Eye Essay #1

NOTE: To me, this comes off as really journalismy. I really struggled with this essay so this is beyond a draft.

The walls of the “kill room” are lined with transparent plastic tarps. Not just the walls, but the ceiling and floor too. It makes for easy clean-up, and not a shred of evidence to be found after the kill. A man or woman, made unconscious, is laid on a plastic covered table in the center of the room. Their body is saran wrapped to the hard surface, and held down tightly so that when they wake up, they have no possible way to get up. Photos and newspaper clippings of the victim’s victims are hung around on the walls and ceiling as reminders to the lifeless body of the evil deeds they have done. Knives, power tools, and other deadly weapons are spread out on another table in the room. The scene is like something out of a bad horror movie, and it is clear what is about to happen in this space. The lifeless body suddenly becomes alert, and their eyes open wide. They usually struggle and stifle a scream, and their eyes dart around the room trying to figure out what is happening to them. They notice the photos of their victims hanging around them, and the lethal hardware strategically placed in an order of some kind on another table, and the fear sets in.

Dexter walks in calmly, with a determined look on his face. A smile creeps across his chin as he reveres in the fact that his victim is awake. Gracefully and routinely he takes a small, short knife out of his pocket and walks towards the writhing body. He puts the blade on the face of the squirmer and drags it across their cheek. Using a dropper, he takes a sample of the blood that drips slowly down the victim’s cheek. Dexter places the blood on a slide, and adds it to his collection of dozens of others he keeps safely tucked away in a place that only he can find them. This is when the victim usually asks why they are there, and why this Dexter has put them in that place. What did they do to deserve this? This is when Dexter looks at the man or woman in the unfortunate position of being about to be killed, and tells them to look around at the people in the photos staring back at them. He mentions “the code” and begins his work on dismembering their bodies while they are still alive, using various tools to get the job done.


This is a common scene on the show “Dexter” which plays on the Showtime network. It is about serial killer, Dexter, whose victims are killers. As a young boy, his mother was murdered right before his eyes, and he was adopted by the police officer who found him a couple days later in a shipping container. Ever since then, he has felt compelled to kill. It started off with just urges, but then his stepfather, Harry, showed him how to satisfy those urges in a way that he wouldn’t be caught. He would kill animals once in awhile when he really couldn’t hold back, but as he grew older, his father taught him how to kill human’s quietly, efficiently, and secretively. It became a way of life for Dexter, and to commemorate each kill, he would keep a sample of each person’s blood. He turned his fascination with dead bodies and blood into a profession as a blood analyst, and was a member of Miami metro homicide in Florida. Throughout the series, Dexter learns through experience how to feign feelings and commonality as he begins a family. He tries to “blend in” as his stepfather Harry suggested to him, to keep his anonymity as a serial killer.

Dexter is charming, handsome, and mysterious. To women, he is the picture of perfection. He has perfected the act of “normalcy”, so much so that even his own wife does not know his true identity. Viewers of the show are enthralled by his hunt to find a killer to kill, and we root for him the whole time. Yes, I said it. We are on the side of the serial killer. Before “Dexter”, killers were crude and cold-blooded. “Dexter” shows us another side of the serial killer. It shows us the human side; the side that needs to kill to survive. Ah, the irony. As we watch, we hope that he finds the victim he is hunting, because we are made to feel like that person deserves to die for what they did. As we start to get to know Dexter, we start to believe the same things he believes: that people who kill the innocent should die for what they did. But wait a second, does that make us believe that in the real world, all killers should be put on death row? After watching an episode of Dexter during which I am fascinated by his killing technique, watching his victim get his limbs sawed off by a chainsaw and dumped into the ocean, I question the appeal. I wonder, how can the Showtime network as us, the viewers, to identify with a serial killer? How can the general public possibly relate with a person who kills people for fun; who needs to kill?

We all have something we do in private that we don’t want anyone to know about. We all have secrets and we all tell lies. It feels good to watch someone on television with worse secrets and worse lies then our own. Since killing may be considered the "ultimate sin", maybe turning the killer into a hero of sorts, killing those who have already killed, makes it okay. But since when is killing humans okay, even if they are guilty?