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Feb. 24th, 2012 11:28 amI started watching The X-Files last night. Yes, for the first time - I spent the 90s without a tv/access to pop culture, and somehow I'd never gone looking for XF since the glory that is streaming video burst onto the scene of my life.
Wow, y'all, this is pretty boss. Scully, how so awesome? She's short and not super-skinny and not dressed like a model and smart and savvy and driven and I love the way the subtext of the show, at least, is aware that she has to protect her career much more aggressively than Mulder does, that it would be a lot easier for her to lose everything via bad reputation due to her gender. And Mulder is like this babydoll Slytherin, really sweet & vulnerable but also bitchy and scathing and not above trolling when he has nothing better to do. I can see why this ship appealed to slashers so intensely! And also, that scene at the end of 1.03 with Mulder in the chapel and his hypnotic regression playing in voiceover? Holy fuck that's elegant meaning-making right there - though I did feel like I had a small![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thingswithwings hovering over my shoulder making noises about manpain, courtesy of that vid.
But a lot of the thoughts I was having last night were about history and politics - which is interesting considering that I watch a lot of tv older than this - but watching XF in 2012 kind of convinced me, for the first time, that 9/11 changed everything. I have very little awareness of a time before the PATRIOT act. I'm used to the FBI being really scarily powerful, to wiretapping being no big deal, to the Feds being the omnipotent baddies, and in XF they're sort of lovably powerless! Mulder and Scully keep getting kicked off crime scenes by cops, marginalized by the government, generally cast as underdogs. The dissonance is so weird.
Also, all the microfilm scanning is making me more thankful than ever for the digital age. My god, how did anyone ever get anything done?
Wow, y'all, this is pretty boss. Scully, how so awesome? She's short and not super-skinny and not dressed like a model and smart and savvy and driven and I love the way the subtext of the show, at least, is aware that she has to protect her career much more aggressively than Mulder does, that it would be a lot easier for her to lose everything via bad reputation due to her gender. And Mulder is like this babydoll Slytherin, really sweet & vulnerable but also bitchy and scathing and not above trolling when he has nothing better to do. I can see why this ship appealed to slashers so intensely! And also, that scene at the end of 1.03 with Mulder in the chapel and his hypnotic regression playing in voiceover? Holy fuck that's elegant meaning-making right there - though I did feel like I had a small
thingswithwings hovering over my shoulder making noises about manpain, courtesy of that vid.But a lot of the thoughts I was having last night were about history and politics - which is interesting considering that I watch a lot of tv older than this - but watching XF in 2012 kind of convinced me, for the first time, that 9/11 changed everything. I have very little awareness of a time before the PATRIOT act. I'm used to the FBI being really scarily powerful, to wiretapping being no big deal, to the Feds being the omnipotent baddies, and in XF they're sort of lovably powerless! Mulder and Scully keep getting kicked off crime scenes by cops, marginalized by the government, generally cast as underdogs. The dissonance is so weird.
Also, all the microfilm scanning is making me more thankful than ever for the digital age. My god, how did anyone ever get anything done?