Obsession: Dexter versus Perfume

Interests are what drive society. They allow us to form bonds and relationships with certain groups, people, and cultures. They help us to engage in conversation, find compatibility, and often get us through the day. But what happens when interest goes too far—when compulsion takes over and we no longer can control our interest? What happens when an interest becomes an obsession? The television series Dexter and the novel and film Perfume: the Story of a Murderer are driven by the obsessions. What makes these obsessions intriguing if finding their roots.

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.

-- Sara Antonuccio