Among many qualities that Dexter and Jean-Baptiste Grenouille share, one of them is the propensity to murder ritualistically. Dexter kills ritualistically because in order for him to evade prosecution for his crimes, he must be incredibly meticulous in his methods of murder. For Dexter, the ritual is part of the rush because in having a certain process that he chose, he exercises the ultimate element of control. Each person that he kills dies the same way, is disposed of the same way, and generates the same kind of peace in Dexter by satiating his Dark Passenger. The knowledge that one more creep, rapist, drug dealer, or murderer, who has slipped through the cracks of the corrupted Miami-Dade justice system is off the streets relaxes him. However, in Season 2 (SPOILER ALERT) Dexter’s dumping area (a remote area off the coast of Miami) has been discovered by several scuba divers who are horrified at the discovery, which prompts a widespread investigation of the identities and murderer of the victims as well as our own emotional investment in whether or not Dexter will be able to survive such an indictment if it ever reaches him. This derails Dexter’s typical ritual behavior and forces him to adapt not to killing in a new way, but disposing in a new way. This ability to adapt and adjust to certain conditions indicates how well-trained he is to be a hunter of evil men.
In contrast, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille’s ritual is not so much about the killing as it is about the preservation of feminine scent. His first kill was completely accidental, but the scene that immediately follows the girl’s death precludes what happens next – Grenouille is going to find a way to preserve unique human scent. After the girl is dead, he indiscriminately rips open her corset and dress, exposing basically her entire nude body. He cups his hands around almost every part of her body in order to indulge in her scent, but her death has rendered her scentless. He becomes disillusioned and fearful that he will never learn how to preserve scent, his sole love and obsession. When he becomes an apprentice to Giuseppe Baldini, he learns how to extract scent from flowers and herbs and whatnot, but because he is socially stunted, he does not realize that even though glass and cats have smells, their essence cannot be extracted. Grenouille tests several methods of perfuming, and the one that succeeds necessitates murder. Grenouille is no misogynist; he simply finds the scents of beautiful women to be precious and worth preserving. His experience with the death of the first girl inspires a fear in him that if he cannot preserve, the unique individual scent will be lost forever.
The actual process that Grenouille uses to capture human scent follows the general principles of enfleurage (a process that uses odorless fats that are solid at room temperature to capture the fragrant compounds exuded by plants), he succeeds in preserving the scent of a woman by cutting her hair, covering her in animal fat, and then distilling the fat. One thing that I find particularly interesting about this ritual is how delicately Grenouille handles his women while they still possess their scent, yet how crudely he disposes of the bodies afterward. It is not because he has distaste for women, but these people are no longer useful to him: they are scentless. In a way, this reflects many of the internal struggles he faces. Grenouille himself has no scent. Any reminder of that fact, for instance, a scentless woman lying around in his workshop, would only distress him. I also find the level of intimacy in the process very interesting. The women are completely nude, dead, wrapped in animal fat, and their unique scent is in a way completely siphoned from their bodies: it is not perhaps only their olfactory essence, but their essence of life. For Grenouille, scent is life. Its preservation is his religion.
Grenouille goes through a different process of learning a ritual than Dexter does. Dexter’s father taught him who to kill, how to kill, and how to get away with it. Dexter kills “bad people” as a survival technique. His traumatic childhood leaves him incapable of fighting off homicidal urges, and his cop foster father figures that the best way to keep Dexter out of trouble is to teach him a way to channel those homicidal tendencies against people whose sinister transgressions will not be missed by society. Dexter’s first attempt at a ritualistic homicide mirrors Grenouille’s first attempt; it’s messy, and it borderline just does not work. Grenouille hires a prostitute to let him perform enfleurage, but she freaks out and he murders her. Dexter’s is a little bit different; he doesn’t have complete control over the situation and ends up having to chase his prey around a living room covered in plastic sheets. As Dexter matures and becomes more of an expert at his dastardly trade, he perfects his system. However, sometimes the belief of perfection in one’s system can prove to be a pitfall, because one may overlook evidence left behind. This occurs several times throughout seasons of Dexter and requires extra side work that detracts from the amount of attention he is able to give his day job, his family, and his girlfriend/fiancé/wife (depending on what season you are watching). For each kill, Dexter covers an entire room in plastic sheets, covers the wall in pictures of the perpetrators victims, toys with their mind, cuts their cheek to take a blood sample, and then impales them. He dismembers their bodies and then dumps them in the ocean, sinking to where nobody would dare find them. Dexter takes a token from each victim as a reminder of what he has done to benefit society, but also because it benefits himself. The blood slides are sacred to him because they are tangible proof of what he really is, lest he ever lose touch with himself. Similarly, Grenouille’s tokens are the essential oils he extracts from his victims. The essential oils serve a different purpose than the blood slides, but the keepsakes indicate that ritualistic murder does not stop at the ritual itself. Something must be taken because having a part of somebody else is a source of power for both Dexter and Grenouille.
The main idea here is that while both Dexter and Jean-Baptiste Grenouille are naturally inclined and pre-destined to be murderers, their discovery of ritual and the consistent following of said ritual are what give the serial killers strength in order to combat an inherent weakness. While both characters do not kill for the same reasons, they both engage in ritualistic behavior in order to give a chaotic, traumatizing life some semblance of meaning and order in a world that seems unfair, unjust and incompetent in solving its own problems.
Jean-Baptiste violently entered the world under his mother's table at a fish market. His mother stopped work only to free herself of him by chopping through the umbilical cord with the same knife she used to gut fish. Having had several miscarriages before this birth, his mother expected this child to also be dead and was thus detached, leaving Jean-Baptiste to die in the filth. As punishment for her crime of neglect, she was executed, and Jean-Baptiste was abandoned. Not the typical maternal figure, his mother was absent for all but the first disgusting moments of Jean-Baptiste's life. The image of his mother cutting the umbilical cord with a butcher knife is violent and cold, not what is expected of a typical maternal figure. Jean-Baptiste's first sensory experience outside of the womb was undoubtedly the powerful, rancid smell of dead, rotting fish guts, and this traumatic entrance to the world greatly influenced his reason for and method of killing. Both his traumatic birth and the loss of his mother, the most important woman in his short life, he associates strongly with his sense of smell and in particular, pungent odors. Becoming obsessed with capturing the perfect scent, Jean-Baptiste pursues a career as a perfumer and subsequently kills beautiful young virgins for the olfactory pleasure they offer.
Debra is the tomboy of the show. Working in a male dominated field, she has to present herself as someone who can “keep up with the boys.” She swears frequently, drinks hard liquor, and smokes. While a very smart individual, Deb is presented as constantly being unsure of her abilities and second guessing herself. In Season One, she falls for the “Ice Truck Killer,” which places her as the damsel in distress. Her female intuition is fooled and she thinks with her heart rather than her brain. In the second season, she falls for Detective Frank Lundy and sleeps with him as they work the case. Here, she is honing in on her basic needs for sex and while she is falling in love with him, she is more cautious. She does not engage in PDA while at work and they keep their relationship under wraps for as long as possible. Fast forward to season three, we see Deb has cut off her long hair into a bob and has sworn of men, drinking, and smoking. She wants to finally obtain a detective shield to prove that she is a great officer and capable of handling herself. This season, she falls for an informant named Anton throughout her work on a case. She is scared for his involvement and he hers as the case progresses. Because Deb has relationships with various men through work, it is crucial to her to be judged on her work merit and not just as a stupid girl looking for a husband. She is immensely afraid of being reduced to “just a woman.” Deb is the typical rough and tough girl who has always been fighting for her chance to shine; from Dexter being favored in childhood to making a name for herself in the police department, Deb can be seen as working for equality for women in the workforce while navigating the difficulty of love and sex at the same time within the department.
Rita can very much been seen as the “Susie Homemaker” of the show. Blonde, slender, and tan she has two children from a previous marriage with an abusive husband, Paul. Evolving from Dexter's girlfriend to his fiancé to eventual wife, the viewer is able to see Rita's character change throughout the seasons. When originally presented, we see her as an abused woman looking for a way to start over. After finding Dexter and settling into the routine of a single, working mother, Rita begins to find her strength. In one episode, she beats Paul with a baseball bat when she feels threatened. The meek and shy Rita presented previously would never have done such a thing. It seems Dexter has affected her more than he knows. We also see her protecting her children, a very maternal reaction. No matter what the situation, her first priority is her children and we know that she would do anything for them. Dexter originally chooses her as a “cover girlfriend” (he needs one because he knows that is what is socially acceptable to fit-in) because “she is as damaged as he is.” As the show continues through the seasons, we find out more of her secrets (including that Dexter is her third marriage rather than her second as we previously thought), but Dexter allows her to keep her own secrets for he knows he has ones which he will never be able to share with her. Rita provides the compassion and love Dexter needs while at the same time being a strong enough woman to cope with the unexpected and hold her own at work in the hotel industry. The fact that she is a concierge/check-in assistant portrays her helpful nature and the idea that women provide for those in need.Both women are crucial to Dexter's well-being. The advice he is able to seek from both of them provide him with the insight he needs to function as a serial-killer attempting to live a mainstream lifestyle. Without them he would be unable to function in a healthy manner. Both portray different aspects of femininity but have similarities which provide over-arching themes of womanhood consistent with the times and needs of each woman.
Here are some interesting links that help further our understanding of Dexter's character and psyche.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
-- This one is the opening sequence on the show. I think it would be really helpful to have a blurb about how even everyday tasks like making breakfast and showering exemplify that he is a serial killer and has those dark tendencies lurking under the surface.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
-- This one talks about Harry's Code and how he taught Dexter from a young age that killing without motive is just murder. This can help paint Dexter as a "good-guy" in some sense and how there is planning behind his killing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?
-- This one is just a funny Dexter/Doakes montage to show how very few catch on to the role he plays so well but Doakes does and he must investigate. It's hilarious. I think it'll provide some good comic relief.
-- Kate Mathews
Dexter is about a young man who works for Miami CSI as a blood analyst. But Dexter is a little more complicate than he seems. Dexter is a serial killer. His killings, however, are somewhat “Robin Hood-esque” in nature. Though he doesn’t kill the rich and leave the poor, his killings are driven by his morals: child molesters, rapists—you name them, he kills them. As the show goes on, we begin to realize an obsession that Dexter possesses. This obsession goes beyond killing people—it’s more primitive than that. Dexter has an obsession with blood (thus, his job as a blood analyst). The root of these obsessions could spur from his line of work, but it began at a young age. Research has shown that serial killers often kill animals as children. Dexter, having expressed this interest as a child, may have gotten his love of blood from this. But I feel the root of his blood obsession is deeper than even that. Dexter has no idea who his real parents are. He was adopted as a child by a family that took him in as one of their own. His adopted father was the chief of police in Miami. He saw Dexter’s interests were not among those that were normal for his gender and age; so, he began to teach him to fit in, be normal, and save his urges of killing until he could harness and control them. As much as his new family loved him and cared for him, he never really fit in, even despite his adopted father’s attempts. Dexter was all alone.I believe this is where his obsession is rooted. He has no idea who his real family, his family by blood, is. So, to make up for his lack of metaphoric blood (his real family), he replaces it with an obsession with literal blood. After Dexter makes a kill, he saves a drop of blood on a microscope slide and stores it away. In a way, Dexter has more in common with the people he kills than he ever did with his adopted family. Dexter kills monsters, and he himself is a monster. By housing the blood of those he kills, the ones that are so much like him, it makes up for his lack of a real blood-line—a real family. Those killers are his family. He needs their blood to survive. Their blood is the only sense of consistency Dexter can get. This sense would normally come from a family who is supposed to love you and be there for you unconditionally. Families have bonds. Dexter does not have a true family, so he finds it elsewhere in the blood of his killers. He needs his obsession to survive.
Perfume is very similar in the root of his obsession. Both Jean Baptiste (the main character in Perfume) and Dexter have their obsessions rooted in something they lack. For Jean Baptiste, this deficiency is in a personal scent. He was born in a fish monger—a different world in and of itself—where his mother abandoned him. When he went to the orphanage, the other children tried to smother him. He did not speak until the age of five. Jean Baptiste had been on his own from the beginning—even his other senses had abandoned him. Smelling was the only way he knew how to discover the world and what’s around him on his own. His early abandonment led to a fear of being abandoned again. This fear, combined with an extreme reliance on scents and smells to connect with the world he would otherwise be estranged from, turns into an obsession with capturing and keeping scent.Jean Baptiste’s obsession with scents and smells spurs from the fact that they, just like memories, fade away. This obsession is further extended and heightened when he realizes that he does not have his own personal scent. Scent gives identity. Jean Baptiste, being abandoned by everything and everyone, now has lost the only identity he thought he could rely on: a personal body odor. This lack of a personal scent and identity, along with his obsession with capturing and holding on to scent, leads to his irrational behavior—his killing of women to make the perfect scent to call his own.Both Jean Baptiste and Dexter found beauty and meaning in the primitive: Dexter in blood and Jean Baptist in smells and scents. Both are so controlled by their obsessions that they get lost within them. Neither Jean Baptiste not Dexter are malicious in their reasons for killing. Dexter kills to sustain him need for blood (much like a vampire), and Jean Baptist kills to find his identity in scent. Their reasons are very personal in nature. It is almost as though they do not know better because their obsessions take over and lead to their compulsive behavior. Their obsessions spur from a deep down need for something they lack.
