The Phenomenology of Conspiracies: X-Files: I Want to Believe

Mulder and Scully: (Not Quite) Together Again.

At its most compelling, the series The X-Files problematized the nature of objectivity and reason. In its near decade long run, the show contextualized logic as a source of conflict between the rationalism of science and the empiricism of psychology. These conflictual differences manifested in debates about what constituted evidence and proof -- which, then, created arguments about what defined knowledge and truth.

The show took these pragmatic and philosophical problems and hypothesized about a world composed of paranormal matter, a darkness that wasn't always defined in opposition but often in apposition to epistemic and scientific norms. This kind of metaphorical thinking served as a prelude for other debates, particularly about faith, ethics, secrets, and even about definitions of clarity.

Generating this epistemological ambiguity were two FBI agents, an Oxford-educated psychologist with a taste for Jungian theoretics, Fox Mulder (David Duchovny), and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), a forensic pathologist and physicist committed to her faith. Once paired, they searched the natural world to understand how human life was affected (even composed) by mutations, aberrations, and other kinds of biological irregularities, including extra-terrestrial life.

In their investigations, these companions were assisted by a coterie of lowly and highly placed operatives, ne'er-do-wells, and even sympathetic aliens. At the same time, their efforts were counterposed by soldiers and assassins employed by a league of lethal men in smoke-filled rooms. Unfortunately, the cost of their investigations was high, for their allies were subdued, silenced, murdered. Mulder and Scully sacrificed greatly. Their careers suffered. Family members were killed. Both nearly died. Sadly, their triumphs were few.

In the moral universe of TXF, villainy was unequivocally identified with the power of government, for well-placed government men conspired to conceal the alien presence from a slumbering world. For these conspirators, deception and murder became necessary principles, so people could govern human affairs without the knowledge of a pending invasion. But there's little need to summarize further the show's mythological arc because, from the very beginning, the series focused on Mulder and Scully, the roles they filled and the beliefs they embodied. Mulder, because of his experiences, believed in the probability of extra-terrestrial life; Scully, working within the security of science, was the mechanist.

Along the way, they developed an empathic understanding of each other, and their relationship changed. Indeed, the show emphasized their growth: the respect, the admiration, the love. As they immersed themselves in the phenomenology of conspiracies, they didn't surrender to the disfiguring deceptions of their enemies because they stood on common ground, pursuing virtue by trying to understand the shape and scope of paranormal matter in relation to the reach of the conspiracy. Despite their common pursuit, the show was largely about their differences. Their distance. Their dialectic. They examined phenomena from different premises to balance their competing perspectives. To their credit, their salvation depended on their intellectual curiosity, their yearning for discovery, and their search for truths.

In X-Files: I Want to Believe, the new big-screen continuation, the story begins six years after Mulder and Scully have left the FBI. After years of paying a heavy price for working in the shadows, Scully opts for meaningful work as a pediatric surgeon at Our Lady of Sorrows hospital while the seemingly unemployable Mulder marginalizes himself as a recluse. Although they are together, they are apart -- even somewhat fatigued. In this post-alien world, a desperate agent (Amanda Peet) consults with them on a missing agent. This context allows them to confront social problems from the zeitgeist -- pedophilia, stem cell research, and cloning (a recurring theme in the show) -- as a way to examine the questionable reach of human science. The director and co-writer Chris Carter and co-scenarist Frank Spotznitz reconceive the Frankenstein mythos to unveil a thematic and moral contrast, one that eventually defines Scully’s potentially radical medical work with that of a killer hunting for unwilling donors to recompose his dying lover.

Though the film shifts its philosophical battle away somewhat from the paranormal, the show's focus on pragmatic problems remains. TXF regularly contextualized Mulder and Scully's work against the limits of normative behaviors and conventional thinking. In the film, individual initiative is opposed by groupthink. Consensual thinking often mutes dissent because the bureaucracy -- even medical review boards -- spurns principled risks. Near the end of the film, Scully realizes that she must argue and behave in ethical ways that move her beyond accepted norms, so she can save the life of a dying patient. Predictably, Mulder returns to his familiar form pursuing the shifting thresholds of empiricism so he can find himself again. By this standard, both are willing to take risks, but they are, indeed, far apart because they are moving away from each other.

Critics, as well, have distanced themselves from the film. Some critics conceded that they were fans of the show but argued that the film lacked the ordinary dynamism of a regular episode. Some observed that Mulder and Scully spent too much time apart to really bring the film alive (were not quite sure if Mulder and Scully live together or where they live). Thus, the basic focus of the story is decentered. Of course, this decenteredness is the point. Their relationship requires distance if it is to work at all, so the film concludes with Scully mulling an important yet risky decision apart from Mulder. This recurring theme of distance has been a prevailing one of the show, a distance new viewers would not likely understand. Certainly, the film suffers from periodic plot problems, but this theme of being apart is not one of them.

With IWB, Carter and Spotnitz developed a stand alone project unlike the previous film, The X-Files: Fight the Future. Their thinking was that new audiences would better embrace a film that was not connected to any kind of alien-based theme. The problem with this approach is that the popular alien conspiracy was ancillary to the show's focus on Mulder and Scully, and new audiences will not quite understand their complicated history, for these two are incompatibly drawn to each other but cannot be together because of their differences.

Their lack of compromise becomes clear in IWB, so we're left with two endings, a thematic one, and the other, a fantasy. In the former, their distance is emphasized, an ending to which few have warmed. In the latter, shown after the credits, this distance is bridged. In the context of this joke, Carter argues that only in an appended fantasy can a more lasting union be formed, a resolution suggesting that broad poetic license and metaphorical thinking are ways to broaden the areas in which epistemic differences can reside.

X-Files: I Want to Believe is available from 20th Century Fox.

DVD Review: Here is Always Somewhere Else (2008)

You might not think that there would be much information available about a performance artist whose entire catalog of work lasts about 40 minutes, and who vanished at sea. This release will dispel that notion. Here is Always Somewhere Else is not only a moving tribute of artist Bas Jan Ader, but a celebration of the eye, that which notices the miraculous in the small, mundane details.

Ader, in that sense, was one of the first micro-historians. He was obsessed with gravity, with its elusive, literal hold on us. His short films feature simple gestures and make them seem epic: he falls off a roof, he swings from a tree branch until it snaps, sending himself into a river; he rides a bike right into currents; he sways, testing his balance, until he topples over. There is another film in which his face is seen in close-up, crying, gravity drawing his tears downward. Yet, despite this hermetic obsession, his disappearance was due to his attempt at the grand gesture: sailing around the world in a tiny boat. He called the adventure (attempted on film) In Search of the Miraculous.

Bas Jan Ader (1942-1975) originally came to America by boat, at nineteen working on a yacht sailing from Morocco to L.A. He stayed in California after the boat ran aground there. Subsequently he enrolled in art school and later taught at the Claremont Graduate School. By this time he began painting; there is an awkward clip of a short film he made in his gallery, where he filmed himself daily reading a children's book, in a gallery consistently empty of patrons.

In 1975, he began preparations for Miraculous, ignoring the advice of those who suggested that the small, 12-foot sailboat he chose--indeed the smallest ever to attempt to sail the Atlantic--was not sufficient for the journey. They were right, as the boat was found off the coast of Ireland shortly into his planned 60-day trip. In a final, ironic gesture to gravity, his body was never found.

Moving interviews with his ex-wife, friends, and current performance artists attest to the magnetism Ader had, as well as the influence his work has continued to have. A second disc in the Cult Epics set features his complete film and video work.

This is a film about a man who tempted fate by facing one of the supreme laws of nature, and attempted to engage it in silly games. There is a whimsical nature to his visual pieces, and his tragic death has not diminished that positive energy. In a sense this is a reminder that literally we all have magic in every step.

Inspiration as a plunge.

DVD Review: Love and Death in Times and Winds

Children's curiosity about death and sex is one of the unspoken engines of childhood. In Times and Winds that exploration takes place in a tiny farming village in Turkey, and under the eyes of strict, often frustrated, often ashamed adults who, it seems, have made emotional exploration a taboo in even their own lives.

Director Reha Erdem, who also wrote and edited the film, casts a wide lens to show the simple beauty of the countryside and rural living, but also zooms in on daily realities, including animal procreation, animal slaughter, birth, harsh parenting styles. The film is about the tension between such raw experience being available for children to try and absorb, and the parents' repression of the desires and feelings that also arise naturally in their young.

Best friends Omer (Ozkan Ozen) and Yakup (Ali Bey Kayali) each yearn to beak free from their respective suffocating fathers. Yakup dreams of running off with the village teacher, while his father is continuously demeaned into submission by his own brutal father. There is one great telling scene in which Yakup goes to the teacher's house to peep in the windows, and runs into his father, who is there to do the same thing. Omer dreams of patricide, as his ailing father, the local imam, hovers close to death but still has strength enough to beat and berate Omer, while favoring his younger son. Omer tries to facilitate his father's demise through various means: buying a scorpion, emptying the medicine from his father's pill capsules, sneaking into his room at night to open the windows wide, letting the cool air in.

Then there is Yildiz (Elit Iscan), whose growing sexuality is hampered by her being used as surrogate mother for infants in the village and her endless chores. Given the patriarchal oppressiveness of the village, it is a safe bet that her burgeoning emotions would be most feared, though the film doesn't deal with that directly. She is more often than not seen observing, learning, but not acting on her growing understanding.

The film's sections are based on the five daily Muslim calls to prayer. These serve as oases during each day to find refuge from suffering and to be reminded of the hope that is always present. Also underlying the narrative is a series of lessons taught by the teacher (Selma Ergec), who leads the students in memorized recitations of the cycles of the earth, of light, of water, and of heat.

This reinforces the idea that nature, while predictable to a point, cannot be tamed. The natural cycles of life will occur no matter the obstacles. The film does not offer any resolution to these yearnings, as if to remind us further that change comes in its own time and on its own terms. The natural cycle is harsh, but dynamic. The music, by legendary Estonian composer Arvo Part, is often barely there, which works, as wind is a constant metaphor and companion for the kids as they slowly sense their avenues to freedom. His steady, quiet score is sure and dependable, like the seasons honored in the film.

Times and Winds is available from Kino Video.