Word: dexterously
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...problem, in other words, is with Dexter's ideas, not its gore. This is disturbing if you'd rather control your own remote, thank you very much. But at least it's refreshing. TV-decency campaigns are only nominally about nipples, blood and curses. Ultimately, they're about the messages that "our children"--read: other people's children--are exposed...
...look at Dexter's ideas. Dexter, not unlike 24's Jack Bauer, is a vigilante. But vigilantism, whether you cheer or boo it, is by definition driven by morality. Dexter's first victim is a man who has been killing young boys. "Kids," Dexter sneers, disgusted. "I could never do that...
...Dexter is also an exploration of what morality is. Is Dexter truly a moral person or an animal who's learned a sophisticated trick? "People fake a lot of human interactions," he says, "but I feel like I fake them all. And I fake them very well." Unlike CSI, Dexter is informed by a philosophical question: whether humanity is more than the sum of one's outward actions...
...kids? And whose? A 6-year-old? Of course not. But some teens are ready to empathize with killers in novels like Crime and Punishment and The Stranger--assigned by high schools, which have greater coercive power than even Viacom does. Others are barely ready for young-adult fiction. Dexter is not The Stranger, but it's not Saw either. Decency protests, however, don't make such distinctions. Killers are killers. One slice fits...
...what most bothers parents today is the pop-culture ambush: the dirty ad in a football game, the gruesome trailer at a family comedy, the R-rated movie on a plane. The responsible answer is respect for context from entertainment megacorporations and more information for audiences. With Dexter, which carries a "mature themes" advisory before each episode, everyone knows what's coming. But to the PTC, as Winter says, "airing something more explicit with a better warning" is not enough...