Contradictions

Happened to sit with three colleagues this morning for a cuppa as one of them was giving a very intense account of a tv series entitled Dexter. It seems it's about a kind of vigilante serial killer and was highly thought of by the gentleman giving his account thereof. A bit disturbing, but the gentleman in question is a good egg (my colleague, not the eponymous Dexter) so we're all reasonably safe.

But all this begs the question as to the fascination of our culture with these murderous types. Actually I reckon it's simply because you can build a good story around them with plenty of thrills, and we all like a good tale, especially the sort that promotes a shiver or two. However, it's noticeable how often the excuse is given that the writers of this stuff are striving for insights of a psychological nature. There's one such claim on the cover of that rather good murder The Distant Echo I read the other week, something to the effect that it gives shivering insights into a killer's mind. Funnily enough I misread this initially as shimmering insights which I thought was a startlingly good phrase - and which I now claim copyright on for my own usage. After realising I'd got it wrong and feeling a bit let down by the cliché that replaced it, it struck me that for all her excellent qualities as a story-teller Val McDermid wasn't giving me any really shivering insights at all with regard to her killer (not in this novel anyway. I suppose her Wire in the Blood series might have something more going for it.) Then I realised that whatever insights there were actually were of the shimmering variety - there was a bit of the fake about them, a bit of the mirage. Something significant is hinted at, but in the end it's all rather down to earth and the usual boring reasons for someone acting in an extremely unpleasant way emerge.

The truth is that evil is all a bit dull. A bit like the bad guys in King Lear. At first there's a kind of attractiveness about them, especially Edmund, but after Act 3 he's not going anywhere and by the end of it all you get a bit fed-up with all the shenanigans involving him and the two ugly sisters.

In contrast, goodness is entirely fascinating. It just seems so utterly counter-intuitive.