death), working as a lumberjack off in some
isolated area. The final shot was him
staring blankly into the camera, devoid of expression, and lacking the show’s
normal voice over.
It
was a dark and depressing ending. And
perhaps a fitting one for the show. Had
the series ended with everyone happy (Deb with Quinn, Dexter with Hannah, etc.)
it probably would have rang false.
Although the question about whether he could ever move past his urge to
kill was answered (it appeared, yes he could), would viewers have really been
happy with him escaping prosecution of any kind? As a scholar, I wouldn’t have liked the
happy ending, but as a fan of eight years I’ll admit I wanted it. Even when it was apparent he was going to
“kill himself” I was hoping the ghost of his sister would replace the recently
departed ghost of his father and talk him out of it in a string of colorful
language. (I’m a perpetual optimist when
it comes to narrative resolutions). And
while I didn’t exactly like the ending we got, I didn’t exactly hate it
either. And, more importantly, I
understood it. The person who struggled
the most with Dexter’s actions was always Dexter himself. And in the end it is almost fitting that it
is he who punishes himself, stripping himself of the happiness he had grown to
want, through his self-enforced isolation.
Also, the open ending also allows the optimistic viewer like me to
envision a future where a not-dead Dexter could potentially reunite with his
family. And perhaps that’s why Showtime
didn’t allow the writers to kill him off.
A lot
of the Internet buzz about the ending is concerning this dictate from the
network to leave him alive. Apparently
some fans would have preferred his death.
Some, it seems, would have preferred the ending that Clyde Phillips, the
executive producer for its first four seasons, claims he would have pitched for
the series:
In the very
last scene of the series, Dexter wakes up. And everybody is going to think,
'Oh, it was a dream.' And then the camera pulls back and back and back and then
we realize, 'No, it's not a dream.' Dexter's opening his eyes and he's on the
execution table at the Florida Penitentiary. They're just starting to
administer the drugs and he looks out through the window to the observation
gallery ... And in the gallery are all the people that Dexter killed—including
the Trinity Killer and the Ice Truck Killer (his brother Rudy), LaGuerta who he
was responsible [for] killing, Doakes who he's arguably responsible for, Rita,
who he's arguably responsible for, Lila. All the big deaths, and also whoever
the weekly episodic kills were. They are all there.
But this
wasn’t how the show ended and according to fan surveys, over 60% of viewers
were unsatisfied with the one they got and the show has earned the title of
“lamest finale since Seinfeld.”
While
I could continue to add to this conversation concerning the ending, I am more
interested in what the show’s popularity overall means and how it fits into my
normal post-9/11 television analysis. As
I’ve discussed in posts before, in the years immediately following the
September 11th terrorist attacks, American television was inundated
with programming focused on salvation, rescue, and heroics. Popular shows featured governmental figures
continually saving the nation (24, Alias, The Unit, The West Wing, Commander in Chief) and ordinary civilians working to save themselves and others
from perilous situations (Heroes, Lost).
Toward the second half of the 9/11 decade (2001-2011), this focus
changed slightly. The virtuous hero
became the unconventional avenger seeking a form of vigilante justice outside
(rather than inside) the system. (Dexter, of course, fits this
categorization well.) This focus can be
seen in some of the earlier programming (for instance the last few seasons of 24 depict Jack Bauer more often than not
as a rogue agent failing to conform to proper government protocol), but it can
more easily be seen in the new programs that were launched. My
argument is that these narratives of vengeance are popular among audiences
because they help audiences work through (and displace) emotions lingering a
decade after 9/11.
The
increase in revenge narrative post-9/11 is most noticeable when studying
Hollywood film trends. Barry Johnson
notes that Hollywood has always been the “primary generator of revenge
narratives in popular media” and looks to the summer releases of 2009 to show
just how prominent this trend is in the post-9/11 moment (para. 3). Some of the blockbuster films he lists
include: The X-Men Origins: Wolverine,
Star Trek, Terminator Salvation, and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (para. 3). However, not all “revenge” films are that
explicit in their focus.
In
the aftermath of 9/11 many films were a bit more loosely tied to the revenge
motif and instead attempted to allegorically explore the post-9/11 world with
examples ranging from “the puppet satire Team American: World Police (2004)” to Steven “Spielberg’s
War of the Worlds (2005)” (Purse para. 2).
Even more prevalent was the trend of what David Holloway calls “modish”
references to 9/11, Iraq or Afghanistan, or associated locales and themes
(75). Laura Purse refers to a variety of
films, such as Cloverfield (2008) and
Law Abiding Citizen (2009) which seem
to fall somewhere between the allegory/modish continuum (para. 2). But ultimately, she argues, the most
“discernible trend in post-9/11 action cinema is (the aforementioned)
developing unease about the viability of notions that are normally at the heart
of the action film: heroism and a ‘just
war’” (Purse para. 3). Purse notes that
“heroism as a cultural idea gained renewed currency in the immediate aftermath
of 9/11” and stories proliferated “about people who had risked their lives or
died trying to rescue others” (para. 3).
In these narratives “acts of human sacrifice and bravery” were “heralded
unproblematically as heroic, and… were duly eulogized” (Purse para. 3). But, as Purse notes,
The
discourse of patriotic heroism was problematised by what happened next. The
military interventions by the US and its allies after 9/11 were initiated in
the face of anti-war demonstrations and debates about their legal mandate. In
the years that followed growing collateral damage statistics and revelations
about prisoner mistreatment at Guantà namo Bay and Abu Ghraib and about the rendition
of terror suspects put pressure on any notion of a ‘just war’ and called into
question the heroism of implicated military personnel, while the reduction of
civil liberties flowing from the 2001 Patriot Act and the rising
US and Allied troop casualties further muddied public opinion. (para. 3)
Purse
references films that reflect this shift in public opinion. For example, in “Shooter (2007), Vantage
Point (2008), the Bourne films (2002, 2004, 2007) and Salt (2010),
amongst others, the ‘just war’ of maintaining national security turns out to be
a dirty and corrupt business, with the hero forced to attack the very
government forces he thought he was fighting with (Purse para. 4). And,
correspondingly, “uncertainty about the true nature of the central
protagonist’s supposed heroism returns as a pronounced trope in” action films
of this period (Purse para. 4).
Also
prevelant during this time period was what film critic Peter Bradshaw terms
“the liberal fence-sitter” – “agonised,
conscience-stricken films about war on terror,” set in “multinational
locations,” aiming to “express a slowly awakening sense that everyone has been
duped by the Bush presidency, but still unwilling to risk being (outwardly)
disloyal in any way” (para. 15). He
lists Robert Redford’s Lions for Lambs (2007), Gavin Hood’s Rendition (2007),
Michael Winterbottom’s A Might Heart (2007), and Stephen Gaghan’s Syriana
(2005) as key examples of this trend (Bradshaw para. 15).
Although
one would expect action films and political dramas to be the genres that
wrestle with the ethics of governmental policy and post-9/11 concerns, some
other surprising genres rose in popularity during this time period and tackled
some of the same goals. In the midst of
a major turn toward the dystopic or post-apocalytpic, the zombie narrative
rejuvenated itself and many scholars have read its popularity through a
post-9/11 lens. For example, Veronica
Cooper studied the alignment of the “zombie renaissance” and the “system-justifying
nationalistic rhetoric” of post-9/11 (Paper 63). She argues that zombie narratives “illuminate
the motives of ‘us vs. them’ rhetoric and hypermasculine revenge narratives in
the post-9/11 decade” (Cooper Paper 63).
Narratives
of revenge and vengeance are, of course, not new. However, their increased prominence in this
particular moment seems worthy of note.
Although one might expect to see an increased number of revenge
narratives in any post-war/post-tragedy period, such correlations are not
immediately evident which leaves one to wonder:
why is this particular time period, and this cultural climate, so primed
to indulge in these tales?
The
avenger has long had a place in fictional storylines and often embarks on plots
for revenge through a variety of means.
One of the most commonly chosen paths is to “devise a Machiavellian
plan, maneuvering things (and occasionally people) in place until the time of
final vengeance is at hand” (“Revenge” para. 3). This type of vengeance is seen (with slight
modification) in the example of the television program Dexter. Although Dexter is
driven as much by his need to kill as his sense of justice, the motif of
vigilante justice definitely is present in the program since he often feels
that the existing legal mechanisms for criminal punishment or civilian
protection are insufficient or systematically flawed. By nature, vigilantes typically see the
government as ineffective in enforcing the law, which makes Dexter all the more
interesting since he works for a police department. The show consistently highlights the failures
of the justice system (criminals who escape conviction; bureaucracy that
interferes with civilian safety; and corruption from within). Although no specific storyline points
directly to acts of terrorism or 9/11, the notion that there is a need to
prevent a large public from a dangerous looming threat (often in the form of a
serial killer rather than a suicide bomber), this program indicates that “the
system” (in this case the police force rather than the government) is
ill-equipped to carry out this goal.
Vigilantes
also tend to justify their actions as fulfilling the wishes of the larger
community, which can be seen in the various daydream sequences Dexter has where
he envisions cheering crowds supporting his brutal methods of dealing with
criminals.
In
the early seasons of the program, each episode focused on the revenge/rescue of
one individual person: Dexter murdering
a variety of rapists, pedophiles, and killers – one episode at a time. Therefore, each week viewers are able to get
their “vengeance” fix through the consumption of individual storylines. Originally, my claim was that there is
something cathartic about the revenge narrative surfacing in Dexter and other contemporary television
programs. Although such shows may
problematically allegorize the revenge fantasies of a nation post-attack, their
shift away from government-centered rescue narratives to individual-based
vigilante justice storylines reflects a critique of this very revenge fantasy
and (perhaps) the government that helped to foster it. If one buys into the idea that television
consumption can act as a type of affect theory – helping to ward off or
decrease negative affect – then these programs may working against some of the
fear-based rhetoric still surfacing a decade after 9/11. Then again, the reciprocity involved in
cultural consumption and production trends might indicate that these narratives
could just as likely help sustain this culture of fear. Regardless of how these programs are read,
what is evident is that these revenge tales are not sites of mere guilty
pleasure for viewing audiences – or they are not simply this alone – they are
also sites where the cultural anxieties of the post-9/11 moment are worked
through and critiqued in important ways.
If
this is the reason for why so many viewers embraced Dexter, how does the outrage against the series finale play into
this? If in the years after the 9/11
attack we have been a nation hungry for revenge fantasies and vigilantes, how
does the show’s ending affect us? While
fans probably weren’t expecting a happy ending for Dexter (although I bet some
were still hoping for it), having the show end with his punishment
(self-inflicted as it may have been) does seem to send the message that
vigilante justice is not to be embraced.
(This type of ending is in line with how Fox chose to end 24, sending its rouge agent, Jack Bauer,
on the run at the series’ close). Could
it be that some of the dislike for this ending is not just about its narrative
closure (or lack thereof), but about how this type of ending sits with viewers
affectually? If Dexter somehow became
the embodiement of a nation’s emotional state – of viewer’s hyperbolic desire
for justice, revenge, and safety – then does Dexter’s punishment imply that we,
too, are morally corrupt for having the desires he personifies? Of course, I’m likely reading too much into
this. After all, fans love to hate the
ending of popular shows (e.g. Lost). But, if my never-ending theory that
television trends reflect national affective states, I’ll be curious to see if
the avenger motif is on the way out and what, if anything, that implies about
the emotional states of Americans as we continue away from the national attack that kicked off this era of
fear and anger.
