I’m enjoying the new mini-series from Fox (three episodes aired so far, three more announced) and I’m glad that there will be a whole new session the next year. But when I look at “The X-Files” show I can’t help but wonder: how many conspiracies can be packed inside a script?
Don’t get me wrong, I respect the work of Chris Carter and all the other people involved in the show. I also admire the loyal fans that waited so long (the movie was seven years ago and the regular series ended in 2002) and pushed so hard to get Mulder and Scully back on the little screen. But the connection between the Fox network, the right-wing push on the media and the dark atmosphere of the X-Files is right here.
I have this feeling, a mix of joy from seeing again a beloved serial, the distress about what happened in the world since 2002 and the nitty-gritty feeling of being softly manipulated. Yes, manipulated. After a full decade of Tea-party rhetorics, anti-Obama hard cases and a ton of bullsh*t yelled 24/7 from FOX News and the like I see shadows everywhere, even in TV serial.
The X-Files was always about cover-up, built upon the theorem that “some parts” of the federal government was suppressing evidences and everything else about the aliens (and any other thing outside the usual). The second layer of the story was about the direct actions of the aliens, busy in some sort of hidden exchange with the aforementioned “parts” of the government in order to get genetic material and experimental data. Mulder was an iconic figure of a maverick, a modern Don Quijote ready to attack alien-powered windmills in the country while Scully was there to show how a rational (and good) agent-scientist (*) could be slowly turned in a true believer.
[Watch out, spoiler here! Don’t tell me that I’ve not warned you.]
The not-so-subtle change of 2016 is the stunning revelation / realization that the aliens are not the prime mover in the cover-up; everything is in the hands of the bad guys, including a not-so-distant future where everybody will be under the toe of an elite. Sound familiar? Are you watching Fox news too?
[End of the spoiler zone]
So, here we are again. Watching Mulder and Scully going forward, with the The Smoking Man in the darkness and all the usual buzz. We will have fun, we will raise an eyebrow (episode three? What the Hell was that?), we will run amok for the hypothesis of a dark future just around the corner.
(*) Just a note, how many degrees hold agent Scully? She knows basically everything about any field of science. 🙂
Angelo Benuzzi 