I ♥ Serial Killers

After having been best friends with Netflix for awhile, it is telling me something important about myself: I am fascinated with serial killers. At least I really like watching movies that feature them. I have to stop and wonder what is wrong with me.

I'm pretty sure Netflix is not wrong. One tv show that I am really very fond of is Showtime's Dexter. I really shouldn't be watching it, it is rated TV-MA and from some of the episodes I've seen, it comes by this rating honestly. I justify it by telling my self it's a guilty pleasure. Weak I know, but that's the nature of self-justifcation. Dexter plays a forensic blood splatter expert who works for the Miami police. His adopted father was a policeman and he adopted Dexter when he was young after a very traumitizing event. We are lead to believe this traumatic episode (seeing his mother murdered) caused his blood lust. His "dark passenger" becomes evident to his father as the boy ages and he teaches Dexter how to channel his murderous impulses to be something good by becoming a vigilante. Dexter refers to his (now dead) father's teachings as "the code."

So after solving crimes during the day, he sneaks out at night and takes out bad guys the police miss for one reason or another. He's a vigilante and in a perverse way brings justice and makes the world safer but all the while feeding his dark side. It's crazy to say so but he's like a superhero whose super power is murder.

If it was just Dexter, I probably wouldn't worry that much but in it's quest to give the customer what he wants, Netflix now shows me an entire shelf of movies titled "Scary Serial-Killer Thrillers" alongside such standards as "Recently Added" and "New Releases". Well, also "Critically-acclaimed Quirky Dramas". The customized rows do change based on what you watch but the words "Quirky" and "Serial-Killers" do tend to come up a lot for me.

Does the heart of a sociopathic serial killer beat in some forbidden part of my chest? Am I only a disappointment or tramua away from locking myself up in a clock tower with a sniper rifle? I still worry a bit about that but the reason I usually dismiss these thoughts go back to my days of reading murder mystery after murder mystery. Turns out that people who love murder mysteries are among the most law abiding of the citizenry. Like accountants and librarians and persumably, in my case, computer programmers.

The other thing that occurs to me is that maybe this sort of fascination isn't that unusual. There's a long tradition in American music regarding the "murder ballad". The original version of On Top of Old Smokey is about a guy murdering his sweetheart. Both Johnny Cash and David Bromberg sing Deliah, a traditional jailhouse ballad. The writer/killer is in jail awaiting his execution and tells his story in a song. Maybe that's why there are so many murder ballads, what else you gonna do while waiting for the hangman?

I guess the other aspect that drives the fascination is that we spend a lot of time trying not to think about what could happen to us when we walk that dark street or open that door to a poorly identified stranger. When confronted with the horrifying and unthinkable things some people are capable of, it challenges how you deal with the world around you. You need to live with your fear without letting it overcome you but never forgetting the danger. And that's a toughie.