Archived from the Eat The Corn Facebook page.
Aug 01, 2022 16:33
“It’s what I will be remembered for.” The X-Files Diaries interviewed Chris Carter and as always it’s a mix of joy and frustration hearing from him!
https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/114-chris-carter-interview/id1076322073?i=1000571541534
There’s a *lot* to unpack here. Now that it appears that the show is over for good he sets some things straight about some controversies from the revival’s My Struggle episodes that he didn’t have the opportunity to clarify before, years after the fact, especially about William’s parentage: “I knew it would be controversial, it was a huge turn in the mythology.”
After En Ami (season 7), did he always know that CSM being the father was a possibility? “Yeah, he spends a night with Scully, he’s got alien technology, she has a child that spins a mobile on its own. We always thought that Scully’s implant or her DNA resulted in that mobile spinning, but he had her somewhat at a disadvantage and could have taken advantage of her. People aren’t asking the right questions because someone can take credit for the parentage issue and there was that flash on the screen ‘I Want To Lie’. I think there’s an element of disbelief by the audience but also disbelief by the CSM himself that he may or may not have been rightly able to call himself William’s father.” (It appears that Carter wanted to entertain the *idea* that the CSM was the father but not really go through with it. In interviews after MS3 and in MS4’s audio commentary, Carter defended the idea that CSM could be, if not William’s biological father, at least his creator.)
Carter strongly agrees that the show never definitively stated that the CSM was the father. “Was the truth being told? Were we to believe the CSM, a person who had been entirely untrustworthy his entire career? We’re also looking at the CSM as a person who maybe wanted himself to be the father, not knowing whether he was the father or not.” (In concept this similar to Two Fathers/One Son, when the CSM *wanted to believe* he was Mulder’s father because Mulder was the worthy son (and it turned out that indeed Mulder was the CSM’s son!). But it could be very well argued that it was definitively stated that the CSM was William’s father, given that in the opening to MS4 William identified his father with the CSM in his visions; that’s stronger “proof” than whatever we got before, stronger than whatever the show told us about Mulder being the father.)
On William telling Mulder he is not his father: “Do we believe him? Who’s protecting whom?” “When you see that smile when William comes out of the water, he knows a truth that he hasn’t spoken. I wanted to leave that ambivalent. I think people take everything at face value.” (Is Carter back-tracking given how most fans received this, in a particularly shipper-pleasing interview? So William was manipulating Mulder and Scully to convince them to abandon him so that he could pass as dead and be free. The implication here is that William knows Mulder is the father, somehow. Hiding the truth in dialogue is typical TXF, but this contradicts William’s opening narration.)
Did you have a destination in mind for the William story that you didn’t get the chance to finish playing out because you didn’t get a season after 11? “Yes. […] I to a point thought there were continue to be more XF episodes where I could answer some of those questions that I had posed and created these controversies. I thought that the show would go on.” (Carter introduced a twist but he didn’t write the twist over that twist even when season 11 appeared to be the very end.)
Where are M&S today? “I can’t tell you. Sworn to secrecy.” (So he *still* thinks he can continue telling their story after all? If not, why hold out so tightly to these thoughts?)
On Scully’s second pregnancy: “It set up a lot of things in motion going forward.” (Going forward to where?) It was a late decision: “When I learnt that Gillian wasn’t coming back, I had actually not given Gillian a full script of the season finale because I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do.” “It’s a relationship that’s a decade old and consummated in the most mysterious ways. That it would come down to a moment at the end of a dock, wrapped in each other’s arms, revealing possibly the biggest secret ever on the show, that was for me a fitting end.” (Some weird uses of the word ‘mysterious’ and ‘secret’ here…)
Overall, Carter continues the “who’s the daddy” trend of season 8. Ever since En Ami and Requiem, the fan theory has existed that the CSM violated Scully and gave her back her fertility by manipulating her chip, allowing a natural conception with Mulder. MS3/4 seems to pick up that thread while adding more ambiguity on whether the CSM is the biological father too, and transposes season 8’s climax of the miracle child to Scully’s new pregnancy.
The idea of the CSM as creator, not actual father, still introduces an additional traumatic medical rape for Scully nearly two decades after the fact and never lets Scully comment on it: it’s drama yes but it’s a weird decision at a time when the world is finally overcoming the spell of toxic masculinity. CSM-as-creator would not negate William as Scully and Mulder’s child, yet William is summarily rejected by his parents at the end of MS4. Still, unfortunately, I don’t see the CSM-as-actual-father as being ruled out in MS4 either. Was it necessary to fix something that was not broken?
Moreover, there is a big disconnect between what Carter now presents as his intentions and how they were translated in the episodes. The CSM-as-father possibility was a storm in a teacup that occupied a very short narrative span, just two episodes, certainly less than necessary for following through the consequences of such twists, and was presented in a very soapy dramatic way. MS3 used elements of the cinema language to mark this reveal as significant, yet it is easy to point out that they were just unverified statements. MS4 did nothing to reverse that revelation (and in my opinion strengthened it), a bit like how the big twist of there being no colonization of MS1 was both reversed and not reversed in MS3 (depending on which line of dialogue one follows). This leaves the paternity issue in a limbo that was not the author’s intent. Most fans are in denial, some consider the CSM as the father, and some few are holding on to saying it was ambiguous. What most people will take from this interview is comfort that the CSM was not the father after all, but what’s really on display here is that the material itself was lacking. Instead of using the opportunity of the revival to provide a coda to the series, Carter chose to be more ambitious; but it appears to have back-fired.
Now, I don’t particularly enjoy being negative and I don’t want to end on this very bitter note, so I will have a second post on this interview about the rest of the series!
Sep 10, 2022 19:47
29 years! #TheXFiles Pilot
Oct 05, 2022 14:09
The blog name says it all: #TheXFiles Statistics! How many times did Scully save Mulder? Screencaps of all the times Scully was wearing glasses or Mulder was holding a gun, and more. For people that, like me, love lists, this is great! Too bad it’s been abandoned for a while.
Oct 13, 2022 17:53
Happy Ten Thirteen! Happy birthday to our favourite surfer and to Spooky M! Here’s some fun: the opening credits to The CAT Files. Follow the link for actual cases of the Feline Bureau of Investigation.
https://catfiles.tumblr.com/post/136403082063/cat-files-opening-credits
Oct 20, 2022 10:38
Carter’s script from My Struggle IV reads like an ALL CAPS screaming ASSAULT on your SENSES. As Clyde Bruckman would say, “visions of a mad man”. #TheXFiles
https://www.twitter.com/jamesjordan555/status/1507443207633834016
Oct 21, 2022 18:56
[FRENCH] Un podcast excellent commence avec l’analyse du pilote ! La série de podcasts culminera avec le 30e anniversaire de #TheXFiles l’année prochaine.
Ca se passe par ici : https://podcast.ausha.co/le-coin-pop/the-x-files-nous-ne-sommes-pas-seuls
