The American Dream in The X-Files: Home, Teliko, Unruhe

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

I am delighted that we are now hitting a couple of episodes where their relationship to the American dream will pretty much write itself with no help from me: apart from anything else this is a bit of a relief because at times I've been wondering whether I was imagining that the show featured the dream.

4x02 Home (Monster of the Week)

Luckily I'm not the only one who says this episode references the American dream: it is even gets on to the episode's Wikipedia page! I was going to say that you could say this episode is criticising the dream; that in a society where if you work hard everyone can get as far as their God-given ability will take them, there are bound to be casualties. Some of those casualties are bound to be found among people (who obviously exist internationally) who don't know that there are reasons you don't sleep with your mother. These sort of people would have a natural disadvantage.

However the commentary by other people about this episode focuses on it as a parody of the aspect of the American dream which is the family and family values. I'm glad to have found someone else talking about this because the family is something which is a bit of a blind spot for me, and in the 74 episodes of the show I've opined about so far I haven't found family values to be referred to once. The idea is that the town of Home represents the positive values of the nuclear family, which is embedded in the American dream, but the Peacock family blow this ideal apart. It's basically the same idea I had about opportunity and inclusion, only in the area of family life.

I would particularly recommend this review of the episode, which, while it doesn't explicitly mention the American dream, nonetheless drips the Americanness of the episode from every full stop: https://web.archive.org/web/20130824061747/http://www.munchkyn.com/xf-rvws/homervw.html

Since Home is even described by other people as referencing the family values aspect of the American dream I will include it among my list of episodes which particularly refer to it.

4x03 Teliko (Monster of the Week)

Much of the commentary on this episode has tended to revolve around its depiction of the other, as personified by - supposedly - illegal immigrants, and the normalisation of (white) US culture and Black aliens being seen as the other. I think that possibly this episode may be even more of a hot potato than it was when originally broadcast, with racial and immigration tansions becoming more hot topics.

In this, of course, the show is once again reflecting and criticising the American dream, because it is showing the dream of immigrating (legally, I can't honestly see how anyone is an illegal immigrant in this show) to the US for a better life. It criticises the dream by reminding us of the entrenched systemic problems of racism and hatred of immigrants by the immigrants who are already there.

Now don't look at me like that, it's not actually me saying this at all. I just knew this show was about the American dream of immigration for self improvement, and it's Mulder that says it!

'...the reasons anyone comes to this country: liberty, the freedom to pursue your own interests...'

So interestingly Mulder gives liberty as the first reason anyone would go to the US, which is exactly what was placed highest in priority for the American dream in the poll of US citizens I quoted a few posts back.

Since Mulder gives an abbreviated version of what the American dream is all about I am going to include this among my list of episodes specially referencing the dream.

4x04 Unruhe (Monster of the Week)

Unruhe again criticises the dream by depicting what happens with people who can't manage to improve themselves, and we specifically see the example of Gerry Schnauz, who is doing the best he can while struggling with schizophrenia and, incidentally his tendency to kidnap and lobotomize people. Given that he's already been under treatment for his schizophrenia there is an implied criticism of society that nobody has got to the bottom of what is going on with him or else isn't monitoring him properly.

Incidentally, as an aside from the theme of this post, the real history that this episode draws on is something that fascinated me as a child: the thought photographs of Ted Serios. It's strange that Mulder quotes the case as if it's fact when the tests that Serios were subjected to by psychologist Jules Eisendud were possibly the worst-controlled scientific tests in history, and Mulder would have known that. Serios could only produce the photographs with the use of a 'gizmo', a small tube which he held between his face and the camera. Obviously if he couldn't do it without the gizmo, that was the answer, but strangely Eisenbud didn't investigate the tube or take it off him and conclude that he was a fraud. As yet another aside I note that in many of the pictures of Serios (and in fact many of the pictures on the internet of poor people) they show the same no-nonsense approach that I do to shirts. I suspect that it is a way of showing poverty or that these people aren't socially acceptable: I really hope that's how I come across. What an schievement. The key difference between me and Ted Serios is I'm not an alcoholic and don't have a diagnosed personality disorder.

I would, however, note that all three of these episodes contain themes of family, home, foreignness, international identity, and the difficulties of immigrating to the US and flourishing there if the best of your ability perhaps isn't quite as good as everyone else's. In this I maintain these three episodes are like a reflection of the hope of self improvement encapsulated in the dream and a criticism of its negative side.

Is it really a dream if people get left out completely?

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: 22 (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: 55 (9 with significant content relating to the American dream: Eve, Beyond the Sea, Young at Heart, Miracle Man, Shapes, Blood, Sleepless, Fresh Bones, Syzygy, Home, and Teliko.)

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