Dexter's Copaganda Part 1
Policing Is Anti-Democratic
I’m watching season seven of Dexter as I write this. Overall I think it was an enjoyable show for the first three or so seasons. After season five I kind of started treating it as a background show when I was bored or wanted to scroll my phone. Normally I’m not one for pop-culture critiques. Is it pop? I guess since they announced a spinoff I can call it that. But as I’ve been watching, several thoughts have been nagging me. I think the series is a perfect example of copaganda, or propaganda that promotes a positive view of police. Basically every show that centers on police departments is copaganda, but I thought there were several more subtle undercurrents to the propaganda in Dexter that were worth describing. Additionally, Dexter’s role as a genius blood spatter analyst is a perfect lens through which to explore the issue of bad science leading to false convictions (coming in part 2).
Mini Review
Before I jump right in, I think it’s worthwhile noting that there are many police officers with good intentions. In the book Mass Supervision, Vincent Schiraldi writes of his experience in charge New York City’s parole officers. His employees generally had good intentions and genuinely wanted to help provide an alternative to incarceration, but they were caught in a system in which they were pressured to be punitive and almost trapped in the web of possible technical violations. In one glaring example of the flaws of this system, a man on parole who went to an event to see Nipsey Hussle ended up getting shot as an assailant attacked and killed Hussle. While he was recovering from his injuries, and still in a wheelchair, his parole officer cited him for the technical violation of associating with a known gang member (Hussle having formerly been a gang member). This citation got him reincarcerated for violating the terms of his parole and only a media campaign and outpouring of public indignation had his case reviewed and the violation removed.
Schiraldi details the many ways he reformed the NYC parole system to be more community-based and less punitive, but even under those conditions he noted that the money spent on parole officers (again, people who often genuinely wanted to help), would be better spent directly on therapy, jobs programs, and other community supports to help people as they return from prison, and more importantly to provide alternatives to incarceration and keep from tearing communities apart. He makes a strong case for the gradual abolition of parole in favor of supportive, not punitive programs, so that we can move away from incarceration as well. The unfortunate truth is that the most well-funded resource parole officers currently rely on is the prison system. Most other resources are patchworks of support, sorely lacking in funding and overloaded with cases.
All this to say, there are well-intentioned police officers who want to help others, but they are constrained by a system which raises punishment above all other options and funds the system of punishment far more than the many alternatives which would make the lives of police officers, and everyone else, much safer. In such an individualistic society, it's a hard truth for people to accept that the system really does constrain you. We spend so much time engaged in hero narratives that we assume that all it takes is one hero cop (or lawyer, or corporate whistleblower) to keep bad things from happening. This is the danger of copaganda. Even when it shows corruption in policing it often also portrays hero cops who through their individual efforts save lives and redeem the system. The truth is it is only through the active participation of many people outside systems of control that we can change things for the better. When we recognize the need for collective action, we understand that police as a whole are antithetical to democratic organization since they are the force called in to arrest organizers and break worker strikes and generally prevent democratic movements of all types from gaining power. Whether or not any individual officer is a good person is beside the point when the institution they serve punishes the poor to protect the wealthy.
Four Examples of Dexter’s Copaganda
1. The show portrays an absurd number of serial killers in Miami, creating the overall impression that it is a rampant problem. This culture of fear, which is also explicitly invoked in the show with statements like “if we don’t catch this guy soon, copycats are going to start up”, or “there will be mass panic if this gets in the news before we’ve caught him.” In reality,
“Serial killings are rare, accounting for less than 1% of total homicides. In the United States, serial killing was at its highest in the period between 1970 and 2000, when 70% of recorded serial murders occurred. Rates of serial killings have been on the decline since the 1990s.”
In contrast, according to The Guardian,
Police shooting deaths represented 5% of all gun homicides in 2020 and 2021, and total police killings represented nearly 5% of all homicides, according to the best available public data.
Because only a small number of deadly incidents each year receive wide media attention, many Americans may not realize that “a meaningful fraction of homicides in the US are police killings”, said Justin Feldman, a researcher at the Center for Policing Equity.
In other words, police across the U.S. kill more people than serial killers do each year and 1 in 20 homicides are committed by police. In addition, 2022 was the worst year on record for police killings, whereas rates of serial killings continue to decline.
2. To make Dexter sympathetic, his victims have to be irredeemable. The show rarely deals with complexity and his victims are almost entirely remorseless. One common trait of colonialism as described by Frantz Fanon is Manichaeism, or the tendency to see things only in black and white, good and evil. In the show, attempts at complexity are quickly flattened out so Dexter can keep killing and remain a sympathetic character. This ties in well with the first example because serial killers are generally identified as sociopaths, with Dexter being the only one who is “good,” while still feeling a deep need to kill people.
For example, in season seven Dexter meets a prisoner who seems to have turned a new leaf and is helping police find the bodies of several unrecovered victims. This leads Dexter to reflect briefly on the ability for people to change and turn their lives around (part of his own internal struggle). The next time Dexter interacts with the man, he jumps in front of a truck and Dexter realizes that he didn’t actually change, he hated being locked up and was just using the recovery effort as a chance to end his life. Simplistic morality like this pervades the show and induces the viewer to continue supporting Dexter in his crusade to kill “irredeemable” people. This creates the sense that most people who commit crimes are sociopaths and have no capacity to change or contribute positively to their communities.
3. Since we follow the goings on at the police station, of course we regularly see the humanity and complexity of police officers and their lives. This humanizes them in a way that the “criminals” in the show never get. This may be the most insidious form of copaganda in the show because it stems from a one-sided depiction of reality - police are humans and have human wants and needs - but it is also used to justify their misconduct. When the police rough up a suspect, it is made clear that they are doing it in search of justice for victims, with the best of intentions. We see that they sometimes make mistakes and commit abuses, but we empathize with them and understand what they're going through. They're only human after all.
There is another way of learning from this though. Since we recognize the humanity of police officers, we can recognize that they make mistakes and sometimes do wrong, whether with good or bad intentions, just like everyone else. As enforcers of the law with massive power over others, they must be held to a much higher standard than other people precisely because they are human with all the accompanying flaws.
4. At various points throughout the series, the higher ups engage in political dealing. At first this may seem like it is showing a nuanced picture of policing, both the good and the bad, but more often than not it sets up a detective to decry the politicking that is getting in the way of their duty to protect people. Navigating the politics is just one more burden for cops to bear. It also contrasts the beat cops and detectives with the higher up bureaucrats, making them look more just and good than the corrupt politicians.
This ended up being a longer piece than I thought, so next time I’ll talk about a few more examples of the copaganda in Dexter and then focus on how fake science is used to get convictions, including the death penalty.
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