Dexter, Democracy, and Nietzsche: Puzzling Through the Deep End of America's TV Obsession

Introduction

His gloved hands grip the blade, both fists, strong above his victim. The victim looks horrified, but that doesn't stop the knife that, after hovering momentarily in pregnant anticipation, descends quickly and mercilessly. The body is sliced up, packed into a few neat Heftys, and dropped into the bay. It's a cool Miami evening for Dexter Morgan: officer, family man, serial killer, protagonist. Not only is Dexter a protagonist, but his show, Dexter, has shattered the Showtime network's viewing records. The season four finale had three million viewers, and thousands more online. As a show, its fan base is growing rapidly, without showing any signs of receding. How, one may wonder, can such a decadent main character attract such broad popularity in a country with a firm lawful framework? Why would such immoral actions fascinate a population that enjoys arguably extensive freedom and wholesome communities? Why does Michael C. Hall, who plays Dexter, receive numerous awards for his performance as such a seemingly evil person? One thing is clear: people like Dexter. This essay investigates these questions, primarily using evidence from Nietzschean philosophy, in hopes of providing adequate answers to the above inquiries. First, Dexter is analyzed as a character; secondly, the current governmental and economic context of the United States is classified; and finally, the paper articulates exactly what it is about America that drives its desire for Dexter.

The Overman

Nietzsche has several characters within his texts. His most famous and most elusive character is the overman. Nietzsche's overman only exists as a character in Thus Spoke Zarathustra; his other books never, or very rarely, mention the overman explicitly. Zarathustra proudly declares “'I teach you the overman. Man is something that shall be overcome'” (Nietzsche TSZ 12). Zarathustra describes man as “'a rope, tied between beast and overman–a rope over an abyss...What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end: what can be loved in man is that he is an overture and a going under'” (Nietzsche TSZ 13). Just as humans consider themselves above apes, “man...for the overman” is “a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment” (Nietzsche TSZ 13). Humans at their greatest simply perish to make way for the overman. Zarathustra loves him “'who works and invents to build a house for the overman and to prepare earth, animal, and plant for him: for thus he wants to go under'” (Nietzsche TSZ 15). Even Zarathustra himself is only one of the “heavy drops, falling one by one out of the dark cloud that hangs over men” that “herald the advent of lightning,” whereas the “lightning [itself] is called the overman'” (Nietzsche TSZ 16).

The overman lives beyond conscience, and beyond good and evil. One way of seeing the overman is literal. With such a reading, modern day people cannot possibly imagine such a man, what he would act like, or even what he would look like. The overman is a separate species in itself, superior in every way to man. The overman is a thing of the future; exceptional human beings can create, become, and overcome great obstacles, but their lives only serve as progress towards the grander transition of the human being into the overman. In other words, the overman exists outside of any human contexts.

Another way of seeing the overman, however, is as a state of mind. Above all else, people are limited by their temporal existence, and “the will suffers from its inability to change the past” (Havas 11). The cripple describes such frustration to Zarathustra:

Willing liberates; but what is it that puts even the liberator himself in fetters? 'It was' – that is the name of the will's gnashing of teeth and most secret melancholy. Powerless against what has been done, he is an angry spectator of all that is past...that he cannot break time and time's covetousness, that is the will's loneliest melancholy (Nietzsche TSZ 139).

Feelings of doubt, helplessness, regret, and transience are the real plagues to liberation. The cripple pines over the hump in his hunchback, or his blindness, etc., but all of this ties one inextricably to their past limitations. Regret for 'what could have been' represents a large, perhaps the largest, impediment to improvement, to saying 'yes' to life. One who is übermenschlich, that is, one with the overman mindset, works to exercise his will free regardless of such constraint, to recognize what he does as having value despite its imperfections and transience, and to exist in the moment independent of guilt or constraint. To put this thought simply, an übermenschlich individual recognizes the conditions of his existence, but does not care. Nietzsche describes such a person:

[One] could conceive of such a pleasure and power of self-determination, such a freedom of the will that the spirit would take leave of all faith and every wish for certainty, being practiced in maintaining himself on insubstantial ropes and possibilities and dancing even near abysses. Such a spirit would be the free spirit par excellence (Nietzsche GS 290).

Men must have issues and problems to overcome, for the overman itself is just a conviction, and “[men] of convictions are prisoners” (Nietzsche AC 153). No human being can escape the inalienable conditions of his existence, namely being perspectival and living temporally. Because of such permanent limitations, one can never truly transcend his human nature to become an overman. However, “Nietzsche holds that far from being a hindrance to agency, the situated, perspectival character of action is in fact a necessary condition of it” (Havas 21). As Zarathustra makes clear, every overman needs an “overdragon that is worthy of him;” greatness requires “[your] wildcats” to “first turn into tigers, and your poisonous toads into crocodiles; for the good hunter shall have good hunting” (Nietzsche TSZ 144). This notion of overcoming and becoming suggests that one cannot be great unless he has conquered, and is conquering, growing issues. There is no 'overman' per se, unless we think of the overman as a state of mind, as being übermenschlich. Just as lightning strikes instantaneously and randomly, as do one's deeds in this temporal existence, it does so without regard to any target and without any deference to the past, present, or future. Lightning exists as pure energy, and emerges furiously from the ground reaching towards the sky. The overman as an agent appears idealistic and unattainable, whereas übermenschlich qualities and endeavors are entirely attainable, if not transient and only momentarily evident. One who possesses such attributes will henceforth be called a 'free spirit,' for such a man is attainable, yet still human.

‘Free Spirit’?

One might wonder why I choose the seemingly arbitrary ‘free spirit’ as the manifestation of the overman. The name ‘free spirit’ indeed requires more justification than just one quote from The Gay Science, but there are reasons why this title is sufficient for our purposes. Firstly, Zarathustra discriminates between the overman and the higher man:

The higher its type, the more rarely a thing succeeds. You higher men here, have you not all failed? Be of good cheer, what does it matter! How much is still possible!...Is it any wonder that you failed and only half succeeded, being half broken? Is not something thronging and pushing in you—man’s future…You higher men, how much is still possible! And verily, how much has already succeeded! (Nietzsche TSZ 293).

This distinction, present not only in this passage but throughout the fourth book of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, suggests that aside from the ideal of the overman, men can indeed be higher. These higher men are fallible, experimental, often erring, and far from over humanity. However, they are not herd animals, and they are certainly higher than last men. What makes them higher is that they are particularly übermenschlich.

A significant amount of scholarly research investigates exactly what Nietzsche means by ‘higher men,’ for the term is vague. Throughout his writings, Nietzsche discusses admirable traits and qualities, as well as various characters, both ‘good’ and ‘bad.’ Weaver Santaniello identifies “eight supposedly ‘higher men’” in a particular study of Zarathustra, namely: ‘the soothsayer’, ‘the two kings’, ‘the conscientious of spirit’, ‘the magician’, ‘the last pope’, ‘the ugliest man’, ‘the voluntary beggar’, and ‘the shadow’ (Young 1). Broadly, Zarathustra teaches each what he lacks, and this knowledge helps to elevate them above mediocrity. These characters are, however, rooted in Nietzsche’s historical time period. This essay does not tackle an inquiry into all such specific characters because their existence simply proves that higher men can, and do, exist within Nietzsche’s texts as conceivable types of people.

A ‘free spirit’ embodies the qualities of a particular type of higher man. In relation to the previously defined übermenschlich qualities, one “could conceive of…pleasure and [the] power of self-determination…a freedom of the will” present within a free spirit (Nietzsche GS 270). The term ‘free spirit’ allows us to conceptualize the higher man outside of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. It is a concrete, workable manifestation of the broadly defined ‘higher man.’ Mark Jonas claims that the true self, or the “higher self,” is the “hope and the promise that one can become strong, whether one is a genius or the common individual” (Jonas 14). Again, this notion of übermenschlich struggle comes to define the individual as ‘higher,’ rather than some sort of physical or mental perfection. Such defining struggle presents itself in the character of the free spirit. From this logic, I argue that the higher man, or the ‘free spirit’ as he will be known henceforth, is an übermenschlic, realistic manifestation of the overman.