Dexter, Twitchell, and Feet: A Messy Rumination

I FIRST CAME across this on Will's site, but man, it's still a pretty freaky story for good old boring Canada...

EDMONTON — In a case police call a diabolically cruel convergence of art and life, local filmmaker Mark Twitchell will appear in court tomorrow charged with first-degree murder.

The 29-year-old fervid fan of the psycho-slasher TV show Dexter is accused of luring now-missing Johnny Altinger to a garage and killing him in a scenario that resembled Mr. Twitchell's latest film project – in which a man is abducted, tortured and hacked to bits.

“We have a lot of information to suggest he definitely idolizes Dexter and a lot of information that he tried to emulate him during this incident,” alleged Edmonton police homicide Detective Mark Anstey.

Dexter, a program on the Showtime network, follows Dexter Morgan, who studies blood spatters for Miami police but leads a secret life as a serial killer, hacking up victims in the name of vigilante justice.

One recent comment on Mr. Twitchell's Facebook social networking site noted he “has way too much in common with Dexter.”

None of the allegations against Mr. Twitchell have been proven in court and he hasn't had an opportunity to respond to the charge against him.

Now, of course, will inevitably come the "see, see what happens?" kind of stuff from the usual suspects who want to pawn human behavior off on external triggers rather than whatever internal soup that potentially lives in each of us. Oh, and make political hay. See, even in the comments of the article you get the predictable culture war spin:

All part of the creative Art that we support with taxpayer money. It is a subliminal cancerous parasite to our youth. Free marketers rejoice. The CTV GM uses censor to stamp out objection of creative entertainment or brands it right wing intolerance.

And so on, and so forth. Though I don't buy into that sort of reductive, "see, that's why we should censor" kind of thinking, there are some elements in this story that should give creatives pause.

First, there's the fact that the guy went into film. Obviously at one point he thought the fantasy of it all was enough for him. But it wasn't. A business that trades in illusion attracts marginal people. And what do all those marginal people really think, and do? Maybe there is something to be said for us being a little more vigilant, or at least engaged with each other. When fantasy seems to be creeping over into mental illness and dysfunction, then what?

On the other hand, he did come up with a way to solve the Canadian film publicity probl...

...Sorry. Sorry. I know. I'm a terrible person. That's a terribly insensitive joke to make.

The one truth I know is that most of the people I've met in film and TV are capable of murdering nothing more than a plate of nachos or maybe a case of beer. They're generally very lovable, sweet people. And nine times out of ten, the ones who can come up with the dirtiest joke, or the most twisted plot point, are, in fact, the polar opposite of what you would expect. The sweetest people come up with the sickest shit. It's just the way it goes.

See, that's where the idea of catharsis is very poorly understood. The idea behind a lot of horror films, or thrillers, is that you use the audience's sense of mounting tension to give them release. The release that comes from confronting fear in a good horror, or your anxiety in a thriller, allows you expunge those feelings -- and even enjoy them. It's a very old and primal impulse. It's why we like telling ghost stories around the fire.

But there are some people whose brains just don't work right. Let's take the example of this guy in the article. It's reported that he's a big fan of Dexter. So am I. But clearly he's getting different lessons out of Dexter than I am.

When I watch Dexter, I see a character who is sick and driven to kill, but tries to struggle against his impulses by killing only those people who harm and do evil to others. He fits neatly into the trope of the avenging angel. But that's a simple, one-level interpretation of the show. That's not what I enjoy Dexter for. What really intrigues me about Dexter is the fact that what it's really about is a man struggling to be human, and to transcend the darker parts of his nature. TV and film storytelling push things to extremes, in metaphor. So we have the ultimate other -- a killer -- and we try to see what in them is human.

This is contrasted by the other impulse -- that you're going to see in spades as this story develops -- where we try to de-humanize the killer -- to talk of his "evil," and describe him in terms like, "monster," or "lunatic." By denying his humanity, we'll also try to seek comfort by saying, "there is nothing like that inside me."

But the reason why we all keep watching, and making, and discussing these entertainments is because that's not true. We know, at some level, that genetically down to the last neuron, there is no difference between him and us. How do you deal with that, finally?

Well, some of us do it by watching things like Dexter.

I don't mean to issue a blanket kind of defence of the whole thing. I'm a pretty liberal guy, but the whole SAW like genre of fetishized torture-porn is something that I just don't understand. To me it doesn't push any of the buttons that a good horror is supposed to push. It's more like the one time in my life when I watched a foot fetish video. (editors. they collect things.) The experience was so weird because you could clearly see the film grammar at work, all set up and deployed to make this seem like the most erotic thing ever. And it wasn't. It was just...a bunch of feet.

When Mark Twitchell watched Dexter, I wonder, really, what was it that he saw? Cause I know we're not seeing the same things.

Ah. See what I did there? I made him the other. Just went there, totally naturally. Man, that's easy to do.

Humans be complicated.

(And yeah, I've left it out to the end, because hopefully it goes without saying, but what a horrible human tragedy, and I hope his friends and family get through it okay. I just don't think they're likely to get any answers, or comfort, unfortunately. That's just never how stories like this work in the real world. That's why we turn to fiction: because in dreams we can make things make sense.)