Saturday, September 25, 2010

X-Files Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space' Paper

The show begins, intense sci-fi music plays as the ‘space ship’ come onto the screen, as the camera pans up to the man fixing the telephone poles. Even the beginning scene of the X-Files season 3, episode 20, Jose Chung’s ‘From Outer Space’, is full of perception creating reality. As we see the ‘space ship’ enter the scene we already assume its a spaceship because perception tells us so. After watching the whole episode, although every character was very interesting, the Pilot,  Lieutenant Jack Schaefer caught my attention. He’s interconnected with every ones stories, and he had me most convinced throughout the episode. It brought me to think Mulder wanted to believe the pilot could explain what happened so he perceived his story to be real to give himself some sense of reality.
The first time we see the pilot, although we don’t know its him yet, is through the boy, Harold’s point of view. Harold is telling Mulder and Skully about what happened the night of the abduction. He’s the grey alien smoking on the ship, which later makes you think the boys story is correct for seeing the pilot smoking. The boy says the gray alien “was just talking...in English, he just kept saying the same thing over and over again ‘this is not happening, this is not happening’”. By seeing him from the boys perspective we get an idea that he was real, that he actually was abducted along with the two kids. Later on the man, Roky Crikenson gives Mulder and Skully his script form story of the events that night. He says he saw the two grey aliens and one third alien. One of the gray aliens was obviously the pilot, thus planting the pilot, or one of the aliens, at the scene in which Mulder had read, putting the pilot there in his mind. Finally Skully is dissecting the dead alien body they had found. Upon the autopsy, she notices a zipper and they then realize the gray aliens were men in suits, Military men. Its then that Mulder finds out that the dead man was in the Air Force, planting the idea that its the government in his head. He tricks the Military into giving him the name of the other grey alien, and finds out Lieutenant Jack Schaefer is the other gray alien.
Now we are hearing Mulder’s story from Skully’s point of view. She says ‘his account of things get a little odd’, so we aren’t sure if any of the following actually happened, it’s just what Mulder said happened. While he’s driving he runs into the Jack Schaefer walking naked down a dark road. He’s scratched up and looks dazed. Mulder calls his name and he grabs him repeating “this is not happening”. We hear him say this again, once on the ship as the gray alien and again now. In Mulder’s mind it’s what Schaefer would say, but we can’t be sure he was even there. The scene goes onto Mulder talking to Schaefer in a dinner. Jack Schaefer lights up a cigarette and tells Mulder many things, he tells him he’s the pilot of a flying saucer. The government abducts people, they take them “back to their base, let the doctors work on them nothing physical they just mess with their minds”, Mulder replies “hypnosis”. From this scene we know Mulder already knows the girl may have been hypnotized and so thinks that's what the government would do try experiments on. Everything in this scene is evidence Mulder is just making the pilot up. He says things that have already been said, solidifies facts that Mulder wasn’t sure was true, but wanted to believe. The pilot goes on to say he’s “sure that him his co pilot and those two kids were abducted”, but then says he can’t be sure of anything, “I'm not sure were even having this conversation, i don’t know if these mash potatoes are here...”. It seems like answers and the whole scenario straight from Mulder’s mind. As the government storms in to abduct Lieutenant Jack Schaefer. We then find out that the cook who works at the dinner says that Mulder was there alone, asking him questions and ordering pie with every question he asked. This seems more like Mulder than when he was talking to the pilot. One more piece of evidence to tell us Mulder thought the conversation with Jack Schaefer was in his head, making all the loose ends he couldn’t figure out make sense to him by the pilot telling him what he wanted to hear.
Throughout the episode the stories we hear about and the people Mulder and Skully talk to all combine into the conversation with Milder and Lieutenant Jack Schaefer. We get a sense of closure with this conversation. We get the idea that Lord Kimboo is real, that the boy and girls stories match up, that the government is behind all the abductions and that there are really aliens out there. All of Mulder’s questions are answered too. Every piece of pie Mulder ate was the reality, and the beat up pilot was only the perception Mulder made for himself.

1 comment:

  1. Emily,

    I think you have a good idea, and if Im understanding you, I think you've got a very good reading of the episode. But I'm not sure if you're claiming the conversation with Jack is all a result of Mulder's imagination. If so, then this episode has no real closure. The meaning of the last paragraph is ambiguous.

    20/20

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