The truth of love

Mulder is the great crusader after truth. But what is this truth for which he has sacrificed the life of a normal human being? What is this crusade into which he has enticed Scully, at the cost of her reputation, career and family? What is it they seek when they go running after the 'truth'?
Truth, by definition, is abstract. Like 'love'.
Well, not really.
There is a fundamental difference between 'love' and 'truth'.
It may be just as difficult to 'define' love as it is truth. The difference between the two is that we 'feel' love, it has physiological effects upon us, it is something worth dying for.
Truth is something always beyond our reach, love is something we cling to with all our being.
Truth is worth other people's lives, love is worth our own.
Is the truth for which Mulder and Scully search really worth Melissa Scully's life? Is it worth the lives of Robert Vallee or Jack Schaffer?
Scully's sister literally just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Because there are those who seek their own nefarious ends, she dies in place of Scully. Under what circumstance could love lead to such an outcome?
Truth is not only abstract, it is probably an illusion. There is nothing to find however hard one seeks. If there is one thing to be learned from watching the X Files, it is that truth is whatever you want it to be. Is it ever found? Does Mulder ever hold definitive proof in his hand? Is he even looking for what he says he is?
Aliens either do exist or they don't. They either have been here a very long time or they haven't. A Syndicate either is working with the aliens or it isn't. None of these things are the truth. They are either facts or not.
Conspiracies do not hold the monopoly on truth. They are either right or wrong.
Did Scully threaten Blaine Faulkner? He says she did. She denies it. Which is the truth? Neither.
One is the more accurate description of what happened and the evidence will prove which that is. Truth is not required.
Were Harold Lamb and Chrissy Giorgio abducted by aliens or Government agents? Which is the truth? Neither.
They either were abducted or they weren't. The evidence will prove the case. Unfortunately, the evidence is inconclusive and we are left wondering.
Nothing that happens in 'Jose Chung's "From Outer Space"' requires us to search for truth. Events either happened one way or they happened another and it isn't truth that will sort out the mess, only evidence.
It is a very postmodern thing to do, playing with perceptions of truth. As Derrida would have it, "There is nothing outside the text". He's wrong, of course. And he's wrong in the same way Mulder is ultimately wrong. The truth is not out there. The 'truth' isn't anywhere. Not even in there.
All the versions of reality presented in this episode are subjectively real and objectively unverifiable. The truth will prove nothing.
Postmodernism was the product of an age of discontent, disillusionment and transition. In an effort to undermine the Victorians, reality itself was sacrificed. The realism of Victorian literature imposed ideals and gender inequality. But, like Obamacare, rather than fixing the imperfections it had to be repealed and replaced wholesale.
So we get 'Jose Chung’s', in which all apparently could be the truth and none. But all it really does is what any great work of literature does, it shows ourselves to ourselves. In this sense, it is accurate and meaningful in a way that would have the postmodernist spitting feathers. It is as 'realist' as anything written by Elizabeth Gaskell or George Eliot. Read Elizabeth Gaskell's 'North and South' and explain the ending. It is open to every bit as much interpretation as 'Jose Chung's "From Outer Space"'.
There is a story at the heart of this episode that is so real it hurts. The story of Harold and Chrissy.
They are, in a sense, truly, star-crossed lovers, every bit as much as in that classic tragedy, the story of Running Bear and Little White Dove.
Harold doesn't seek some imagined truth. He loses his love to truth. Truth destroys love. Love is fictional, in the sense of being a story of life. It might be said that Harold is a fool for love, but what better thing to be a fool of?
Love is what brings us together, truth keeps us apart.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nothing more than what we are

What makes a person who they are? The X Files asked this question back in Season One’s ‘ Ice ’ when Richter announced, “We’re not … who … we are.” It has continued to ask this question through Mulder and Scully, both of whom have had plenty of cause to question just who they are, who they would like to be, and whether they like being who they appear to be. Mulder’s crisis of faith has forced him to face this question, as Scully has had to face it after meeting Emily and the choices she felt she needed to make for ‘her’ child. All of us are faced with this question, probably more often than we know. In a toxic relationship, we must ask ourselves if we wish to be the person we seemed forced to be? In a job that makes us unhappy, we must ask if we wish to force ourselves to be someone we’d prefer not to be? Returning home after many years away, we must ask ourselves if we are the person remembered by those who stayed or someone who has grown beyond what they can know? Who is Alex K...
Read more

Sky Commander Winky wrote this script!

Let’s get something straight right away. I hate this episode. But, then, I hate William! It’s not the baby’s fault. He’s probably as adorable as Scully thinks him. I hate what he did to my all-time favourite TV character. I hate that he reduced her to, well - dare I say it? - a mother. I hope you women out there – if there are any who read this blog – don’t misunderstand me. I have nothing against motherhood. Or fatherhood, for that matter. My wife and I have two of the most beautiful, wonderful, gush gush children imaginable. Only in the context of the X Files, and specifically, Scully, do I hate the baby. I am gloriously happy for her as a human being. She had previously lamented her inability to have children in ‘ Home ’ and ‘ Emily ’, for instance. As a person, she is blessed by the birth of William. But, Scully isn’t a person, is she? She’s a character in a TV show. Not just any character, mind, oh no. She’s a rational female character whose job it is to rationalize the ...
Read more

Empedocles

According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Empedocles “has been regarded variously as a materialist physicist, a shamanic magician, a mystical theologian, a healer, a democratic politician, a living god, and a fraud.” Evidently not a “ stable genius ”, then, and, very likely, someone who would utilise Twitter to his own aggrandizement, but, nevertheless, someone who is regarded as “one of the most important of the philosophers working before Socrates ”, to quote, once again, the IEP. Empedocles it was who gave us the perennially popular idea of the four elements: earth, air, fire and water. Out of these four elements all things stem. According to Empedocles, all that exists is some mixture of these four, with the whole being something other than its constituents, while they, in turn, retain their own individual nature. Just think on that for a moment. Before Socrates – that is, before Athens and all that it gifted to the political, philosophical and literary world – ...
Read more