Dexter Morgan's Monstrous Origins

Abstract

The genre of serial killer television drama offers an uncanny marriage between form and content. This is intensified in the case of Dexter (2006-present) where the story's continuance relies both on episodic restitution and viewer complicity. This article explores how the series uses the trope of monstrosity (with strong literary and televisual roots) to unfold relationships between subjectivity, narrative and community. Exploring Jeffrey Jerome Cohen's premise that monstrosity unsettles and challenges a totalised epistemology, Dexter is considered as an expression of multivalent social fears and as a satire on the prevalence of serial murder as domestic screen entertainment.