2016 eh? I know, right. A lot to take in. Who could have foreseen FHM Magazine ceasing in print? Who could have predicted the X-Files returning to our TV screens. These seemingly disparate events pretty much shaped 2016 for us all, I'm sure.
The X-Files was a huge part of my pop culture growing up in the 1990s. Reflecting now, The X-Files was my most beloved programme. I had the VHS tapes, the DVDs, the posters, the theme tune single... I literally had (and still have) the T-shirt, which was dubbed a "cool nerd shirt" when I met an American. Agent Scully was also, in not quite my first onscreen crush, then certainly my first and only pin-up. I had her photo pinned up above my bed.
The X-Files arrived on the BBC with what I remember to be a little fanfare. But enough that I made a point of insisting that we turn over to it in the living room to watch the first episode. And I was hooked from the start.
Watching it on the only TV in the house, with my parents, meant I had to put up with some typical what we'd now recognise as Gogglebox commentary: "It's always dark!" "Why don't they turn on a light?" "This is silly!" "Madness!" "Do you really like this?" "I can't follow it. Weird" "The news is on the other channel you know - proper information about the world!"
I did really like it. It really was my world. At the time, I was reading Weekly World News and 2000AD and now this TV programme was homing in on alien conspiracy, monsters and a post-modern age of technology with ideas on 1.44MB disks that simply had to be too knowing about the covert not to be actually knowing. I knew it was nonsense TV, but it was entertaining, hard sci-fi and it felt like it was trying to say something about our times.
It has famously been described as a cult show. And for me at school, that it was. I wasn't aware of any of my friends sticking with it beyond episode 2. And so the show's conspiracy confined hanger fed into my own sense of being an outsider, a believer, when watching it. I was part of the cult and it felt good.
If Mulder was living my fantasy life of being an FBI agent, left to investigate bizarre cold cases under the radar and finding wondrous and strange answers, then Scully was naturally my fantasy foil.
I've written about the X-Files before and the how that chemistry can go wrong once it's out of lab conditions. But this blog is more about my feelings for Scully.
As a partnership, Mulder and Scully were perfect. Attractive and slightly awkward with it, this was way down the list of their character traits that made the relationship work.
Mulder, dogged and driven just to the line of insanity to find the "truth" was the cool one, often leaping before looking. An Indiana Jones of the Clinton era: so a wool-mix overcoat instead of a fedora. He had an easy, sometimes whimsical manner which belayed his strong intentions to uncover and discover the layers he was convinced were in plain sight wherever they were. He made "spooky" OK to be. He made buying the Weekly World News acceptable. He made having an open mind a way to look at the world.
Scully was and is the heroic character. Intelligent and strong enough to give Mulder just enough slack to keep up with him before bringing him back to the grounding of reality of record. She had a tinder dry humour and fun to give confidence when the alien shit hit (and likely point out it is simply unrecorded shit and that doesn't verify nor discount it being alien shit). She was capable of rescuing Mulder from himself and actions. And of course it helped that she was hot. Who doesn't want a partner like that?
As a scientist, Scully found the rational in the irrational and accepted the irrational in the rational. As a pathologist, Scully found my heart. Scully was someone, as a teenager, to trust with my irrational truths and know she would take care of them.
It was only when Gillian Anderson modelled for FHM in 1996, did school friends start to become interested in the X-Files again.
I never bought a copy of FHM Magazine, but a friend subscribed. I remember I would sit in his room and flick through it (for the articles on how to buy a motorbike, or "hog"), almost like an alien artefact. This was expensively put together. A top of the range car of a magazine for me to be handed the keys to. Glossy, assuredly weighty, it even smelled great.
It was a "lad's mag", but I always felt it was a child of a time which spoke to the emerging internet, disposable income and bravado of the 16-25 year old machismo generation. Just like the X-files, it felt zeitgeist.
And then, one issue, there was Scully on the cover. Oh my.
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| It's the in depth investigation of a sinking ship that sold this issue |
Now you may think that this blog might only be an excuse to put up a few pictures of Gillian Anderson. And you would be only a little correct.
A bit of me was (careful now) delighted that FHM had made my X-Files part of the culture that I had been in but not exactly part of.
See? See! This is what you've been missing!Only in less well lit scenes and more jump suits.
A larger bit of me (careful now) was sad that the X-Files was no longer the counter culture I had as mine at school. Suddenly the X-Files was mainstream. The secret of Scully was out.
Britpop culture and the X-Files would quickly dovetail from here, culminating in the Catatonia hit of the parade, Mulder and Scully.
But there is no doubt Scully took me through my difficult outsider years, telling me that rational is OK, no matter how irrational to others it appears, strange or alone it makes me. Gillian Anderson also took me through some of my developing adulthood too.
To be honest after the 4th series, I began to drift away from the X-Files. I caught it sometimes, but that was all. And when the movies came, I watched them, but they were not enjoyable. It's very hard to maintain hard sci-fi when you see the alien craft lift off.
No matter, when the X-files returned in 2016 for a 6-espisode series special, I was delighted. I know it got some stick, but I couldn't fault it. It had everything in microcosm. The monster of the week, the emo story arc that no one really invests in outside the writers, the meta-humour, the ability to put the Twilight Zone narrative on it's head, the final overblown reveal when they finally listened to my parents and turned on the lights.
All the while, older Mulder looked hangdog and jaded, while Scully, more professional and whip smart than ever and, thanks to Gillian Anderson being amazing, brought a warmth and captivation to proceedings. The chemistry was there in every scene.
Although Gillian Anderson has done a lot of photoshoots...
Oh and this one, I've put in just in case you still didn't get the idea, you understand:
So, ah, yes, what was I... Oh... as I was saying: Although there have been a lot of photoshoots, my pin-up of Agent Scully above my bed was this. She was my ego to my Mulder IDol:
So 2016 was the year FHM ceased and was the year the X-Files made a return in a unexplainable symbiotic relationship from 1996. So not quite disparate events after all. Co-incidence? I know what Agent Scully would tell me.
