Thoughts in a File Marked X

I want to start by telling you that all of the "fairy tales" and stories about the powers of wizards, Witches and magicians are true ! Kraig, Donald Michael, Modern Magick: 11 Lessons in the High Magickal Arts , (2nd Ed.)Llewellyn Publications, Minnesota, 2001, p.1 A magician would never perform the 'Maleeni Head Spin' because it must be done in full view of the audience. Illusion works by sleight of hand and misdirection of the eye. It could never pull off a stunt so open to scrutiny. To be fair, in ' The Amazing Maleeni ', it is presented as a silly bit of TV, with poor CGI and no logic to its performance. Under normal circumstances, we don't prefer to be hoodwinked. If we think someone is trying to get one over on us, or just plain con us, we generally wouldn't be best pleased. If you've ever felt someone has made a fool of you - and who hasn't? - you're likely to have felt shamed and angry, probably in equal measure. Usually,...

In ' Irresistible ', Donnie Pfaster's first appearance in Season Two, there is a brief moment, at the end of the teaser, in which we catch a glimpse of something more than a man. We are not meant, at this point, to take this vision literally but accept it as an insight into Donnie's nature. ' Orison ' sees the return of Donnie and, this time, his evil is rather more manifest. As the Reverend Orison prepares his grave, Donnie takes on a demon aspect that leaves us in little doubt over how we should see him. It is a tricky moment - can we the viewer accept the existence of demons in the world? It's a question we've been confronted with before, in Season Five's ' All Souls '. Is it any more difficult to accept literal demons than, say, a flukeman? In a way, it is. Flukeman and all the others in the monster-of-the-week rogues gallery are blatantly fictional characters, created by the writers of the show as little more than plot devices...

Henry Weems is a prisoner of his own good fortune. Who knows what happened, before the events of ‘ The Goldberg Variation ’, to make him realise his good luck was bad for others? On seeing it, he took responsibility, sought out a life for himself that wouldn't adversely affect those around him. Henry is a brave, heroic figure living a miserable life, a life which measures his greatness. Henry Weems is the diametric opposite to the usual Monster-of-the-Week, the Yin to their Yang . Henry is not merely passive, he seeks passivity as a way to safeguard others, for he is every bit as dangerous to them as Rob Roberts and his need to feed on human brains. Henry has, as the average MotW doesn't, what Pope Francis terms memoria futuri , a memory of the future. I would suggest that most human beings are more akin to the MotW than Henry Weems. We act and we speak with little or no regard for the consequences of our own thoughtlessness. We either lack or blatantly disregard a mem...

Adrenaline junkies. Explain. ' Rush ' is an episode I don't like. Not because it's particularly bad. It's not a strong episode, but not the worst. Just don't understand the need for speed. Tried Speed once. In celebration of the handing in of the BA Dissertation. Ended up puking in a back alley of Preston . Went home immediately after. I find I have little sympathy for those who die doing adrenaline fueled stuff. Alexander Polli was an adrenaline junkie and died. Natalia Malchanova, considered one of freediving's greats, never surfaced . I get the fact they went out doing what they loved. Fair dues for that. I should die while teaching poetry. Same thing! Early in the course, we must discuss Alison Hargreaves and I use her to jolt my female Muslim students out of their lethargy. The question is whether a mother of two young children should have put the mountain first. It's a good question. I can pretty much tell which female students will pass th...

'World War Z ’ (2013) was a good movie and I have a certain soft spot for Alice and her convoluted history in the 'Resident Evil ' (2002 -) films. Otherwise, Zombies have little appeal. I've seen maybe two or three episodes of 'The Walking Dead ' but not from the beginning so they made little sense. The best ever Zombie movie was 'Shaun of the Dead ' (2004) which at least made of Zombies the joke they are. As monsters, Zombies just don't work. Rob Roberts worked in ' Hungry ' because he was an X Files monster before he was a Zombie. The X Files excelled at giving the monster-of-the-week a degree of humanity; always enough to make the metaphor work. Even in its weaker episodes, like ' Teliko ', for instance, the Zombie/Vampire was a human-like character that needed to feed off other humans just to survive. It is in comparison with the Vampire that the Zombie fails. Even Dracula can pass as a gentleman, a man of culture and mann...

Eleven episodes from now, in ‘ Theef ’, we’ll have the apparent suicide of a character suffering from Kuru – no, not his shoes ! Granted, it’s not a New Guinea tribesman that winds up hanging in the hallway and nor, one supposes, had the victim been a connoisseur of human brains. Nor is his name Rob Roberts, though it might have been, for Rob does spend his hour devouring the “ little grey cells ” of his neighbours, the workplace bully and the man in street. ‘ Hungry ’ is a monster-of-the-week episode presented from the monster’s perspective. This, I gather, is supposed to create the rather odd effect of making him sympathetic. I sound somewhat disparaging of the notion that a monster can be anything less than monstrous because, while a nice trick to play with an established TV show, it is precisely the kind of ruse that enabled real-life monster, Ted Bundy , to prey on scores of young women. Fortunately, I suppose, Rob preys mainly upon other men – maybe a comparison with John Wa...

The idea of ‘ panspermia ’ is hugely underwhelming. All it serves to accomplish is a shift of focus, redirecting our gaze away from a Supernatural Creator out towards the stars. Those invested in demythologizing human culture may feel invested with any idea that enables an explanation of life’s origins which don’t include a Creator God, even if it ultimately offers no more satisfying explanation. Science seeks to understand. In essence, this is no bad thing. The world, and the Universe in which it spins, is – fortunately for us – structured in such a way that encourages investigation and understanding. Unfortunately, it means that the power that understanding brings rests in the hands of that branch of the human endeavor that lacks any sense of moral obligation to the species. It’s kind of ironic that those who most vociferously deny the cultural relevance of those events depicted in the early chapters of the Book of Genesis get to reenact them on an almost daily basis. But, of cou...

I was born and raised in a rural market town in Lancashire – the kind of place that was shut on Sunday. Everything. Until the pubs opened. And even they had to close again by 10:30pm. It was, in its way, an idyllic place, with a river winding through it one way and a canal another. The fishing was good. The walks through field and forest kept us fully occupied throughout out childhood years. To be young back then was to rush home from school, change quickly out of the uniform and dash outdoors to enjoy the long summer days, getting up to what no dictionary today would define as mischief. Most of my family still live in that town. Although I didn’t leave until I was 23yrs old, there is no one – apart from family – that I know there. When I left, I left good and proper. The one friend I kept hold of died years ago. If not for family, it is a place I would never return to. I left to go to London. And knew immediately that if ever a place on this earth was home it was London. After all...

If the events of November 22 nd , 1963 had never happened, as they haven’t in Byers’ dream in the teaser for ‘ Three of a Kind ’, then he wouldn’t be John Fitzgerald Byers. He’d be Bernard. And his life wouldn’t have been the one he has led, the life we know him to have led. He wouldn’t be one of The Lone Gunmen, for like his, it is a name that wouldn’t exist. And he would never have met Suzanne Modeski. Life is a string of what might have beens. Has there ever been a human being without regrets for choices made or roads not taken ? Byers’ dream is a beautiful one, one we could all hope to be real. It remains a dream. For only in dreams can we hope to experience something so romantic and innocent. Life will certainly never allow it to be real. It is more than fashionable to diss Freud ; it’s an industry. But, of course, those who lack the genius to be original must climb to fame over the backs of others. Lee Harvey Oswald, if he was indeed the shooter on the 22 nd of November, 196...

Baseball! At the heart of American culture lies an incomprehensible game that, allegedly, but for our “joyless myopia”, is the “key to life”. It’s a shame that the whole of American culture isn’t as inscrutable as Baseball. The fundamental problem is that America is as dishonest with itself over its true faith as it is about its Dream , its politics and its guns . As much as America may wish it were a Christian country , in reality, it is anything but. America should stick to what it knows and make Baseball the official religion. That way they would truly be able to say that, when they hurl projectiles at one another, God told them to do it. One could then see a shooter as, metaphorically, a pitcher. In running from a shooter one will either be ‘safe’ or ‘out’. I don’t know enough about Baseball to carry this metaphor much further. My point is not to be facetious or callous, so much as it is merely to convey the impression America makes on the world today. However much Baseball m...

Scully’s interest in Phillip Padgett should be professional only. That he is able to provide so much detail of Scully’s personal life is worrying and should at least arouse suspicions of his being a stalker. If for nothing else, she should arrest him for being such a creep! So, why, instead, does she become fascinated by him? Certainly, as Padgett himself says, curious, but not quite so fascinated that she’d go sit with him on his bed. Scully, as a woman, is a problem character. She is, to all intents and purposes the far more interesting of the two leads – and not just because Gillian Anderson is by far the better actor. Mulder has been involved with the X Files and all things alien for the best part of his adult life. The only real change he undergoes is the temporary loss of faith in Season 5. Otherwise, he is as steady as a rock and right in 98.9% of cases, as he rather frustratingly reminds Scully before heading off on a ‘ Field Trip ’. Scully is the character who undergoes t...

Pinker Rawls is a man adrift in a world that wishes him no safe harbour. There is nowhere left for a man like Pinker, a man who believes it is his to take whatever he wants, a man who reacts to the taunts of another with an act of brutality. Pinker Rawls is the kind of man who lives and breathes the crisis of masculinity . To be male is not to play a role imposed by society. There are indisputable differences between the male of the species and the female. Biology determines the sex of each individual before birth. However smart it is to say, as does Simone de Beauvoir , in ‘ The Second Sex ’, that “One is not born, but becomes, a woman” - or a man, for that matter – it isn’t biologically true. How one expresses one’s maleness or femaleness may be susceptible to a range of influences yet, this only goes to prove the infinite opportunity for freedom open to the human individual. That one may feel constrained to be male rather than free to be male only reveals the individual’s weaknes...

The relationship between humans and dogs is quite an old one. So old, in fact, it might actually have played a developmental role in the evolution of both species. (cf. Hare, Brian, ‘ We didn’t domesticate dogs. They domesticated us ’, National Geographic, 2013) I have previously alluded to one way in which this relationship would be beneficial to both humans and dogs. Yet, for all our affections towards Fido most of us refrain from going as far as one Joseph Guiso who, in 2010, married his dog in a ceremony at which he allegedly assured his guests that the relationship was not sexual! I personally am not particularly fond of dogs, having had a nasty encounter with a mad dog when I was about 7 years old. It’s not that I don’t like dogs, just that I’m always a little bit too wary of them to want to be friends. I am far more of a cat person . What I find a little perplexing is that our fondness for our canine friends doesn’t seem to prevent a sort of inherent dread of what might be...

After the nightmare of ‘ Monday ’ we have marriage! We all know that the X Files didn’t go out in the order in which they were produced for various reasons. But there is a certain serendipity to the way each season unfolds. What more recurring nightmare is there than married life? Same routine day in and day out.  Deviate at your peril. The husband decides to go for a beer and the wife suddenly has a whole shed full of plans that are upset by so minor an expression of free will. The wife goes for her hair done and eight hours later the husband is searching the hospitals and immigration in his worry for her whereabouts. In ‘ Arcadia ’, Mulder and Scully get to play out the bliss of the newly married. They may as well have turned up at their new house with a trail of cans from the back of their SUV and ‘ Just Married ’ scrawled on the back window. Though they know not its name, they do at least know that they are walking into a version of Hell. ‘The Falls at Arcadia’? One assum...

Monday, Monday, so good to me; Monday morning, it was all I hoped it would be. Oh, Monday morning, Monday morning couldn't guarantee That Monday evening you would still be here with me. The Mamas and the Papas (1966) Haven’t we all had one of those Monday mornings that feels, as we drag ourselves unwillingly out of bed, just like all the other Monday mornings when we’ve done precisely the same. Unless you are somehow a very lucky person, whose life is full of excitement and derring-do, you will almost certainly have felt a degree of ennui and eternal recurrence. I suppose we should be thankful that we’ve never literally had to live the same day over and over again. On that Monday, when Pam first awoke with no suspicion of what was to befall her, maybe it felt like just another Monday yet still it was all she hoped it could be. Certainly, it offered her no guarantees, for how could she know that, around six hours later, she’d literally be awaking to exactly the same Mo...

‘ Agua Mala ’ is a notoriously bad episode, by far the weakest episode of Season Six. A monster that is water! Preposterous! Doesn’t it seem like water – and other elements – are proving themselves quite monstrous? Hurricanes and storm surges are taking a huge toll on life and property across the Caribbean and the U.S. A monster that is water? Maybe not so preposterous! Whatever one would wish to read into some episodes only serves to save them from total oblivion. No amount of ‘symbology’ can save ‘ Agua Mala ’ from its own abyss of awfulness. Having said that, I do think the hurricane is portrayed quite well visually. There’s one shot in particular, as Mulder and Scully are driving through the storm, where we get to see the lashing of the wind and the debris strewn around the streets, that is quite effective. And there’s some kind of meaning to this man-made disaster being set during a natural disaster. If only one could be enthused enough to spend the time necessary to unravel...

Don Corleone, I am honored and grateful that you have invited me to your home on the wedding day of your daughter. And may their first child be a masculine child. Luca Brasi, ‘ The Godfather ’ (1972) How much of the father is in the son and how much to the father does the son owe? Genetically, of course, the father and mother are present in the child. The father and mother are the authors of the child. One way or another, both parents will have influence over the child’s development. No child gets out of childhood alive! Until that moment arrives when the child decides that life is something that should be lived according to dictates of its own making. For some, this moment may never arrive and for as long as they live they will be trying to fulfill an imperative not their own. Such a person will never find any form of happiness. At best, maybe, they’ll find an accommodation, a way to live in the belief that they live their own lives - it’s a delusion. Mulder lost respect for ...

What is a ‘father’? Most obviously, a ‘father’ would be a biological function that requires a certain degree of participation, momentary satisfaction but few other demands. Today, we recognize the ‘father’ as a cultural construct – a set of roles and responsibilities that may vary and change according to the whims of society. It may be that a ‘father’ is actually both of these things – a biological function which runs the risk of entrapment or, even, a voluntary participation in a cultural construct. What a culture constructs the idea of a ‘father’ to be is myriad but might include a willingness to stick around long enough to help with the child’s development from infancy through to early adulthood; a contributory role in the financial sustainability of the family; and beneficial physical and emotional interaction with the child. If this be a bare minimum for an individual to be recognized as ‘father’, it appears the Cigarette Smoking Man beats Bill Mulder in the fatherhood swee...

Sitting at home one day, alone in the house, not expecting any visitors, I was mildly surprised when the bell rang, though I suspected who my visitors were. With a Kingdom Hall not five minutes up the road, it was a good bet the bell ringer was a Jehovah’s Witness . Sure enough, upon opening the door, there stood two women – one young and very shy looking, the other small and wizened – Jehovah’s Witnesses both. I greeted them cordially, then the little old woman – who looked like she was on her third lifetime, at least – asked her question: “Would you like to live forever on earth?” To which I responded with my usual tact and decorum, “Good God! No! Why would I want to do that?” I can understand why a woman who could pose Before to Maz Kanata ’s After in an Oil of Ulay advertisement would be horrified by my reaction. But, really, unless you are a Highlander with the constant excitement of having to duck every time a sharp implement swings your way, I just feel eternal life would...

Surveys of organizations find that the vast majority of rude and inappropriate behaviors, such as the shouting of profanities, come from the offices of those with the most authority. (cf. Jonah Lehrer, “ The Psychology of Power ”, Wired , 2010) Harvey Weinstein ’s leave of absence should come as no surprise. No more of a surprise than Donald Trump’s ‘ Access Hollywood ’ tape, anyway. Authority brings with it many perks; one being freedom from the restrictions, boundaries and social norms that the rest of us must live by. Poststructuralism is an elitism that the rest of us can’t afford. In ‘ S.R. 819 ’, Senator Matheson can argue that his intention is to save lives yet, when presented with a specific life to save, his response is, “I can’t save his”. Strangely, but for a man in Matheson’s position, life in the abstract is far more valuable. Not in any noble sense – hence, Skinner is expendable – valuable in a monetary sense. Like any good politician, Matheson may not be outrigh...

Yet another Monsterless monster-of-the-week episode. And I for one am not in the least bit bothered. Yes, we love the X Files for its dark heart and easy dispatch of hapless victims but we also love it for the way it bends and plays with the rules of a TV serial. There’s a valid argument that Season Six laid on the extracurricular a little too heavy but, when you’ve got a team like this, making episodes like ‘ The Rain King ’, who cares? Grouches and Grinches to the left of me, Noromos to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle of you. The X Files has often played with the idea of small town America, usually with the revelation that they’re a never-having-existed nostalgia for a time that never was. The twist of ‘ The Rain King ’ is that, just maybe, they might still. Surely the small town still exists and it must be just about possible that at least a few of them don’t have a mythology-employed doctor experimenting of the town’s children, who are videoed by a paedophile, or a ch...