The Kilar Who Saves

Christopher Lee was a vampire. Robert Pattinson was what you get when Barbara Cartland decides to write for Hammer House of Horrors. Nothing is sacred to the beating heart of a love-lorn teenager.

Not that vampires were ever sacred, of course. Nor has their myth ever been static, so we can't quite judge Stephenie Meyer of usurpation. Dammit!

(Actually, if you've never read the Twilight Saga, it is recommended as a romping good read.)

Typical of the X Files to have its cake as it's eating it. The Unholy Trinity are nasty 'vampires' that actually kill for their blood, while Perrey Reeves plays one of the sexiest characters ever to appear on the show.

The myth of the vampire, in one form or another, has been around for much of human history. Babylon had its Ekimmu and Ancient Greece had the Keres, Rome its Strix and the Aztecs had Cihuateteo.

Even among these four examples, not all were undead creatures of the night - the Keres, for instance, were death spirits, or daimones, who fed on the blood of those fallen in battle, and the Strix was a bird, in a reversal of the more modern tradition, that could turn into a woman to seduce a man. The vampire myth is both very old and very plastic.

In its earlier manifestations, the myth seems to stem from a fear of death and disease. With the spread of Christianity it becomes more symbolic if a fate worse than death - the loss of salvation and the damning of the soul. And now, in an age where the soul is a forgotten idea, the vampire is who we are and what we do - soulless creatures in a soulless world, each feeding off the other, loving our damnation to the hilt.

Mulder has lost his soul, the one thing that has saved him "a thousand times over", kept him honest, made him a "whole person" (cf. The X Files: Fight the Future, 1998). Into the void, enter Kristen Kilar - if ever there was an apple dangling from the tree seductive enough to tempt even the most righteous soul!

But, of course, Mulder is anything but righteous, right now. He is vulnerable, no longer sleeps, and walks alone through this world of the lost. And, as Kristen reminds him, he has "lost someone. Not a lover, a friend." More than a friend, his very soul, if only he knew it.

In a way, this whole season so far has been working up to this moment; for Mulder to decide in which direction he will go. He has lost everything important to him, he has literally been wading through shit at work (cf. The Host) and now he is presented with the most enticing of sins, in the form of Kristen Kilar. If this is his choice, then he chooses his own damnation.

But, in reality, Mulder is already halfway-damned. He has abdicated the normal responsibilities of life and, instead, hides away in the basement chasing monsters no one else believes in. As noted above, it isn't himself that is honest, it is Scully who keeps him honest. And Mulder eats of the forbidden fruit that Kristen offers him. And, indeed, it is Kristen - in the woman's role usually occupied by Scully - who destroys the evil vampires, not Mulder.

Mulder has a long journey ahead of him and a lot yet to learn. The lessons will be presented to him in the forms that such life-enhancing teachings have always been presented to those human beings who seek after meaning and purpose - in this instance, the ageless vampire myth.
Such journeys are perilous and should not be undertaken alone. Frodo has Gandalf the Wizard, Luke has Obi Wan Kenobi and Mulder has Scully. It is precisely because she has been taken away at a time before Mulder is able to clearly see the road he must follow that he is so easily tempted, and falls so quickly for the apparent comfort of a woman's arms. Fortunate is he indeed that she has her own path to follow, the path of sacrifice for the sake of others.