Trust in the X

We know Fox Mulder to be lonely, paranoid and obsessive. Being a man who believes in extreme possibilities, he is a man who is willing to go to extreme lengths in search of that which he wants to believe. Fox Mulder is a shattered soul seeking to find a way to connect with a world he has never learned to trust.

Not to be too Freudian, but it is hardly surprising that Mulder might have trust issues - especially towards figures of authority. After all, the one who should have protected the family not only failed in his obligation but actively participated in tearing the family asunder. Even though Mulder would not be aware of his father’s full complicity in the conspiracy that took his sister as a bargaining chip - until his work on the X Files provided him the details - even as a child he knew on some level that the family authority figure had failed disastrously. Little wonder then that his ties always seem closer to his mother, obviously, if unconsciously, aware that she was right to blame the father. And, lest we forget, Bill Mulder worked for the government, at the Centre for Special Warfare. Mulder’s suspicion of the government’s participation in clandestine operations is merely an extension of his distrust of his father.

Not able to place his faith in any of those societal organisations that form the usual source of security, Mulder almost has no option but to look for alternatives, opening himself up to extreme possibilities. His search is not really about finding the evidence that would enable him to believe (for belief requires no evidence), rather Mulder’s life’s work is more about providing him reassurance that he was right not to trust the very figures and structures that he rejected along with his father.

Then comes the day when a diminutive sceptic walks into his office and announces that she is looking forward to working with him. An immediate confrontation is inevitable as the two members of this new partnership hold diametrically opposed views of the world. Dana Scully, as we learn later in ‘Beyond the Sea’, has nothing but respect for her father and a fervent need to know that he loved her. By the end of that episode, she has found the assurance she requires. It is Scully who needs evidence of the frailty of authority, for she has to learn of it. Mulder has the experience.

The surprising thing about this encounter between the man willing to believe almost anything and the woman who must have the science, is how quickly Mulder places his trust in Scully. Certainly, he tries to keep certain things about their first case from his partner - as when he first stops the car and paints a red X on the road - but it isn’t long before he is sharing his life story and the trauma that goes along with it, in a quaintly intimate moment on a stormy night in a motel room.

On some basic level, we human beings are social animals and, therefore, we are genetically predisposed towards trusting others. Society wouldn’t be possible otherwise. So, it is understandable that however much he might have won the freedom to work alone, it isn’t just the FBI policy of agents working in pairs that weakens his resolve the instant an attractive woman shows an interest in him. Mulder, as much as any of us, is predisposed to trust - it is as natural to him as breathing.

Trust is something which comes into existence between human beings, it forms a part of that magic that occurs when humans meet and form some kind of bond - of friendship or intimacy. Of all the people that any one of us meets in our lives, we form close relationships with only a very few. Trust may be part of the magic but the magic happens only infrequently.

A man like Mulder should therefore be extra wary before committing himself to another. Romantically, this is certainly the case between him and Scully. On a purely human level, however, the bond is almost instantaneous in its forming - a few minor squabbles apart.

These days, we like to say that huge swathes of that thing called a human being is culturally conditioned; that we are taught certain ways of expressing our humanity; that it needn’t be necessarily so. This, of course, allows us a degree of freedom to gainsay those aspects of being that we’d prefer others not to have control over - gender being the obvious example right now.

It’s a lovely ideal!

To those who find themselves at odds with cultural expectations, reality might be less than lovely.

Mulder cannot help but form a bond with the woman who has just, purely by chance (at least, for him), entered his life. Biologically, he has no choice in the matter - even if he wears a deodorant ‘made for a woman’. This is not to say, of course, that we humans are mere slaves to our genetic programming; only that, for all that we have achieved beyond the call of nature, we are, nevertheless, and remain, programmed. There just are times when human nature trumps culture.

Mulder’s need is met by the arrival of Dana Scully, who is, in every way, the least likely person in whom Mulder might be expected to find a soul mate. He makes intuitive leaps; she follows the evidence. He wants to believe; she already does. He is extreme; she is conservative. The one thing they have in common (apart from both being agents of the F.B.I.), is their need for evidence. Upon such tenuous connections, relationships are built.

And they are because they must be. For we are not as culturally conditioned as we might like to think. One might think it is those who have yet to find even a tenuous link to another who must insist upon the cultural definitions they then seek to undermine. After all, culture is far more malleable than is nature. If culture is a basket full of eggs, nature is a bucket full of rocks. Both can be ground down, but one requires far less strenuous effort than the other.