Synopsis for Sept. 15-19, 2008,
"The Citizen Kane of X-Files Shows"
This week, we analyzed "Jose Chung's From Outer Space," what could be called the Citizen Kane of X-Files shows. The episode allowed us to continue our discussioon of focalization techniques, particularly as these apply to frame narratives and, even more specifically, framed narrations. On Sept. 15, one student (sorry, can't remember who) correctly pointed out that narration is another example of the discursive manipulation of story. That is, given a certain sequence of chronological events (the story), an author can choose to relate those events either through third-person omniscient perspective or by way of a narrator (first-person narration), who could be any one of the characters involved in the actions. One can also have a third-person narration that is focalized through a single, main character. (See third-person-limited narration.) The choice of narration completely changes how we have access to the story, but the story itself (what actually happened) does not change, even if certain narrations may be misleading or even plain wrong. A good example would be the film He Said, She Said, which recounts the same events but from the very different perspectives of the two characters involved. "Jose Chung's From Outer Space" does the same thing: we assume that an actual story does exist ("the truth is out there"), that there is one explanation that accounts for all the elements of this narrative; however, through various conflicting and questionable narrations, we are left questioning what that story might be. The episode, along with the entire series, thus invokes the hermeneutic code: we keep watching because we want to learn the "truth." This particular episode extends as far as possible the implications of our difficulties in understanding "the truth." As Jose Chung states early in the episode, "truth is as subjective as reality," or, as he states a little later, he is fascinated by how our very perception of reality can be "transformed by words, mere words." As the Man in Black later tells Roky (the science-fiction writer and, later, cultist), we don't even understand how our brains process supposed "reality," so how can we be sure of anything, or, as Lieutenant Jack informs Fox Mulder in the diner scene, "I don't know if any of this is really happening. I don't even know if you're real." Fox's response: "I can only assure you that I am real." Of course, as a viewer of this fictional series, we can't help but realize in this scene that, indeed, Fox is not real but a fictional character. The show could thus be said to be quite postmodern in its self-consciousness and self-reflexivity. Even the claim that "seeing is believing" is questioned in the episode, for we see (through a reference to Roswell) that even recorded "reality" can be edited to seem like most anything one wishes. Through the constant cutting from one framed narrative to another to yet another (even the first sequence with the red and grey aliens turns out to be a scene from Roky's science-fiction screenplay), the viewer becomes so disoriented that we are made to experience precisely what the show is about: "truth is as subjective as reality."
 
     

 

  

The Discussion
     
CITIZEN KANE
  We began, in fact, with an exercise to make sure we all do by now understand the difference between story and discourse. I showed the first minute of Citizen Kane. I then asked those students who have never seen the film (i.e., most of the class) to tell me what they can determine about the movie from this opening sequence, in which one follows a camera past a sequence of fences up to the lit window of a large mansion; I stop the clip as soon as the light in the window goes out. The "story" in this sequence, as Christine Anderson correctly explained, is: "there is a gate and there is a mansion." That's all! However, the discursive presentation of this story led to a number of interpretations that went significantly beyond this rather simple plot. Here are just a few: 1) we appear to be in a setting straight out of a gothic tale (as Allison Mattes suggested), or perhaps a mystery, perhaps even a detective story. Certainly, we expect some terrible event to occur in the following scenes; we anticipate danger or some evil, perhaps a death; 2) As Joshua Wolf and others pointed out, the sequence of fences and the "No Trespassing" sign suggest that the viewer will not be allowed fully to reach the object of the film, "Citizen Kane." (The fence thus turns into a metaphor for the film.) Indeed, the fences seem to get increasingly thick as if to say that the closer you get to this subject the less you will know about it; 3) The sequence of fences suggests some sort of transgression; we are placed in the position of an interloper (after all, as Aaron Strand and Jake Elliott pointed out, we're sneaking up to someone's window at night). Indeed, as a result, we are given the sense that something mysterious is being hidden here, something that we desire to learn more about, and yet something that the director seems intent on denying us, since each fence we cross is followed by another. Even once we finally reach the enigmatic window of the mansion, the light suddenly goes out before we can see what hides inside; 4) Jake Elliott, Christine Anderson and others offered up a possible reading for the landscape we are being presented with. Could the house and its grounds be a metaphor for the person that lives in it? If so, we cannot help but understand this person as not only incredibly rich but also paranoid, scared, depressed, and unhappy, someone who is suspicious of others and refuses to trust anyone. He or she might be someone that sets up barriers between him/herself and others, although, as Jake Elliott pointed out, he or she is somone who once lived a glorious life of wealth and power, and may even have known love (perhaps represented by the gondolas we pass). Also, he is add the end of his life or sick unto death; and 5) the lap dissolves and match cuts of the opening sequence (with the window anchoring each frame) forces the familiar to become unfamiliar and forces to reader to "read into" the otherwise mundane fact of a lighted window.
     
THE FALSE ESTABLISHING SHOT
   We then turned to the opening sequence of "Jose Chung's From Outer Space," in which we appear at first to be given an establishing shot evocative of the opening of George Lucas' Star Wars, as Eiliff Vanderkolk explained ; however, as the camera pans out, it becomes clear that what we are actually seeing is a close-up (NOT a long shot) of the underside of a utility vehicle. Also, it becomes clear that the 'ship' is not moving; rather, that is an illusion—it is the camera that is actually moving. The story here, as one student pointed out, is: "a guy is fixing an electricity pole"; however, the discursive tricks of the episode all suggest at first a completely different story, one involving extraterrestrial travel. The opening thus perfectly exemplifies the theme of the episode, in which it is never perfectly clear what precisely the truth is. The show thus plays with the generic preconceptions and perceptual illusions of the viewer, as Amber Worman and Sean Coleman argued, which is to say that the show thus makes us question, as does the Man in Black played by Jesse Ventura, whether "seeing is believing." The episode could be said to be caught between two possibilities: either we are being presented with non-fiction or with science fiction; in fact, Jose Chung is, indeed, writing the first "non-fiction science fiction." It's also unclear whether in various scenes we are being presented with an objective treatment of events or a subjective treatment; whether we are being given clues about "outer space" or given some subjective truth about "inner space"; whether, as the show's two mantras might say, "the truth is out there" or we only "want to believe" (it's no coincidence that Scully's interview with Jose Chung is shot in front of a poster with the latter slogan). As I pointed out, even the show's title plays with the opposition since we are first led to think that "Jose Chung" is himself "from outer space" before realizing that the title refers to his nonfiction sci-fi book.
   
FRAME NARRATIVE
   We then discussed a later sequence that explains what exactly we are seeing in the first sequence before the credits. As it turns out, what we are seeing is Roky's version of events, helpfully presented to Mulder and to Jose Chung in screenplay format. The series of frames here is incredibly comples: Lord Kinbote and the inner core of the earth > Roky's version of events > the screenplay version > the screenplay is read out loud by Fox > Scully relates Fox's reading of the screenplay to Jose Chung > Jose Chung's book, From Outer Space, plus yet one more layer: Scully reading the book, which we see in the last scenes. You gave a number of reasons for why a show would feel obliged to present a story through such a complicated frame structure: Sean Coleman argued that it underlines the limitations of one's point of view and the subjective nature of perception; one might add that it also underscores the limitations of memory (underscored, Joshua Wolf pointed out, by all the references to hynosis in the episode); Vicky Matuszk and others pointed out that such a frame structure highlights the psychological motivation of the teller (the desires that are in play); Allison Mattes added that the show thus highlights the process and problems of transmission (which implicates the viewer as well, of course); Sean Coleman argued, the series of framed narrations works as a form of narrative dilation that serve to hide the story from us; one might add that such a structure keeps us guessing and therefore invokes Barthes' hermeneutic code; the structure thus underlines the theme of the episode ("truth is as subjective as reality"); the method, as Jen Rukavina argued, is also highly self-reflexive, thus commenting on our own act of viewing; Amber Worman, Sean Coleman, and Vicky Matuszak all tied our reading of the structure to our readings in Peter Brooks: the ripple-effect of such frame narratives often revolve around some lack of closure. As Brooks puts it, "The reader is finally left with a story on his hands, a story he doesn't know what to do with, except perhaps eventually to retell it. In this sense, the movement of reference is one of 'contamination': the passing-on of the virus of narrative, the creation of the fevered need to retell" (220). Like Heart of Darkness or Apocalypse Now (which we'll see featured in next week's Buffy episode), we also have a traumatic core at the heart of the frame structure; indeed, Scully 's interpretation of the events is precisely that we are seeing an example of what she calls "sexual trauma." The subsequent retellings function like Freud's and Brooks' understanding of transference: a form of repetition compulsion seeking to bind the traumatic core and thus to put "the story to rest," to "find peace," or, as one might rephrase their comments, to allow the story to "rest in peace." The goal of the transference is a "transference of past desire into terms that can be realized and made to render real rewards" (Brooks 228). For this reason, I suggested, the show ends by illustrating how each of the characters have dealt with the repetition compulsion and transferences of the episode, with Chrissy and Duane succeeding in the end to re-enter society in productive ways.
   
THE POSTMODERN
   This week, we also began to discuss postmodernism. I stated that this episode is highly postmodern, as are each of the shows and films we'll be seeing from here on. So, I asked students to start characterizing what constitutes a postmodern work (as distinct from 'postmodernity,' which refers to the world around us—see Linda Hutcheon on this). Some of the elements you identified include: self-reflexivity (e.g., about the scriptedness of the fictional show being presented to us [the repeated bits of dialogue, the fact that Roky's rendition of events is put in screenplay format] or the way the show comments on its own discursive tricks, as in the editing of the autopsy in the 'Alien Autopsy' segment—thanks to Jen Rukavina for that); intertextuality (e.g., all the B movie references); self-consciousness about genre and the ways genre bends our perception of reality; a self-consciousness about mediatization (the medial transfer of the episode, hence the importance of the mise-en-abyme home video of the 'Alien Autopsy,' as Justin Lee and Stephanie Gill pointed out); finally, the breakdown of the distinction between fiction and reality. I suggested that the lattermost point provides us with a way to distinguish 'postmodernism' from 'modernism' to which it is clearly related. The modernists are best characterized by the rupture and "modern" rethinking represented by the great, revolutionary thinkers of the period 1850-1950: Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzche, Albert Einstein, and Sigmund Freud. What could be said to mark the postmodern break is the loss of the belief that, through some sort of radical rethinking of ideology or the world order (hence the proliferation of manifestos in the modern period), we can get to the REAL truth. The shift from Einstein's theory of relativity to Werner Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and quantum physics generally, which suggests that reality itself is not stable once one reaches the quantum level of existence (which has led to such contemporary theories as many-worlds interpretation, including string and superstring theory), is exemplary of this shift. (By the way, I think I've been saying Eisenstein rather than Heisenberg in class—a Freudian slip caused by the similarity between 'Eisenstein' and 'Einstein,' not to mention Sergei Eisenstein's importance to film history.) On the level of psychoanalysis, the same shift can be seen in the shift from Freud (who wanted to believe that there is some buried truth at the heart of the psychoanalytical treatment) and Jacques Lacan who argues that our very entrance into language and what he terms the symbolic order means that we are forever dissevered from what he terms the Real.
   
THE LITERALIZATION OF STORY BY DISCOURSE
  

We discussed a number of discursive techniques as well throughout the two classes. We did not examine but might have how a "collapsed cut" and sound bridge during Roky's narration of his encounter with the Men in Black serves to underline the breakdown between subjective treatment and objective treatment. We think we are inside his narration (a subjective treatment) only to realize that we are, in fact, back in the more or less objective frame (Roky recounting his events to Scully and Mulder). A similar technique is used in the interrogation of the boy in the episode.

An analogous trick occurs later in the diner scene, when we see Mulder asking the owner of the diner questions while eating pie. Right after he asks "have you ever experienced missing time," we have a jump cut, which is literally an example of "missing time": an edit that jumps forward in time, creating a jerky sequence. The discourse thus, once again, perfectly mirrors and literalizes a story element.

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