The Human Animal

The novels I've been reading lately - William Golding's Lord of the Flies, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and now Ayn Rand's massive Atlas Shrugged - and even the television I have been watching lately, such as the new season of Dexter, all force a confrontation, messy and painful as it usually is, with a the ugly and true nature of humanity; and they all ask this questions, What does it mean to be human? How are we authentically human? Does morality, either innate within us or imposed from without us by society or tradition or religion, make us more or less human?

Several hundred years ago, the answers to these questions would be nearly laughably obvious. Man is an animal, depraved from all goodness; he can, however, aspire to greater thing and, through moral and religious training, become more human and more heavenly; as the prophetic Milton wrote, humanity could be be "by gradual scale sublimed, / To vital spirits aspire... improved by tract of time, and winged ascend / Ethereal" (Paradise Lost, V.483-4... 498-9). Man was the missing link - not some hypothetical stage in an overblown cosmological conceit, but the very real connection of earth and heaven, a combination of matter and spirit that could either ascend the Great Chain into the presence of God or wallow in the dirt, mired forever in animal impulses. Man lived in two worlds and it was up to him to decide which one he preferred.

Today, of course, we are disillusioned with such notions; we reject the possibility of an objective standard of morality, that is to say, of righteousness, and we insist, through our myths, our science and our theories, that man is only an animal, the purposeless product of chance and aimless design. But this insistence brings us no comfort. Since Darwin, humanity has struggled to come to terms with our own unflattering ideas about ourselves and this struggle, this conflict of myth and ideology, is reflected in our literature and our entertainment. We do not know who we are. We do not know how to live with each other. Society collapses in the face of nature. We kill the pig and exterminate all the brutes and become savages - not the politically incorrect savages of Western imperialism, but the savage human beings feared by Milton and other Renaissance thinkers - the base, material animals of wasted and fallen humanity. We've broken the link, severed Man from his higher nature and forfeited heaven, the proper inheritance of Man.

I know that a return to a Christian mythos is an impossible proposition and one that is ugly to many people, at least in today's political and ideological milieu. But we as a society have replaced the elevating Christian ideals with an ideological of self-deprecation, an ideology that makes us loathe ourselves and which promotes savagery instead of inspiring greater humanity. An ideology that does not give us an identity but forces us to constantly ask, Who am I and what does it mean to be human? Until we stop telling ourselves that we are merely advanced animals, until we regain a greater sense of what it means to be moral and free-choosing creatures, until we see that we are more than an collection of material instincts, and until we turn our eyes away from the dirt and up once again to the heavens, we will not build a better world, we will not see the end of war, we will not even live in happy families, we will not even be satisfied with who or what we are. We are greater than we think we are. We just need to learn how to be so again.

Review :: Dexter: The First Season

(I've been meaning to write this for a while but every time I started I got scared. It's intimidating to write about something truly great and I really wanted to do the series justice. With season two looming just overheard, though, I figured if I was going to write something about it than it was now or never so I finally gathered my thoughts about the series and wrote them down.)

Last year, Showtime produced one of the most interesting and daring television series ever. Dexter, based on the Jeff Lindsay novel Darkly Dreaming Dexter and starring Michael C. Hall as the eponymous character, is a twelve episode serialized crime drama that focuses upon one Dexter Morgan, a Miami police department forensic scientist specializing in blood spatter analysis - and a serial killer.

Unable to feel human emotion and experiencing irrepressible urges to kill since he was very young, Dexter (the almost too talented Michael C. Hall) was guided and shaped by Harry Morgan (the stalwart James Remar), the cop and adoptive father who rescued the damaged child from a crime scene; Harry taught him to channel his impulses and to blend in with normal society, to hide the monster in plain sight. Recognizing Dexter for what he was, and loving him nonetheless, Harry conditioned his murderous adopted son to target only the worst of society - the murderers and rapists who, for whatever reason, had escaped society's more conventional forms of punishment. As the series begins, the now adult Dexter has been comfortably living two lives, as both man and monster, as a member of society and as the flaw within it. But a bizarre encounter with another serial killer threatens to shatter his ideas of identity and forces him to confront who and what he really is.

No other series on television has embraced irony as a narrative device as much as Dexter has. The stories are pitch black and often hilarious and yet bloody as hell and still, strangely, oddly comforting. Dexter, murderous and monstrous and yet distressingly charming, is a postmodern and disillusioned (which I guess is what postmodernity really amounts to) take on the vigilante super-hero. However, unlike a Clark Kent or a Bruce Wayne, Dexter lacks a sense of morality, justice or even vengeance. He simply enjoys killing - it's his compulsion and he makes no apologies and suffers no guilt. That he kills other murderers is simply a protective measure: these criminal victims are less likely to be missed than, say, the average housewife. No one really misses the dregs of society. It's a sly and unsettling take on postmodern ethics and morality, in which one only acts decently or lawfully as a self-protective measure.

And yet, amidst all the carnage, Dexter is just like us. If, like myself, you are inclined to look for deeper and symbolic meanings in a story, you might begin to suspect that Dexter is really just an average guy and like all people he is just searching for meaning and identity. The very fact that he is so cut off from everyone else forces us, especially on a visceral level, to identify with him. He's just trying to make sense of himself and the world in which he lives. Dexter exposes the everyday rituals and pleasantries of society makes them look uncomfortable and alien; as the show subtly detaches us from our own surroundings we realize that much of our social conditioning is just that... conditioning: an artificial superstructure of rituals and niceties imposed upon human behaviour, maybe for the good of humanity and maybe not. As the series progresses, this is the question Dexter will eventually face: do these artificial impositions of morality and banal ritual in fact make us more human or are we most human when we give into our darkest urges and desires.

It used to be that television was just the "small screen" and that real philosophy and poetry, at least in the realm of the motion picture, was reserved for the "big screen," for the cinema. In the last few years, though, television has experienced a sort of Golden Age and you are now more likely to find true art on cable than in the movie theater. In the world of television art, Dexter, at least for the moment and in my opinion, represents the absolute height of art and wit. If that were not hyperbolic enough for you than let me say this (and I'm being perfectly serious when I say this): Dexter is the greatest thing to happen to television since Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, which was the greatest thing since The X-Files, which was the greatest thing since Twin Peaks, which was the greatest thing to ever happen to television. Seriously, if you are looking for intelligent and challenging television, than go watch Dexter. You won't be disappointed.

Dexter: The First Season is now available on DVD. Season two begins airing on Showtime on September 30.

Darkly Dreaming Dexter (excerpts)

I've been reading Darkly Dreaming Dexter, the Jeff Lindsay novel that the Showtime series Dexter is based upon. It's a darkly comic and ironic examination of human life from the perspective of Dexter, a sociopath and serial killer who, instilled with a hard-line sense of morality by his adopted father Harry, only targets other murderers. It's an interesting examination of conditioned morality and ironic detachment. Enjoy.

I secured the priest to the table with duct tape and cut away his clothes. I did the preliminary work quickly; shaving, scrubbing, cutting away the things that stuck out untidily. As always I felt the wonderful long slow build to release begin its pounding throughout my entire body. It would flutter through me while I worked, rising and taking me with it, until the very end, the Need and the priest swimming away together in a fading tide.

And just before I started the serious work Father Donovan opened his eyes and looked at me. There was no fear now; that happens sometimes. He looked straight up at me and him mouth moved.

"What?" I said. I moved my head a little closer. "I can't hear you."

I heard him breathe, a slow and peaceful breath, and then he said it again before his eyes closed.

"You're welcome," I said, and I went to work."

*****

"What do you remember from before?" he asked. "You know. Before we took you in."

That sill hurts, but I really don't know why. I was only three. "Nothing."

"Good," he says. "Nobody should remember that." And as long as he lives that will be the most he ever says about it. "But even though you don't remember, Dex, it did things to you. Those things make you what you are. I've talked to some people about this." And strangest of strange, he gives me a very small, almost shy, Harry smile. "I've been expecting this. What happened to you when you were a little kid has shaped you. I've tried to straighten that out, but -" He shrugs. "It was too strong, too much. It got into you too early and it's going to stay there. It's going to make you want to kill. And you can't help that. You can't change that. But," he said, and he looks away again, to see what I can't tell. "But you can channel it. Control it. Choose -" his words come so carefully now, more careful than I've ever heard him talk, "- choose what... or who... you kill..." And he gave me a smile unlike any I have ever seen before, a smile as bleak and dry as the ashes of our dying fire. "There are plenty of people who deserve it, Dex..."

[Lindsay, Jeff, Darkly Dreaming Dexter. New York, NY: Vintage, 2004. 12-13, 43]

TV Year in Review :: Serialized Dramas

As the current television regular season hits the home stretch it’s good to reflect on what’s happened. This past year in television was a good one. We have definitely entered the golden age of the serialized drama. Shows like 24, Battlestar Galactica, and The Sopranos dominate the airwaves, the satellites and the broadband. However, these shows seem to be showing subtle signs of exhaustion. Certain conceits can only be taken so far before they begin to buckle under their own weight. While 24 and Battlestar Galactica remain strong, they did not remain the most compelling shows on television. Instead, this years television greatness comes from the rookies.

Perhaps the most glamorous of the new shows, Heroes capitalizes on the recent super-hero trend to great effect. Best described as a more mature take on The X-Men, Heroes follows a diverse group of next-generation human beings, all of whom posses amazing abilities. As a super-hero origin story, Heroes is basically a morality tale that explores the implications and responsibilities of power and the ways different individuals use it. Some, such as the shows primary villain, Sylar, simply want to use their power to gain more power, no matter the cost. Others, such as the good-hearted Hiro Nakamura, want only to be heroes and to help other. Heroes is normally stellar but it sometimes descends to the absurd, which is perhaps inevitable when the super-hero genre is given the high-brow treatment. Heroes’ only real problem, though, is its teasing nature. The show routinely sets up what promises to be an amazing sequence of violent release and pure action only to cut away from it or deflate rapidly. Perhaps this is due to a low budget or perhaps it is a stylistic choice. Either way, Heroes remains one of the more compelling new dramas of the year. With the finale only a few weeks away, here’s hoping that they go all out and give us some truly great super-hero battles.

Jericho, for me at least, was the surprise hit of the year. The show is a new take on the post-apocalypse genre. The sleepy mid-western town of Jericho must rally to survive and protect each other after a series of nuclear bombs devastate the United States. Focused less on action and violence (though both are usually quite present) and more of the social and communal effects of isolation and political independence, Jericho is Lord of the Flies on a larger scale and the central question is always how to remain civilized human beings when laws and consequences are no longer externally enforced. Films such as The Road Warrior or Water World have conditioned audiences to expect certain things from the post-apocalypse genre; Jericho reinvents the genre by focusing on the slow-burn effects of isolation - this is a world slowing falling apart as witnessed by the interpersonal and political dynamics of the survivors. Jericho is consistently compelling; even its low budget and sparing use of special-effects add to the muted tension and menacing normality of the situation. Like Heroes, Jericho hints at a lot without actually showing much of anything. In Jericho, though, this works better and actually complements one of the shows conceits, which is that the town of Jericho is trying desperately to preserve what it was in the face of tremendous and disastrous change. Outside the town, which is rarely depicted, all manner of evils and lawlessness can be found; inside the town, though, there is hope in the communal experience and in shared goals.

The season’s absolute high-point, though, was Dexter. Pitch-black humour, incredibly unnerving violence and even a healthy dose of romance are at the heart of this serialized crime drama. Dexter Morgan is a forensic investigator specializing in blood-spatter patterns. He is very good at what he does. He should be… after all, he himself is a serial killer fascinated with human blood. Relax, though, in his own way Dexter is a good guy and he only releases his dark predilections upon those deserving of them. Dexter is a wildly ironic series. Even though it focuses on a sociopath who is unable to feel human emotion, the series is really about becoming human. Like all television characters who are unable to be human (such as Star Trek: TNG’s Data) or even desire to not be human (such as Battlestar Galactica’s Gaius Baltar), Dexter is a metaphor for humanity itself. Faced with solving the case of an even more vicious serial killer who, like an anti-Dexter, is somehow able to remove all the blood from his victims, Dexter slowly learns the importance of love and family. Dexter is most definitely not for the faint of heart. Some of its sequences are truly horrific. However, in the midst of other shows which routinely play it safe and fail to deliver meaningful stories or characters (or which, even though they create horrific events, dumb down their depictions or emotional responses to them like the many iterations of CSI), Dexter is, to use a horribly clichéd metaphor, a breath of fresh air. That the show has been renewed for a second season proves that someone out there in Televisionland is finally awake to artistic importance.

It's not clear how much longer the serialized drama can last. The quick cancellation this year of such shows as Smith, The Nine, and Drive - and the even more bewildering decision to reformat Veronica Mars to exclude long mystery story-arcs - may be evidence that the studios prefer short-term rewards instead of long-term payouts. Unless you're 24, which packs enough action into one hour to satisfy any Bruckheimer/Bay fan, the serialized drama requires patience and daring, which are things that most television studio executives do not have. The serialized drama remains my personal favourite style of television, though, and if Heroes, Jericho, and Dexter can continue to deliver quality television in their second seasons, than I will be very pleased indeed.