To Dream the American Dream
Imagine the mixed, even confused, feelings of the average American in 1969. On July 20th, Neil Armstrong took his giant leap of a small step onto the surface of the moon in fulfillment of President Kennedy's 1962 dream. In seven short years the USA had achieved the seemingly impossible. How it must have seemed as if anything were possible.
Or it would have if not for the war in Vietnam, which reached its peak as far as American involvement was concerned, that same year.
At the same time as new worlds were being explored and new futures were being made possible, America found itself embroiled in one of the most futile, pointless and little understood wars in its history.
Also in 1969: the Stonewall riots, Chappaquiddick and Charles Manson. At the very moment when America showed the world that it probably could lead the world to a brighter future, it came apart at the seams.
But, America is, after all, built on a dream. It is no accident that "I have a dream" is one of the most inspiring and American of famous speeches.
As proof it would endure and continue to dream, in 1977, the year America and humanity lost the King of Rock 'n' Roll, two spacecraft left earth on a voyage of discovery the like of which had never been seen. Each carried a message to the stars, an invitation to any advanced civilization to make contact.
Imagine how it must feel to know that your country, such a dot of insignificance in the vastness of space, has opened its arms in welcome to unimaginably advanced civilizations. Whoever they are, we are ready to meet them as equals. That is the message the Voyager spacecraft carried with them as they passed, thirteen years later, out of the solar system.
Imagine how it must feel to live at a time when that dream appears to have been forgotten. As Agent Mulder breaks into the Arecibo Ionospheric Observatory he contemplates what once had been a possibility in the knowledge that the dream had come to nought. But little did he know then that there would come a day when not only would his country no longer be able to meet those advanced civilizations as equals, it wouldn't even be willing to meet fellow human beings if they came from without its borders.
Mulder is a dreamer who, in this opening episode of Season Two - Little Green Men - has doubts over the veracity of his dreams. Little could he know that his meeting with Scully in the underground car park of the Watergate Hotel, which evoked such a strong sense of paranoia, would, just over twenty years later, seem such a mundane occurrence, with 'Watergate' once again a byword of the media.
At this meeting, Mulder tells Scully the story of George Ellery Hale and how he came to build the largest telescope in the world. Apparently, Hale was visited by an elf one night while playing billiards. The elf instructed Hale on what he should do. The disillusioned Mulder does not believe in the elf. Like Hale, he is beginning to believe that what he has been chasing his entire adult life is a trick of the imagination. He is bored with the electronic surveillance job the FBI has him doing but, for a man without dreams, what else is there except mundanity? Like America itself, he has the dream but doesn't really believe it.
Scully, who so often rescues Mulder from his own worse self, reminds him that, whether the elf was imaginary or not, the telescope still got built.
These two agents are nothing less than the conundrum that is the United States of America. Take either one alone and you have nothing but, on the one hand, a dreamer who may be paranoid and delusional and, on the other, a boringly rational explanation of life, the universe and everything. Put them together and whole new worlds are met head-on, with wonder, speculation and, if not always understanding, at least acceptance that extreme possibilities are possible.
At the end of this episode, like so many others, Mulder has no tangible proof that he is right, that what he searches for is worth the life he has sacrificed. But he still has Scully and he still has himself. And surely this is the point. America has the ability to dream dreams that the rest of us can only wish for. If America stops dreaming, as it seems it has, what hope remains for the rest of us? If America no longer believes in itself then the world loses because, let's face it, we don't have the vast ridiculousness of the American dream.
It is very easy to laugh at the United States of America. They produce such dross. They seem to relish the lowest common denominator. They see themselves as the leaders of the free world and give us imbeciles and crooks.
And yet, they have a dream that we should all strive for. It may be that the American dream is little more than an elf popping in through the window while you're playing billiards. But if it is, so what?
The telescope still got built!
Or it would have if not for the war in Vietnam, which reached its peak as far as American involvement was concerned, that same year.
At the same time as new worlds were being explored and new futures were being made possible, America found itself embroiled in one of the most futile, pointless and little understood wars in its history.
Also in 1969: the Stonewall riots, Chappaquiddick and Charles Manson. At the very moment when America showed the world that it probably could lead the world to a brighter future, it came apart at the seams.
But, America is, after all, built on a dream. It is no accident that "I have a dream" is one of the most inspiring and American of famous speeches.
As proof it would endure and continue to dream, in 1977, the year America and humanity lost the King of Rock 'n' Roll, two spacecraft left earth on a voyage of discovery the like of which had never been seen. Each carried a message to the stars, an invitation to any advanced civilization to make contact.
Imagine how it must feel to know that your country, such a dot of insignificance in the vastness of space, has opened its arms in welcome to unimaginably advanced civilizations. Whoever they are, we are ready to meet them as equals. That is the message the Voyager spacecraft carried with them as they passed, thirteen years later, out of the solar system.
Imagine how it must feel to live at a time when that dream appears to have been forgotten. As Agent Mulder breaks into the Arecibo Ionospheric Observatory he contemplates what once had been a possibility in the knowledge that the dream had come to nought. But little did he know then that there would come a day when not only would his country no longer be able to meet those advanced civilizations as equals, it wouldn't even be willing to meet fellow human beings if they came from without its borders.
Mulder is a dreamer who, in this opening episode of Season Two - Little Green Men - has doubts over the veracity of his dreams. Little could he know that his meeting with Scully in the underground car park of the Watergate Hotel, which evoked such a strong sense of paranoia, would, just over twenty years later, seem such a mundane occurrence, with 'Watergate' once again a byword of the media.
At this meeting, Mulder tells Scully the story of George Ellery Hale and how he came to build the largest telescope in the world. Apparently, Hale was visited by an elf one night while playing billiards. The elf instructed Hale on what he should do. The disillusioned Mulder does not believe in the elf. Like Hale, he is beginning to believe that what he has been chasing his entire adult life is a trick of the imagination. He is bored with the electronic surveillance job the FBI has him doing but, for a man without dreams, what else is there except mundanity? Like America itself, he has the dream but doesn't really believe it.
Scully, who so often rescues Mulder from his own worse self, reminds him that, whether the elf was imaginary or not, the telescope still got built.
These two agents are nothing less than the conundrum that is the United States of America. Take either one alone and you have nothing but, on the one hand, a dreamer who may be paranoid and delusional and, on the other, a boringly rational explanation of life, the universe and everything. Put them together and whole new worlds are met head-on, with wonder, speculation and, if not always understanding, at least acceptance that extreme possibilities are possible.
At the end of this episode, like so many others, Mulder has no tangible proof that he is right, that what he searches for is worth the life he has sacrificed. But he still has Scully and he still has himself. And surely this is the point. America has the ability to dream dreams that the rest of us can only wish for. If America stops dreaming, as it seems it has, what hope remains for the rest of us? If America no longer believes in itself then the world loses because, let's face it, we don't have the vast ridiculousness of the American dream.
It is very easy to laugh at the United States of America. They produce such dross. They seem to relish the lowest common denominator. They see themselves as the leaders of the free world and give us imbeciles and crooks.
And yet, they have a dream that we should all strive for. It may be that the American dream is little more than an elf popping in through the window while you're playing billiards. But if it is, so what?
The telescope still got built!
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