Episode 181: On 'The X Files,' with Meredith Michael

Weird Studies

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel

Society & Culture, Arts, Philosophy

4.8 • 688 Ratings

🗓️ 4 December 2024

⏱️ 78 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Chris Carter's The X-Files is weird on its face: a dramatic series that, from the start, presented itself as more than drama, an exploration of the reality of the paranormal using the tools of fiction, a fantasy posing as reality (or is it the other way around?). Strangely prescient, undeniably zany, and truly "hyperstitious," the series is likely to strike contemporary viewers as equal parts naive and prophetic. In this episode, music scholar and Weird Studies assistant Meredith Michael joins Phil and JF for a deep dive into the archival sublime of the filing cabinet marked "X." To purchase tickets to JF and Phil's December 19th solstice event on Weirdosphere, with live music by Pierre-Yves Martel, to to weirdosphere.org. Support us on Patreon. Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack, volumes 1 and 2, on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp page. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia. Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop Find us on Discord Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau! REFERENCES Cut-up technique Phil Ford, “The View from the Cheap Seats at the UFO Show” Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow Special Guest: Meredith Michael. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Spectrevision Radio
0:02.0	Welcome to Weird Studies, an arts and philosophy podcast with hosts Phil Ford and J.F. Martel.
0:20.0	For more episodes, or to support the podcast,
0:23.3	go to weirdstudies.com. Welcome to Weird Studies, this is JF.
0:52.3	When the X-F. When the X-Files hit the airwaves in 1993, I felt like this show had been made specifically for me,
1:00.7	or at least an earlier version of me. Having just turned 16, I was at the time possessed of the
1:06.5	disappointing conviction that my interest in the unexplained was on the wane. Those time-life
1:13.2	mysteries of the unknown books, which had so beguiled me a few years before, were now gathering
1:18.7	dust on a forgotten shelf alongside my fighting fantasy adventure books. Unsolved mysteries, a television
1:25.9	documentary series I'd watched with almost religious fervor until a
1:29.6	short time before now seemed more hokey than thought-provoking. I feared I was becoming jaded. But the X-Files
1:37.4	changed all that. Once I'd gotten past the low-budget credit sequence, which looked to me like it
1:43.1	was made with a handy cam and a
1:44.7	cassio-mitty keyboard, I realized that if this show wasn't made for me, then I was made for this show.
1:50.7	The premise is well known. A skeptic and a believer, FBI agents Dana Scully and Fox Mulder,
1:57.3	investigate unsolved cases involving paranormal phenomena and deep-state conspiracies.
2:03.7	Like many other viewers, I was struck by the poster in Mulder's office, that grainy photograph
2:08.5	of a hubcap-shaped UFO underscored with the phrase, I want to believe.
2:14.1	Like those other viewers, kindred spirits all, I found that I too wanted to believe, or to keep
2:20.9	believing.
2:22.1	But in what?
2:23.1	Ultimately, it's on this question that we alight in today's episode, recorded with our
	...

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