Even today, I don’t think there’s a creature on television quite like Fox Mulder. This is a rare case where a woman has been allowed to outshine a man; Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) has had volumes written about her detailing her wonderful qualities as a skeptic and, indeed, the material effect she’s had on women in STEM and law enforcement (also known as the Scully effect). Her mere existence within the show elevated it enormously, grounding writing that could and often did fly off into the aether and then up its own ass. Fox Mulder (David Duchovny), on the other hand, hasn’t received quite as much critical appreciation and in fact I feel he can be underrated.
Many people observe that, much like Scully, he’s an inversion of what was, at least then, a gender stereotype – on top of his conspiracy thinking, he’s an expert in psychology and profiling; soft sciences compared to the hard science of Scully. I would actually say this ends up enveloping his entire character; his fascination with the human condition and ‘the possibilities’ extends to a nonjudgemental attitude towards the whole of the human race. Mulder’s curiosity goes hand-in-hand with compassion, particularly for people whose only crime is being a loser or a freak.
The very obvious comparison is with his successor, Doggett (Robert Patrick), who embodies the very masculine qualities of domination that Mulder’s existence rejects. The moment I fell in love with Mulder was in the pilot; he marks an X on the road, and when he passes over it a second time, mysteriously losing several minutes, he laughs in wonder. He has found a section of the universe in which he has no control, and this has brought him joy. Mulder claims his motivation is to find the Truth (always spoken with a capital letter, somehow), but based on his actions, what Mulder really seeks is a world where nobody dominates anybody, and we can trust simply floating down the river that is life.
About that motivation: I don’t think there’s a better character-establishing line than ‘I want to believe’. Every time Mulder says it in the show – or someone says it in homage to him – I feel a prick of joy (indeed, one of the positive qualities of the ‘16/’19 seasons is that he goes back to saying it all the time). One of the mistakes, even and in fact especially in X-Files fandom, is thinking that Mulder’s compassion and curiosity make him dumb, as if he couldn’t tie his own shoes without Scully*. What makes ‘I want to believe’ capital-G Great is that it describes both Mulder’s motivation and his process of getting there.
*There are two ways to dehumanize a person: degrade them and put them on a pedestal.
There’s a difference between believing and wanting to believe. ‘Believing’, despite being a verb, isn’t really an action – it just happens, usually unconsciously. Wanting to believe, on the other hand, is a process; to say someone wants to believe something is to insult them, because you’re saying they’re acting in fear and nervousness that what they’re doing is incorrect – that they are self-deluding. When Mulder uses the phrase, however, he uses it honestly. He wants to believe aliens are out there, he wants to believe you can turn lead to gold, he wants to believe you can find his fucking car keys. But then, he knows that if you want something to be true, you need to conclusively prove it’s true.
The most common mistake people make is thinking that Scully is almost always wrong and Mulder almost always right – the number of non-supernatural conclusions to Monster O’ The Week episodes can be counted on less than one hand. In truth, both of them are almost always wrong – in a standard MOTW episode, Mulder will throw out a surreal supernatural explanation that’s always exactly as wrong as Scully’s mundane one, and regardless, it doesn’t matter. Mulder’s theories are less about being 100% correct and more about picking a direction to go in.
One of my heretical X-Files fandom opinions is that episodes scripted by Darin Morgan are, while funny, wildly overrated specifically because the man has contempt for Mulder that comes from a complete lack of understanding of him. For one thing, Mulder as written in Morgan episodes has a level of ego that I don’t believe is present in the character; “The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat” has him demanding answers on the basis that his name is Fox Mulder, “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space” has a scene where Mulder has an incomprehensible conversation that comes off as him indifferent to his subject’s dignity, and our own Lauren James has pointed out how the joke on Mulder at the end of “Humbug” makes no sense in the reality of the show.
If these jokes work, it’s because David Duchovny (ironically) doesn’t take himself at all seriously and enjoys puncturing Mulder’s air of mystique; indeed, they often come off as jokes Mulder would make about himself. It’s interesting that Chris Carter (series creator) is more inconsistent in the quality of his scripts and yet, when Mulder is written badly in them, he’s still recognizably Mulder. Mulder’s actual negative quality is that his passions can, in the wrong context, override his rationality; where his sister is concerned, he can forget the ‘want to’ part of his motto and end up on an absurd goose chase that he hasn’t fully thought through (to an extent and for opposite reasons, the same thing can happen when he wants vengeance on the Smoking Man). Mulder is at his most attractive during a MOTW, when he’s open-minded about the solution to a problem, detached somewhat from the people involved, and operating out of love of the game as opposed to seeking a specific outcome (no surprise all of this is true of the show as well).
Mulder is the part of humanity that crossed oceans when we’d barely mastered the concept of fire. He’s the part of us that projects emotions onto trees and clouds and roombas. He’s also an example of how to act upon those intuitions; not blindly, not with the aim of having been right all along (and getting the world to admit it should have recognized this), but with the desire to find the real truth. The funny thing about Mulder is how he made the real work look like play, because that’s what it should be; to Mulder, the world is not a place to dominate, but to explore.
About the writer
Tristan J. Nankervis
Tristan J Nankervis (aka Drunk Napoleon) has been a writer, pop culture critic, dishwasher, standup comedian, waiter, potato cake factory worker, gamer, TV worker, and various other things. You can find him in Hobart, Tasmania.
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Department of
Conversation
What did we watch?
Red vs Blue, Season Two, Episode Nine
“Sarge, is he campaigning for your job at your funeral? Classy.”
“Couldn’t even wait for me to be dead, could you?”
“You two only pretended to throw dirt and made digging noises with your mouth.”
“Girls can’t be colourblind!”
“Yeah? Well they say girls can’t ejaculate either, but guess what!”
“Yeah! Wait, what?”
“It’s not like the Blues go around killing their own team members.”
“She’s been acting real wacky lately.”
“Oh yeah? Wackier than your average talking tank?”
“Why don’t we try some aversion therapy? Think about something that makes you really angry that isn’t me.”
“It hasn’t gotten dark here in three fucking years, asshole!”
“I thought the only rule was ‘don’t kill the leader’?”
“Yeah, but we break that rule all the time.”
“Is she a mean girl or a regular girl?”
“Caboose, what did I tell you?”
“That there are no regular girls.”
“You didn’t have to push.”
“Yeah, I didn’t have to, but it was fun.”
There’s an extended monologue from Sarge when he contemplated the possibility that he’s in heaven, including his bizarre understanding of the Bible, putting him in the same category as Homer Simpson and Bender in terms of characters being funnier when completely alone.
“Dude, what was all that stuff about your penis ruler?”
I’m now really far out of my memory, despite having watched the show right up to its first ending.
Live Music
Actually, this was a talent show, but only three of the acts weren’t just singing: a ‘reverse escapologist’ who put mousetraps, and, as a climax, a rattrap on various body parts, a poet, and a standup comedian. There are some disgustingly talented young people; my favourite was a barely-out-of-her-teens girl who found some incredible melodies she nearly broke. There was a guy on piano who opened with the remark that he was actually a drummer who had only recently picked up piano, and sadly I didn’t hear much of his monkey-hitting (as he described it), although my partner could hear it in the rhythmic piano playing. Two young guys wrote and starred in a short musical play about the love story of a farmer and one of his cucumbers (represented by a Gumby suit). Otherwise it was mostly singer-songwriters.
Woooo live music! Sad state of affairs over there that you can’t afford real instruments and have to rely on hitting monkeys, though.
You stupid monkey!
Blue Moon – The opening night of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma!, and Rodgers’s longtime writing partner Lorenz Hart stews at Sardi’s, tries and fails to resist the call of the bottle, and mopes about both being cast aside and his half-unrequited crush on a Yale co-ed half his age. Ethan Hawke is up for an Oscar, and he’s good, but he also has that feel of “look at me, I am playing a famous person!” that goes with biopics reaching for Oscars. I also don’t love that the most likely queer Hart is mooning over a woman (someone who did exist but whose relationship with Hart is not really well documented). But the script (also up for a little gold man) is very good, capturing the time and the bulk of the real people (most notably Rodgers and EB White) well, and the rest of the cast is less showy and more effective than Hawke. Especially Margaret Qualley, who I had never seen in anything till now, and is really, really good. I just wish we could have avoided the silly nudge nudge wink wink jokes.
Miss Marple, “At Bertram’s Hotel” – Miss Marple’s nephew sends her to a fancy if old fashioned hotel in London, a place she visited as a little girl. She finds that she knows half the guests, and that an old friend knows pretty much all the guests, she is disconcerted by how little the hotel has changed (outside of a TV room), and she is sure something bad is going on. (Spotting undercover cop George Baker only confirms matters.) This is the first episode to not be in the countryside, and at long last it feels like we are in the 50s and not in some amorphous 20th century setting between the inventions of the radio and color TV. The mystery, however, has barely gotten going. Joan Greenwood, her voice as husky as ever if of course older, makes one of her last appearances.
The Practice, “Of Thee I Sing” – The Lindsay Dole case, or maybe better called “DA Walsh’s Vendetta,” ends when Helen anonymously sends something to Bobby by fax (remember faxes?) that Walsh should have shared before the trial. The judge, weighing the facts and Walsh’s already established misconduct, tosses the case with prejudice. At one level, this is really unsatisfying since at the end of the day, Lindsay did kill someone and should have been convicted of manslaughter (not something you want from your lawyer). But the acting is very good and this is really about a prosecutor who chooses to bend the rules and excuses himself because the defense does the same. But I would be surprised if he loses his job.
MASH, “Margaret’s Engagement” – Margaret returns from a conference in Tokyo engaged, and somehow thinks that Frank will be okay with it. We are in two difficult places here. Frank loses the only thing he has going for him, and since no one works to allow him to change and grow, there really isn’t much left to do with him (which is why Larry Linville quit). And Margaret looks like a fool, for not understanding how Frank feels, and for falling for her West Point grad who gave her a photo of himself with, er, “his cousin” and who bought her the cheapest of rings. Which isn’t to say there aren’t some good moments here. But I feel like the writers – now missing Larry Gelbart – just ran out of things to do with Frank and Margaret (for the moment for the latter since I know she rebounds).
Thieves Like Us – not quite at the level of the other Altman blind spots I’ve filled recently, but still a very enjoyable hang-out crime-spree movie. The opening scenes really reminded me of O Brother, Where Art Thou? although this ends up going down more of a doomed-romance / Bonnie & Clyde route. I didn’t realise that it was based on the same source material as Nicholas Ray’s They Live By Night, which has been on my noir watchlist forever.
Twin Peaks, S2 – opening double-episode, and it’s a strong return. I absolutely love Lucy filling in Agent Cooper on the happenings / cliffhangers that have occurred while he’s (briefly) been unconscious, and this episode also gives us the rebirth of Leland (Leland the White?), the return of Albert, the elderly waiter completely failing to help Cooper and a couple of terrifying scenes, particularly Ronette’s vision at the end. Firing on all cylinders at this point for sure.
Seinfeld, S7 – first two episodes. Hey, George is getting married! I’m sure this will go well. I enjoyed the excessively talkative Rabbi and hope that we see him again.
Live Music – technically a wedding, but my friends who were getting married scheduled in an hour of music and poetry that inevitably overran, because they tried to fit in 15 acts and asked me to do the sound (I have never done this before). It went pretty well, considering! I performed “Something Changed” by Pulp with my girlfriend and the guy who got up after us had, in a slightly crazy coincidence, also prepared the exact same song. So that was a bit awkward! Oh well.
Woooo live music! Wooo getting in first with Pulp!
They Live By Night is so good!
Spaceballs
I don’t think I’d seen this since high school. It hasn’t lasted well for me—too much of it feels obvious and low-effort, although you do at least get occasional spots where a transcendent amount of effort went into the obvious (Pizza the Hutt is an obvious joke as a name; the slimy, bubbling hot practical effects creation that resulted is disgusting and beautiful at the same time). Best bit is definitely checking the VHS tape of the movie they’re in.
Missile
RIP Frederick Wiseman. If you let a camera run long enough, and neutrally enough, someone will stand in front of it and gravely but approvingly use the phrase “final solution” mere minutes after acknowledging the Holocaust. This is an on-the-ground portrayal of the training for the people who—in 1988—would handle the USA’s missile system, and it’s beige rooms and earnestness don’t quite disguise that, contrary to what everyone involved keeps saying, there’s a frightening lack of rigor here. As always, real life throws up things you would reluctantly cut from fiction: in this case, a naturally occurring shot of a fire on the base.
Captain Blood
More of Errol Flynn’s Adventures in Piracy. (The first volume, this time.) This is probably weaker than The Sea Hawk in terms of structure (Basil Rathbone feels underused here, for example) and action, but it compensates a bit with Flynn and de Havilland’s firecracker chemistry. I love that this makes a plot point out of how out of the loop you’d be if you spent most of your time as a pirate; it’s a natural consequence that I feel like I nonetheless haven’t seen too often. Cannonballing burning coals at enemy ships is pure ownage.
Inside No. 9, “Simon Says”
Toxic fan (Shearsmith) vs. toxic showrunner (Pemberton), in a tense psychological battle that could feel too self-indulgent but comes out feeling exactly the right amount of mean. I approve of the potshots this takes at a Game of Thrones-style flatline of a finale (which Pemberton’s character tries in vain to defend as intentional diminuendo). Shearsmith is always excellent when he gets to play slimy and manipulative: his “Why, what would you rather dredge up?” while toying with his phone that has damning evidence on it is a great bit of mockery. And we get guest stars Lindsay Duncan (from Rome) and Nick Mohammed (from Ted Lasso)!
Taskmaster, “Hey Mate”
“I mean, we’re looking at, what, a day’s work there?”
“Two weeks, Greg!”
“And I had to find a way to meet the mayor, and it’s a lot easier than you’d think.”
“The ‘90s were a different time in education.”
“Is your number by any chance a prime number?”
“No.”
“… I wish I knew what a prime number was.”
“Were you as surprised as me that Alex’s own wife doesn’t know his birthday?”
“It really felt like I’d got a key to the task and then it became something quite sad about their marriage.”
“Why is she gabbling? Is she at gunpoint?”
“There’s a creature on me!”
[on replay] “No one comes running in to help, though, do they?!”
“Look at Sanjeev. What a curve.”
“Okay, so you’re riding George Clooney today.”
“The envy of many.”
“Innuendo! He means his cock!”
Task ownage: Reece’s gorgeous haunted dollhouse.
Maisie’s Memory: Trying to remember “redrum” from The Shining and coming up with “Red Room.”
Peak Phil: Using up part of his crucial ten second voice memo to say, “Hey, mate …,” which Sanjeev accepts with resignation.
Taskmaster, “Bats, Bats, Hang Up”
Alex, re: his bucket list: “I’ve almost finished it, so not much to live for anymore.”
“Ania, I’m telling you right now, I’ve written down, ‘Ania: one point,’ and I haven’t even heard everyone’s yet.”
“What is a cervix if not a set of saloon doors?”
“You’ve had your baby lifted up by him, and then you’ve come off your green to go and retie them, yet somehow I’m the knobhead for not ringing Katie Price!”
“It just seems like maybe you’re not okay asking other people for help.”
“That’s the rhino firing balls at himself.”
“Don’t do it! There’s only three of you left!”
“There’s not much pleasure you get in life that can beat dragging a lifeless horse over a child’s paddling pool.”
“Are you all right with this?”
“I think I may get enough points that I can be all right with it.”
“Which one of us would you rather have sex with? Your answer here will make you either a racist or a sexist.”
“Bearing in mind I’m fifteen.”
“You called my bumhole a school?”
“He’s got a bigs body.”
“Goodbye, Andrew. Nice talking to you, liar.”
“Why did I think very definitely red shoes? How could I have got that from him?”
“And that’s the thing that worries you about your drawing?”
“Eat the lame duck or don’t eat the lame duck.”
“I’m gonna stop you there. Is there an accent on the e?”
“Yes, there is. ‘Éat the lame duck ….’”
“You know why that happened? I didn’t understand the rules.”
“Sure you didn’t get the rules, Macbeth.”
Task ownage: Lots of it this episode! Maisie having Amanda Holden’s autobiography translated into hieroglyphics. Sanjeev bribing Alex to be the object he moves in the lawn task. The entirety of the Ania-Phil-Sanjeev awkwardness task.
Reverse task ownage: Reece’s reaction when Alex gently asks him how he’s been dealing with the “every other answer is a lie” part of the task.
Physical comedy: Ania silently bending down and hands-free gobbling her duck and then reacting with silent alarm when Phil tries to get everyone to pass theirs over. And everyone’s finger paintings, if I can count any visual.
Spaceballs is definitely lesser Brooks but he’s still got some fastballs (like the VHS stuff and anything with Moranis, who is on fire here — him playing with his dolls sums up the last decade-plus of pop culture pretty well). I last rewatched it with the eight-year-old nephews and that was the ideal environment, and I think the movie is actually the best introduction to Brooks for a young person — the humor is a bit more in their wheelhouse and his classics are increasingly outside of their frame of reference, best to get a sense of his deal via Star Wars and then move into the all-timers.
I had a similar reaction to trying Spaceballs again while doing other stuff and strongly felt this would be better with other people around and perhaps some substances.
The Road Warrior — rewatch after quite some time and I’d forgotten that Humungous is really not that big of a presence here, it’s all-time intense crazy guy Vernon Wells’ Wex who is the heart of the movie and a mirror to Max. And it’s also funny after Fury Road and Furiosa (and even Thunderdome) to see just how low the stakes are here, this is just an outpost with some barrels when you get down to it. It’s not so much what happens as how it happens and the stunts and cars are still rad as fuck.
The Fallen Idol — a legally not French diplomat’s young son has the run of the embassy in Britain and worships the friendly butler while trying to avoid the butler’s harridan wife; and winds up in the middle of the butler’s affair with an aide at the embassy. Bobby Henrey is an annoying lisping dipshit as the child but I am putting the blame here on Carol Reed, who directed this adaptation of a Graham Greene story — the direction itself is superb, exploring this giant house and largely using Henrey’s perspective, and Ralph Richardson is excellent as the butler, but the story is flawed from the get-go. This is widely praised as a depiction of innocence lost and there is a lot of childish confusion over truth and lies and when to deploy them, this seems Greene-ish in how adults fatally complicate simple matters (with an understanding that complication is unavoidable and not evil in itself). But another way to look at this is a love triangle/crime story about adults that is constantly fucked up by a kid, while Henrey has no physical power he is several levels of class above the other characters and if he’s not little Anthony from “It’s A Good Life” the adults still have to defer to him and can’t tell him to fuck off. Lots of his unthinking neediness and demands here and it nukes any sympathy, and the ending clearly pulls punches to boot. Worth a watch but not the classic I was sold.
The Thin Man — a mystery with no wiener children and near-constant drinking, now we’re talking! A delightful rewatch, this loses a bit of steam toward the end and the drawing room conclusion feels a bit out of place, but Powell and Loy are so wonderful together and that extended party early on is a marvel of unobtrusive but effective motion, W.S. Van Dyke working great stuff here.
The Departed — snow day watch! And absolutely no shade to W.S. to say that Scorsese and Schoonmaker mop the floor with him and everyone else, the perpetual motion of this is incredible and necessary, a movie that is only about work working overtime to conceal the emptiness at the heart of things. So many father figures but only one actual dad in Martin Sheen, and he is warm and decent he also knows how to deploy that ruthlessly, laying back while Wahlberg does the bad cop routine so he can move in with the good. Another way of looking at this is he knows who he is and DiCaprio spends the whole movie off that axis before delivering a directive to someone else that is a statement about himself: “You know who I am.” And Damon, like he did as Will Hunting and Jason Bourne (and to a degree Jean in The Last Duel), plays a man who isn’t there, I think he’s hugely underrated in this regard. Charm and charisma and work work work and for fucking what. His exhaustion at the end says it all. Everyone in the film is Catholic but this is the most Protestant movie in the world, and there is no world to come. Boston as something worse then hell, it’s the only thing there is and it’s full of rats. What a picture.
What did we play?
I have ONE joker left that I need to get to gold-sticker level in Balatro and then I’m done. ONE. Due to the random elements, this could take weeks or I could do it today.
Bionic Commando – Game Boy – Nintendo Classics on Nintendo Switch
Made it nearly to the end. Have started to lean a little more on guides and rewind, just to expedite the trial-and-error process. Made it to a point where my character was apprehended and then freed by an ally, but stripped of my weapons and having to rely only on the grapple gun. That was very cool, but too brief, wonder if it’s more expansive on the NES game. Might finish it in the next few days.
Hollow Knight on Nintendo Switch
Went through pretty much the entire map trying to find where to go next. Eventually found a new area and the first of three ghosts-or-something that I need to kill to open the next path forward. Still a lot of places I’ve marked that I need to explore before I get to the remaining two guys.
The Legend of Zelda – Nintendo Entertainment System – Nintendo Classics on Nintendo Switch
The game’s anniversary was on Saturday, so I felt compelled to play this for a while. Picked up an old save from after the end of the first dungeon, which is just about where my memory of the game ends, despite having finished it before. I thought I wouldn’t get anywhere, but it turns out after some fun exploring I wound up finding the entrance to the second dungeon. I stopped there, but it was enough to convince me that this game’s still got it.
I am pretty sure that does not happen at any point in the NES game.
Haha, I have my doubts.
Good to know, thanks.
Meant to say that I went through the entire map that I’d uncovered so far.
Ha, yes, part of me figured that, but it’s funny how much of the game there and how even when you think you’ve seen it all there’s still much more to go. (I guess until you’re actually finished.)
I think I’m getting close to the end of Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles. Pretty fun, although I found some of the balance a little odd. Like, I feel like you have to really grind at the beginning just to survive battles, so you end up building up this team, but toward the end, you start getting a bunch of new characters late game that are even more powerful, so in the final battles you hardly use the party you came all this way with.
Also, one thing I like about games like this is the purported flexibility of builds, but in this one it seems like there are a few bottlenecks that require an extremely specific strategy to win, and that’s annoying. Still, pretty good game, though.
A beautiful appreciation of a wonderful character. I like how you drill down into the specific meaning of Mulder’s “I want to believe”–how it’s passionate hope, with the discipline to see it through, not naivete–and break down some of the way he’s been flattened out in the pop cultural ethos.
And honestly, disregarding all Mulder’s strengths as a character also shortchanges Scully, for that matter: a Scully who chose to be unwaveringly loyal to Darin Morgan’s Mulder, someone it would be hard to respect, would not really be Scully. These are two characters who are built so closely together that their characterizations intertwine and shape each other.
Great stuff here. As you note, none of this works without Duchovny and it’s really weird to look at him as a louche asshole before this. I think the change is that Duchovny already knows everything and has a baseline contempt, but Mulder wants to believe, like you say — his relaxation is open and not dismissive.
It’s amazing how, all the way to the end of the revival seasons, Duchovny can play Mulder’s amusement at people (including Scully) dismissing him as acceptance rather than smugness. Like, yeah, I can see from your perspective why you wouldn’t agree with me yet.
I have a lot of female friends whose sexuality is due Scully, and as a heterosexual woman I have to say that there’s just something about Mulder. I could definitely go for him.
He is very honest while remaining charming, both great qualities to possess.
My favorite Mulder moment is when Tom Noonan (RIP) plays the serial killer who MAY have killed his sister and is telepathically manipulating him, except Mulder is able to play him right back. He wants to believe and yet he knows there needs to be more than belief at the end of the day (which is what make him and Scully compatible).
Year of the Month update!
This March, you can write about any of these movies, albums, books, TV, etc. from 1980.
Mar. 2nd Tristan J Nankervis: Raging Bull
Mar. 5th: Cori Domschot: The Music Man
Mar. 16th: Tristan J Nankervis: 9 to 5
Mar. 19th: John Bruni: Gaucho
Mar. 23rd: Bridgett Taylor: Magnum PI
And this month, we’ll continue looking at 1957, including all these movies, albums, books, TV, yadda yadda.
Feb. 27th: Gillianren: Sleeping Beauty’s Castle