The American Dream in The X-Files: Paper Hearts, El Mundo Gira, Leonard Betts, Never Again, Memento Mori, Kaddish, Unrequited
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.substack.com/p/the-american-dream-in-the-x-files
4x10 Paper Hearts (Monster of the Week)
The episode brilliantly reuses the events of Samantha's abduction in Mulder's dream, turning it into her abduction by Roche. This of course means we are once again exposed to the news item about Nixon's secretary and the Rose Mary Stretch. If you listen carefully to the news that's on the TV during the abduction rather than paying attention to the events, it's actually telling us that it is unlikely that Rose Mary Woods actually deleted the recording she did by mistake. This brings Watergate back into the show, and I'm going to go out on a limb here and draw on the significance that the show is juxtaposing 1) Samantha's abudiction 2) suggesting the abduction was by a criminal rather than aliens and 3) news drawing our attention to the Watergate scandal saying that the deletion of the recording was unlikely to be accidental. I would suggest that this juxtaposition could be seen as directing our attention again to the cover-up in the heart of the state. I would suggest you could interpret this as the show using a dream to indicate that the state is rotten to the core and the American dream is part of the facade.
4x11 El Mundo Gira (Monster of the Week)
Once again the show foregrounds one thing, namely the myth of El Chupacabra and the strange fungal growth. However again the American dream is in the background, namely in the issue of immigration, which has repeatedly come up as problematic in the show, and yet is a core part of the American dream.
4x12 Leonard Betts (Monster of the Week)
No apparent reference to the American dream.
4x13 Never Again (Monster of the Week)
No apparent reference to the American dream.
4x14 Memento Mori (Core Mythology)
No apparent reference to the American dream.
4x15 Kaddish (Monster of the Week)
The criticism of the American dream in this one rather hits you in the eye. It is that in a country where the entire founding of the country was around escaping religious persecution and which has a written constitution embodying religious freedom and freedom of speech, you hit a contradiction when you find citizens who think other people should not be free (or even alive) to practice their religion and feel free to say this. It is essentially the same quandary as the one in which everyone has the opportunity to better themselves but not necessarily the ability and that some people will hoard resources while others are starving: ultimately some people will actively interpret their freedoms as an opportunity to persecute other people or disadvantage them.
4x16 Unrequited (Monster of the Week)
Once again we have the military-industrial complex forming the background to this episode. Helpfully in the foreground the show gives us an actual real-life government cover-up conspiracy, once again indicating that the justice and freedom from fear which are part of the dream may not be as real as you would hope.
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: 25 (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: 64 (with significant content relating to the American dream: Eve, Beyond the Sea, Young at Heart, Miracle Man, Shapes, Blood, Sleepless, Fresh Bones, Syzygy, Home, Teliko, and Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man.)
As always, I'm totally unequipped to do this so if I've missed anything corrections are very welcome in the comments.