On the eve of The X-Files movie, I Want to Believe, Tom Piatak makes the case in a well-written article at TakiMag that The X-Files show actually promoted a conservative message. It's a thought provoking piece that makes some valid points, but the idea that The X-Files offered "a worldview far closer to paleoconservatism than is generally found in anything emanating from Hollywood" is a "truth" that is out there.

He writes, "Rather than guiding the way to a brighter tomorrow, Mulder and Scully face the same fundamental problems human beings have always faced, including the persistence of evil. The aliens and monsters who appeared in so many episodes were not benevolent or even misunderstood but implacable foes who needed to be stopped. There was no hint of moral relativism: The serial killer Donnie Pfaster is shown morphing into a demon or other serial killers as he goes about his work, and those who misunderstand the nature of evil get what they deserve. In the first season episode 'Tooms,' a social worker accepts a serial killer's claim that Mulder had brutalized him, and then attempts to befriend him, only to become the killer's next victim. And almost every episode featured the tagline 'The Truth Is Out There,' meaning not only that the truth might be found in unusual places but that there was in fact an objective truth that could be found, despite what the postmodernists want us to believe."

I've recently taken to watching The X-Files, and my immediate response to Piatak's thesis was, like the upcoming movie title, Piatak "wants to believe." So many conservatives find political rationalizations to explain why they enjoy a particular show. Can't something just be good without having a consistent or coherent political message that meshes with your own? After reading the article, I must say he makes his case well, noting the respectful treatment of Scully's Catholicism, the absence of non sequitur leftist spiels that strangely get dropped into so many television scripts, the "reactionary" subtitle of "Fight the Future" for the first X-Files movie, and the anti-government theme of the show.

On this last point, The X-Files seems to mirror not the conservative distrust of state institutions but the paranoia of 9/11 "truthers," Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorists, and other weirdos. This works as fantasy, which is what The X-Files is, but not as a guiding political idea. Rather than generally anti-government, the show is specifically anti-military, often depicting men in uniform as murderers for hire. It's not as if the Internal Revenue Service or the National Endowment for the Arts is bashed. It's the national security apparatus, not the government in general. Piatak says The X-Files virtually ignored sex, but this ignores the ongoing joke regarding Mulder's obsession with pornography (which, as Sam Francis once reminded, is an obsession for many paleoconservatives as well). There is also the consistent depiction of local law enforcement as bumblers unable to solve any case without the help of the feds.

My biggest pet peeve regarding the show intertwines with my biggest gripe with Piatak's piece. Though Piatak spends several paragraphs praising The X-Files for paying homage to patriotism and its willingness to defy multiculturalism by ocassionally portraying foreigners in an unfavorable light, he ignores the fact that The X-Files outsourced its operations to Canada for the first five seasons (the only episodes I have watched). This is not a political but an aesthetic point. It's bad enough when episodes, such as the third-season opener The Blessing Way, attempt to trick the viewer into believing that the Canadian northwest, with evergreens intruding into the picture, is actually the American southwest. What is really horrible is when the show purports to be in Pennsyltucky or the Florida Panhandle and all of the bit-part actors exhibit heavy Canadian accents. The "aboots," hard "Rs," and clipped cadences are inescapable. It mars the show. Nothing against the greatness of the Great White North, but I want actors playing Americans to sound like Americans--not like Bob and Doug McKenzie from Strange Brew. It's distracting otherwise.

Nevertheless, I like Piatak's article. I like The X-Files. It's okay to admire articles with which you disagree. It's okay to be entertained by shows that don't make a point of flattering your politics.

Thanks for your kind words and thoughtful comments. I agree that the show is not about conservative ideology, but I was intrigued by the conservative elements that do appear, which is why I wrote the article. One small note: my recollection is that Chris Carter said in an interview that Mulder is shown as having an interest in pornography so that the audience would not assume that a character with no girlfriend was homosexual. If I were Chris Carter, that's not what I would have done, but it does bring up another point I did not mention: the love that dare not speak its name is pretty much absent from the X-Files.

On this last point, The X-Files seems to mirror not the conservative distrust of state institutions but the paranoia of 9/11 "truthers," Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorists, and other weirdos.

Which include, alas, Morgan Reynolds and Paul Craig Roberts.

Mr. Flynn and Mr. Piatak: The most conservative part of the show is left unnamed by both of you. The Leftist anti-business and anti-military conspiracies are intertwined with the alien invasion fantasies. Instead of taking it seriously, the Leftist conscpiracy stuff is portrayed as the fantasy it is.

Dan,

I don't think what you write here is wrong but I think Piatak is more correct in his interpretation of the show than you are. It is very difficult to have a long running show portray any sort of clear and consistent politics b/c of the great number of writers that invariably become involved and the often quicker turnaround than desirable on the writing of an episode and its creation. However, it is MUCH easier to have a show be consistently liberal/left given the overwhelming majority of people involved in screenwriting or production of that political persuasion.

The fact that X-Files cannot be accurately portrayed as consistently left isn't an argument that it is conservative but allows it the freedom to trend more that way. This is akin to how Law and Order for a long stretch of its early years was pretty much a pro-life show (numerous Catholic screenwriters and its creator), but overall is much more a liberal show and has been nothing but for years now.

Out of curiosity I just tried to find out something about the creator Carter's take on religion and found this quote:

"The most difficult thing to reconcile is science and religion," he said. "And so we created a dilemma for [Scully's] character that plays right into Mulder's hands. So that cross she wears, which was there from the pilot episode, is all-important for a character who is torn between her rational character and her spiritual side. That is, I think, a very smart thing to do. The show is basically a religious show. It's about the search for God. You know, 'The truth is out there.' That's what it's about."

Many people have argued (correctly I think) that the belief in aliens is a religious impulse, and comes out of the breakdown of late Protestant American religion. For a tv show creator to take this and treat it with respect is clearly not a liberal/left thing to do.

Carter has elsewhere said that the show is about the remystification of our world in response to the demystification attempted by reductivist science. (Okay, those are my words, and my spin, on what I remember him saying.) Great. But how does he accomplish it?

This is fundamentally a conservative impulse ONLY as long as one also resists an irrationalism (e.g., the view that contradictions can be true, or e.g., an acceptance of new age religions or a primitive animism). Often, the show goes towards irrationalisms instead of just remystification and anti-scientism.

Scully,

You are making Dan's point again to a degree but the response to you is that the show "often" doing one thing doesn't preclude it from doing other things more frequently or consistently, etc. I think the most frequent way in which Carter's show (not always written or directed by him remember) did this was through the growth and development of the character of your namesake which was gradual, consistent, and decidely not an embrace of animism or other irrationalisms. Scully was also the one character that remained throughout every season (of course only b/c Duchovny left for what he thought would be a film career but nonetheless).

Gosh, I just liked the show. I didn't look for deeper meanings. However, I was relieved that religion was not ridiculed. I must confess however that my favorite characters, the Lone Gunmen were killed off.

The x-files was filled with new-age nonsense and ultra paranoid government conspiracy stuff that is more often associated with the left.

The X-Files are hunting aliens. The problemm is they are encouraging the crazies who believe they have been kidnapped by space creatures.

They deal with the aliens properly but supporting th UFO hysteria is destructive.

I would agree with Terri. It was a good show but not sure why you'd look for deeper meaning in it. As a practical matter, you could probably find deeper meaning in anything if you really wanted to. Or....maybe it's just that I'm not that deep in the first place?

The show was great when they were chasing monsters and ghosts -- not so much when they were chasing aliens. I hope the movie is mostly the former.

The X-files is the only television show I've watched in the last 10 years or so, and while I enjoy it, I never noticed a "conservative" message. As the storylive evolves the script makes it clear that all the great religions of the world -- Islam, Christianity -- came from aliens who were also our progenitors. This, no doubt, is a message that offends any religious person.

The shows anti-government approach does seem more aimed at the military and the "security-state," but I don't think this is inconsistent with a conservative perspective. However, as the series went on the shows simply became incoherent. Could anyone follow the plotline about the aliens, colonization, and something about sentient black oil?

Me neither...

Interesting observations from everyone. I'm a big fan of The X-Files. I've never thought of the show in terms of Conservative or Liberal. However, I did appreciate their treatment of religion in general. Scully's Priest was always calm, compassionate and insightful. The last time I saw religion treated this well was a Made-for-TV special of "Les Miserables" back in the '70's. It was a welcome relief from Hollywood's usual attitude of life's spiritual aspects.

Bruce: Except for one quite antiCatholic show (written by Duchovny) and the tendancy to treat Protestant preachers as crazy and dangerous (though often right!), the show was quite positive on religion in general. But the only type of religion they unequivocally portrayed positively was the new age stuff (e.g., Scully's sister) and the American Indian animism stuff.

Again, Carter wanted to portray a de-demystified world (it is in some ways the anti-Star Trek, with the latter's optimistism about a scientistic future with a benevolent universalist government), but that most consistently led to irrational superstitious stuff. That's fine with me -- it's a show and it's fun. But that doesn't make it very conservative.

On the whole, I enjoyed this piece, but I do want to object to one minor thing: I've been a Canadian for all of my 38 years, and I've never heard one of my countrymen say "aboot".

Sorry to burst your bubble, but we don't all sound like the fictional McKenzie brothers (whom a lot of Amercians seem to think are real) any more than every American sounds like John Wayne or the Tony Soprano character on the eponymous show.

I was sitting with three Canadians from Halifax a couple of weeks ago and didn’t hear one ‘about’ from any of them. Maybe being from Canada you don’t hear it that way, but to American ears ‘aboot’ seems to be the Canadian pronunciation. Also listened as they lamented on how they hadn’t had a good beer since they left the Great White North. What’s that all aboot!? Hosehead.

I liked what was written here, some of the best arguments on a blog without being self-righteous. I think the biggest "conservative" notion of the shows was that religion as a whole wasn't given the "de facto" Hollywood treatment and bashed as loony from the jump. However, in some plotlines, especially the latter parts of "the Mythology", religion gets turned on its head.

This reminds me on the movie "Contact" and how Jodie Foster's character is all science and no religion or God. She thinks that the people who do believe in God do so as a way to not feel lonely in the universe. I think that idea is clearly how Hollywood or any of the supposed "intelligent" people think of people who believe in God or have deep religious faith.

BTW, to ASDF, I'm here at Tinker AFB, OK and have heard "aboot", "eh", "bean"

FF

ASDF:

If what Americans hear is 'aboot' when Canadians say 'about', then I'd say the problem lies with you, not us. And by the way, we could spend a great deal of time mocking American foibles, or the "ugly American" stereotype, but most of us are above that.

P.S. Most of the rest of the world sees American beer -rightly or wrongly- as weak and tasteless, that's why the Canadians you allegedly heard were complaining.

Why is it that Canadians are so sensitive. If you're happy with yourselves, so be it. But, we hear what we hear and that's what it is. Doesn't really matter, does it? I'm from Massachusetts and I get $hite about my accent and pronounciation all the time. So what.

And I am particularly proud of my country and don't think of any of us as 'ugly Americans'. If others think that way, that's their problem. Especially as the contributions to the World that the U.S. has provided far outweighs any of the negatives that we might have exported.

If the only complaint I hear from Canadians is that our beer $uck$, I can live with that.

Here's hoping that you post a review after watching the new X-Files movie.

Interesting post. I just saw the movie "I Want to Believe" and was pretty f*cking pissed off about the strong anti-gay bias... like so many hollywood villains, not only did they have a pedophile priest, but the two ultimate villains were gay lovers... "married in Massachusetts" ... and Xibits's character states with disgust. Top top it off they were Commie Russian homos!...

I now that there is a kind of underground conservative group of writers in Hollywood... currently being facilitated informally by Gary Sinese... would be curious to know whether Spotnitz or Carter are memebers...

This seems awfully fishy in a heated political season to be taking potshots at the gays... when there is a gay marriage ballot initiative taking place in California no less!!