But The X-Files was there, in the background, for that year and for several years after it. In my memory of that time it seems to be running, muted, on every TV in every room I enter after dark.
Brian Phillips, “In the Dark,” Grantland
This is one of my favorite pieces of X-Files journalism, in part because it captures what I both knew and did not know about the series before I watched it. I knew the theme song, the grainy monsters, the lights in the woods, the two agents in suits standing by a cornfield and looking into the sky. I knew Mulder and Scully were a kind of love story, even before I understood it. I don’t know how I knew. I just knew.
“I was already used to imagining the series as a montage of empty atmosphere,” Phillips says, “and in fact I had fallen half in love with it as such.” It’s a mood. The X-Files is a feeling that we already recognize and an idea that resonates with us before we have the words or the facts to back it up–so it talks to us like Mulder and Scully talk to each other. It’s both the darkness and the flashlight. It’s the part of us that knows there’s something to fear but wants to run toward it. It’s the cozy idea that we might be able to run with someone else. It’s “you’ll never get there” and “keep going.” “Trust no one” but “trust this person.” Strain to believe in something you’re not sure you’ll ever believe.
The fact that we all know at some unspoken level the FEEL of The X-Files makes everything nostalgic, even for those of us who aren’t lucky enough to have a 22-year relationship with the show. This is still the return of a story we feel like we’ve been hearing our whole lives. It’s affirmation that yes, you were right, there are monsters, even now. But another bedtime story is just as real: There are people who fight the monsters and who are made better and more alive by the fight. And in a way that’s nostalgia brought into the future (it’s a nostalgia ouroboros). The fact that The X-Files is still going, and that Mulder and Scully are still going, is proof that no matter how many obstacles it’s up against, hope doesn’t have to run out, the truth is still out there, and the passage of time doesn’t have to bring with it the acceptance of easy answers. You can still want to believe in everything you used to want to believe in. You’re still not alone.
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