In 1994, James Wolcott reviewed television’s first otherworldly procedural, which would become a cult classic: “The X-Files.” NewYorkerArchive
Photograph from Moviestore Collection / Shutterstock / REX
Like “The Twilight Zone,” “The X-Files” expresses a national unease, which helps explain its hold on our nerves. “The Twilight Zone,” first broadcast in 1959, was the dark negative of the sunny snapshots of suburbia shown on sitcoms like “Ozzie and Harriet” and “Leave It to Beaver.” Created by Rod Serling, who also acted as its host, the show served as a night watchman to the anxieties of the atomic age.
The Cold War is absent from “The X-Files,” replaced by a more cosmic paranoia. The show reflects the end of the millennium, the flip side of the New Age. Beneath the soothing cover of incense, mantras, and Tibetan chants, rude beasts are awakening—Gnosticism reborn. The term X-Files refers to hush-hush, top-secret F.B.I. case studies of paranormal activity. Investigating new outbreaks are the F.B.I. agents Fox “Spooky” Mulder , a believer, and Dana Scully , a skeptic.
Once an episode earns your faith, no avenue seems too far out. One outstanding “X-File” episode began with a camera pan of suburban back yards, across isolated squares of pasture. A young girl clutching a stuffed animal draws the attention of a passing couple, who follow her into her back yard. On the swing set, her father sits slumped, his back to us. In his neck are a pair of puncture wounds. “Daddy?” No answer. Daddy’s been drained of blood.
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