On Wanting to Believe

 "It was war that destroyed Lenord Trimble's body,

 but his wounds went deeper than the loss of his limbs.

What destroyed those parts of him that make us human beings,

those better angels of our nature?

I cannot say."

                - Fox Mulder                                       

I watched a lot of X-Files during my first year of graduate school. I would spend most of the day confused in math textbooks and papers then go home to turn on X-Files while eating dinner. One night while watching the show I started wondering why something about Mulder and Scully's search for aliens felt familiar to me. 

X-Files is a fictional TV show about two FBI agents, Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, who investigate paranormal cases, i.e. they look for aliens. Mulder "wants to believe" that aliens exist and uses the job to find them while basing his investigative work off of his gut feeling. Scully is the opposite. She's driven by science and empirical evidence and constantly steers Mulder back to reason. A great duo. 

On the surface, Mulder's search for aliens and uncovering government programs that know about them is futile. Episodes either leave mysteries simply unsolved or provide Mulder, Scully, and the audience with more questions than they started with. With regards to plot, the show never gets anywhere. So why is the show any good? The answer lies in the idea that aliens and conspiracies are a way communicate and empathize with the audience on an annoyingly fundamental part of life: its strangeness. 

Notwithstanding science and faith, we encounter deeply uncanny experiences and facts, albeit good and bad, on a daily basis. Most of life is an attempt to make sense of the world and its people around us, and much of the time we fail to do so. Mulder is the epitome of this deeply human experience. Episode after episode he remains devoutly committed to answering the questions that stir him deeply while the universe unendingly responds with nothing at best, and more questions at worst. We see him submerged in suspicion about the nature of the world around him, and a part of us naturally resonates with that due to our own individual struggles in uncertainty. Although the far majority of the cases and questions in the show remain unsolved, Mulder does not relinquish. In his piousness to truth, Mulder teaches us this higher fidelity of standing in the unknown and continuing to push against it regardless of whether or not it moves. This is what allows his character to grow throughout the seasons, and drives the other important aspect of the show, namely, Mulder and Scully's friendship.

Friends pull us back to our senses. Genuine interactions with people we trust ground us in the here and now. When Mulder strays too far from reason and begins to spiral down a hole that he's dug for himself in his head, Scully brings him back. She recalls to him what we lose in fits of passion, logic. Friendship also pushes back on the strangeness of the world. The certainty of speaking with a trusted friend in confidence, knowing that you'll be understood, is the antithesis to the unfamiliarity of the world around us. Not only does Mulder finds this in Scully but it allows him to move forward in the unknown of his pursuit. 

If there is a consistent theme throughout my writing on this blog it's that the literature, films, music, and art that impacts us the most are those which empathize with what we all feel and experience on a fundamental level. Though the X-Files seems to be about aliens and the unknown, what the show actually strikes at is something deeply familiar to all of us. 

 "The end of my world was unrecognizable and upside down.

There was one thing that remained the same.

You were my friend and you told me the truth."

- Fox Mulder                         

Another note about the show I'd like to make is how David Duchovny portrays Mulder. His eyes always have a sort of sense of longing and heaviness from the weight of the task at hand. It reminds me of how Harrison Ford seems to play every character with his eyes. 

Carsen

"Enchanted by its rigor, humanity has forgotten, and

continues to forget, that it is the rigor of chess masters,

not of angels"

- Jorge Luis Borges