To the sustained disbelief of my wife, I’ve recently watched all eleven series of The X-Files (they’re available on My4 / Channel 4 catch-up) from start to finish. Though not the films or the Millennium or Lone Gunmen spin-off series (because that would have been really insane).
When I started this, I had the vague idea I might be able to chart how attitudes to Roswell changed over the lifetime of the show. But after a while I realised that Roswell functioned as a foundational nostalgic axis, one which everything rotates around but never really approaches.
But as I got close to the end, I started to wonder more about what role mystery plays in The X-Files. Yet here too I ended up frustrated: the constraints of the show format meant that mystery was only useful as a tactical template. By which I mean: a long-concealed truth yields to a high-speed pincer attack by two research commandos, yet proof is then revealed to be fragile and revocable. Yada yada yada.
Ultimately, the show’s long story arcs aren’t about mystery per se, but are instead extended meditations on childbirth, technocracy, loyalty, betrayal, futility, etc. Conspiracy isn’t the show’s fabric, but the thread holding all the fragments together. It’s a patchwork, sure, but a very well-executed one.
What I came to see about the show is that, in the same way that William Gibson’s cyberpunk universe is locked into the 1980s, The X-Files are locked into the 1960s, with Mulder and Scully a Twilight Zone-coded reprise of John Steed and Emma Peel (the original Avengers cinematic universe), and with the Cigarette Smoking Man standing in for the Technocrats Who Know Best, Bless Them.
What, then, have I learnt about myself from The X-Files? Am I a Fox Mulder, using intuition and crazy hypotheses to battle bureaucracy and indifference to get to the unspeakable truth? Or a Dana Scully, trying to ground everything in science and evidence, but forever let down by the fragility of proof? Or a Walter Skinner, a well-meaning but ultimately ineffective bureaucrat? Or a Lone Gunman (pick any one of three), hacking around the edges but forever succumbing to conspiracy stories? Or their nemesis Morris Fletcher, gleefully putting out unprovable stories to mess with people’s minds? Or even a Reggie Murgatroid, inserting himself in a history he has no genuine part in?
I think it’s telling that I’ve been accused of being all of these over the years. But to be honest, these days I identify more with the various grey aliens that the Syndicate briefly tolerates: misinterpreted, misconstrued and then nonchalantly shot in the head.
Make of that what you will, conspiracy fans.
If you want to go down the meta-rabbit hole, you might find Jimmy Maher’s series of articles interesting: https://www.filfre.net/tag/x-files/?order=asc
He explores the interactions between the show and its cultural context, ending with what he sees as its influence on the modern prevalence of conspiracy theories, which I think he overestimates.
Channel 4 – have a far superior conspiracy film (Danish with subtitles) Riders of Justice.
https://www.channel4.com/programmes/riders-of-justice/on-demand/73811-001
I wondered how many conspiracies don’t start with a grave/a death.
I watched the early series as they came out, enjoying the “oh yes, read this in New Scientist last year” frisson. Almost persuaded myself that the best wrap would have been the end of S4, but then we’d have missed the Cancer Man “box of chocolates” monologue, the series high point,
The “conspiracy” might just be the encouragement of peremptory dismissal of X-Files matters as “Conspiracy Theories” !!
The FBI ? They actually have a team investigating UFO’s. (sorry, I refuse to use that new term, classic administrativese, “Unidentified Aerial Phenomenoa”.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/fbi-just-quietly-revealed-real-003040693.html
Any new developments on Voynich ? I would think, with the coming of multi-qubit quantum computers, the possibility to try an almost inconceivable number of guesses in a reasonably short time, might become a viable strategy.
John K: I too watched the original series up to about Series 5. It was fun watching them all again, with relatively few stinkers spoiling the overall vibe. Or maybe I’m just more forgiving in my old age. 😸
David M: sounds very interesting, I’ll give that a watch (when I can bear to look at a TV screen again). 😸
David B: interesting link, thanks! You can’t beat a good rabbit hole. 😀
Nick Pelling: I can well appreciate Karen’s reasoning. That being said from a known disbeliever’s perspective, a prude who wouldn’t know one X-File from another who places greater reliance upon REAL reality if such a thing still exists. Sadly, there be little evidence of it these days.
The X-Files is the FBI’s attempt to cover up the research they used to get to the bottom of Doctor Who.