Dreamland
Imagine the United States had a legitimate Government, one that actually took seriously its responsibility to care and protect the people.
Imagine there were forces working against the best interests of the United States, forces that might seek to bring harm upon the people.
The Government would have a duty to develop technologies to aid the detection and prevention of both overt and covert acts of aggression against the people of the United States, would it not?
Knowing that spies are at work seeking to subvert the efforts of the Government to keep the country safe, wouldn’t it be natural to establish secret sites for the development and testing of new technologies?
It is the nature of America’s democratic freedoms that makes it virtually impossible for the Government to keep anything completely secret. In countries like the old Soviet Union where travel was restricted, secret military bases probably were really secret. It is the very freedoms that Americans enjoy that makes the wildest conspiracy theories possible.
Freedoms and secrets make for volatile relationships.
Groom Lake is a sitting duck for the conspiracy conscious. A vast tract of land from which ordinary Americans are barred – it’s like putting your cookie down on the table and telling your three-year-old not to touch while you pop to the bathroom!
The difference being that the toddler would be reaching for something that was actually there.
Unlike Mulder - who drives through the night, hoping he is on his way to meet with some ‘particular crackpot’, hoping to find the ‘proof that we’ve suspected but never been able to hold in our hands.’ And why is it that the toddler might get to hold a cookie while Mulder never gets to hold the proof?
In Mulder’s televisual world we do get to see evidence of extraterrestrials. Between ‘The End’ and ‘The Beginning’ we were treated to the big motion picture release of the X Files in which we and Mulder get to see an actual alien space craft – Scully, of course, is unconscious and misses the show! But the X Files was never really about aliens – just as ‘Dreamland’ & ‘Dreamland II’ are not really about Area 51. General Wegman wouldn’t be quite so clueless if it were.
Think of the title more in line with Edgar Allan Poe’s poem. As Mulder and Scully drive towards their source, think of the opening line of Poe’s poem - ‘By a route obscure and lonely’. Mulder is about to experience Poe’s Dreamland.
Mulder’s life is not normal, however much he might defend it to Scully as she bemoans yet another night of not settling down or living something ‘approaching a normal life’. Not normal does not make it less than ideal – if only ideal for the one person who gets to live it. Hence Scully’s longing for something Mulder can’t even dream of. He has no need to dream for he already has the ideal Scully yearns for.
As the speaker of Poe’s poem wakes to face “Bottomless vales and boundless floods, / And caverns, and caves, and Titan woods”, so Mulder will face a vale of tears and boundless emotion as he takes up Morris Fletcher’s place in a normal life.
The temptation will be whether he is seeking what Scully claims she wants. It might appear normal but, in actual fact, it is a dysfunctional world and not without its Ghouls, whether Morris Fletcher himself or those warped by the effects of the crash. Despite appearances, however, Mulder isn’t a “heart whose woes are legion” so this world is not an Eldorado. Rather, he is the “traveller, travelling through it” and refuses to “openly view it”.
In a typical ‘Freaky Friday’ scenario, Mulder would have solved all the Fletcher family problems and grown as a human being along the way. He does none of these things.
Mulder’s route may be “obscure and lonely” but it is his ideal. The episode’s end may appear as a simple reset back to the status quo, but is actually his wandering “home but newly”.
Imagine there were forces working against the best interests of the United States, forces that might seek to bring harm upon the people.
The Government would have a duty to develop technologies to aid the detection and prevention of both overt and covert acts of aggression against the people of the United States, would it not?
Knowing that spies are at work seeking to subvert the efforts of the Government to keep the country safe, wouldn’t it be natural to establish secret sites for the development and testing of new technologies?
It is the nature of America’s democratic freedoms that makes it virtually impossible for the Government to keep anything completely secret. In countries like the old Soviet Union where travel was restricted, secret military bases probably were really secret. It is the very freedoms that Americans enjoy that makes the wildest conspiracy theories possible.
Freedoms and secrets make for volatile relationships.
Groom Lake is a sitting duck for the conspiracy conscious. A vast tract of land from which ordinary Americans are barred – it’s like putting your cookie down on the table and telling your three-year-old not to touch while you pop to the bathroom!
The difference being that the toddler would be reaching for something that was actually there.
Unlike Mulder - who drives through the night, hoping he is on his way to meet with some ‘particular crackpot’, hoping to find the ‘proof that we’ve suspected but never been able to hold in our hands.’ And why is it that the toddler might get to hold a cookie while Mulder never gets to hold the proof?
In Mulder’s televisual world we do get to see evidence of extraterrestrials. Between ‘The End’ and ‘The Beginning’ we were treated to the big motion picture release of the X Files in which we and Mulder get to see an actual alien space craft – Scully, of course, is unconscious and misses the show! But the X Files was never really about aliens – just as ‘Dreamland’ & ‘Dreamland II’ are not really about Area 51. General Wegman wouldn’t be quite so clueless if it were.
Think of the title more in line with Edgar Allan Poe’s poem. As Mulder and Scully drive towards their source, think of the opening line of Poe’s poem - ‘By a route obscure and lonely’. Mulder is about to experience Poe’s Dreamland.
Mulder’s life is not normal, however much he might defend it to Scully as she bemoans yet another night of not settling down or living something ‘approaching a normal life’. Not normal does not make it less than ideal – if only ideal for the one person who gets to live it. Hence Scully’s longing for something Mulder can’t even dream of. He has no need to dream for he already has the ideal Scully yearns for.
As the speaker of Poe’s poem wakes to face “Bottomless vales and boundless floods, / And caverns, and caves, and Titan woods”, so Mulder will face a vale of tears and boundless emotion as he takes up Morris Fletcher’s place in a normal life.
The temptation will be whether he is seeking what Scully claims she wants. It might appear normal but, in actual fact, it is a dysfunctional world and not without its Ghouls, whether Morris Fletcher himself or those warped by the effects of the crash. Despite appearances, however, Mulder isn’t a “heart whose woes are legion” so this world is not an Eldorado. Rather, he is the “traveller, travelling through it” and refuses to “openly view it”.
In a typical ‘Freaky Friday’ scenario, Mulder would have solved all the Fletcher family problems and grown as a human being along the way. He does none of these things.
Mulder’s route may be “obscure and lonely” but it is his ideal. The episode’s end may appear as a simple reset back to the status quo, but is actually his wandering “home but newly”.
Comments
Post a Comment