Irresistible orison to Evil

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 which give Scully and Mulder something to do each week. But an angel? Or demon? Well, that's a whole other kettle of loaves and fishes!

I think it is possible that we give more credence to a fat-sucking vampire than to Donnie Pfaster as demon precisely because the former is fictional. Virgil Incanto is but a character in a story that might keep us entertained for forty-five minutes. Our investment is to the show, not its individual monsters. Tooms might keep us on the edge of seat for the duration of the episode, might even make a big enough impact to have us discussing him around the water-cooler - but only until next week's monster comes along.

Angels and demons have a power to shock us to our core because they are not merely figments of a Ten Thirteen writer's imagination. Upon angels and demons were the very foundations of our culture laid. Accept them as part of our religious belief or reject them because they no longer fit into our perception of the world, either way, they lurk in the collective unconscious ready to surprise us with their ability to make us uncomfortable.

As fine an episode as 'Squeeze' is, I always felt Frank Briggs was over doing it a little when responding to Mulder's question:

When I first heard about the death camps in 1945, I remembered Powhatan Mill. When I see the Kurds and the Bosnians, that room is there, I tell ye. It's like all the horrible acts that humans are capable of, somehow, gave birth to some kind of, human monster.

Eugene Victor is certainly creepy, but hardly on a par with the Holocaust!

A devil or demon, on the other hand, could well have been at work behind the scenes, manipulating people and events to bring about the worst atrocity in human history. Even if you don't believe in the literal possibility of devils and demons, our cultural heritage is so bound up in the imagery it's almost impossible not to have that feeling Frank Briggs experienced at Powhatan Mill.

In a sense then, angels and demons are too profound to evoke the same scare quotient as a more mundane MotW.

Evil is a difficult concept to portray in a popular TV show. The X Files always succeeded better when it presented its MotW as more human than monster. Donne Pfaster in 'Irresistible' is far scarier than Donnie Pfaster in 'Orison' simply because that fleeting glimpse in the teaser only serves to focus our attention, it doesn't make up our minds for us.

As far as evil goes, I tend to hold with Kant's idea of 'self-interest'.

As such, I don't regard earthquakes or tsunamis or hurricanes as evil. A natural disaster is precisely what it says it is - a natural disaster. I wouldn't be altogether eager to claim the natural world lacks independent will but, on the common sense view that it doesn't, an earthquake, etc. has no 'intent' to cause harm. Hence, not evil.

If we discover some kind of 'natural intelligence' at work, deliberately and with malice aforethought, wreaking vengeance upon humanity for all the harm we have caused, then we could maybe say disastrous natural occurrences are possibly evil - though, justified might be closer to the mark.

On Kant's concept of evil resting on 'self-interest', the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy offers this criticism:

Whether, and to what extent, a person, or her will, is evil seems to depend on details about her motives and the harms she brings about and not just on whether she prioritizes self-interest over the moral law.

Firstly, what is 'self-interest' if it isn't a motivating force? So, if motivation helps to define the extent of evil, 'self-interest' would seem a likely contributing factor.

Secondly, the level of harm caused only serves to measure the extent of the evil on display. One might say that Andrei Chikatilo is more evil than Gary Ridgway, as the former has 52 confirmed victims, whereas the latter has 48. But who would want to get into such a seedy parlour-game of numbers?

At the end of the day, both men killed for one reason above all others: their own self-interest.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is dismissive of this idea:

For instance, it seems far worse to torture someone for sadistic pleasure than to tell the truth to gain a good reputation.

To which one can only say - well, of course!

Again, however, it is a case of measuring the display of evil not its existence.

We can easily accept that Ted Bundy was psychopathic, yes? What about Tom Skeyhill?

Skeyhill didn't kill anyone - in fact, he feigned blindness in order to escape the dangers of World War I and then wrote a book of poetry about his 'extensive' experience at the battle-front, which he read to enthusiastic audiences in Australia and the United States, on one occasion even feted by President Theodor Roosevelt.

Both Skeyhill and Bundy were in fact psychopathic. It may not be very scientific but, certainly on a popular level, one might say that Bundy was 'more' psychopathic than Skeyhill, nevertheless, the fact remains, the harm caused only serves to measure the impact of their psychopathy on the world, not whether it in fact exists.

Both Bundy and Skeyhill acted out of their own self-interest.

This is precisely what makes the Donnie Pfaster of 'Irresistible' scarier than this latest incarnation, in 'Orison'. The minute he manifests as a demon awaiting his own murder and burial by the Reverend Orison, Donnie Pfaster ceases to be scary.

Do demons - actual, literal demons - act out of their own self-interest? Can a demon act out anything other than its own demonic nature? Are demons actually evil?

Donnie Pfaster is - or was - evil because he, like every one of us, is a human being with free will. Somewhere along the trajectory of his life, Donnie decided frozen finger snacks served his own self-interest.

If it is true that "Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends" (Jn.15:13), then there is no greater evil than this: to lay down another's life for oneself.