The X-Files

By Theresa L. Geller

Premiering in 1993 on FOX Network, The X-Files followed the investigations of two FBI special agents, Fox Mulder and Dr. Dana Scully as they pursued the supernatural, the bizarre, and the alien, as well as the government conspiracies at work to conceal the truth of their existence. For nine seasons, Chris Carter’s series broke new ground in complex narrative television by integrating science fiction and horror with the forensic investigation of the detective genre. Shaped by the conspiracy films of the 1970s, the series had the ability to comment on the contemporary political climate one week and poke fun at its own self-seriousness the next. Responding to its cinematic visual style, haunting score, complex and nuanced writing, witty dialog, and the exceptional acting of David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, who elevated the show with their chemistry, fans embraced The X-Files, making it one of the most beloved cult television series to this day.

The aim of this book is to provide the reader with several points of entry into the television series, with social, cultural, and political analyses framed by the examination of the show’s many overlapping genres. Divided into chapters highlighting the episodic standalones known as the “monster-of-the-week” (MOTW) and the serial mythology or “mytharc,” the first section of the book explores the ways the MOTWs represented social differences in stories of fantastic, supernatural beings both strange and estranged. Through comparative analyses and detailed discussions of individual episodes, it becomes clear that the MOTWs were less concerned with the alien than with alienation, using the figure of the “monster” to focus on a range of ethnic, racial, and social outsiders. The latter half of the book turns to the serialized mythology, examining both the arc of the alien conspiracy as well as the fan-driven relationship between Mulder and Scully. While the romance subplot was powered in part by the show’s fans, the alien-government conspiracy mythology was Carter’s unique vision. This volume argues that The X-Files was a milestone because it employed the generic tropes of science fiction to call our attention to contemporary global politics and the history behind them. Specifically, Theresa Geller maps the ways the series used the mytharc not to predict the future, but to unbury the violence and injustice of our own past.

With its return to television as an “event series” in 2016, this volume offers a timely assessment of the show’s cultural relevance and social significance. Fans of the show, as well as readers interested in cultural studies, genre criticism, race and ethnicity, fan studies, social commentary, and gender studies will appreciate this insightful examination of the series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wayne State University Press
• Release date: Dec 5, 2016
• ISBN: 9780814339435

Book preview

TV Milestones

Series Editors

Barry Keith Grant

Brock University

Jeannette Sloniowski

Brock University

TV Milestones is part of the Contemporary Approaches to Film and Media Series.

A complete listing of the books in this series can be found online at wsupress.wayne.edu

General Editor

Barry Keith Grant

Brock University

Advisory Editors

Robert J. Burgoyne

University of St. Andrews

Caren J. Deming

University of Arizona

Patricia B. Erens

School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Peter X. Feng

University of Delaware

Lucy Fischer

University of Pittsburgh

Frances Gateward

California State University, Northridge

Tom Gunning

University of Chicago

Thomas Leitch

University of Delaware

Walter Metz

Southern Illinois University

© 2016 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without formal permission. Manufactured in the United States of America.

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ISBN 978-0-8143-3942-8 (paperback); ISBN 978-0-8143-3943-5 (ebook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016952472

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Memory, like fire, is radiant and immutable while history serves only those who seek to control it

(Chris Carter, The Blessing Way, 3:1).

For John Crawford III, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Mya Hall, Jonathan Ferrell, Ranisha McBride, Corey Jones, Laquan McDonald, Cedrick Chatman, Oscar Grant III, Alexia Christian, Natasha McKenna, and for so many others for whom the search for answers—and for justice—continues.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster, or The Beginning (Redux)

1.El Mundo Gira, or Alien in the True Sense of the Word: Otherness and the Social Detective

2.Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps): The Powers of TV Horror

3.Signs and Wonders: Alien Conspiracy as Historical Allegory

4.Irresistible: Shipping, Shape-Shifting, and the Sexual Politics of Cult TV

Conclusion: Requiem: Ten Thirteen’s (Re)Invention of Quality Television

Notes

Bibliography

Index

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Like The X-Files itself, this book is many, many seasons in the making. Indeed, it is my own sort of reboot of a project I began almost two decades ago while in graduate school at Rutgers University. It premiered as a talk titled The Alien Bodies and Other Worlds of The X-Files for the Rutgers Undergraduate English Association in September 1998. This talk turned out to be one of the best moments of my graduate career for many reasons. One key reason was that it was an event I shared with my cohort. I want to thank my fellow graduate students at Rutgers for providing me a community of brilliant and committed feminist scholars who challenged me to think critically and imaginatively, including Nat Hurley and Jennifer Worley. I am especially indebted to Jane K. Elliott, who also presented her research on the series with me at Rutgers; her breathtaking analysis of Dana Scully continues to shape my thinking about gender and television to this day. To Jenny I owe special thanks for being the brash, outspoken, wonderful friend she is—she helped change my life for the better the night I gave this paper.

The second season of this project came about in a graduate seminar with Brent Hayes Edwards, who rightly informed me that these ideas were better suited for a book. It took me over a decade to finally act on his advice, for which I am entirely grateful, as well as for his continued support throughout the years. I would also like to thank Elizabeth Grosz and Richard Koszarski for reading preliminary versions of this research.

Later seasons of this research were marked by my move to Iowa, where I joined the faculty at Grinnell College. I want to thank students who helped me think about these ideas over the years, especially Anna M. Banker, Brian Buckley, and Joe Hiller. I would also like to thank my colleagues for their support through difficult times: Vance Byrd, Javier Samper Vendrell, Heather Lobban-Viravong, Todd Armstrong, Tolya Vishevsky, Eliza Willis, and Janet Seiz.

I owe a debt of gratitude to the community of media scholars who have inspired and supported my scholarship, including (but not limited to) Caetlin Benson-Allott, Patricia White, Nick Davis, Pamela Robertson Wojcik, Chris Holmlund, and Katherine Bond Stockton. I am especially thankful for my summer at the School for Criticism and Theory at Cornell, funded by a research grant provided by Grinnell College. I want to thank Amy Villarejo for her transformative seminar, and a special thanks goes to my Ithaca comrades, Patrick Flanery and Andrew van der Vlies, whose kindness and support for this project have meant so much to me. I am also endlessly grateful to Amelia Ranche, Elizabeth Siahaan, and Kathryn Silva for their friendship and encouragement over the years. Special thanks to Annie Martin at Wayne State University Press for her perfect balance of honesty and encouragement to help me see this through to the end. I am entirely indebted to Jess Issacharoff for her astute and encouraging readings of drafts of the book—you are truly a good friend.

Lastly, there is an almost supernatural backstory to my history with The X-Files—one I cannot do justice to here. Suffice it to say, I met my own one in five billion while writing that first talk back at Rutgers, which became our first date (thanks to Jenny). I cannot help but forever associate The X-Files with the beginning of a "folie à deux" that has been a dreamland for going on two decades. To David, I am endlessly grateful for all things.

Introduction

Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster, or The Beginning (Redux)

As of January 2016, the television phenomenon returned: The X-Files redux. Thanks to the FOX network’s reboot of the multi-award-winning series, The X-Files (1993–2002), the groundbreaking series returned to the airways, with most of its original talent. Chris Carter brought his original brainchild back to life in a six-episode event series, with David Duchovny reprising his role as (former) FBI Special Agent Fox Spooky Mulder, of the X-Files Division, and Gillian Anderson returning to her Emmy-winning role as Special Agent Dr. Dana Scully, assigned to debunk his findings, only to quickly become his partner, intimate ally, and, eventually, his one in five billion (Folie à Deux, 5:19). To the relief of many fans, other original characters returned too, such as Mitch Pileggi as Assistant Director Walter Skinner, Scully’s mother (Sheila Larkin), and the reviled Cigarette Smoking Man, played with brilliant menace by William B. Davis. Most of the series’ production team, Ten Thirteen, was back as well, with Carter writing and directing three of the episodes, and other alums, including Glen Morgan, James Wong, and Mark Snow, also contributing. When the reboot was announced, Internet fan sites had a near meltdown, generating a slew of web content about the series’ return, while related conventions buzzed with excitement; Carter even premiered the first episode at New York Comic Con 2015. That Carter acknowledged the centrality of the show’s fans in this way, many of whom populated the online communities that buoyed the series from its very beginnings, taking to the rapidly expanding forum of the World Wide Web to create some of the earliest digital television fansites, is hardly surprising, as he was one of the first, if not the first, to turn to the Internet and its fan cultures as a resource for the success of the show.

While other shows quietly fade into obscurity with their inevitable cancellation, this is not at all the case for The X-Files. In 2013, for instance, the Los Angeles Times Hero Complex Film Festival featured a fan choice screening to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the series, with Chris Carter joining the ranks of Guillermo del Toro and Roland Emmerich as guests of the festival; a week later, the Art Directors Guild Film Society and The American Cinematheque hosted a celebration of the production design of the series. The persistent accolades for the series reflect the widely shared opinion that, "with The X-Files, Chris Carter created the template for the modern science-fiction series and influenced the direction of serialized storytelling on television."¹ With The X-Files, television programming was substantially altered, turning toward serial mythology, often with expressionistic visuals, which is now the norm in TV drama. The X-Files strove for cinematic television in its production values, as recognized by the Art Director’s Guild and The American Cinematheque—notably, film societies. As Vince Gilligan, who cut his creative teeth as a member of Ten Thirteen and went on to create one of the most brilliant examples of serialized television to date, Breaking Bad (AMC, 2008–13), assesses: "to the best of my knowledge, [The X-Files] was the first show that truly approached the look of the TV show itself in terms of cinema, in terms of, ‘How much of the story can we tell visually?’ ‘How much can we make this look like not just a movie but a really wonderfully shot movie?’"² It should not be surprising that Carter is included with big screen phenoms like Emmerich and del Toro, as the series’ influence transcended television, impacting independent filmmaking and Hollywood fare alike.³

Entertainment Weekly recently ranked The X-Files among the top five all-time cult TV series; moreover, the show gave rise to a new wave of cult television, with television auteurs openly acknowledging The X-Files as a direct influence on their own TV milestones, including J. J. Abrams, Joss Whedon, Russell T. Davies, Bryan Fuller, and Ryan Murphy. While their own and other cult series helped salve the wound of The X-Files’ absence, the show sustained its own postcancellation life through major films (the first premiered while the show was still on the air), the "The X-Files Season 10" comic book series,⁴ and a recent anthology series of fiction edited by horror writer Jonathan Maberry.⁵ The show’s fans, known as x-philes, emerged early on as constitutive of the series as Mulder’s I Want to Believe poster and cell phones, and their x-philia sustains these various ancillary media. X-philes maintain their passion for the series in chat rooms, blogs, and other platforms, which made the reboot nearly a foregone conclusion—particularly on the heels of other exemplary cult series like 24 (FOX, 2001–10, 2014) and Twin Peaks (ABC, 1990–91; 2017) returning to TV. The show has even added millennials to its fanbase, for whom newer media routes into the show have emerged, like actor and comedian Kumail Nanjiani’s weekly podcast that anatomizes individual episodes, "The X-Files Files; Nanjiani was subsequently cast in the third episode of the event series, Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster."

Such a title, Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster, signals all that made the series a milestone in television—its revitalization of the horror genre for TV, its postmodern winking self-awareness, its charismatic leads, and foundationally, the intrigue that arises when the agents meet the unexpected, the unusual, and the bizarre. Indeed, fans have been saying this and more for years; one of the extraordinary characteristics of the series is that it inspired fans to think, write, and speak about the show’s appeal, taking to the Internet early on—in the series and in the history of the Internet itself—to publicly declare their allegiance to the show. Just a small sampling from IMDb demonstrates the far reach of The X-Files, and an impressively eloquent consensus about what made the show a landmark in TV history. From a fan in Israel, in a post titled, The most intricately perfect work of art:

I find it hard to comment on The X-Files because it simply transcends words. It’s an intelligent masterpiece, an epos of beautifully complicated scenarios, plots and characters. Eruditely taking on the grayest of areas, confronting those things under your bed and inside your closet