Our Serial Killers, Our Superheroes, and Ourselves: Showtime's Dexter
2011; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 28; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/10509200902820688
ISSN1543-5326
Autores Tópico(s)Cinema and Media Studies
ResumoClick to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. According to Zap2it.com: “The finale drew an audience of 1.1 million people, which Showtime says is the biggest for an original series since 2004, when Nielsen started separating the channel's ratings from Showtime Plex. […] The ratings for the finale are also significantly better than those for the show's October premiere, which drew slightly more than 600,000 viewers.” Additionally, CBS picked up Dexter and began airing an altered version (less gore and obscene words) on February 17, 2008. 2. His targets change somewhat in the next two seasons, some becoming less manifestly “guilty” in the ways described. 3. There have been a number of academic studies devoted to what has been called a contemporary crisis in (white) masculinity. See, for example, Robinson or Malin. 4. There are a host of other reasons, including Grixti's contention that serial killers have become wholly bound up with consumerism and entertainment and Caputi's belief that our obsession with serial killers derives largely from a culture of patriarchy that ritualizes sexual murder of the female. 5. These are all labels Philip Simpson uses in his introduction. Some of these designations are also echoed by Schmid throughout his study; see especially Chapter One for a discussion of the serial killer as the iconic American self-made man. See Black for the idea of the murderer as artist. 6. The ambiguous nature of our superheroes can be usefully compared to the current spate of other ambiguous “monsters” who are really good guys (see for example, Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy II: The Golden Army [2008]), or Will Smith as a superhero with a drinking problem, in Peter Berg's Hancock [2008]). 7. One could argue that Dexter is a kind of god-like figure insofar as he alone judges and decides who deserves to die. Further, his lack of overt patriotism, is telling, given contemporary America's understanding of its ambivalent status on the world stage—are we a nation of torturers or are we a nation seeking to bring freedom and democracy to all. 8. Tad Friend describes Harry's devotion as “as touching as it is creepy.” 9. This same sequence airing on CBS was heavily edited; it was about 30 seconds shorter and almost all the cuts were from the sequence of Dexter in the hotel room. Not only is the jump cut missing, there is far less time spent on the blood on the carpet and the flashback depictions of the boy witnessing the gruesome murder are shorter.
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