Change of Direction
There is just no escaping the realisation that life is little more than one long trip down a back road leading nowhere, accompanied by people who find their purpose in playing with furniture and finding delight in ignoring their ‘buts’.
If that isn’t enough to rip out your soul and squeeze the life from it like the juice from a week old mouldy blood orange, there’s the ‘teamwork seminar’, a torture worthy of the Inquisition.
In ‘Herrenvolk’, Season Four’s opener, Jeremiah Smith corrected Mulder’s understanding of the alien’s intentions. “You have to understand something,” Smith tells Mulder.
Stonecypher’s gleefully recounted anecdote is a shout-out to the CSM’s conversation with Jeremiah Smith in ‘Talitha Cumi’. CSM, angrily, asks Smith, “Who are you to give them hope?”
Secondly, the ‘teamwork seminar’ serves to identify the ‘non-team player’ - though it hardly seems necessary to send Mulder to a seminar to discover he might not be a team-player. It is doubtful that this is the reason Mulder is being sent along with Kinsley and Stonecypher. The authority that would have hegemony must punish any who stand outside the team. A Mulder will always be a far greater danger to authority than vice versa.
When Dana Scully was first appointed to work with Agent Fox Mulder it was because she was seen as an up-and-coming Agent of the Bureau, someone with the intelligence, objectivity and loyalty to be able to report on and ‘debunk’ the X Files. Never for a moment did Division Chief Scott Blevins ever think that Scully would become as much a part of the X Files as Mulder himself. This is Mulder’s threat, that others might learn to see as he sees, become imbued with his passion for truth, enlist in his fight against all that is alien to the dignity of the human being.
Mulder holds the power to destroy the Syndicate, for he has the power to change hearts and minds. Mulder inspires others to become believers in a cause that may demand the ultimate price. Though it always sounds lame, this is the reason the Syndicate always offers for not killing Mulder, that they don’t want to turn one man’s religion into a crusade. (cf. ‘Ascension’) So they seek to contain him, control him, even convince him of the error of his ways. (cf. 'Gethsemane', 'Redux')
At the beginning of ‘Detour’, Mulder and Scully sit in the back of the car being taken to the ‘teamwork seminar’ – almost as if the powers that be realise that, left to himself, Mulder would never arrive. Yet again, they try to mould Mulder to the norm. As they must keep trying, for their only alternative is to kill him.
It is a problem recognized by the American Management Association who are unable to hide their hatred of the Mulders of this world. In ‘Building a Sense of Teamwork Among Staff Members’, the AMA do try to discuss the ‘talented loner or nonteam-player’, striving to employ the anodyne language of the status quo. In short order, this effort breaks down, the ‘non-mainstreamer’ quickly becoming the ‘anti-team’ player. Interestingly, the AMA do concede that the ‘ill-will and negative feelings’ come from the team-players, not the loner who, despite his/her “individual experience, special skills, length of service” must be made to conform.
For all their authority, Senate hearings, and disciplinary actions, there is nothing to stop Mulder making a detour – from the French détour, meaning ‘change of direction’ - preferring the dangers of his job to the boredom of the seminar.
If that isn’t enough to rip out your soul and squeeze the life from it like the juice from a week old mouldy blood orange, there’s the ‘teamwork seminar’, a torture worthy of the Inquisition.
In ‘Herrenvolk’, Season Four’s opener, Jeremiah Smith corrected Mulder’s understanding of the alien’s intentions. “You have to understand something,” Smith tells Mulder.
SMITH: I must perish. Whatever the consequences to that end, they are incalculable to the preservation of the larger plan.”
MULDER: The larger plan? You mean colonization.
SMITH: Hegemony, Mr. Mulder.
The ‘teamwork seminar’ is a handy weapon in the arsenal of those who would seek dominance over others. Firstly, it identifies those who have the disposition to conform and succumb to the ‘norm’. Kinsley and Stonecypher fit into this category, happily relinquishing individual self-worth in their eagerness to find that they “could never have done it alone.”Stonecypher’s gleefully recounted anecdote is a shout-out to the CSM’s conversation with Jeremiah Smith in ‘Talitha Cumi’. CSM, angrily, asks Smith, “Who are you to give them hope?”
SMITH: What do you give them?
CSM: We give them happiness, and they give us authority.
The memory of placing that “electric pencil sharpener on the top of the pile” provides the happiness for which Stonecypher is willing to barter away authority.Secondly, the ‘teamwork seminar’ serves to identify the ‘non-team player’ - though it hardly seems necessary to send Mulder to a seminar to discover he might not be a team-player. It is doubtful that this is the reason Mulder is being sent along with Kinsley and Stonecypher. The authority that would have hegemony must punish any who stand outside the team. A Mulder will always be a far greater danger to authority than vice versa.
When Dana Scully was first appointed to work with Agent Fox Mulder it was because she was seen as an up-and-coming Agent of the Bureau, someone with the intelligence, objectivity and loyalty to be able to report on and ‘debunk’ the X Files. Never for a moment did Division Chief Scott Blevins ever think that Scully would become as much a part of the X Files as Mulder himself. This is Mulder’s threat, that others might learn to see as he sees, become imbued with his passion for truth, enlist in his fight against all that is alien to the dignity of the human being.
Mulder holds the power to destroy the Syndicate, for he has the power to change hearts and minds. Mulder inspires others to become believers in a cause that may demand the ultimate price. Though it always sounds lame, this is the reason the Syndicate always offers for not killing Mulder, that they don’t want to turn one man’s religion into a crusade. (cf. ‘Ascension’) So they seek to contain him, control him, even convince him of the error of his ways. (cf. 'Gethsemane', 'Redux')
At the beginning of ‘Detour’, Mulder and Scully sit in the back of the car being taken to the ‘teamwork seminar’ – almost as if the powers that be realise that, left to himself, Mulder would never arrive. Yet again, they try to mould Mulder to the norm. As they must keep trying, for their only alternative is to kill him.
It is a problem recognized by the American Management Association who are unable to hide their hatred of the Mulders of this world. In ‘Building a Sense of Teamwork Among Staff Members’, the AMA do try to discuss the ‘talented loner or nonteam-player’, striving to employ the anodyne language of the status quo. In short order, this effort breaks down, the ‘non-mainstreamer’ quickly becoming the ‘anti-team’ player. Interestingly, the AMA do concede that the ‘ill-will and negative feelings’ come from the team-players, not the loner who, despite his/her “individual experience, special skills, length of service” must be made to conform.
For all their authority, Senate hearings, and disciplinary actions, there is nothing to stop Mulder making a detour – from the French détour, meaning ‘change of direction’ - preferring the dangers of his job to the boredom of the seminar.
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