I got sucked into the Showtime series Dexter over the weekend, which is available for instant streaming on Netflex, and ended up watching the whole first season, which clocks in at around twelve hours.  Twelve fairly suspenseful, sociopathic, blood-spattered hours.  I haven't done a TV-marathon in a while, and the only real downside, aside from losing twelve hours of your life (which isn't always such a bad thing) is that once you've finished it takes a while to rewire the synapses in your brain. 

The last time I did something like this was with the series Little Britain, and I was walking around in women's clothes talking in funny accents for weeks. 

I think my brain's still pretty plastic, even on the cusp of middle age.  I may be recalcitrant when it comes to my politics and incorrigible when it comes to my opinions of art and literature, but within certain very set strictures, I remain as soft and squishy as a sponge.  All you have to do is get your foot in the door and you can have your way with me.  Dexter did.

And it doesn't take twelve hours, either.  I walk out of a really good movie still halfway in movie mode.  If the actors are charismatic enough, and the characters they're playing fairly well-drawn, and the right tropes are applied to garner our sympathy, I'm walking around for the next half hour like a man possessed.  In the case of last weekend's monster marathon, asking myself What would Dexter do? 

The thing about Dexter is it combines at least two of my weaknesses: redheads and sociopaths. Michael C. Hall, who may or may not be a redhead in real life, is one here, and is cute as a bug, even in a welder's mask with a chainsaw.  As Dexter, he has just the right combination of redheadedness and sociopathology, and while you rarely get a glimpse of it, you can tell he's got a nice bum.  It's a factor.

Aside from that, I think what's interesting about season one is that Dexter is coming to see that he's not the only one wearing a mask, putting on an act to appear "normal."  We live in a society and a culture that breeds sociopaths. Granted, they're not all serial killers, but still. 

What makes the show work is that we're privy to Dexter's inner dialogue.  We are not privy to what's going on in our fellow-commuters' heads or those of our coworkers, thank God.  Even our spouses' and parents' and children's inner dialogues would probably shock us were they to be broadcast in real-time.  If what I read on blogs and comment threads is any indication, there are a lot of would-be Dexter's out there.  The blogosphere is the collective Id.  It can get pretty ugly.

If we could hear what people were actually thinking — even if we heard our own inner dialogue broadcast out loud — can you imagine?  Truth is, you probably have.  There's a generation for whom turning this dialogue inside-out is no biggie, so long as no one can trace it back to you through your IP address.  There was a chilling account of internet "trolls" in a recent New York Times Sunday Magazine. 


Most of us have a "firewall" between the internet and our real lives.  But, increasingly, in younger folks, especially, it seems the distinction is blurred.  Think Megan Meier, the "MySpace suicide."  Even for people my age — if you've ever been flamed, you'll understand how some anonymous message from the ether can ruin your whole day. And it's understandable.  We didn't used to be able to say these horrible things.  Anywhere.  To anyone. 

The internet has indisputably made us nastier.  Check out this interview on NPR's On The Media, where This American Life host Ira Glass talks about why the show shut down its online bulletin board.  When NPR listeners turn into a vicious mob of hatemongers, you know it's gotten bad. 

(Reaction to the show's taking down the message board was predictably snarky, too.  One listener called it "pathetic," another commented: "If we allow pornography to be in plain sight on newsstands, what's wrong with stating one's opinion of someone else's politics, beliefs or opinions in an insulting way?... Our freedoms come at a high price.  Like it or not, it's an all or nothing package."  A truly baffling declaration.) 

But Dexter isn't interesting because he's mean and nasty, although it would be hard to be privy to anyone's honest inner thoughts and not think them a monster at times.  No, Dexter's interesting partly because, even though we are privy to his thoughts, he's not particularly mean and nasty.  His main complaint is that he doesn't experience emotion as he gathers others do.  And while he has an inner life of some sort, it is strictly analytical.  He is incapable of emotional empathy. If it weren't for that compulsion to kill, he'd be the perfect personality for our time.

Given our rage-saturated social landscape, the lack of emotion actually seems like a refreshing alternative.  Making a thousand friends online is a snap! Breaking up by text is a breeze!  Interactive Voice Response is starting to eclipse live operators as the preferred method of maneuvering the bureaucratic maze.  Self check-in is preferred by upwards of three-quarters of airline passengers, and self check-out is a growing preference among younger supermarket shoppers.

I prefer self-check-out at the supermarket, myself.  Unless you're in a sort of mom-and-pop shop, like Foodies in the South End, or a hipster venue like Whole Foods, supermarkets seem like pretty depressing places to work, and customer service reflects it.  I sympathize with the check-out clerks, but personally I don't have the additional emotional resources to take on their burden. 

On a good day, they do little more than robotically scan your stuff.  I figure, even if only a third of your human check-out experiences are emotional, why not use a machine?  It's predictable.  You know what your emotional outlay will be.  It's always the same.  (Although sometimes the machines at Shaw's tend to shout at you, which I find a little off-putting, and I wish they let you choose between a male or female voice, or maybe one with an accent or something.  Might I also suggest celebrity voices?  Mix it up a little.)

Anyway, given Dexter's limitations, which may be psychological, he's been as well and properly socialized as possible, raised by a foster father (a cop no less) who recognized his compulsion to kill early on, and took pains to instill some form of conscience (however imperfect) in him.  Dexter refers to it as "Harry's Code," and it substitutes analytical rigor for fellow-feeling, much like our modern justice system is supposed to do.  The difference is that Dexter uses his code to justify a compulsion of his own to kill.

But Dexter's compulsion doesn't interest me as much as his emptiness does.  His father lectures him constantly about the importance of faking the emotions he lacks.  And while few of us received this kind of instruction growing up, the feeling of faking it is fairly commonplace in our culture. 

Ironically, Americans have always had an obsession with authenticity.  We look for it in places any sensible person could tell you we'll never find it, like politics.  Even in our social interactions, the expectation that people should say and do as they feel is a recipe for anarchy and widespread unhappiness.  Society has always required that people say and do the opposite of what they feel, and that has worked out very well for thousands of years. 

The internet has given us a safe (anonymous) and sanitary way to state our "opinion of someone else's politics, beliefs or opinions in an insulting way," which is what some people apparently consider the definition of "democracy".  And this ethic of "authenticity" seems increasingly to be spilling into real-world social interactions.

Personally, I'll take fake politeness from strangers over authentic nastiness any day of the week, including Sunday.  From what I've seen of Dexter in season one, and heard of his inner dialogue, he's less of an asshole than a lot of folks out there.  And as long as he didn't bury the bodies in the backyard, I think we'd get along just fine.