ABSTRACT
The Showtime series Dexter is analyzed by looking at how the audience is made to feel guilty pleasure through an ambivalent depiction of a serial killer. Since the main character is only supposed to kill people who the legal system fails to prosecute, we see that the underlying fantasy is driven by a lost faith in our modern liberal democratic institutions. Vigilante justice is therefore presented as a just response to a failed social order, which remains the only game in town. Furthermore, through the use of Dexter's narrative voice-over, the audience is made complicit as a doubled, ironic representation is produced. As we have seen in the previous prestige shows examined thus far, this turn to irony matches the narcissistic centrist's ambivalent relation to power and capital.
