Institutionalized psychopathy: Dexter and Psycho-Pass

I’ve been doing some Netflix diving recently and have watched a couple of cool, seemingly unrelated TV shows. I say “seemingly” unrelated because at first glance they’re as different as can be.

Psycho-Pass is a nifty, tight cyberpunk anime set about a hundred years from now in a Japan that has been radically transformed by advances in technology and science related to the mind. About 30 or 40 years before the time of the show scientists figured out a way to read people’s psychological health remotely. It’s implied that the rest of the world has been dealing with various levels of chaos since before that time, and the Japanese authorities rebuilt their society from the ground up with this techno-psychology at the foundation. Every citizen is periodically scanned from the time that they’re infants until the day they die: as part of school evaluations, while on the job, even while walking down the street. Anyone whose psychological health is deemed to be damaged enough is treated, imprisoned, or eliminated. The rest of the citizens enjoy safe, content, fulfilling lives where everyone is matched with the jobs to which they are best suited by talent and personality. Choice still exists, but it is limited to things like which online entertainment to enjoy, which State-approved musicians to listen to, and so forth. There is an unbearable pressure to fit in and to just accept things as they are, since anyone who deviates is identified almost immediately, but of course nobody talks about that or even acknowledges it to themselves.

The story follows a new criminal investigator in the Public Safety Bureau as she learns the ropes. At first there’s a bit of a freak-of-the-week structure to the show, but quickly you come to see that these crimes are related. The investigators must always be on their guard against identifying too closely with crime victims or thinking too much like the perpetrators, since these things will harm their mental state--too much of that and not only will they be pulled from the case but they may end up losing their job and even their freedom. To help with this problem they are assigned Enforcers, citizens who have been flagged by the system as being “latent” criminals and who have been given partial freedom in exchange for their service. The Enforcers can think like criminals without jeopardizing their psych rating because they are already flagged, and they can do and see things that the investigators themselves oughtn’t. As the plot progresses we learn more about each of the investigators and Enforcers, and our heroine begins to question her assumptions about how the world works.

The series itself has some really neat ideas about what the ultimate goals of a civil society actually are and ought to be, and in it you will spot a great mix of concepts from a ton of other works: Brave New World, Minority Report, Nietzsche, Kant, Blade Runner, Ghost in the Shell, even Manhunter/Hannibal/whatever. It does a fantastic job of conveying the banal horrors of this society while also making a fair case for it. There is a particularly creepy scene where a violent, horrific crime is committed on a public street, and the dozens of citizens who witness it simply cannot process it as something that is wrong. The fact that it is happening means that it must be acceptable. These people no longer truly feel anything. They have become so adept at mimicking the behavior of a healthy person that they might as well be psychopaths.


And that leads me to the other show, Dexter. This one ran on Showtime for about eight seasons and I imagine that most folks here are familiar with it. I’m about six episodes into the first season and so far so good: the characters are memorable and the plots of each episode and the entire season have been interesting. Dexter himself is a psychopath, and is in fact a psychopathic serial killer. Luckily for him and for society his foster father was a police officer who recognized his son’s condition while Dexter was still very young. This let him divert his son’s killer tendencies toward vigilantism. This is a wonderful pulp premise, and so far the show is doing it justice.

What I find most interesting about Dexter is that he is nowhere near a textbook psychopath. He is not particularly interested in sex, is not a bullshitter jumping from one grandiose, failed idea to the next, doesn’t soak his “friends” for money, is not particularly manipulative of the opposite sex, and he is a serial killer (of course the vast majority of psychopaths aren’t). That said, he does completely lack empathy and most positive emotions, and he has learned to fake them. In that regard he is indeed much like the many psychopaths we all have run across--most likely unknowingly--throughout our lives. If only all psychopaths were as odd as Dexter is; they’d sure be easier to spot and avoid.


I think that Dexter would fit in quite well in the 22nd Century Japan of Psycho-Pass. The system almost certainly would flag him immediately because of his murderous impulses, but in all other ways he would be a model citizen. I guess that tells us a lot about both shows.

I liked the first season of Psycho Pass a lot. Haven't checked out the 2nd season yet. Thanks for the reminder that I need to do that.

While I liked the show overall, I have to say that Dexter has one of the worst finales I have ever seen or heard of.

Enjoy!

Mad Dog wrote: I liked the first season of Psycho Pass a lot. Haven't checked out the 2nd season yet. Thanks for the reminder that I need to do that.

I haven't watched the second season yet either. It's not on Netflix or Crunchyroll yet, but I'm sure it's out there somewhere.

Disgustipater wrote: While I liked the show overall, I have to say that Dexter has one of the worst finales I have ever seen or heard of.

Enjoy!

Ohhhh crap, that's too bad. Is this a Lost situation? I jumped off of that show after the first season and it sounds like I get out while the getting was good. A bad finale--or especially a bad final season--can really taint a show.

Dexter starts its downhill slide after season 4 I believe. (John Lithgow season). The last season is pretty regrettable, but you'll want to ride it all out. Overall a great show.

Honestly, I could have just watched Dexter Season 1 through 4 and have been just fine without seeing anything past that. Season 1 and 4 were particularly great though.

Edit: Oops, hit the wrong button and posted too quickly. I will have to check out Psycho-Pass based on your description. It sounds really interesting. I've never watched any anime before so maybe I'll be on to something cool and new.

airmarkus wrote: Honestly, I could have just watched Dexter Season 1 through 4 and have been just fine without seeing anything past that. Season 1 and 4 were particularly great though.

That's what I did (although I did watch the first episode of S5 just to answer some questions). I think I made the right choice, and I have no desire to finish off the rest of the series.

While I think S1-4 of Dexter got progressively better, I've yet to watch anything after that. I still have S5-8 shrink-wrapped, taunting me, but you guys' comments make me apprehensive.

A friend tried to get me interested in Dexter a couple of years ago. I don't have a background in psychology, but I often get annoyed when tv shows and movies portray mental illness as simply a crutch for badly-developed characters, so I wasn't interested in Dexter's bogus version of psychopathy. So my friend tried hard to get me interested in Dexter and did something that made it even less likely I would try the show: he spoiled a couple of major plot twists from the later seasons. And they were really, really stupid plot twists. No chance I'm going to give Dexter a try now, when there are so many other ways that I could spend my time.