Dexter-ous

 

I began my sabbatical by watching the entire first season of Dexter, on the recommendation of my friend Stacey, a literature professor I trust to give good advice about things narrative.  She told me that it was a "novel" like the Sopranos, with the focus of each season on a particular other serial killer.  I'd avoided watching the show in part  because we don't have Showtime.  But now the first and second season of the show are streaming at Netflix.  I'd also avoided it because I thought that a show with a serial killer protagonist would be both violent and decadent.  It's neither.

Now, it does have a lot, and I mean like BUCKETS of blood, most of it aesthetically splattered about like the work of a grand guignol abstract expressionist.  But very little slam-bang viciousness.  In terms of gross visions of corpses, it's far less disturbing than any season of NCIS or CSI, two of my favorites.  The violence in Dexter is like that in old fashioned horror films -- mostly hinted at.

As for decadence:  though he is a serial killer, Dexter is a vigilante version thereof.  He "takes out the trash."  He is a "dark hero" along the lines of Dirty Harry, Batman, and a thousand other Hollywood and comic book characters.  He is also self aware and mentally struggling with the conflict between the normality he desires and his difference.  So the show is, in some ways, ferociously moral.


Dexter's struggle is part of what made the show interesting and enjoyable.  He knows that he is a monster and he is doing his best to live by the code taught to him by his adoptive policeman Dad, Harry.  Harry taught him the practice of looking normal. "Even if you don't want to smile, you should.  It's what normal people do." This is the key, of course, to surviving in the bourgeois world.  The rich can be monsters without cost because they have the power to make evil actions invisible.  Those who live in absolute poverty have some of the same freedom because they don't have trackable connections.  But to live in the middle class, one has to maintain an image of normality.

I believe that every bourgeois person in postmodern, information age society struggles with the challenge of balancing their "authentic self" with the need to "fit in" with their colleagues and friends. This is one reason why Americans report having very few friends.  According to Social Isolation in America: Changes in Core Discussion Networks over Two Decades (Miller McPherson, Lynn Smith-Lovin, Matthew E. Brashears, American Sociological Review),  our social networks have decreased dramatically in the past twenty years.  Few of us have more than two or three people with whom we can "be ourselves."  Many have only one or none.  One of the reasons for this is that most Americans find their closest connections in the workplace and must, perforce, hide from their colleagues any aspect of their character that might put their colleagues or themselves at risk.

Dexter hides his monstrousness from his colleagues, his adoptive sister (he was adopted by the cop when he was 4), his girlfriend and her kids.  The show suggests that most people have something to hide and I think that the shows viewers are probably people who experience this hiding in their own lives.

SPOILER ALERT

In the first season, the show has a mythic quality because the serial killer Dexter and his cop colleagues are investigating turns out to be his "real" brother, the other boy who sat in a cargo carrier two inches deep in blood.   Through the season Dexter thinks of the Ice Truck Killer as a genius, a master class teacher, and a friend.  When he discovers it is his brother, he is tempted in a very deep way.  His brother is the only one who can possible understand him, who can accept him as he is.  His brother wants him to kill his adoptive sister and Dexter has his hand on the knife, but can't do it.

I think this is the most powerful struggle anyone can face -- the struggle between our desire to feel loved for ourselves and our desire to follow a social code of conscience.  It is the struggle of addicts.  It is the struggle of anyone whose "true self" is experienced as unworkable.  Most people in our overly regulated, surveilled, and measured society have something they want to keep private.  Or perhaps something that they should keep private.  Yet we have been taught, perhaps by our parents, perhaps by some teacher along the line, to just "be ourselves:"  "I know I'm somebody, cause God don't make no junk," as the poster tells us.  But what if the self is not acceptable to most if not all of the people surrounding one?  The desire to release the constant control, to just be open, to flow as an animal flows without self-consciousness, to feel accepted and loved, to feel connection becomes more powerful as it faces constant thwarting.

In the show, we see Dexter go to a therapist (who he is about to murder) and say, "I'm a serial killer.  Whoo!  Wow!  It feels great to say that out loud, finally!"  We know how much Dexter wants to feel accepted, wants to have his monstrosity seen, recognized and celebrated.  At the end, Dexter fantasizes about a crowd celebrating him.  His desire to be accepted, however, is fulfilled only by the evil actions of his brother, a different kind of monster who has gone to great lengths (buying a freezer unit, chopping up hookers, etc) to bring Dexter to consciousness so that he can recognize his brother's love.

I think that, as viewers, this might be a hidden desire we all experience -- to have someone need us so much that they go to great lengths to help us realize ourselves.  But at the end, this dark and evil "therapy" must end.  Dexter kills his brother as every acolyte is taught to conquer or move past his teacher in order to become a master.  "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him."

Somewhere there must be a Jungian analysis of this show.

Of course, Dexter's duality also gives the show plenty of dark humor.  The lead actor, Michael C. Hall, manages to play Dexter with complexity and wit.  The visuals are stunning and the ensemble cast is excellent, all of which add to my pleasure in the show.  I think I'll go start season two.





 

WAKE UP FRITALIANS! Part 2 What is Love (of our jobs)?

If you haven't seen the Diet Pepsi Max commercial, see it on youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJEVxfWpm7c

I am certainly not the only person who fell in love with the Diet Pepsi Max commercial first aired during the Superbowl. On youtube there are thousands of posts about the ad, most articulating, briefly, the work's LOL stimulating qualities. Both the faculty and students of the University of Southern Carolina's School of Journalism & Mass Communication scored this as the best of the superbowl ads (see http://www.jour.sc.edu/news/isite/08superbowl/index.html ). At a computer science blog site, Graphics@Illinois from the University at Urbana-Champaign, Jason Hughes wrote

"The best of the night so far. It starts off innocently enough with Troy Aikmen commenting on the action in the first quarter when Joe nods off and bangs his head on his mic. Queue music ("What is Love?") and we then get a montage of people across all industries nodding off at their jobs, at dinner, at awards shows, on game shows. I'm pretty sure that's Missy Elliott, Busta Rhymes, LL Cool J and Macy Gray nodding off while they were up for "Song of the Year." This keeps up until Diet Pepsi Max comes along on a mail cart and everyone starts doing "The Roxbury," or the head bopping made famous by Chris Kattan and Will Ferrell in the recurring SNL skits. The bit ends with Troy staring at Joe as Joe bops along. But the best part is after the blurbs about Diet Pepsi Max and the slogans, we get a quick shot of Chris Kattan shopping, yelling "Stop it!" to two girls doing the head bop." https://agora.cs.uiuc.edu/display/graphics/SuperBowl+XLII+Recap

So, now you know what I'm talking about. I don't need to explain to you why I love the video. But I will tell you my reading of the people "across all industries" that aren't REALLY across all industries. There IS a WWII military or Star Trek "diversity in the cockpit" theme here, but the jobs chosen, while different, all help to sell the product through humor but also through hinting at the dangers involved in falling asleep on the job. There are MANY jobs that aren't shown, of course. What we do see is American success (entertainment) and American boredom (the white collar workplace, the blue collar workplace) and we learn that all American workers, from foreign transplant (sushi chef) to the core of American masculinity (cowboys, mechanics) get bored at work and need some help to enjoy what they do.

Now, in any setting in which we have a "diverse" cluster, we can understand the meaning of each piece by comparing it to both what the audience member might know of the thing or action involved (in this case, the workplace) and also to the other pieces that make up the totality of the work.

The full length commercial begins with two Superbowl XXVII announcers, one using the word comfortable as the other starts to nod off, banging his head on the microphone. Both men are white, both wearing dark suits, one blue, one gray. Behind them is the tv studio's blue curtains and some kind of scaffolding holding the sign. So we begin with white, middle age, middle class, American sports business -- High, masculine, ruling class.

Then, when the music starts, "What is love? baby don't hurt me" we are introduced to the other players in our cinema of diversity.

First, we jump cut to a gentleman at a lunch-counter, nodding his balding head into his soup. It's midday (see the sunny street outside). He's on lunchbreak. He's wearing a brown suit (not as formal as blue or gray). He's got a gigantic Adam's apple and his wrinkled suit isn't fitting him all that well. He is a parody businessman! He is the worst of the ordinary middle-class work world. He might be us, or might be the others we work with. He is nodding into his soup because his job is not interesting to him, because he works to hard, because he may be burning his candle at both ends. Check out those Elvis sideburns! And, OMG, is he at a mall in California? Check out the oak tree sprouting tall behind the patio umbrellas outside the windows.

Then we jump to another office scene, this time a hallway where a young white woman in white blouse and black skirt, a young white man in white shirt and black slacks, are standing and nodding in a hallway. The camera is behind another person who is walking down the hallway. at the level of a person sitting down, this time suggesting that we are at work in the same space as, possibly, a bored twenty-something observing our fellow workers. Seated on a horizontal file cabinet is a woman in a suit with big hair. She may be African American (very tan legs in nylons) but hard to say at this time.

Jump to two men who park cars for a hotel or restaurant. They are in uniform. One is middle aged and Asian or Latino (hard to say with the head's nodding). Unlike the middle aged white guys, he is working at a menial job instead of an office job. The other is a younger, bearded white guy. He isn't clean-cut like the office workers. Maybe he's an artist or student who is just doing this work until he can make a go of it in another world. It's clear he exists in world different than the office world. We look at both across the top of a car (as though we are USING their services, not inhabiting their world).

Jump to real life cowboys, two middle-aged white guys on their horses within a herd of cattle. One is kind of chunky. Both wear beige jackets, plaid shirts, jeans, boots. One has a cowboy hat, the other a ball cap. This is about cowboying as a chore, not as the fantasy world of the rodeo. They AND their horses seem very tired. They are NOT looking at the view of amazing high mountain thrusting out of the plains behind them. (Sierras?) This shot tells us that even the John Wayne world of the cowpuncher is permeated by boredom.

If the cowboy, that quintessential American character, can be bored at work, then it's not so strange that the Pop star, another American icon, can also nod off. Jump to our cluster of singers, seen by the camera as though on the TV screen at the Grammies. They are all African American, because this is how American's like to see our Black Folk -- as pop stars. Not as cowboys, certainly. Success as a singer or dancer has been a way for individual African Americans to defy (and defy the existence of) American racism since Bojangles Bill Robinson held hands with Miss Shirley Temple as they danced down the stairs of a Hollywood set over sixty years ago.

Now we return to brown suit as his head flops back and we see his comb-over. Wow. Here is a parody white guy for sure. Deeply uncool.

Jump to two white ranch workers nodding in the middle of a sheering, the half-trimmed sheep, it's sheered butt bright compared to it's dirty thick wool, standing to the right of them. They are both in dirty jeans and shirts. With a background in American history, a viewer knows that cattle and sheepmen were at often at odds. So this image works with the cowboy image to cement that "unity in diversity" theme. And what is unifying these old enemies is that both are now, in the 21st Century, bored of their jobs. This image is funny in part because these men are handling sharp tools and something could go wrong.

Jump other people who handle sharp tools -- three male(?) Japanese(?) sushi chefs (if I recognize their attire, I must myself have gone to such a restaurant -- meaning that I am middle class or have seen this image on TV). The question mark means that the image goes by so quickly that only the front chef is obviously male and Asian. They are in white uniforms with hats. The cleanliness of this image contrasts with the filth of the sheep image.

Jump to nerds! Yes, these people LOOK like they are at a Star Trek convention, though slowing the commercial down makes it clear that these are parody trekkers. In front, a guy at a check in desk wears a Star officer uniform of some kind. The three facing us wear "V"s of red. One is a tall, glasses-wearing red-headed young woman -- pretty but can't get a "regular" date because she is shy. Beside her is a fat white boy who probably spends his days on his computer in his mom's house. Beside him is short haired African-American, proving that blacks are not only the traditional pop star but also geeks. This is a positive move toward more contemporary racial imagery. And, to bring our diverse images into the Future, to the far right of the frame is a model of a "Gray," one of the traditional types of extra-terrestrials. They are in a meeting room with a few other chatting people, also in costumes. On the wall behind is a sign reading something like "Galactic ...." The room looks like a small hotel conference room. Trekkies, nerds, are people whose lived are absolutely wrapped up in their love of fictional worlds. These are people so bored or fearful of real life that they live vicariously in a world of adventure and romance.

Jump to rows of bobble heads seen in close-up. SYMBOL! We, American workers, are bobble head dolls, nodding our agreement, nodding our boredom with our work lives. Cut to the guy at the bobble-head plant nodding over the passing line of dolls.

Jump to a student IQ quiz program and an African American girl in what could be a parochial school outfit is nodding as the tall white boy across from her racks up 9200 points. The announcer is another white guy in a suit. The image behind them in the TV studio is a night city skyline.

Jump back to brown suit. (He's our recurring gag of recurring gags).

Jump to mid-shot of muscular stocky thirty-something guy in an orange shirt with rolled sleeves nodding off in an outdoor area. Cut to long shot as child on swing flies back and knocks this guy on his butt. Here is Dad being bored and letting himself get hurt. The father who experiences taking care of the kid as a job. (Would a woman be as funny in this image?)

Jump back to close-up of black pop star.

Jump to heavy-set, white, nodding truck driver. (He could kill someone if he goes to sleep at the wheel.)

Cut to midshot of skinny, white, cap on backwards mechanic with a full beard and long hair, falling asleep at the switch as (cut to long shot) car rises to be crushed against a pole on the ceiling. This image expands on the hint of danger in the truck-driver shot. We see a car destroyed (as we could imagine with the truck) but with no-one actually hurt. Nevertheless, we are asked to notice, subconsciously, the serious danger of our boredom (as was hinted at with the images that contained the knowledge of knives).

Jump to bobble head factory. Jump to two sushi chefs (where there is a shoulder between us and the chefs). Jump to black pop star. Jump to parking valets. Cut to brown suit and his face goes right into the soup and we see the big bald spot under the comb-over.

Jump to office corridor where a young, short woman in a dark and light argyle vest pushes a cart of bottles between our nodding office workers. We go from the hallway shot to a shot looking up from the cart to the heads of the two women, blond and black as they bounce down. Shot of the Diet Pepsi Max bottles on the cart. Group closeup of three workers, two white and one black (the young man is now, suddenly, in a continuity error, on the right side of the cart) as they tilt back the bottles at the same time.

At this point the mixed, off-beat nodding turns, through the miracle of caffeine, into DANCE MOVES! and the Night at the Roxbury parody commences...a parody of a parody. Cut to a shot of the entire office and our three Pepsi drinkers are bouncing, not nodding, heads flipping sideways in time to the dance anthem.

Cut to black pop star, Pepsi in hand, bouncing his head and pointing at us! Hey, he wakes up and now he LIKES us! He KNOWS us! Smiling! And Mr. Brown suit with the moustach is smiling at us too, drinking Pepsi with his soup! His eyes are open. As are the eyes of the nerds, now smiling and happy as they bounce. Cut to another black pop star, his head moving sideways in an action recognizable as African American in form. Cut to the three people in the TV IQ quiz, all head bouncing in unison. Then we return to where we began, with the Superbowl announcer bouncing his head (badly) and his colleague making eye contact with the camera as though to say, "What's with this guy?"

Cut to our sales line, "Wake Up People!" in read and blue sans serif print, WAKE UP in red and PEOPLE in blue, the letters outlined in white. Red, white, and Blue. In voice-over the announcer tells us that the drink has ginseng and caffeine and zero calories.

The "cute" conclusion has two young women in modified dress-up outfits (denim but with jewelry, one wearing a low-cut tank top) at a clothes cleaners, with glistening plastic in the background, bouncing their big hair (an eighties theme) as Chris Kattan, original star of Night at the Roxbury, walks between them and yells, "Stop It" His character is supposed to be thinking that they are making fun of him (what self absorption) when actually we know that everyone is dancing because Diet Pepsi Max carries its dance anthem with it.

As an aside: I bought two versions of Haddaway's What Is Love from ITunes in March and let me tell you, it's not a good idea to sing along with your IPod and bounce your head while walking across campus, not if you want people to respect you as a senior professor.

Gotta get to work now...so I'm gonna plug in my tunes.

WAKE UP FRITALIANS! Part 1 Dunkin

Ok. So right now I am obsessed with two commercials -- the Dunkin Donuts Fritalian spot and the Pepsi Max head bouncer with "What Is Love?" as its driving tune. What these ads share is hooky music that shot its tendrils deep into my cerebellum and a humorous take on American diversity.

So let's take a look at each one.

Dunkin Donuts "Must be Fritalian"

This ad takes aim at Starbucks and those businesses that try to match the global corporation's pseudo-European linguistic universe. In the commercial we, the viewers (intended audience) are represented by a cluster of singing heads that show their confusion about the words on the wall menu of a coffee shop.

Their faces are twisted in confusion as they say in a deadpan monotone, "Ocho half-caf latte chino mocha due avec moi." We begin with the back of a short haired white head and then look, syllable by syllable, at a collection of faces. After seeing them individually, we see them as a line of eight people who stare over the head of the barista at strange word formations as they sing (in a melody line that could have been ripped from a 90s Seattle grunge band, another slap at the Starbucks fantasy of its beginnings), "My mouth can't form these words. My mind can't find these words. Is it French, or is it Italian. Perhaps Fritalian."
At this point I want to share my ideas about who these people are supposed to be and why we are supposed to "identify" with them. (I always suppose that makers of commercials are trying to "establish consubstantiality," as my hero Kenneth Burke would have said.) (For more about Burke, see http://bradley.bradley.edu/~ell/burke.html ) I believe that this commercial is about not just Dunkin Donuts and Starbucks but a particular vision of what it means to be American.

So, who is trapped in Starbucks and would, in the vision of the commercial, be better served by Dunkin Donuts where they speak English? First I should note that all the singers and the Barista are wearing gray, white, black and gray-green to stand out from the yellowish background of the coffee shop wall but also to blend together and give us the impression that they inhabit a bland world of sameness. The ten characters in the shop are the following:

#1 Normal Young-Guy. In his thirties, wearing a muddy green t-shirt over a gray undershirt. He's nice looking but not spectacular (his features are even, hair clean, face oval, eyes hazel). He's our jogger, bicyclist, grad student type. The sort who isn't yet at work in the morning of a workday. Maybe he e-commutes. Average guy, though.

#2 Biz man. In his early forties. He too is not bad looking. A bit plain but still even featured; has all his hair (and its full if not styled). His brown eyes are a bit small but the lines on his face are friendly. He has a tie and bluish shirt. He's on his way to work. He stands in for those normal working people who once-upon-a-time had coffee perking on the kitchen counter but now have coffee outside of home on their way in to the office.

#3 Grunge dude (skate boarder?). Blond hair shaggy flip over cut stacked under thick as though teased or dirty. Empty stoner gold stoner eyes. Very dry lips. He's been smoking pot somewhere and wandered in for his morning treat and now stands confused before the sign. He is us in our youth, before we started earning money. Or, he represents the actual stoner watching the commercial.

#4 African-American woman. Representing American diversity. She wears her natural tied back and up on top of her head. She is going to work. Has tiny hoops in her ears, suggesting, along with her skirt and shirt, that she works in a conservative office environment. So she represents not only American diversity but also cubical workers. Because her hair is natural but controlled, we understand her as seeking authenticity in a bureaucratized world. (If she had bleached or ironed hair she would represent giving in to dominant authority.)

#5 Thin Blond. Her long blond bangs reach down to her pale blue eyes. She has long straight hair. Her chin, in this ad, is a bit too pointy so her beauty isn't perfect. In my youth she would have been a hippie. Now she may be a housewife, soccer mom, or rich woman on her way to the spa. Her face is pretty and she has a full lower lip. But she is not played up as beautiful. She is an ordinary but especially nice looking woman. The typical too-thin American blond. (She wants a skinny double latte.)

#6 Curly red hair guy. Plaid shirt over undershirt, receding hairline. Could be another guy who works at home or a contractor. He has a receding hairline and pale eyes. Nice enough looking but certainly not handsome. He can represent those who still work with their hands for a living OR someone from a family with that background.

#7 Asian (Korean?) business guy. Wearing a gray tie and suit with an over the shoulder bag. He's another representative of American diversity, also stands in for those bound to conservative offices. Has plenty of hair but well back on his head. Possibly thirties, forties. There's something odd about his hairline when you look at it closely in a freezeframe -- almost as though he's wearing a wig. I'm not sure if this is intentional.

#8 (after a pause while the group sings) Red headed woman with twisted mouth. Now, she's been trashed on You Tube for being ugly. She's not. She has an evenly balanced face that she's purposefully wrenching for this commercial by curling her upper lip and acting like she's going to spit. She has large hoop earing than African-American woman and a gold chain. I don't think she's going to work. She may be going shopping. She has gray eyes and her hair is poorly or barely styled. Because she and plaid shirt guy have similar hair, and are standing next to each other, it may be that we are intended to link them, so they represent a married or dating couple.

#9 Short guy. He has a nice face but we never see him in close-up. He stands between blonde woman and Asian biz guy, making both look taller.

#10 Barista. Oh, my. His black hair has this nineties style flock-of-seagulls haircut. When he turns toward the camera in a midshot we see he is wearing expensive glasses. He himself sings along with "perhaps Fritalian" with a sarcastic turn to his lips. He reads a bit gay, a bit goofy nerd.

So, this is an image of the folks Dunkin Donuts hopes will visit their shop -- harried workers, drive by exercisers, wannabe wealthy, and the stoned.

And who already goes to Dunkin? The eleventh character: chunky, white, next-door neighbor workaholic with a big-gulp size latte. We see him first in his reflection and then in his actual physical form. He also is harried -- we see that he has TWO bag straps over his shoulder. His sleeves are rolled up (he's working) and yet he has no tie (he has some freedom in his job).

The announcer proclaims, "Delicious Lattes from Dunkin Donuts. You order them in English, not Fritalian." Our average guy is smiling as he looks into the Coffee A shop and the customers stare back at him in jealousy and aw (check out grunge dude's open mouth).

"America runs on Dunkin" the graphics say at the end, emphasizing the commercial's link to national identity and the Calvin Coolidge's claim that "the business of America is business."

Well, looks like I've got to shower and get to school. No time to deconstruct the Pepsi commercial right now. But stay tuned to these, our stations.