nov 4 - nov 10, 2021
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Dexter: the OG sympathetic serial killer returns Eight years after going off-air, a new and improved Dexter is set to return to screens this week
hammad ali staff writer The film and television industry has always had a fascination with serial killers. Perhaps it would be fairer to say that the North American audience has always had a fascination with serial killers, and these industries have simply followed the money. A quick Google search reveals no less than 24 TV shows about serial killers available on one streaming platform or another. This is even before we count thrillers, police procedurals, and detective genre shows that often have minor story arcs dedicated to the theme. There is, however, one show that stands out in the minds of crime fans for two reasons. First, since this show premiered in 2006, it arrived on the scene some time before the entire industry seems to be taken over by the hype. Second, it was possibly the first show to feature the serial killer as the protagonist, the character you are meant to root for and empathize with. Based on a series of novels by Jeff Lindsay, Dexter was a crime drama series about Dexter Morgan, a serial killer hiding in plain sight as a forensics analyst with Miami Police. His adoptive father Harry, who was a police officer, noticed the telltale signs in young Dexter. Instead of freak-
ing out or trying to get Dexter to bury this aspect of himself, Harry then trains Dexter to become the perfect serial killer, the one who never leaves a clue behind and is simply uncatchable. The catch? In return, Dexter must promise to only kill those who deserve it: criminals and degenerates who somehow used their wealth and power to escape the legal process. From here, the show essentially is just a series of Dexter’s murders, always with the backstory on why these victims deserved it. In the first season, his victims range from a child molester to a gang member who keeps escaping the law because no one dares testify against him. Soon though, the storyline gets more involved. We see glimpses into Dexter’s past and are able to slowly piece together the reasons for his deranged obsession. In nearly every season, we are also introduced to one other serial killer, sometimes an adversary to Dexter, and others kindred spirits if not mentors. Interwoven with the tales of murder, police investigations, and Dexter’s frantic race to stay a few steps ahead of an FBI investigation, there’s the story of him trying to blend in. Initially, Dexter is dating and interacting with his coworkers simply because, as Harry taught him, not doing so would invite attention and scrutiny. But over subsequent seasons, maybe
simply as fan service, we see his character grow, develop empathy, and form a few genuine connections. Will these last, though? Or will somebody in Dexter’s life notice the late nights, the blank look in his eyes at times, and his obsession with blood spatters? You’ll have to find out for yourself. Fair warning though, by the end of the eighth season you may find yourself more sympathetic to a serial killer than you would have
originally thought possible. The season 8 finale was aired on Showtime on September 22, 2013. While many ardent fans feel that the last season was a bit of a letdown, any TV show fan can probably think of a show that ended on a far worse note. You know, one whose title rhymes with “name of cones.” If, like me, you are a Dexter fan who never quite got closure, there is good news: Dexter is returning this fall with
a ten episode limited series, and is scheduled to premiere on November 7 on Showtime. As fans who have seen the trailer may have noticed, it seems that all these years later Dexter has finally mastered completely blending in, playing the friendly neighbor that everyone has a nod and a smile for. Will it last? I, for one, cannot wait to find out!
On Being via Flickr
A very angelic photo of Dexter Morgan – because all the angels I know have blood spatters for wings.
Shrek, colonialism, and the sands of time For the students who weren’t alive when it was released
sara birrell news editor
The other day, as I was reading an old Seventeen magazine instead of literally anything else, I was reflecting on cultural changes over the past two decades, and in particular, the fact that there are students attending the U of R right now who have never lived in a world without Shrek. Since I’m [REDACTED] years old, and since this year marked 20 years since the film burst onto the scene, changing everything, I thought I would review it for those who weren’t alive to see it reviewed when it was fresh and young. More importantly, it allowed me to fulfil an obligation to the A&C editor without actually having to put on pants or leave my apartment. Shrek, for those not in the know, is your standard quest narrative with the twist that it’s deliberately ripping off Disney conventions – like how it opens with a voiceover of our hero reading from a fairy tale story book before tearing out one of its pages and (presumably) using it to wipe himself in an outhouse. Subversive! Anyway, at the start of the film, Shrek bursts out of the outhouse and onto the scene to the rock music of Smash Mouth, which is another signal that this isn’t your average fairy tale! And remember, this was before the age of COVID, so we had no way
of knowing that Smash Mouth would one day sing “I ain’t the sharpest tool in the shed” at a superspreader event in Sturgis that probably ended up killing hundreds or even thousands of people with questionable taste in music. All we knew then was that the years started coming and they didn’t stop coming. It was a simpler time. Bush hadn’t even done 9/11 yet. Shrek’s sartorial choices are pretty inexplicable, primarily because he lives alone and doesn’t seem to care about social conventions, so why even wear pants or that horrid little vest (or maybe bralette?) that looks like it’s made from one of those no-slip mats that your grandmother has on the bottom of her bathtub? His pants are leggings for some reason, and they’re a foul plaid pattern and colour that looks like maybe he ordered them in the waning days of the LulaRoe empire. And I’m not here to body shame Shrek, but it’s very clear that he’s been skipping leg day. While Shrek is sitting at his kitchen table eating a bowl of eyeballs, he’s blissfully unaware of the imminent arrival of ogre hunters, who want to kill him so they can expropriate his lands and deport undesirables to that location, which is a plot line that has been directly lifted from the history of the colonization of Australia (at this point I paused and hastily Googled “Shrek:
post-colonial???” but all I found was one Prezi from 2017 that was pretty shoddily done, so if you’re looking for an idea for a paper, there’s a free one right there). The film’s animation holds up as something that would be, if not impressive, at least not unimpressive in a movie released today, which is good since it took them four years to animate the thing, which is nearly as long as it took for the US to lose the Iraq war. At one point, while Shrek is explaining to Donkey that ogres are like onions, I recognize that
this is a reference to Peer Gynt, something I didn’t notice in 2001, and I wished that someone was around watching with me so that I could loudly draw attention to the fact that I am familiar with the works of Ibsen. The plot and humour also hold up in ways I won’t get into because I realized that A&C only needs half a page, so I need to wrap this up. I think if this movie were to come out for the first time today, it would receive reviews just as favourable as when it came out 20 years ago (don’t
check if the reviews 20 years ago were actually favourable, I certainly didn’t fact check this claim) but we would have had a lot more Buzzfeed articles titled, “20 reasons why Shrek is a body positivity icon we can stan,” which is unbearable. Let me know if you do a paper on “Reclaiming the swamp: a postcolonial approach to analyzing themes of displacement and repatriation in Dreamworks’ 2001 film Shrek” because I’d like to read it.
Sanjeev Beekeeper via Flickr
Before makeup and after.
