(no subject)
Decided I’d write up that Dexter post. This is entirely about S1, because I got bored partway through S2.
I don’t know if Dexter S1 qualifies as copaganda, but it’s written with the expectation that the audience likes copaganda. The imagined viewer is someone who believes there’s a vast underworld of violent criminals who’ll kill you for no reason, and wants the cops to protect them by killing all the criminals.
Dexter’s repeated success is that he goes farther than the cops. When they don’t have warrants to investigate, he breaks in and finds clues. When a villain is beyond their reach, he enacts his own bloody justice. In that sense, he fits into the copaganda model where civil rights make us unsafe. But I don’t think the show directly comments on Dexter one way or another—it just watches him dispassionately and lets the audience fill in the rest
In the end, Dexter turns that back on the audience, directly lecturing you about rooting for him. In his view, you wish there was a real Dexter to “protect our children,” but you refuse to admit it out loud. If he were real, you’d make a public show of scorning him so everyone would know you’re not one of those people.