bunch of spooky shit … Don’t ask me, I hardly watched the show. And for good reason, as a child I would stay up “late” on Friday nights to watch Unsolved Mysteries with my mother. I was completely transfixed by the show, starring at the television unblinking. I wasn’t that I enjoyed the show, more like enthralled. Unfortunately when it was time to go to bed in my big room, with all of the lights out, and no one to protect me or at least be sacrificed while I got away should things go bad, my imagination would get the best of me. In my mind little green men will pull their spaceship up to my backyard break in through my window and abduct me. I’d look out the large window that was just inches from my bed and whether it was my imagination or not see “things” looking back at me. Of course I would come to the realization that I lived in Queens, not Nebraska, and I was Black not White, the chances of being abducted by aliens was preeeetty slim – Or was it…What kept me away from watching the X- Files was the fear of the unknown. Don’t get me wrong, like most young kids I thrived off of a good spook. I enjoyed sitting in pitch-black rooms trading scary movies with my cousins, watching movies like Nightmare on Elm Street, or Jason. When Michael Jackson’s Thriller would come on MTV I was the one ripping my cousins hands off of their face just as the undead were pulling themselves from their graves. But there was something about shows like the X- Files or Unsolved Mysteries something about the unknown that made it more feasible and as such, much more real to me.
I could easily look at television and say “you know what, I don’t think this Freddy guy with the melted off skin and the axe to grind is going to try and kill me in my sleep” and even if he wanted to he couldn’t that’s not humanly possible. But at night staring up at that great expansion of darkness, how could I know exactly what could or could not be lurking out there. In the ocean and on the earth itself, we are constantly finding new species of animals, so who is there to say that there isn’t something out there that doesn’t want to come down here kidnap some people and play with their butt-holes?
This is where the strength of the X- Files lies, that gray area. Although they do deal with storylines that could be fantastical in nature there are also those instances where either through science or sheer ignorance the events within can be open to possibility. As was bought up in the X- Files article a major theme in the television show was the idea of skepticism, believer vs. non-believer. Having no firm conviction (either for or against) is more frightening than believing to “know” one way or another. The dichotomy of the show exhibited through Mulder’s beliefs vs. Scully’s skepticism together is what created this gray area. Neither was right and the other wrong, things that appeared one way could turn
out to be completely different later on. A viewer's "belief" in what was truly happening in the show changed frequently enough that they were never able to become definite on what was really going on. "Trust no one..." Thanks, but I'd rather deal with monster's that I know probably don't exist...
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