Missing Mothers in Perfume and Dexter

Based on the novel by Patrick Süskind, the film Perfume focuses on a fictional 18th century French serial killer with a superhuman sense of smell who goes by the name of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. Jean-Baptiste has much in common with Dexter Morgan, the lovable serial killer with a conscience from the novels by Jeff Lindsay (on which the Showtime series is based). Besides both having a penchant for murdering people, both of these characters have missing mothers that contribute to their serial-killer psychologies.

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.


Much like Jean-Baptiste, Dexter's missing mother influences him in his path as a serial killer and in his more societally acceptable career choice. Before "abandoning" her child through death, Dexter's mother was not the typical maternal figure. She was involved in illegal drug trade, had an affair with a married man, and put her children in less than favorable, less than safe situations. Viewers of the show learn through Dexter's flashbacks that his mother was not unloving or completely detached (like Jean-Baptiste's mother); instead, Dexter's mother focused on her "career" at the expense of her family (and at the expense of her own life). For Dexter, his actual birth was not as important as the metaphorical birth of his "dark passenger," the part of himself that desires to destroy life. This more significant birth takes place at the time of his mother's death, during which Dexter has to watch (along with his older brother, who also turns out to be a serial killer) as his mother is dismembered and then must sit in a pool of her blood for several days before being discovered by the police. The sudden, violent separation from his mother causes Dexter to develop an obsession with both killing (which he does in his spare time, gathering information through his more legitimate job) and with blood -- so he works for the police department as a blood spatter analyst.

-- Rebecca Primm