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THE X-FILES
Symptom of Millenial Malaise
by H. David Blalock
In the last decade of this century, everything having to do with our fears, our needs, and our desires seems to have taken on a frantic, imperative urgency. The end of the millenium, to western eyes, portends more than just the end of 1999.
Over the past few decades, American society has lost its innocence to war, scandal, financial ruin and boom, even future shock in technology. A tense cynicism has become intrinsic to Americans, a wariness of our politicians, schools, churches, institutions in general.
Denied the ability to trust anyone with their well-being (political, economic, or societal); refused impartial presentation of facts on which they might make informed, rational decisions; not allowed to express themselves through a voice of a majority in their own government because of laws and regulations, written and unwritten, generated by special interest factions; the majority of Americans have settled into a quiet paranoia. The pressure of fifty years of pandering to expediency and abandoning common sense has made America's leaders untrustworthy not only in each other's eyes, but in the eyes of their constituents and foreigners. That favors from political offices as lofty as the Presidency can be bought by hostile alien factions only strengthens American unease about who is really in charge of their lives.
Enter "The X-Files", a television program giving flesh to America's faceless demons. Within weeks it had developed a cult following, within months it was a major hit. Why should this be a surprise to anyone?
"The X-Files" is both a product and a causal factor in the burgeoning neurosis plaguing Americans today. It was created out of the common fear of loss of control, that one's life is not one's own, that an anonymous, malevolent group of men working for an unidentified agency is actually holding the reins not only on government, but on individual lives. It encourages this image of secret societies waging underground war on the average American. It lets the average American believe that the bad things happening to him are someone else's fault. He can't get a job because a mysterious force is at work against him. He can't get a raise because his boss is part of the conspiracy. He can't hold on to a relationship because somebody out there is manipulating things to prevent his perfect mate from reaching him.
Programs like "The X-Files" have begun to proliferate. "Millenium" and "G vs E" are two of the most blatant spin-offs of this phenomenon, but the influence of "The X-Files" can be seen even mainline programs down to the animated "The Simpsons". This expansion of unreasonable belief in some shady organization controlling the lives of millions of Americans without their knowledge is a symptom of an even deeper problem. America is spiritually and morally bankrupt.
After years of denying the dignity of the human soul, is it any wonder Americans are confused when presented with a spiritual crisis? And, in spite of what might be said, the end of the millenium is a spiritual crisis. Americans for the most part are either descendants of Puritan stock or slaves. Both of these classes were deeply spiritually minded and imbedded this in the subconscious of their families, even those who purport to be atheistic. Faced with a landmark event such as the end of the millenium, with its attendant prophesied end of the age, a spiritual unease has settled into America. She expects an event of enormous proportion, but has divorced herself from spirituality for so long she can not now identify it. Her feelings about the threat being unidentifiable, that it is out of her control, that she cannot prevent it, manifests itself in the media in programs like "The X-Files" and otherwise as the panic over the "Y2K bug" or the emergence of killer cults.
"The X-Files" is a disturbing statement on the state of the American mentality, and it is time we examined our outlooks on life before our loss of control becomes more than mere fiction.
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