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Discussion: Is Dexter Morgan really a monster?Reported This is a featured thread

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clairebbbear
clairebbbear
20. RE: Is Dexter Morgan really a monster?
Aug 1 2009, 11:33 AM EDT | Post edited: Aug 1 2009, 11:33 AM EDT
"Suppose Dexter's MO was different. Instead of rendereing the victims passive with plastic wrap, presenting them with evidence of their guilt, and (usually) knifing them, what if the victim's never saw it coming? Would you consider that situation any better, if Dexter killed like the Brewster sisters in Arsenic and Old Lace?"
Somewhat, I suppose. That, by the way, would make him rather like Harold Shipman, the British doctor who killed possibly hundreds of people in the 1990s by administering morphine, They probably didn't see it coming either.

Re your other question - I believe that there are many people who deserve to be executed, but that doesn't mean that they SHOULD be. If there were a perfect legal system I could possibly support the death penalty for SKs, but there will never be a perfect legal system anywhere.

That is probably why I enjoy the show Dexter, because it allows me to see murderers getting the end they deserve, So I vicariously get to see the kind if divine justice - with the genuinely guilty and most evil killers getting what they deserve - that doesn't happen in real life.

Another thing is - when the State does the punishing, rather than a vigilante like Dexter, relatives of victims at least get the reassurance that society has captured and judged the perpetrator and he or she isn't going to be able to kill anyone else - even if, as in countries where there is no death penalty, the perpetrator will still get to live.

With Dexter's methods, the perpetrator just disappears - if it weren't for the fact that his BHB bodies were discoved,the families of his victims would have just been left wondering forever. (That includes both the families of the people he kills, and the familes of his victims' victims).

So really, his system is not that fair and justified at all, except to him. 1  out of 1 found this valuable. Do you?    
DrkPassenger
DrkPassenger
21. RE: Is Dexter Morgan really a monster?
Aug 1 2009, 11:51 PM EDT | Post edited: Aug 1 2009, 11:54 PM EDT
True, Dexter does not really offer closure to the families. Doing so would conflict with the "Don't get caught" rule. But this is a peripheral issue to the administration of justice. Dexter does bring closure to the lives of Miami serial killers.

Now, if we really, really believed in divine justice, viz. that you can't get away with anything and that God will punish the wicked in both the present and the hereafter in a way which restores absolute moral order to the universe, we would not need to worry too much about administering human justice, which at its best is only an approximation of divine justice. This was how things once stood, in antiquity, before the invention of the modern nation state and its apparatus of police forces. The Furies would get you. And yes, if society sanctioned the private administration of justice, we lose certain safeguards. But we are not talking here about passing out vigilante "007" licenses to all takers. We are just talking about Dexter. Dexter only kills vermin. He may not always be gentle in his killing methods, but he does seek to make the punishment fit the crime.

The Dark Passenger hopes that you are not wanting Dexter to get caught. 1  out of 1 found this valuable. Do you?