May 21, 2004
existential desires
Below is an image of a television set of the X Files. It was shot during the filming of the final season in 2002. John Divola says that this body of work deals with the literal manifestations of existential desires.
I watched the X Files on free-to-air television a while back but I never really clicked with the series.
This blurb says that the:
"...X Files is a division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation devoted to unsolved cases that appear to have some unexplained, paranormal element. The files take their name from the filing cabinet where they were kept - originally filed under U for unsolved, they grew to big for the drawer and were moved to the less populated X cabinet."
This is the X cabinet on the set:
So we have well done photographs of the set.
From memory the television programme was gender bending--trangressive of the strict gender codes of masculinity and feminity. Agent Scully is rational, empirical, and competent in her dual role as scientist and FBI agent. She is gender-coded as masculine. So Scully is an independent woman as a cybercop and forensic investigator. Hence the claim that this was groundbreaking television. We are a long way from Baywatch, but is not Scully the woman scientist still the object of the male gaze? I vaguely remember her body being mutilated.
All the stuff about the conspiracy at the heart of the government is easy to accept, since our Governments are always lying and hiding something. Hence uncovering the secrets of public and private power is a staple of investigative journalism, political campaigns, and the everyday lives of citizens.
All that stuff about the aliens trying to take over the planet was hardly disturbing or subversive. It was standard sci-fi fantasy without much in the way of a pardoy of television.
What I don't have much idea about is the way our existential desires and the X-Files connect. Would that be existential anxiety?
What I did see was that the X-files played on our own paranoiac fears, which are themselves partially a media creation---of 'hyped' news coverage.
Is that image a representation of existential anxiety? Paranoia?
I can appreciate that the narrative of conspiracy is big in the US---eg., the assassination of President Kennedy in the 1960s----and that the cultural logic of paranoia stems from a loss of faith in political authority. The logic of conspiracy is attractive in many different areas of American culture and it has become a part of the cultural logic of late capitalism that is dominated by the simulated spectacle.
Is that the existential desire in the X-Files?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at May 21, 2004 07:41 PM | TrackBackHaving both lost siblings Mulder and Scully were very clearly coded as surrogate siblings for each other so when they finally smooched and had babies etc. half the audience went 'ew' and half got all sweaty. Is it important to characterize which half of the fanboy audience one is in as regards the incest thing? I'm not saying.
As regards existential anxiety, there was this episode that was delayed because of the Superbowl, and then delayed more because of post game coverage, blah blah blah, we know who won, and then delayed like another HOUR because of more blah blah postpostgame coverage, it's like 12:30 AM, and finally we see the episode which had that guy who was in Robocop and ER playing the EMT guy who can regrow limbs like a salamander and even shed his whole skin by opening his mouth and, like, sticking his new head out and just kind of wriggling out. Which as far as I'm concerned is just way cool.
I'm not sure if this answered the existential anxiety thing.
Posted by: T.V. on May 24, 2004 02:39 AMOK, I am making reference to the general existential anxiety that leads people to attempt to get outside of culture, and to believe in miracles or space aliens. Allot of my work in the past ten years has explored this terrain. I am simply interested in the X-files as one of many arenas where these desires are played out.
Posted by: John Divola on August 24, 2004 02:42 AM