The American Dream in The X-Files: Sleepless, Duane Barry and Ascension

The introduction to this series of posts on the American dream as it appears in The X-Files may be found here: https://culttvblog.blogspot.com/2023/06/the-american-dream-in-x-files.html?m=1

2x04 Sleepless (Monster of the Week)

As always The X-Files puts some seriously weird stuff in the foreground of the episode, which can tend to distract us from the many references it also includes to the American dream of the rule of law, equal opportunity, equal justice, hope for the oppressed and human rights.

In this case the foreground is the experimentation conducted on Cole and the other members of his Marine unit in the Vietnam war. As so often in The X-Files the weird stuff has a background in reality to give it an air of verisimilitude, and the show builds on previous references to the military by going straight to one of the US's more disastrous engagements: in this case the real background is actual medical treatment of soldiers in the Vietnam war. I have been unable to find anything which rivals the (implausible) psychosurgery experimentation to affect the need for sleep, however Vietnam has been extensively documented as the first war in which psychiatry was used to help the combat along a bit. As far as I can tell what this means in documented history was the dosing of soldiers with amphetamines to help them carry on combat without the need for so much sleep and use of chlorpromazine (I think this is netter known as Thorazine in the US) to suspend their combat stress. As a result the Vietnam war had far fewer immediate psychological casualties of war than previous ones but the extensive PTSD in veterans has been well documented. Exactly the sort of veterans we see in this show.

They went off to fight a war and came back...well you can see them.

Bringing up the Vietnam war of course is the show's way of ushering in all sorts of associations which break the American dream apart.

Firstly we have the introduction of the military-industrial complex: so far in the series, the defence of the dream has come up now and then, but the USA is the name which is always mentioned in connection with the complex. Capitalism is often placed at the heart of the dream, and when placed in a particularly poisonous combination with the apparent need to defend the dream (or increase profits for armaments manufacturers) it is no wonder the USA is the country which is always named in connection with the complex.

Secondly with the introduction of the Vietnam war we have the idea of the Communism against which the war was fought, introduced for the first time, and as we all know Communism is everything the American dream is opposed to, right? Let's pause and define that:

'Communism: political and economic doctrine that aims to replace private property and a profit-based economy with public ownership and communal control of at least the major means of production (e.g. mines, mills and factories) and the natural resources of a society.' (britannica.com)

Merely stating an encyclopedia definition of Communism shows that the opposition to it must necessarily be driven by free market capitalism, that is again at the heart of the dream. I wrote some posts ago about how originally the idea of the American dream did not include uncontrolled capitalism, and it was thought immoral to be a multimillionaire; as far as I can tell the point at which this changed was in 1947 when in a speech Truman dropped Roosevelt's idea of freedom from want and fear and replaced them with freedom of enterprise. Because Communism is bad, isn't it. And unAmerican and all that.

Subsequently American soldiers returning from Korea spoke of being well treated during their captivity if prisoners and had nothing bad to say about their captors; some Americans even 'defected' to Korea and wouldn't come back. It was the incomprehensibility of this attitude towards what was considered a hostile, Communist nation, that led the CIA to think they had been brainwashed and led to Project MK-Ultra, a decade-long torture session supposedly in an attempt to find out why anyone would want to leave the USA. The lack of self-awareness is incredible.

The spectre of real or imagined Communism will of course reoccur in the show as it goes on. My theory would be that referring to the Cold War and Reds under the Beds scare, the show may once again highlight that American exceptionalism is naturally propped up by the need for enemies, and 'Communism' is one of them. I think the show will suggest that this particular bogeyman is a complete distraction, specifically from aliens in the show's mythology, but I think it will reflect on real aspects of the American dream as well.

Thirdly, it is not for nothing that Cole is Black, because the Vietnam war was intensively protested because of the disproportionate use of Black soldiers in dangerous situations. It was also the first US war in which the fighting forces were not segregated. This is simply gob-smacking, 

Finally, bringing up the Vietnam war contradicts the American dream of human rights and hope for the oppressed because of the number of things Americans did in Vietnam which were against all the rules of war. 

Once again all off these associations are not foregrounded in the show at all, they are associations likely to come up in the viewer's mind because of the mention of the Vietnam war, but the show's realistic background for its science fiction necessarily brings up a host of associations, all of which go dead against the American dream.

And last, the file disappears from the X-Files office. So much for justice.

Because it brings up governmental treatment of soldiers, associations of US conduct in Vietnam and the military-industrial complex, I am going to include Sleepless among the episodes which most refer to the American dream.

2x05 Duane Barry (Core Mythology)

Barry comments that government agents (who we see to be men in black) are present during his abductions and subsequent experimentation. By using the fictional example the show brings up real world records of governmental shady dealings and cover ups, which do not align with the democracy and justice which are part of the dream.

2x06 Ascension (Core Mythology)

We see the men in black (referred to in the last episode, Duane Barry) in the hospital with Barry and Mulder after Scully's abduction. Chris Carter said it was deliberately left unclear whether Scully was abducted by aliens or the government (which would obviously provide more negative commentary on the reality or otherwise of the American dream), and of course we have Krycek in his his role of ?governmental double agent.

As I go through these posts I am going to keep a tally of how many episodes of Core Mythology and Monster of the Week types have significant content making the American dream in effect part of the plot rather than the omnipresent setting, and so far we have 

Core Mythology: 9 (4 with signifcant content relating to the American dream: Deep Throat, Fallen Angel, E.B.E., and Little Green Men.)

Monster of the Week: 20 (7 with significant content relating to the American dream: Eve, Beyond the Sea, Young at Heart, Miracle Man, Shapes, Blood, and Sleepless.)

As always, I'm totally unequipped to do this so if I've missed anything corrections are very welcome in the comments.