Devil Doll
I quite enjoyed 'Chinga' when I first watched it. Nothing quite so spooky as a doll possessed, right? Watching it again recently I wondered how I'd missed those big silly doll shadows or, at least, how they hadn't registered as big and silly.
Not being a huge fan of out-right horror movies, I find I do have a penchant for Vampires, especially if played by Christopher Lee, and films about demon possession.
I guess I was disposed to look upon 'Chinga' favourably. And, despite not being quite so taken in by it, I find I still quite like this episode. Though in no way explained, that damned doll must be possessed by some demon or other, mustn’t it? At first, I thought that Polly was doing a version of Norman Bates’ impersonation of his mother. That somehow the doll enabled the girl to vent repressed rage and resentment. In which case, the shadow wouldn’t be that of the doll, but of Polly dressed up as the doll. I had to discount this idea because it isn’t like the X Files to repeat itself so quickly or so obviously. And the Norman Bates thing had been done the previous week with Karin Matthews in ‘Schizogeny’.
I’m never quite sure if I’m happy with a lack of explanation. The show made a name for itself by leaving much of the meaning to the imagination of the viewer. Anyone familiar with the show should, by Season 5, have a fair idea of what is going on most of the time. But for all its brilliance, the X Files has produced enough episodes of poor story-telling to leave a modicum of doubt in the mind of the audience. So, when we get an episode like 'Chinga' should we put the lacunae down to deliberate choices or just accept that brilliant TV is hard to maintain on a weekly basis?
I’m still fussing over the origin of that doll.
The Victorians enjoyed a good ghost story. But haunted dolls don’t feature too prominently. That is if you discount the couple who recently appeared on ITV’s ‘This Morning’, claiming that the husband had been scratched by their haunted Victorian doll. Mind you, the doll in 'Chinga' looks more Edwardian than Victorian.
Even deciding from what era the doll came is a matter of guess work, for I certainly am no expert on fashion generally, let alone fashion from any particular age or epoch. Even supposing I could identify its age, still we would not know of how it came to be the demon it is. Or why it is so childish that it is possible to think, at first, that Polly is culpable. Certainly, Polly is no pleasant child, exhibiting behavior that would not be tolerated in that Golden Age of childhood, the 1970s. Even without the doll in tow, Polly is a bit of a nightmare.
It is entirely possible that the doll acts only as a metaphor for the dreadful behavior of Twentieth and Twenty-First-Century children and the way they make such unreasonable demands of their single parents. But I’ll leave that topic alone.
An important lesson to take from this episode is that modern technology is unable to kill evil. It never ceases to amuse when Mulder pulls out his gun as a ward against evil. That aside, microwave ovens can kill almost anything except, it seems, haunted dolls. Evil must be confronted head-on, it must be faced and it must be shown that it has no power over us.
However you think of evil, whether as a force in its own right or merely the bad thing that we humands do to one another, its defeat always comes by those willing to stand up to it and show that we are not willing to go gentle into that good night.
Not being a huge fan of out-right horror movies, I find I do have a penchant for Vampires, especially if played by Christopher Lee, and films about demon possession.
I guess I was disposed to look upon 'Chinga' favourably. And, despite not being quite so taken in by it, I find I still quite like this episode. Though in no way explained, that damned doll must be possessed by some demon or other, mustn’t it? At first, I thought that Polly was doing a version of Norman Bates’ impersonation of his mother. That somehow the doll enabled the girl to vent repressed rage and resentment. In which case, the shadow wouldn’t be that of the doll, but of Polly dressed up as the doll. I had to discount this idea because it isn’t like the X Files to repeat itself so quickly or so obviously. And the Norman Bates thing had been done the previous week with Karin Matthews in ‘Schizogeny’.
I’m never quite sure if I’m happy with a lack of explanation. The show made a name for itself by leaving much of the meaning to the imagination of the viewer. Anyone familiar with the show should, by Season 5, have a fair idea of what is going on most of the time. But for all its brilliance, the X Files has produced enough episodes of poor story-telling to leave a modicum of doubt in the mind of the audience. So, when we get an episode like 'Chinga' should we put the lacunae down to deliberate choices or just accept that brilliant TV is hard to maintain on a weekly basis?
I’m still fussing over the origin of that doll.
The Victorians enjoyed a good ghost story. But haunted dolls don’t feature too prominently. That is if you discount the couple who recently appeared on ITV’s ‘This Morning’, claiming that the husband had been scratched by their haunted Victorian doll. Mind you, the doll in 'Chinga' looks more Edwardian than Victorian.
Even deciding from what era the doll came is a matter of guess work, for I certainly am no expert on fashion generally, let alone fashion from any particular age or epoch. Even supposing I could identify its age, still we would not know of how it came to be the demon it is. Or why it is so childish that it is possible to think, at first, that Polly is culpable. Certainly, Polly is no pleasant child, exhibiting behavior that would not be tolerated in that Golden Age of childhood, the 1970s. Even without the doll in tow, Polly is a bit of a nightmare.
It is entirely possible that the doll acts only as a metaphor for the dreadful behavior of Twentieth and Twenty-First-Century children and the way they make such unreasonable demands of their single parents. But I’ll leave that topic alone.
An important lesson to take from this episode is that modern technology is unable to kill evil. It never ceases to amuse when Mulder pulls out his gun as a ward against evil. That aside, microwave ovens can kill almost anything except, it seems, haunted dolls. Evil must be confronted head-on, it must be faced and it must be shown that it has no power over us.
However you think of evil, whether as a force in its own right or merely the bad thing that we humands do to one another, its defeat always comes by those willing to stand up to it and show that we are not willing to go gentle into that good night.
Comments
Post a Comment