Dexter Vs. Dexter: Notorious Serial Killers

In the national culture of America, there always have been an innate portion of violence. People adored crimes, as well as killings on both on and off screen. The more alarming the brutality involved, the more it captures the community’s attention. Notorious serial killers get the most attention through carrying out the most prolific crimes. According to Jeff Lindsay, creator of the book series that inspired the wildly-popular television program “Dexter,” asserted that “We’re sickened and disgusted, but we need to know about the scene; the more we know about it, the more we really are horrified” (Lindsay). Violence is subjugating which is particularly bounded by this distinctive type of criminals. Through the deviating allurement of news reports,

people get exposed to the actions of killers. However, the evolution in the serial killer category in both small and big screen leads people to become numb on horrifying killings that are bounded in it. This urges the controversy of either the culture of violence in America should be stopped or persists to become tougher. Felons are continually glamorized by agreeable personalities and unjustified illustrations of their unlawful acts through movies, television, and news reports that leads into the increase of certain characters concerning violence which in turn sustains the increasing development of brutality in America.
Representations of violence in the media have committed to the desensitization of crimes throughout history. Using the progression of personality, even the least serial killers are depicted in a sense that draws out a comprehending feedback in the public; comprehensively reducing their wrongdoings and leading to a certain connection among the audience and the murderer’s felonies. In the movie American Psycho, Patrick Bateman, the main anti-hero, is a serial killer who aim hookers and young ladies. Compare to his normal physical appearance with the guy he is at night, his horrifying mischiefs are apposed contrary to the events which display his lavish young upwardly mobile professional lifestyle. He is described as an uncertain person who assumes that on the occasion he assimilates, nobody will recognize the difference on how he conducts his self publicly and privately. Moreover, the places that he conducted his crime are generally anticipated through extended narration on the musical pieces he performs in the background, which aid to manage the conditions of the scene’s light and ranges the crowd from the current massacre.
Moreover, in the television show Heroes, Gabriel Gray, whom also known in his stage name Sylar murders people that have exceptional characters, acquired by hereditary deviation. He can attain to manage the capabilities of those he kills by his own metamorphosis that allows him to figure out how minds manipulate. In the scenes in which he shows up, Sylar vividly trim the caps of his victims’ skulls using telekinesis. However, the audience appears to admire him as a role by the depiction of his past. Having a gentle jeweler father and an arrogant mother whose great assumptions of his attainments strongly contradict his real accomplishment that gave him a pressured adolescence. This allows the writers to link the difference between his character as the bothered Gabriel Gray and as a legendary “Sylar”. As if the two figures show a desire to make them sense that they are important in their own way, or beyond the rest, each one exhibits a deprivation of self-discipline over their obsessions.
In the film American Psycho, Bateman asserts that he does not have an option except to execute people, while Sylar’s hereditary capability comes with a devastating desire that drives him to lust after the fame of others. Their inadequacy of self-constraints leads them to turn out less liable for their offenses against the law, which allows them to an easier pathway toward absolutions. Even though he barely made goodness beside from cautioning some of his possible victims, Bateman’s wrestle against his murderous compulsions that was obvious by the end of the movie. In the film, he said that there is no purging, but his retribution stays to elude him. Nobody rely on him, not even witnesses, he cannot get the amnesty he is looking for because of his deeds that are left uncertain even to the viewers. On the other hand, the killings of Sylar are assertive; however, along the closure of the film’s run, the audiences are likely to grant him the amnesty which Patrick Bateman never gained. Sylar’s enemy forgives everything that was done to him after apologizing for what seems like five years in a surreal situation with his arch-nemesis. In fact, his rating as a heroic personage is bonded by his action of saving one girl from danger. Alternatively, when his ethics is disputed by opponent of other show, he argues that he is a hero. For he affirms that he can turn into a hero because he promises to not ever harm anybody again, yet neglect all previous felonies he has done. Patrick Bateman did not gained reclamation, but his actions lessen through the uncertainty with which they are presented. Sylar is idolized on screen through his unceasing fluctuations between good and bad, after all gaining pardon that is underserved, also adores his crimes. 
Furthermore, while the public frequently is enthralled to Bateman and Sylar’s systems of aggression, they are influenced by the psychological methods of operant and classical conditioning. In an article, Dave Grossman argues that “Operant conditioning teaches you to kill, but classical conditioning is a subtle but powerful mechanism that teaches you to like it” (qtd. in Lavers). Endlessly witnessing these killer’s violence and followed by certain impressions towards the personas that derive in distinction to their encouraging depictions, develops an evenly positive relation with the personas’ wickedness. This is marked in how, during the segments of vicious brutality in movie houses, Lavers asserts that “the young people laugh and cheer and keep right on eating popcorn and drinking soda” (3). Lavers also claims that violent behavior becomes linked with pleasure that results in a correlation between earlier exposure [to violence] and later aggressiveness (4). Conditioning is desensitization since the two stem from too much disclosure. The blended outcomes of these situations effect are the rise of vicious moves, especially when after the television was presented in America, the amounts of killing multiplied. Also, the arrival of greater numbers of vicious feminine idols as well as male serial killers like Sylar and Bateman in broadcast programming has corresponded with an increase in destructive amount of crimes for females and males particularly from 1992 and 2002. The ever-growing predominance of brutality in the media exclusively delivers to persist this course, which will not stop to occur if personalities like Patrick Bateman and Sylar stay well-known in modern culture.
In addition, the glamorization of a serial killer will likely lead to more “copycat crimes” that are influenced by television and movie characters.

These are the crimes that are stimulated by the prolific jobs of notorious serial killers like Jack the Ripper, whose crime rampage concluded under a year, though as many as eight indistinguishable cases that were took place within London and afterward, around the world. Also, like Sylar, Dexter Morgan of “Dexter,” works within his own ethics, the “Code of Harry” that was made by his foster father, Harry. Dexter also had a broken childhood in which early signs of sociopath, such as murdering the neighborhood’s dog, were promoted by his well-intentioned foster father. Dexter was trained by Harry how to stay unfound under the vigilant eyes of the law enforcement. He come of age to be an apparently natural fully grown person: bind with his sister and connected in a passionate affair. According to Jeff Lindsay, Dexter has a funny bone and has a devotion for kids that guide his heartless intelligence (1). Despite this, Dexter was not anytime meant to be a likable character. Lindsay only present him more susceptible and gave personal characteristics to connect the difference between a murderous psychopath and readers, whom he believed would, however, be horrified (1). Lindsay assumed that he was making a gruesome stuff through scripting a story about a sympathetic serial killer, but the truth is that various individuals have no hesitations regarding the guy. They put confidence in the reality that he just chases other killers that causes him to become a hero instead of a

criminal.
Also, in other cases, some have gone so far as to admire the covert murderer on two events occurring in a copycat murder. According to an article, the earliest point was a guy identified as Mark Twitchell, a passionate admirer who followed a scenario from one of the scene in “Dexter” when he killed a 39-year-old guy named Johnny Altinger. Furthermore, the next incident happened in the year 2012 when Andrew Conley choked his brother because most of the time he thought that he also has same image with Dexter (Friedman). Both Twitchell’s and Conley’s transgressions happened because of being fascinated with this show, that exhibits nominal person’s moves which is obviously ethical, even right. Even if Jeff Lindsay never planned for his work to encourage such chaos, these delicate persons that saw the television series’ exaltation of Dexter’s deeds as instructions, longing the dominance and enchantment correlated with the killer’s character.
For these reasons, it shows that violence is already embedded in American culture in which brutality and murders is glorified thru the influence of the media. Indeed, the more heinous the crime is, the more captivating it is to the public. Prominent serial killers draw greater awareness by executing the most atrocious felonies. By news reports, film and television, criminals are continually glamorized through compassionate personalities and complimentary portrayals of their wrongdoings, which leads to more accepting attitudes towards crimes and consecutively, fuels the development of brutality in America. If the trend to romanticized serial killer progress, there will probably be a boost in “copycat crimes” led by perilous television and movie personas. Just like Twitchell’s and Conley’s deeds were not the initial actions of simulated crimes delivered by the media, they will not be the last. This is a constructed evident by the media’s depictions of murderers throughout history and by sympathetic description, the people’s obsession with serial killers is a long way from breaking off.