The American Dream in The X-Files: Grotesque, Piper Maru, Apocrypha, Pusher, Teso dos Bichos

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The introduction to this series of posts about the depiction and criticism of the American dream in The X-Files can be found here: https://culttvblog.blogspot.com/2023/06/the-american-dream-in-x-files.html?m=1

3x14 Grotesque (Monster of the Week)

No apparent reference to the American dream.

3x15 Piper Maru (Core Mythology)

The episode reflects badly on US justice with the suggestion of government complicity or corruption when the investigation of SCully's sister's death is halted despite new evidence being uncovered.

At this stage I'm not clear whether Krycek is supposed still to be an FBI agent but he and Jeraldine are selling government secrets so there must be some source within the government for them.

Once again we have the impact of the US military-industrial complex on its own citizens: I'm not sure whether this model for military being exposed to radiation was publicly available in the nineties but again a real world example of this actually happening would be the veterans of the cleanup at various Atolls after US nuclear tests.

3x16 Apocrypha (Core Mythology)

The episode then again brings the horror of US treatment of its own military home for Mulder by revealing (to us) that his own father was involved in questioning, with a young Cancer Man, a surviving sailor of the nuclear testing. The nuclear testing is cleverly mixed up, as is the show's wont, with the show's fiction of the black oil, which increases the fictional content of the episode as it progresses and changes the focus from the subject of these posts.

The shadow government agency, the Syndicate, features highly in this episode, suggesting that they are behind the leaks of secret information.

3x17 Pusher (Monster of the Week)

I was having trouble identifying a connection to the dream for this episode, although I was convinced I must be able to find one. Then I found on the episode's Wikipedia page (of all places) a reference to Robert Shearman and Lars Pearson's book Wanting to Believe, in which they say that despite Modell's ability he is in reality a loser who wants to be special rather than cured of his brain tumour. So the connection to the dream is that, as so often in The X-Files, Modell represents an inversion of the dream. He is another example of the reality that the dream means that people don't achieve Bill Clinton's description of being given a chance to go as far as your God-given ability will take you, as long as you work hard and play by the rules. Modell further inverts this because the ability he does have is given by a brian tumour rather than by God. If he actually fulfilled the dream he would have been an FBI agent or Navy Seal (a phrase which never stops striking me as being absolutely hilarious).

3x18 Teso dos Bichos (Monster of the Week)

The obvious reference (and therefore criticism) in this episode to the dream is obviously to colonialism. Strangely, you will never see this subject mentioned in any of the definitions of the American dream I have so far quoted, but it is actually an essential part, because you have to be in America to have the American dream, and as has appeared before, the reality is the majority of inhabitants are descendants of immigrants or immigrants themselves. In this episode we see what bad things happen when Westerners interfere in other cultures and of course the American dream conveniently ignores the consequences of building a new country on top of an Indian burial ground.

There is an interesting cultural aspect to this episode because the body is described as that of a shaman, which is of course an ancient cultural phenomenon which is widely appropriated. I feel as if I should be able to connect the idea of cultural appropriation to the American dream, largely driven by the famous image which illustrates this post, but have tried and failed.  Interestingly Mr Chansley's tattoos depict many of the images of northern European heathenism, which of course may well be his own ethnic origin or religious beliefs. As it happens these images were the ones appropriated by the Nazis and it has not gone unnoticed that many of his tattoos (eg the valknut, the sonnenrad, and I think he might have an othala) have a Far Right interpretation, so we have a full circle of cultural appropriation, colonialism, and degradation of the concepts appropriated. I haven't been able to find out the significance of the head thing and horns, but if they are Native American then obviously they can be connected to the American dream.

Don't worry, not all men with bare chests and tattoos are Nazis.

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: 20 (7 with signifcant content relating to the American dream: Deep Throat, Fallen Angel, E.B.E., Little Green Men, Anasazi, The Blessing Way and Paperclip.)

Monster of the Week: 47 (9 with significant content relating to the American dream: Eve, Beyond the Sea, Young at Heart, Miracle Man, Shapes, Blood, Sleepless, Fresh Bones, and Syzygy.)

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