Scully and Me (...and maybe Mulder, if he's into that kinda thing)

I have a confession to make. I think Scully is HOT. I've come to this conclusion after watching the first five series of the X-Files during my (rather unproductive) summer, and rediscovering the horny teenager inside of me that I never knew existed. When I can't sleep after one episode, I blame it on the gruesome storyline ... when instead Scully is on my mind.

Before this sounds like a PostSecret confession in the making, my love for Scully is indicative of something else (and before you mention it, no, not a secret thing for my mum). I've been struck by the way in which these old epsiodes of the X-Files return onself to a world without care. A world in which the threat of alien invasion and government conspiracy was one of our more demanding concerns. In short, the paranoia of Mulder and Scully is so appealing because it is not a paranoia that we ourselves are now embracing, it is one that we have since replaced with something far more dangerous and consuming.

Our new paranoia is again "out there". But this time, the men in black are more likely to be wearing a burkha or turban. Or so we are led to believe. The "War on Terror" has so permeated our lives and imaginations that all of our Hollywood blockbusters and HBO dramas have to have some sort of terrorist plot if they are to gain some critical praise for their "gritty realism". Gone are the days when we could look to the skys and wonder if there really were some little green men up there with some expensive gamma rays. Now the television executives demand counter-terrorism action, oil executives on the pull and the latest MI5 gadgetry. I'm quite frankly fed up of this realism in modern drama. It's not just TV either; it extends to the theatre and the latest novels.

I think we need to take a look at what we are letting ourselves be consumed by. The doctrine of "terrorists everywhere we look" might be a conveniant one for a government trying to sell its latest erosion of habeus corpus, but it should not be one that we become so saturated in that we feel it is somehow rather realistic (and therefore sexy). I'm not trying to say that we should replace our fear of Al-Qaeda with a fear of martians. What I am saying is that the state of our collective health and fixations can be expressed through what we choose to watch. A little bit of escapism should be allowed to flourish, and I'd argue that the recent success of Doctor Who on the BBC is in part thanks to this. Let's not become slaves to a fear that has been permeated by the latest drama; that is in fact what the terrorist want us to feel. Instead, lets look elsewhere (to the stars even) for a bit of entertainment that puts our daily lives into perspective ... and may even throw up the equivalent of a red-headed minx once in a while.

Blygt

PS - I've attached an interesting video from the X-Files spin-off series "The Lone Gunmen", one that rather spookily makes a connection between the characters that made the show so quirky, and events on 9/11 that changed the way we (and the TV executives) see the world fundamentally...

The Lone Gunmen TV Show Predicts 9/11 + War on Terror (4 mins)