2x25: Anasazi
Deep Throat, Deep Time
‘Nothing disappears without a trace.’
If it hasn’t been clear since at least Mulder’s teary missing-Samantha moment in the church in ‘Conduit,’ I hope it’s clear now: Mulder isn’t actually chasing ‘the truth about the government coverup of alien contact’ or anything like it. ‘The Truth’ isn’t information about the true workings of power. It isn’t really information at all.
Mulder is seeking a vision, and his quest is for a state of consciousness, which is why the love story and the quest story are the same.
If that’s clear to you, then there’s no need to explain why a show about JFK/Watergate/Roswell is suddenly full of psychedelics and shamans and cod-Navajo mysticism. If you see that the already increasingly incoherent plot of The X-Files is an inevitable consequence of its hallucinatory character (‘documentary of a dream,’ I think I called it?) then the unity of its storyworld, misbegotten vampire bullshit notwithstanding, should also be clear. UFOs, psychic powers, hauntings, visions, abductions, monsters — they’re all the same story, deep down, and the show’s postwar schemata are just a modern presentation of old old story stuff.
Which is why the cringeworthy Navajo mystical gobbledygook in this episode doesn’t bother me as much as it would’ve a few years ago. It comes from the very center of the story. You might say that the rejected knowledge of a group of marginalized Americans — veterans, by the way — who know the (literal) code to unlocking the memory of our nation’s sins…well, it is the story, at least as much as anything else.
Underlying oneness —
A new star appears — and just how remote is it from drops of water, of unknown origin, falling on a cottonwood tree, in Oklahoma? Just what have the tree and the star to do with the girl of Swanton Novers, upon whom gushed streams of oils? And why was a clergyman equally greasy? Earthquakes and droughts and the sky turns black with spiders, and, near Trenton, N. J., something pegged stones at farmers. If lights that have been seen in the sky were upon the vessels of explorers from other worlds — then living in New York City, perhaps, or in Washington, D. C., perhaps, there are inhabitants of Mars, who are secretly sending reports upon the ways of this world to their governments?
A theory feels its way through surrounding ignorance — the tendrils of a vine feel their way along a trellis — a wagon train feels its way across a prairie —
Underlying oneness —
(Charles Fort, Lo!)
Lo! was published in 1931. Mulder would never talk like this, neither would Chris Carter — no one would or ever has, Fort was a ridiculous writer — but Mulder’s perspective on the universe seems to me Fortean in a deep sense. Ironic, earnest, skeptical, credulous, with the somewhat melancholy pseudo-comprehensiveness of the autodidact. Crucially, he’s read as widely as he can and is eager to wrestle with every possible way of knowing. ‘Ways of knowing’ is a crucial phrase for understanding the show, I’d say. (What’s the opposite of ‘Deny all knowledge,’ by the way?)
The series valorizes Mulder’s way of being, to its/Carter’s credit; and incidentally, this is why Scully isn’t the antagonist. Because she’s not so different from Mulder, really; they just tend to start investigations by jumping in different directions, as she’s the ‘rationalist’ and he’s the other thing. But they’re both out to rescue one another and they both want, more than anything, a vision of a better world. (Carter himself has a cameo in this episode in which he directly acknowledges that Scully has completely outstripped her original narrative purpose, and reminds Scully that her ‘partner’ is a rogue agent whom she was supposed to be investigating and discrediting. Well, that’s a love story for you. Stuff always gets out of hand.)
Mulder getting dosed with drugs that alter his personality as prelude to a visionary experience in the desert is…well you might say it’s a bit on the nose, or would be if that subject matter weren’t deemed silly (cue nervous laughter) by so many viewers. The drugs-in-the-water-supply stuff and the Navajo-mysticism bit appear to come from separate neighbourhoods in Plotville, but you don’t need to look particularly closely to see how this pattern (altered consciousness as allegory for, and allegorized by, alien encounters) recurs throughout the show. Max Fenig’s memories take the form of a neurological disorder. Duane Barry’s ‘insanity’ stems from both abduction experiences and his wounding and abandonment by the FBI. The elderly patients in ‘Excelsis Dei’ gain access to the land of the dead through a combination of magic mushrooms and unauthorized scientific experimentation. Experimentally produced twins/clones are psychically bonded. Scully’s ghostly visitations (e.g., from her dad) come after a gov’t/alien abduction.
The various X-Files, in other words, all seem to flow from a kind of systemic Weirdness. They illuminate the limits of our ability to know the universe — they’re messages more than events. Glitches in the Matrix (deja vu) signaling the Agents’ approach.
In other words: the ‘one-off’ and ‘mythology’ episodes are all part of a continuing story about (you might say) the transformation of consciousness by encounters with the Weird. This is not an anthology show, nor is it a serial about government conspiracy and/or UFOs.
If you buy that, then much ‘critical’ carping starts to seem like a waste of time and breath. You begin to wonder what (who) it’s really for.
