| The new X-Files movie |
[Jul. 26th, 2008|06:58 am] |
I enjoyed the movie, but have been steeped in the series for years. I don't know how well one who wasn't steeped in the series would accept some of the things which are slowly revealed that normally writers would make clear immediately as character development.
The X-Files is best known for the conspiracy arc with aliens, but in our household we've often recognized how there's a strong current of challenging the ways current culture has accepted horrors. Now, perhaps that's just how one writes good creepy shows: keep close to as normal as possible and bring in the twist. In the movie, Scully's back to being a doctor, and she's at a Catholic hospital. She has a young patient with a brain disease that is incurable except, but there is an experimental stem cell therapy. Scully would be putting the boy "through hell" to give the boy the treatment because of the physical pain. Since the therapy is given in a Catholic hospital, one must presume the stem cell source is not embryonic, and that it is not the type therapy the church disapproves on moral grounds due to the source of the cells. Still, the debate over embryonic stem cell research provides a cultural undercurrent.
Meanwhile, the bad guys are a Russian man and his partner, a victim of the psychic pedophiliac priest. The two are "married in the state of Massachusetts," and the Russian is procuring bodies with the right rare bloodtype to support organ donation to the partner. The organ donation is the whole body: experimental head transplants. And the bodies are that of women.
So, there are some interesting/perplexing/disturbing contrasts: Scully's stem cell therapy to save the boy with the brain tumor, the Russian body transplant therapy (and the label of Frankenstein science in the news headline at the end). Unmarried Scully & Mulder, married bad guys, and the pedophiliac priest who has the psychic visions that help Mulder (and Scully) slowly break the case.
This ethical ambiguity was a staple in the standalone episodes. You *could* turn off the show and leave the monster of the week at that, or you could poke at the story for a moment and wonder whether Chris Carter was skewering or making a point or delivering an allegory, but the moral issues were, are left just as ambiguous as the paranormal.
Christine suggests the contrast is to show real "Frankenstein" in contrast with Scully's therapy. This is not that.
Most horrifying moment in the film: Scully researching "stem cell therapy" using Google and that (or close to it) search string. And then promptly heading off to surgery.
Shippers should be delighted, stay after the credits.
Also, Fargo influenced snow scenes, if you ask me.
Christine thinks the snowplow symbolizes something, but what? |
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