In case you don't watch Dexter, he's a serial killer who kills murderers. He has a code to his kills. Dexter ensures that those he kills are in fact guilty of killing. This season he's started to question what he believes in and whether that includes a higher being. He has a young son, Harrison, and that also factors into his questions. He wants Harrison to have something to believe in so that he doesn't end up like Dexter. This season Dexter has met Brother Sam, an ex-convict turned minister. Conversations with Sam have made Dexter question and think about God's existence. This truly is shown when Harrison's appendix ruptures, and he is rushed into surgery. Dexter finds himself bargaining with God, telling him he's willing to do whatever as long as Harrison is okay. To add further intrigue to the religious theme of the season, the killers Dexter is tracking down are reenacting scenes from the book of Revelation with their victims' bodies. Here's a clip that looks into what's happening:
So let's start examining Professor Gellar. He's the killer who's behind the book of Revelation killings. He epitomizes a religious fanatic. Travis, shown in the clip, is in a way his apprentice. I found Gellar to be an example of mechanism. I'm still not sure where to place Travis in the scheme of Brummet's article; I think the later episodes in the season may be required before that decision can be made. Professor Gellar demonstrates belief in both tenets of Newtonian mechanics that Brummet provides: "1) reality is objective, that is to say it exists absolutely and apart from mind, the observer's intentions, or tools of observation, and 2) this objective reality is mechanical, causal, and necessary" (22). Gellar uses God to explain why people don't "apprehend objective reality directly in everyday experience" (22). To Gellar, God is like the gap between the knower and the known.
Professor Gellar also demonstrates the idealistic truth. As Brummet notes, "Having found the truth, the idealist cannot claim that truth as his/hers and cannot be held accountable for the consequences of the actualization of truth" (39). Professor Gellar doesn't believe he'll be held accountable because he believes that he is enacting God's will. When Travis is faced with a decision, one of which Professor Gellar disapproves, Professor Gellar chides him saying, "As long as you're willing to accept the consequences God gives you" ("A Horse of a Different Color"). In regard to ethics, Gellar believes that God will punish those who don't follow his will. As such the consequences of idealist truth "are charged to the account of Truth, not to the rhetor who is only an agency. This creates for the rhetor a waiver of responsibility at best. At worst...it provides the kind of 'rationalization' that fanatics feed on'" (Brummet 39). Professor Gellar is indeed in the at worst category of the fanatic.
Meanwhile I see Dexter as an example of the process of intersubjectivity. In a conversation with Brother Sam, Dexter tells him "You put your faith in God. I put mine in science." Sam responds saying, "You might say I can't prove that God exists. You can't prove he doesn't" ("A Horse of a Different Color"). This seems to show that "people get meaning from communication: 'Therefore meaning is not discovered in situations, but created by the rhetors" (Brummet 29). Dexter is taking meaning from this. He's starting to question what he believes in. His conversations with Sam are creating the meaning of his reality. In a way Sam is the rhetor who is helping Dexter create that meaning. "The point here is that wherever meanings are shared they are shared only because discourse has the power to induce people to participate in that shared reality. That same power may be used to change the reality" (31). Dexter has entered into that discourse because Sam has addressed questions to which Dexter is uncertain of the answer. The season has yet to determine Dexter's reality, but he seems open to changing his beliefs. Writer Scott Buck ends the above clip alluding to Dexter's spiritual journey, also demonstrating that Dexter is open to changing his truths of experience.
Whereas Gellar is an example of truth as it relates to the idealist, Dexter contrasts as an example of truth in intersubjectivity. "Here the rhetor still has the responsibility to discover his/her truth... But the rhetor also has the responsibility to recognize that this truth is his/her responsibility, and its actualization and consequences are his/her responsibility, for he/she is part of the context that determines in part how others will view reality" (39). Unlike Gellar, Dexter is concerned with his code, in a way his truth, a context of how he views reality. His responsibility is to make sure that people he kills are guilty of murder. Dexter believes the consequences are his responsibility. Unlike Gellar, Dexter won't use something else as an excuse.
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