The X-Files is a television show created by Chris Carter, which first aired on the FOX Broadcasting Network from 1993 to 2002 and ran for nine seasons and 202 episodes. Its two main characters are Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson), an FBI agent and medical doctor, and Fox Mulder (David Duchovny), an FBI agent and profiler. The show begins as Dana Scully, fresh out of the FBI academy, is assigned to assist Fox Mulder and to report on his management of the X-Files, which is the name given to the bureau’s unresolved cases. Agent Scully is asked to put her scientific background to good use in dismissing Mulder’s conviction that aliens have been interacting and collaborating with government officials since the 1950s. As the show progresses and the characters get involved in both personal and complex criminal cases, Mulder’s theory is proven to be true and Scully teams up with him against powerful government agencies, which are eager to hide the truth from citizens. Their initial platonic relationship eventually develops into a romance.
The show scored between 10 and 27 million viewers per episode and by the end, it was the longest running science-fiction show in the history of U.S. television.
In the program, the FBI’s X-Files also contained cases of supernatural events such as demonic possession, mutant beings feeding off human flesh (“Tooms”), and voracious insects (“Darkness Falls”), among other subjects. Mulder and Scully’s inquiries led the pair to question every scientific fact taken for granted, expanding reality to its most extreme limits. Their quest, which caused them to risk their lives more than once, is summarized by two of the show’s most popular slogans: “I want to believe” and “The truth is out there.”
Director Chris Carter admitted that he read fans’ letters and took their ideas into consideration for the show. Online groups emerged, paying attention to every detail and engaging in discussions and debates that resulted in a sense of community. Like Mulder, many of these enthusiastic viewers are eager to believe, but the show is careful to never provide easy answers.
In 1998, a movie titled Fight the Future using The X-Files’ characters and themes was released and contributed to the general narrative of the television show. The film’s plot involved Scully and Mulder in an action-packed adventure in which the FBI agents undercover the truth about an alien colonization on Earth. A second movie was released in 2008. I Want to Believe is a stand-alone film, independent from the series mythology but still featuring known characters such as Mulder, Scully, and agent Walter Skinner.
Mulder and Scully encountered numerous characters in their quest for the truth. Some of them were popular enough to get their own television series. Two spinoffs were created, the first one featuring The Lone Gunmen in which three awkward geeks get deeply involved in exposing government secrets. The second spinoff is Millennium, a series centered on special agent Frank Black (Lance Henrikson) and his dealings with the Millennium Group. The show suggests that the government of the United States is involved with former Nazi and Japanese scientists and is assisting aliens in colonizing the Earth. Aliens abduct humans and conduct experiments on them, all with the knowledge and complicity of political authorities.
The X-Files narrative has grown to be an incredible success because of the show’s ability to feed on existing conspiracy theories fueled by the evolution of the Internet. Its credits open with the image of a flying saucer, which immediately establishes The X-Files’ focus. The hazy photograph shown during the opening credits has become the symbol of Mulder and Scully’s quest. Its resonance is also understandable when taking into consideration the importance of the UFO abduction phenomenon as a strong American underground narrative. Because it reunites science fiction, New Age obsessions, reincarnation, near-death experiences, sexual abuse, and fear of a superior civilization, UFO abduction narrative taps into one of modern America’s greatest mythological discourses.
The movie The X-Files: Fight the Future (1998) starred Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny as agents Scully and Mulder. The X-Files combines important themes in twentieth-century American myth, legend, and folklore, including alien encounters, government conspiracies, and paranormal activity. (20th Century Fox/Photofest)
Working with major UFO themes, The X-Files series featured its usual landscapes and references, catering to the public’s need for familiar mythological elements. In that regard, Mulder and Scully’s visit to Area 51 (“Dreamland”) is an important integration of American UFO conspiracy theories into the scenario of the show. The theories that suggest an alien presence on Earth can be traced back to the beginning of the Cold War when a civilian pilot reported seeing unidentified flying objects (UFOs). A few days later, another civilian found metal debris on his property near Roswell, New Mexico, where the pilot had seen the UFOs. The Roswell narrative grew to include flying saucer debris, the recovery of an alien corpse, and a monumental government cover-up. In the years that followed, a number of people claimed that aliens had abducted them because these people had lost hours of their lives and had to rely on hypnosis to discover what had happened to them during that forgotten time. For more than half a century now, popular culture, folklore, and myth studies have relayed these stories, turning them into something everybody knows. The X-Files plugged these elements into its mainframe, counting on the fact that they are all familiar now to the American public.
Mulder and Scully’s desire to discover and expose the truth causes them to become the object of numerous attacks by the members of an elite group of government officials, causing the two to have to work in the shadows and involve close family members. Mulder’s knowledge of alien abductions goes back to his childhood when he witnessed his sister’s kidnapping by a white light (“Little Green Men”). His restless will to find out what happened to her triggered his interest in the FBI’s X-Files and worked as a guiding principle for the show.
Good guys and villains surrounded Mulder and Scully, with some characters navigating between the two categories and illustrating the conflicted nature of humanity. The Smoking Man, also known as the Cigarette-Smoking Man, or CSM (William B. Davis), is an important part of the show because he is the link between the FBI and a powerful group of men called the Syndicate. As Mulder’s arch-nemesis, CSM embodies everything conspiracy theorists fear and denounce: silence, secrets, contempt for human life, greed, and dishonesty.
Geneviève Pigeon
See also Alien Abduction Stories and UFOs; Area 51; Conspiracy Theories; Hopkinsville Goblins; Montauk Project; Roswell (New Mexico) UFO Landings
Further Reading
Delasara, Jan. 2000. PopLit, PopCult and The X-Files: A Critical Exploration. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.
Knight, Peter. 2000. Conspiracy Culture: From Kennedy to The X-Files. New York: Routledge.
Lavery, David, Angela Hague, and Maria Cartwright, eds. 1996. Deny All Knowledge: Reading the X Files. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.
Yang, Sharon R., ed. 2007. The X-Files and Literature: Unweaving the Story, Unraveling the Lie to Find the Truth. Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars.