Who is a monster?
Beware of Breaking Bad and Dexter spoilers (mostly generalities)
We see monsters everywhere. Movies, TV, corporations, ourselves. There are monsters everywhere. It’s the new status quo. And I think we like it.
The former non-executive Chairman of the NASDAQ and founder/chair of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC was arrested in 2008. Madoff, the Wall Street mogul, was arrested in a massive investment scandal. Specifically, it was a Ponzi scheme. He defrauded many of millions. He lived high on the hog and got used to it and when things didn’t work out so well, he turned to a Ponzi scheme to continue making loads of money. He ruined lives and was the reason a lot of media began truly focusing on Wall Street, asking questions and wondering whom else might be doing similarly. Turns out, a lot of people. And then the economy collapsed damaging even more people’s lives, all around the world.
Most said Madoff was a horrible human being. He had his hand in defrauding the owner of the Mets, the poor retired old folks, the news showed interview after interview. They all painted Madoff as a charmer. He convinced them that his moneymaking scheme worked and made money for everyone who invested. He lied and now he’s in prison. People wanted to hang him yet he looked so cool and calm on TV. At one point he wore cuffs, being walked through a crowd and was visibly upset that someone shoved him. A certain who do you think you are? or a I’m just like you mentality that he seems to maintain today. He craved the high life he expected to have, some said, so he defrauded his way there.
In 2012, this doe-eyed loner shot up a Century 16 movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. With 12 dead and 70 injured, people decried the ease of which he was able to get his hands on guns. Pundits espoused their views about mental health issues, guns and the movie The Dark Knight Rises. And whether or not the shooter was full of some demonic will to reap chaos. When you see the guy’s picture, he just looks confused, like he’s looking straight past you at something that grabbed his attention on the wall. Then people in Colorado went out and bought more guns and turned on their TVs.
Sunday night was the series finale of the TV show Breaking Bad, a show about a man who decides to sell meth after a cancer diagnosis in order to support his family.Breaking Bad follows the ending of another series, Dexter, about a serial killer who hunts down and kills other serial killers. In both shows the main character is an anti-hero, and surely possessed of something monstrous deep inside.
In Breaking Bad we learn that Walter White, a man dying of cancer, went from a meek, repressed individual to a seemingly heartless drug kingpin. He embraces the snowball’s course from loving father to meth cook to murder to criminal mastermind to cocksure crazypants. He did what he had to do to help his family when he was gone.
Dexter’s different. The titular character has “always been the way he is.” He’s had murderous impulses since watching his mother’s murder and becomes a sort of serial killer vigilante. His adopted father teaches him how to deal with his homicidal impulses by killing bad people and since his dad’s also a cop, teaches him how to cover his tracks so he’s never caught. Dexter becomes the Batman of serial killers. He accepts his life. He questions what he should do but never who he is. He’s a murderer who murderers bad people.
People are obsessed. Fans became invested quickly, rooting for Walter and Dexter, cheering for them like members of one giant (Manson) family). And, yeah, I watched them, and, yeah, I enjoyed them, but it would seem much less so than some. It feels like there’s something monstrous that we see, perhaps in ourselves, that these shows have tapped into. Some kernel or mighty, dead oak within us.
The rabid fanbase has been gathering these last few months, so much so that if you’re not watching it, not part of the cultural zeitgeist, than you’re an outside. An outsider if you don’t cheer for the outsiders. Root for the killer, don’t miss out.
Right before Breaking Bad’s conclusion Sunday night, people were commenting on social media how there would be a “Breaking Bad sized hole” in their hearts or how they wondered how they would go on with their week after a no doubt heart-wrenching, cathartic ending. Mostly, people just worried about what they would watch next. Because of Dexter and Breaking Bad’s success, other shows have popped up within the realm of monsters. More twist views and justified actions that we’ll all see and talk about as if it’s all quite normal. A “I would totally have done the same thing” attitude.
That’s where we are now. And it doesn’t seem like many people care. We celebrate the villain and decry the heroes, we use online quizzes to see how much like Dexter we are or which character on Breaking Bad we are most alike. It’s fucked up, but it’s a release valve; which is even more fucked up. Because monster recognizes monster. The only difference between we who watch and cheer the murderer and those who act out those fantasies is we only feel the thrill without the action. Complicit in action but never going that far. It’s all just Schadenfreude, right? Or is it Schadenfreude that keeps the monsters from within us from acting out?
