As Sir Isaac Newton said in 1675, "If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." In other words, present context exists because of its connection to the past. Perhaps one of the more interesting shoulders to stand on, or should I say sit on, is your couch. Look forward. What do you see? More probable than not, you’re staring into the screen of a television set. There is seemingly endless content inside this magic box, but have you ever thought about what exactly the content is? How many things have filled your eyes but not your brain? It’s amazing how much television content has shifted while themes, such as heroism, have remained constant. We are growing up in a world of complexity, and that’s why the complex anti-hero, the person that does bad things for the right reasons, has made its appearance in numerous hit T.V shows like Showtime’s Dexter. I have found that as society has molded itself, so have our human perceptions of each other. Slowly but surely, there was a shift in values. The T.V we are exposed to every day has targeted this shift. Although the themes remain timeless, the way they are portrayed are distinct, original, and complex – an example being the use of the anti-hero.   

Even before the anti-hero even came onto screen, T.V has been changing and emphasizing our perspectives. The things that surround us, shape us. They shape our values, our actions, and our lifestyles. Have you ever noticed how you start to say the same things as the people you hang out with? Now think about how many people say, “Netflix is my best friend.” If that is what people surround themselves with, it must tamper with their thoughts and actions. Look at twenty-one-year-old Mark Howe, Dexter enthusiast, who was found guilty for killing his mother (Ramsland). Shortly after searching “Dexter’s kill knife” and "what does a sociopath need to do to blend seamlessly with society?", Howe proceeded to stab his sleeping mother fifty-six times. Similarly, Jessica Lopez strangled another woman and claimed that “Dexter had spoken directly to me [Lopez].” Furthermore, she wrote that the show Dexter made the gruesome work look easy along with her statement, "I made a few attempts to chop her up like Dexter with Masters power tools, but I was afraid it was too loud, and it sucked at cutting flesh" (Ramsland). Dexter’s material had caused a shift in them; however, millions of people have watched this show and if everyone reacted the way these individuals did, we’d be chaos. 

Stanton E. Samenow (Ph.D.) sides with the millions that don’t take violent action to prove the “absurdity” of the thesis that what a person watches influences them to become violent. Nevertheless, he still claimed that “there is such a thing as a copycat crime… For every person who might fantasize about, then replicate the crime, millions of people who saw the very same thing reject it, are repulsed by it, and never would be tempted to enact what they watched” (Samenow). Even though the claim that media causes violence is controversial and musty, it is undeniable that the Dexter’s performance influenced those real-life killings. A fictional show laid out a blueprint in which an inspired person acted on. Parallelly, one of the latest “must see” T.V shows, 13 Reasons Why, was linked to be the reason 7 students in the same Colorado school district committed suicide (Brown). They claimed the show “romanticized” the subject. I watched the show and its dark content, just as Dexter did, swung my mood. If a suicidal person or a violent psychopath were to have their mood swung based on the content of these shows, their capacity of persuasion may be more catastrophic. 

Most people relate in a more common manner: mood swings, new self-realizations, and perspective shifts. The anti-hero has keyed in on how to do that today, but the anti-hero wasn’t always so popular. The character was evolved from the basic heroes we’ve always had. We begin to see the classic idea of a hero in television with 1933s Superman. While many movies have been made on the subject, take a look at Superman II (1980), and Man of Steel (2013). Both were given a “metascore”, a critical rating based on the opinion of the world's most respected critics. Superman II earned an 87/100 with the lowest score being 80, whereas the more current Man of Steel dragged in an overall 55/100 with the lowest score being 37. Janet Mislin of the New York Times explained Superman II as “classy”, and most importantly, “full of tricks.” On the other hand, Man of Steel was explained as “blahness” with “transformers-grade skyscrapers snapping and bloodless catastrophe” by Ann Hornaday of the Washington Post. In the time between these two movies, the idea behind both films didn’t change; we did. Society has gained enough brain-power to kill their heroes. We’ve exhausted the century year old mule of our society until it finally collapsed, and the humane thing to do would be to put it out of its misery - to end an unrealistic idea. Everyone bleeds, so why make our heroes, the stepping stone to society, a “bloodless catastrophe?”

Ideas of classic heroes, like Superman, have been expended. Over time movie creators poked out people’s eyes with big unrealistic fighting scenes with bright flashes and an annoying amount of camera angle shifts (blahness), hoping the audience’s resulting blurred vision would distract them from realizing that “Man of Steel” is still the same movie as “Superman II”. It didn’t. Just because Superman flips his dirty underwear inside out and puts it back on doesn’t make it new underwear. In fact, that's pretty frowned upon. Superman, the Man of Steel, may be faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, but this was in the 1930’s comics. Our buildings have since gotten taller, our trains have gotten faster, and we have more guns and bullets than we know what to do with. We have even discovered ways to create metals stronger than steel. Superman has torn off his smelly old tights and replaced them with a lab coat. Clark Kent goes by Dexter Morgan now. 

An evident transformation of even our classic heroes has taken place with record-breaking box office movies like The Avengers: Civil War where our unflawed heroes finally get their hands dirty. The character Vision, for example, friendly-fires his laser vision during the heroes’ civil war. The beam hits Rhodey (War Machine), leaving him paralyzed. When asked how that mistake was made, Vision responds, “I became distracted,” to which Tony replies “I didn't think that was possible.” Neither did we. For the first time, the plot made it clear that people get hurt and innocent people die because of our hero’s actions. Another event that took place in the previous movie - Avengers: Age of Ultron – left the entire city of Sokovia uplifted into the atmosphere with the intentions of being meteorited back into Earth’s surface to cause global extinction; how could that possibly be a bloodless catastrophe? For once, we want vengeance on our Avengers. As a result, a virus has taken hold and our heroes have taken sides… against each other. It’s a battle of the anti-heroes.

While our classic heroes have shifted more to our liking, they still aren’t as realistic because not many people can transform into a giant green monster (yet). Perfect cannot keep up in an imperfect world. So instead of praying for our favorite Kryptonian to appear, a new mold of heroism has morphed itself around the common man. A common man that can be found not millenniums away, but maybe a couple miles down the street smoking a cigarette and reading the paper. This is why the groundbreaking anti-heroes Dexter Morgan of Dexter and Walter White of Breaking Bad have stormed the screen. They are relatable. Now you may not think you can relate to a crystal-meth kingpin or a psychotic killer, but you can – I promise.       

Although most of us haven’t killed – Dexter is a hero and a common man. In The Psychology of Dexter, Assistant Professors of Social Psychology at Oklahoma State University, Melissa Burkley, PhD and Edward Burkley, PhD, found Joseph Campbell’s hero archetype we see in most of our stories.  Of the shadow, hero, and wise old man patterns, the shadow archetype is what projects Dexter to #84 of top T.V shows. Dexter’s “Dark Passenger” – his need to kill – is a shadow found within us all. “Although most of us do not struggle with issues of the same magnitude as Dexter, we all have felt the tension between doing what we want to do— eating that high-calorie dessert, flirting with someone other than your spouse— and doing what is right— sticking to your diet, staying faithful to your partner” (Burkley). Killing people is of a different degree, but the internal struggle is the same and watching Dexter acts as a release of that tension. Good people have their bad habits. Dexter Morgan is not a bad guy. In fact, many times throughout the show he is related to heroes like Superman as a result of containing these hero archetypes. In season 2 episode 5, evidence could lead to Dexter’s capture is found and he alludes to it as “kryptonite. If it’s traced back to me [Dexter], that I’ll be helpless” (The Dark Defender, 2-5). Similarly, he has to come up with excuses as to why he vanishes “at all hours in the night like Clark fucking Kent” (Waiting to Exhale 2-2). The audience is able to draw a clear connection between Dexter’s obvious heroic qualities while still relating to his humanity – his “Dark Passenger”. We’ve all heard the phrase “I’m only human” after someone makes a mistake because that is a key to our definition as humans: flaws. We idolize the fact that he is relatable and using even the worst parts of himself to do good. Few people, if any, grow up wanting to be a garbage man, but someone must take out the trash. 

Even though Dexter seems to be a more clear-cut hero with the archetypes, Breaking Bad’s Walter White is a hero too. To represents our “shadow” side, Walt progressively gets more evil throughout the show – becoming the “one who knocks”. He even switches the reasoning for his crimes from doing it for his family to doing it because he liked it, as he claims in the series finale. Like Dexter and Walter White, an anti-hero covers a spectrum of everything we are, and everything we aren’t supposed to be. While most of us aren’t killers, David Buss wrote a book called “The Murderer Next Door: Why the Mind is Designed to Kill” that found not only do more than 80% of both sexes fantasize about killing people, but — if the conditions of jealousy, rage, self-defense, and greed are met — people do kill. The anti-hero uses the greatest parts (i.e. White’s love for family) and the guilty pleasures (i.e. murder) of common humanity to complete a task. Task that make one think Walter White is a legend. “Heisenberg’s” intense villain-like actions only increased our love for him with the ratings skyrocketing 442% before his death in the final episode (Hibberd). He isn't immortal, he dies just like everyone else. Most importantly, we see him succeed - his family does not continue their lives in poverty – just as Dexter killed for the “greater good”. Even though Walter broke “bad”, he leaves his imprint on society for the right reasons. Yes, Superman also leaves an imprint on society, but it’s more of an imprint of hurling a body through multiple skyscrapers, causing them to collapse. Not many of us can relate to being rocketed through concrete and steel at hundreds of miles-per-hour. If they could, I doubt they’d be reading this.
