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An "X-Files" Effect? Science Fiction, Horror, and the Promotion of the Paranormal

12/16/2015

45 Comments

 
Today I’d like to discuss Matthew Nisbet’s article in the current issue of Skeptical Inquirer (January/February 2016), which is keyed to the upcoming X-Files revival and claims that skeptics shouldn’t worry that the X-Files is having a negative effect on popular perceptions of science. According to Nisbet, research shows that fans of science fiction have an overall positive view of science and therefore science fiction shouldn’t be condemned for promoting a belief in alien abductions, monsters, and other paranormal phenomena. But when we drill down into the evidence Nisbet provides, we can see how scientists’ own biases toward science fiction have shaped their investigations and, by leaving out key elements of how the public engages with paranormal material, developed an incomplete understanding of popular reception of paranormal claims.
Nisbet, for example, has himself studied the relationship between science fiction viewing and perceptions of science. He concludes that “somewhat counterintuitively, heavier viewers of science fiction programs … tend to be more positive in their views” of science. This, he says, is because “the science fiction audience is by nature strongly enthusiastic about science, meaning that their viewing habits may capture an underlying latent support for science.” He therefore blames paranormal-themed reality programs for fostering paranormal beliefs and concludes that we do not need to fear The X-Files specifically and may enjoy the program without concern that it is helping to create new believers in the paranormal. This is in contrast to Richard Dawkins, who in his 1996 Dimbleby Lecture warned, without empirical support, that the program was inculcating a belief in the paranormal because “week after week, the rational explanation loses” to the supernatural one.
 
This is not a new concern, and we find evidence of it going back centuries, at least to the time when Matthew Lewis had to defend his ghost play The Castle Spectre (1797) against claims that it was dangerous to the public to depict spirits on stage. Indeed, all of Gothic literature came under attack for allegedly promoting belief in the paranormal, and similar concerns have occurred at regular intervals ever since without ever establishing with certainty whether fictional depictions of the paranormal lead to increased belief in its reality.
 
The Skeptical Inquirer article follows closely a 2013 chapter Nisbet wrote for the book Hollywood Chemistry, which also was interested in the X-Files, but the research in both articles tends to be from the 1990s or early 2000s, which was all prior to the modern wave of paranormal belief that launched in the mid-2000s with ghost hunting and psychic shows and took off in this decade thanks to ancient astronaut and cryptozoology programs.
 
Nisbet, of course, recognizes that pseudo-documentaries play a far greater role in shaping beliefs than fiction programs, though he has no data to quantify it. The trouble is that in praising science fiction viewers for their positive attitudes toward science, he mistakes science fiction (and closely related mainstream dramas such as CSI, which are all but science fiction in their use of fantasy technology) for a representative sample of (a) science in media and (b) audience understandings of science. As a result, Nisbet becomes confused in trying to explain why science fiction in general produces positive attitudes toward science while The X-Files in particular “may have only a limited, and often difficult-to-discern, influence on beliefs in the paranormal.”
 
I would suggest that one of the key reasons that Nisbet wasn’t able to see a clear a correlation between X-Files viewers and the paranormal is because of the problem of genre. Nisbet’s research—and all of the studies he cites—focuses on science fiction, which is only a part of the X-Files’s DNA. The X-Files is, arguably, a horror show at heart, and as I argued in my 2008 book Knowing Fear, the horror genre is, more than science fiction, the fictional genre that explores the costs and consequences of knowledge, manifesting in the form of monsters of various types. The horror genre rests on the uncertainty of knowledge and the dangers of pushing beyond acceptable limits. By contrast, science fiction tends to use science as a framework for exploring moral issues rather than epistemological issues. The audience for science fiction is, undoubtedly, largely drawn from fans of science, but on the other hand the audience for horror is more likely to draw from people who are more inclined to supernatural beliefs, though as I laid out in my book, scholarly research into the reasons people choose various genres finds that the reasons tend to be highly individual and not easily generalizable. The X-Files, having fans from both camps, will produce ambiguous results.
 
The question, ultimately, is whether we are able to conclude that there is a clear effect of fictional depictions of the paranormal on viewers, or whether people who already hold these beliefs are drawn to fictional depictions of what they already believe. This can’t be easily teased out, but what we do know is that there is a feedback loop between fiction and belief. To take one example: Over a period of three weeks in 1964, The Outer Limits depicted specific types of aliens who engaged in abductions of human beings. A few days later Barney Hill told his hypnotist that he had participated in the same scenario with the same aliens. Afterward, NBC made a TV movie based on Hill’s account, and Travis Walton watched this movie and claimed he had been abducted in the same way depicted in the movie. Similarly, the modern image of the chupacabra is borrowed wholesale from the 1995 movie Species, but married to preexisting folk belief in the demonic powers of the goat-sucker (night jar).
 
What would have been interesting is to look at what self-described believers in the paranormal watch and how that either reflects or shapes their views. What limited evidence there is suggests that UFO believers in 1990s were often fans of the X-Files, and that the X-Files in particular helped to increase the number of people who believed in what had previously been fringe conspiracies by “mainstreaming” them to a much larger audience. Michael Barkun says as much in A Culture of Conspiracy (2006/2013), but he doesn’t have specific statistical data to prove it. Earlier research that surveyed X-Files viewers who claimed paranormal experiences of their own found that they were more likely to recall pseudoscience from the show and believe it, according to Christopher Henry Whittle’s On Learning Science and Pseudoscience from Prime-Time Television Programming (2003).
 
Because Nisbet focused narrowly on the depiction of scientists and the genre of science fiction, his research necessarily left out broader questions of the depiction of the paranormal, particularly in the horror genre. Audiences are not likely to distinguish as neatly between science, pseudoscience, and the occult as Nisbet might like (witness Ancient Aliens as “science” for example), and by restricting inquiry only to the genre that best aligns with researchers’ own feelings about science, they are likely to miss out on the broader story of how fictional works wrestle with questions of how we know, what we know, and why we know it—the essential questions that underlie science but aren’t always explicitly depicted with Bunsen burners and Van der Graff generators.
 
It’s great that Nisbet was able to relieve his (and the magazine’s) audience’s anxiety that their favorite shows are somehow working against science, but he shouldn’t forget that in fiction “science” isn’t confined to science fiction and CSI.
45 Comments
Charles G
12/16/2015 02:58:23 pm

It's also worth noting that "positive attitudes toward science" is a pretty poor proxy measure for not encouraging paranormal beliefs. It's possible, after all, to feel good about science while being totally wrong about what it actually consists of. (Witness the amount of rubbish that gets into IFL Science, or TED Talks.) The likelihood is that many in the audience who develop such a "positive attitude" are motivated by it to reframe their own paranormal beliefs as scientific rather than to reexamine their validity using actual science.

Reply
spookyparadigm
12/16/2015 03:34:33 pm

The X-Files is definitely at its core in the horror genre. The anomalies, monsters, freaks, etc. are rarely sources of wonder, usually just of grisly murder. This typically goes unrecognized because (a) most pop culture observers don't get that paranormal aliens are not science fiction aliens but just another cultural version of angels and demons etc. and (b) the show heavily borrowed from Silence of the Lambs which itself had succeeded in being a horror movie without the horror label. This issue with understanding the X-Files is just a microcosm of the larger inability of the pop culture mainstream to understand what "UFOs" actually mean to people.

I would also concur that the X-Files' biggest impact culturally was to mainstream a lot of the far right/libertarian conspiracy culture, and even more so, to successfully remove that political tie from it. Key aspects of the show, particularly the idea of the elites in society being running by a secret cabal of Nazis (and friends, note the show literally named an episode after Unit 731, Japan's WWII bioweapons program) who continue biological experimentation and construct flying saucers in order to cement global control, were pulled right out of that subculture. But the show then purposely distanced itself from this background using supporting characters as well as the key structure of the show. Several times, minor characters in the conspiracy culture would in fact be drawn from the militia or even white supremacist world, but they were invariably crude, unpleasant, and dangerous. IIRC, Krychek took sanctuary with one such group that was depicted as dangerously paranoid. Mulder infiltrated a domestic terrorist group in "The Pine Bluff Variant" precisely because of his conspiracy theory credentials. By contrast, the friendly and harmless conspiracy nuts, the Lone Gunmen, are coded as morally upright hackers and hippies. One talks about his time in the 1970s counterculture. Another is a geeky punk rocker who literally talks about The Man. And the third was based, according to the actor who portrayed him, on Noam Chomsky.

More broadly, the core structure of most episodes has two highly educated city-based investigators/scientists drop into a small town, often marked as rural and conservative. They face constant opposition by local law enforcement which is usually depicted as small-minded. If they win the day, it is through scientific investigation into mysticism. And on many occasions the heroes almost instinctually stand up for environmental issues, minority communities, indigenous people etc. (while the leads are decidedly made out as non-racist, the show's handling of such things is a whole other thing. Much of its material comes from foreign/indigenous exotic magic people, another horror staple).

I think one could argue that the heyday of Art Bell etc. was very much helped by crafting a politically moderate conspiracy fantasy. Chris Carter has openly discussed this in recent years in the wake of Birtherism and especially mass killing false-flag conspiracy theorists. But I suspect that in the aggregate, it doesn't make much broader cultural difference, in no small part because most of the X-Files knock-offs made the same mistakes I mention above: they thought the show was about science fiction, and when they did include secret things, they made it a more comic-booky "good secret guys" vs. "bad secret guys", which undercuts the paranoia.

tl,dr: X-Files liberalized militia conspiracy culture through how it handled the material. But other than a few UFO hawkers, this didn't have a big cultural impact because the real subculture recognized the difference while the cultural mainstream didn't really understand why X-Files worked. Trying to understand the X-Files as science makes the same mistakes as trying to understand UFOs or the other topics covered on this blog as science rather than as politics or religion, they're apples and oranges.

Reply
titus pullo
12/16/2015 05:40:47 pm


"liberatarians..." come on that is ridiculous. You would probably find as many "progressives" who were fans of the show. The show hit the market at the right time, a few years after the cold war ended the established "world" was overturned and fringe ideas always come to the "front" more during these periods (see 60s). The show itself was well filmed and revolved around a friendship/romance. Similar to Supernatural (the brothers friendship) also hit its high point during the post Iraq war fear of terrorists under every chair.

There really are not many Sci fi shows on TV these days. I honestly can't think of one.

Reply
David Bradbury
12/17/2015 07:44:57 am

Orphan Black? Humans? Doctor Somebody-or-other?
(And I'm not counting monolith-induced time-travel as science fiction). (Or alternative realities, though I think I should really make an exception for alternative realities in which there is awareness of alternative alternatives).

DaveR
12/17/2015 08:08:55 am

Who is that Doctor? I can never remember his name.

Clint Knapp
12/17/2015 08:30:21 am

Whocares.

But beyond the examples given, we can always point out that there is an imminently horrible basic cable channel that has been consistently running "original" Sci-Fi programming for twenty-some-odd years now. It could also be argued, though, that the best programming it's aired have been syndicated reruns of network sci-fi...

An Over-Educated Grunt
12/17/2015 09:13:11 am

The Expanse just launched, supposed to be quite good. I haven't had a chance to see it yet thanks to work, but it's on my near-future to-do list. See also the upcoming new Star Trek, Childhood's End, the examples already given... for all their many faults, Syfy seems to have started to notice the error of their ways.

David Bradbury
12/17/2015 11:56:06 am

And while we're almost on the subject- I now fully understand why conservationists didn't want Skellig Michael to be used as a filming location. It looks gorgeous in the film, but not a place that could stand loads of visitors.

William Schumacher
12/20/2015 03:23:13 pm

spookyparadigm isn't saying that the viewers were libertarian, but that the conspiracy theories which were the inspiration of many of the X-Files episodes had their basis in fringe beliefs primarily originating from the far right or libertarian cultures - beliefs which were “the implausible visions of a lunatic fringe.” Put simply, Conspiracy chatter was once dismissed as mental illness.
Libertarian beliefs and Conspiracy theories share a common distrust of government. According to Nick Pope , “…most conspiracy theories involve government… When you look at ghosts, and out of body experiences, and near death experiences, and things like that, you don’t get conspiracy theories! Why? To me, the important point is that I think it’s government—the very presence of government in the situation—that I think often generates the conspiracy theories.”
I think spookyparadigm is right in saying that "...the X-Files' biggest impact culturally was to mainstream a lot of the far right/libertarian conspiracy culture..." But while the show may have opened the floodgates, allowing the first wave of conspiracy theories to flood into our public discourse, it doesn’t bear the ultimate responsibility for the tsunami of conspiracy theories currently washing over us. Thank you, World Wide Web...

DaveR
12/16/2015 03:49:14 pm

X-Files is NOT science fiction. Most if it, from what I remember of the series, follows closely with all of the fringe theories about aliens, government conspiracies, monsters, paranormal events, etc. I'm sure there are plenty of people who watched and then read fringe stuff, quickly inferring that much of the X-Files was based on "suppressed" facts and evidence by the government and academia.

Reply
Pacal
12/16/2015 06:28:07 pm

Jason you said:

"This is in contrast to Richard Dawkins, who in his 1996 Dimbleby Lecture warned, without empirical support, that the program was inculcating a belief in the paranormal because “week after week, the rational explanation loses” to the supernatural one."

Well the bottom line is that the X-Files did in fact have the trope that the rational explanation loses week after week and the supernatural one wins. In fact the show went out of its way to show that Scully was wrong, way wrong , totally wrong over and over again. Only occasionally was Scully right. Mulder's childlike faith and belief was sanctified and justified and celebrated in episode after episode and of course shown to be right again and again.

In fact the show pandered too the conspiracy, pseudo beliefs held by some of its viewers again and again. Chris Carter in fact admitted that he found a more balanced show just didn't "work" and so went whole hog with the pseudo stuff. You see balancing the show would have upset a chunk of the show's fans so in order to satisfy those fans and keep the gravy train going the show had to pander to conspiracy / pseudo nonsense.

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Jason Colavito link
12/16/2015 07:51:10 pm

I by no means dispute the correctness of the view that the paranormal explanation was favored on the X-Files; I meant that Dawkins provided no evidence that this caused the audience to accept the paranormal more readily.

Reply
DaveR
12/17/2015 07:45:17 am

Ancient Aliens and shows of that ilk are far more damaging than X-Files ever was, or will be, because X-Files was a fictional program. The current crop of pseudoscience programing is so damaging because the presenters claim some professional credentials or grand life experience and therefor their theories are based on evidence and facts.

Mike Jones
12/16/2015 07:01:43 pm

I never watched the X files when it was new but watched an episode a few weeks ago. I was struck by how awful it was...bad acting, bad script, terrible effects. I kept thinking "THIS is the great X Files??!?!?!?!?" Maybe I just happened to catch one of the crappier episodes and others were better.

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Not the Comte de Saint Germain
12/16/2015 07:51:53 pm

Maybe you did. I haven't seen very much of the show, but my impression is that the episodes that were deliberately silly were the best. A lot of people would no doubt disagree because they got wrapped up in the overarching conspiracy-theory storyline. Obviously that storyline appeals to the conspiracy-minded, but it was also popular because it was innovative at the time. The X-Files was one of a handful of shows in the early to mid-1990s that pushed the boundaries of how serialized (non-episodic) a show can be. However, the conspiracy-theory storyline also demonstrated one of the pitfalls of serialization: if it goes on too long and gets too convoluted, it just collapses into nonsense.

Anyway, one of the best-regarded episodes of The X-Files, certainly the one that made me laugh the hardest, is "José Chung's From Outer Space," which verges on being a parody of The X-Files.

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Shane Sullivan
12/16/2015 11:28:19 pm

I remember one where Mulder and Scully were arguing over the implications of a bunch of dead cows being found in Texas. Mulder seems to think Scully's interpretation that the killings are the work of satanic cultists is paranoid and dramatic; no, he thinks it vampires. That always stuck in my mind as a funny moment.

skathes
12/17/2015 11:12:53 pm

Great episode! It sorta underscores some of the less obvious tongue in cheek ones....

crainey
12/16/2015 07:16:21 pm

My problem with all of this is: should we blame a work of fiction for how it is interpreted by a certain percentage of its audience? Should Outer Limits be blamed along with X-Files for alien conspiracy theories? What about the Twilight Zone or The Invaders or countless other shows from the last 50 years? Most people can think critically enough to distinguish fiction from non-fiction. The problem lies in the current lack of proper labeling. Ancient Aliens on the History channel is the problem; Discovery and the Science Channel and NatGeo running shows on Bigfoot and UFOs and mermaids are also part of it. If they were all on the Syfi channel, properly labeled, wouldn't they be seen very differently? By the way, I loved the X-Files and am looking forward to its return.

Reply
Graham
12/16/2015 07:39:21 pm

Anecdotally, a local conspiracy magazine 'New Dawn' ran a letter-to-the-editor in which the writer claimed (Based on the first few episodes.) that the X-Files was based on '...real but supressed events...' the editors slapped that person down pretty harshly but were still quite happy to exploit the shows mystique for their own agenda.

Reply
DaveR
12/17/2015 10:01:35 am

Similar to people thinking Dan Brown's "Da Vinci Code" was also factual.

Time Machine
12/17/2015 10:13:32 am

Dam Brown still maintains today that The Da Vinci Code is based on fact.

DaveR
12/17/2015 10:47:59 am

I've never seen or read an interview with Dan Brown where he has stated his book is anything other than a work of fiction. What I've seen is religious groups spreading the claims that "The Da Vinci Code" is based on facts. Yes, he does reference real places and organizations, but that does not make the book true. Steven King writes about real places in Maine, does that mean there's an ancient alien living in the sewers and dressed as Pennywise the Clown killing children around Bangor, Maine?

Time Machine
12/17/2015 10:57:47 am


Good Morning America: The Da Vinci Code, 3 November 2003

Charlie Gibson:
This is a novel. If you were writing it as a non-fiction book, how would it have been different?

Dan Brown:
I don’t think it would have. I began the research for The Da Vinci Code as a skeptic. I entirely expected, as I researched the book, to disprove this theory. And after numerous trips to Europe, about two years of research, I really became a believer.


The Today Show: Interview with Dan Brown, 3 June 2003 NBC

Matt Lauer:
How much of this is based on reality in terms of things that actually occurred?

Dan Brown:
Absolutely all of it. Obviously, there are — Robert Langdon is fictional, but all of the art, architecture, secret rituals, secret societies, all of that is historical fact.


CNN Sunday Morning: Interview with Dan Brown, 25 May 2003

Martin Savidge:
When we talk about da Vinci and your book, how much is true and how much is fabricated in your storyline?

Dan Brown:
99 percent of it is true. All of the architecture, the art, the secret rituals, the history, all of that is true, the Gnostic gospels. All of that is… all that is fiction, of course, is that there's a Harvard symbologist named Robert Langdon, and all of his action is fictionalized. But the background is all true.

DaveR
12/17/2015 11:21:08 am

"The Da Vinci Code is simply an entertaining story that promotes spiritual discussion and debate and suggests that the Book may be used to "as a positive catalyst for introspection and exploration of our faith." -Dan Brown

In an interview with Matt Lauer on The Today Show in September 2009, Brown responded by saying, "I do something very intentional and specific in these books. And that is to blend fact and fiction in a very modern and efficient style, to tell a story. There are some people who understand what I do, and they sort of get on the train and go for a ride and have a great time, and there are other people who should probably just read somebody else."

Time Machine
12/17/2015 11:26:00 am

It wasn't that long ago when Dan Brown said he did not believe in conspiracy theories like UFOs, ancient astronauts, Loch Ness Monster, etc - but that the Jesus Bloodline was a valid historical mystery.

That's no longer on his website.

DaveR
12/17/2015 11:30:14 am

That's interesting, I wonder why he removed that...

I also found it interesting that he's been sued several times for plagiarism.

Time Machine
12/17/2015 11:35:28 am

These are things you have to learn to save.

Undoubtedly you could get that webpage if you had the exact URL because danbrown.com is not currently protected by robotext.

His earlier Home Pages had a gateway that do not respond to archive.org.

Time Machine
12/17/2015 11:45:36 am


https://web.archive.org/web/20080325062025/http://www.danbrown.com/novels/davinci_code/faqs.html

25 March 2008

WOULD YOU CONSIDER YOURSELF A CONSPIRACY THEORIST?

Dan Brown:
Hardly. In fact, I'm quite the opposite--more of a skeptic. I see no truth whatsoever in stories of extraterrestrial visitors, crop circles, the Bermuda Triangle, or many of the other "mysteries" that permeate pop culture. However, the secret behind The Da Vinci Code was too well documented and significant for me to dismiss.

Ken
12/16/2015 07:59:36 pm

Smart science fiction (or horror, or whatever) can never be accused of promoting pseudoscience. I doubt anyone would suggest that "Star Wars" promotes pseudoscience even though very little of its "science" is reality. Science-smart as well as science-illiterate types walk away entertained (or not), but they haven't picked up any beliefs detrimental to their concept of reality.

Likewise there are smart UFO or alternative science series and documentaries on TV (although not many) such as the recent Science channel show featuring Michio Kaku explaining how an alien UFO might work if we were to reverse engineer one.

Similarly there are many dumb sci-fi series and documentaries, which you can usually identify because they repeatedly refer to science as "mainstream" or "conventional" science. This implies that disingenuous or incorrect branches science exist and of course science illiterates jump all over those. Its a lot easier to just disbelieve than it is to expend some effort learning how things really work.




Reply
DaveR
12/17/2015 10:07:52 am

I think you've hit on an important element. There's a vast difference between Physicists speculating on how alien technology might work, it's a completely different thing when someone without a degree or a degree in Journalism is on a television show stating as fact that aliens came to Earth and built the pyramids.

Reply
John Morehead link
12/16/2015 08:01:19 pm

I found this post very helpful. I'm glad to have discovered your work. I think another factor in Nisbet's assessment is an equation of science fiction with hard science fiction, which represents a small segment. Much of it takes great liberties with science, and is closer to fantasy and even religion and magic, with scientific terms and alleged credibility behind it. So science fiction fans may not be as scientifically grounded as Nisbet might assume. Thanks again for this essay.

Reply
Ph
12/17/2015 05:51:44 am

"which is keyed to the upcoming X-Files revival and claims that skeptics shouldn’t worry that the X-Files is having a negative effect on popular perceptions of science"

I was never worried.
No one with adequate brain functions, who knows the show and thinks about this for more then 10 seconds would be worried
Who are those sceptics he is talking about?
He surely must be lacking in interesting things to write about if this is what he chooses to communicate.
Making up a non issue, then confirming it is a non issue, so we don't have to worry...
Gee, thanks i guess...

Reply
David Bradbury
12/17/2015 07:53:35 am

The problem with "X-Files", I think, is that it uses the paranormal as merely one aspect of its overarching theme of external loci of control. Anybody who believes that major power, not accessible to the average person, is being exerted in any covert manner can probably be influenced by a show which proposes that such power takes even more forms than we might imagine.

Reply
Time Machine
12/17/2015 09:09:21 am

Never watched the X-Files after "Squeeze" episode because it tried to lift the "film noir" style and copied motifs found in the nutbooks.

Reply
Kal
12/17/2015 12:30:20 pm

The X Files is both 'fantasy' and 'horror' and is called such. It is not exactly science fiction because they only pretend the theories work in most episodes. Not one X file ever gets vindicated, unless they have caught the monster, or the conspirator. It does have aliens, but they never knew what to really do with that. Hopefully they explain some of it next time around.

Silence of the Lambs did not directly influence the X Files. The genre was in place already, otherwise that film would not have won the popular vote, and surprisingly, Oscars also.

Also extant in the 1990s were Twin Peaks, another paranormal cult show, and various horror shows, fantasy shows and the like, and the detective shows never died off.

The X Files was all over the map, but the fans loved it, even when some stories were totally nuts.

Dan Brown ripped off the author of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, got sued, but somehow because he's rich didn't get to pay because of it.

Reply
David Bradbury
12/17/2015 02:12:01 pm

The "Holy Blood & Holy Grail" guys were basicaly hoist with their own petard. They claimed it was factual, and facts can't be copyrighted- only the way they are expressed.

Reply
DaveR
12/17/2015 03:27:30 pm

I read that they, along with some other authors who sued Brown, did so because their books had the same major themes, that Jesus and Mary wed, produced children, the family blood line exists to the present, and the secret is protected by the church through various "secret" agencies within the church. The courts rejected the claims.

David Bradbury
12/17/2015 04:32:21 pm

The courts didn't reject the claims made in the books. As I suggested above, they effectively accepted them, because in order to establish copyright on the claims themselves (as opposed to the words in which they were expressed), the authors would have had to prove that they had invented the claims, rather than discovering "the truth".

V
12/17/2015 06:15:27 pm

David Bradbury, the court did not accept that the claims were valid. The court accepted that the authors of "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" intended their work to be a work of non-fiction, and therefore the concepts could not be copyrighted because of that intent. It's a very different story from accepting that the claims are actually factual. And yes, it's a difference that matters, because copyright law doesn't actually care whether you've done a good job of proving your claims. You don't get extra copyright protection for being an idiot that you wouldn't get if you actually did proper research. That's why the intent matters more than the content when it comes to copyright.

Also, I think that DaveR was trying to say that the courts rejected the claims of the authors that Dan Brown plagiarized because they had similar themes, rather than that the courts rejected the themes themselves as valid.

spookyparadigm
12/17/2015 05:55:04 pm

Several early episodes were very clearly Silence of the Lambs inspired. Most obviously Beyond the Sea, but also Young at Heart as clear "homages" though there were bits and pieces elsewhere.

But further, there really is no avoiding that Scully is Clarice Starling. Not only is she a young FBI agent who looks like Starling and chases serial killers and has daddy issues, this was made all but explicit in the pilot. We are introduced to the character as she's in training workout clothes running the FBI Quantico fitness course. She's then called unexpectedly into her superior's office, and given an unusual assignment to work with the brilliant but the eccentric to the point of madness Mulder. She then goes down into the basement and has initially verbal sparring and a bit of an intelligence test with her new partner. Starling's introduction is identical except that her partner is a brilliant but mad serial killer. But they're talked about in the same way in her superior's office. The young agent as asked about her knowledge of the case and/or partner, and she responds with a bit of rumorish lore. And in both cases the partner is or has solved a high profile serial killer case (Lecter had helped catch Dollarhyde in Red Dragon/Manhunter, Mulder's profile caught Monty Props before he become obsessed with the X-Files).

The show even joked about this later in the episode Hollywood A.D. by calling Scully "Clarice Starling on a Payless budget"

Later episodes Scully is her own character. But first season, and especially Pilot episode Scully is without a doubt Clarice Starling if she was playing Watson to Mulder's Holmes (another influence explicitly admitted in the episode Fire)

Reply
spookyparadigm
12/17/2015 06:14:30 pm

PS: Dear lord there are a lot of fan-made music video tributes to the X-Files on youtube. Wow.

V
12/17/2015 06:20:57 pm

The one issue I take with this particular article, and a few others like it, is that it's remarkably like the argument that video games or cartoons or comic books cause violent behavior in children, which has been DISPROVEN over and over and over.

I don't think we have anything to worry about from X-Files because those people who will be swayed by it would be swayed by something else in its place. Ancient Aliens. Dresden Files. X-Men. Disney Princess movies. ANYTHING. Because they're the people who either really really WANT to believe in these things, or they're the people who can't tell fact from fiction, or both. Basically the only thing that something like X-Files might influence is the specific shape the whacko-ness takes. Is it going to be ancient aliens or is it going to be angels or is it going to be government mind control? but it's NEVER going to be "there is nothing going on at all."

Reply
Shane Sullivan
12/17/2015 09:17:43 pm

I often think of those violent-videogame watchdogs who got so much press in the 90s, thinking that first-person shooters were going to turn innocent children into homicidal psychopaths. Fast forward about a decade, and Dennis Fong, who made a name for himself in competitive Doom and Quake tournaments, co-founded a website that was acquired by Viacom $102 Million in 2006.

If that's the kind of influence violent videogames have on players, then I wish I had played more of them when I was a kid.

Reply
Shane Sullivan
12/17/2015 11:31:11 pm

Sorry, *for* 102 million.

Ashley link
12/24/2015 04:48:07 am

And of course, you're all ignoring the obvious elephant: Freud and Historiography which in turn led or for some, still leads back into the idea that there is a "Hermetic" category or taxonomy within and of History as a SCIENCE. It's an urban legend. That is how Jason can run this blog along with many others across the web. Of course, you all by default say that one can go so far right that violence will erupt into xenophobia and vice versa to include the left or conversely, that one can go so far left, that one ends up fascist or close too it. Axiology is and remains the bane of science fiction just as gender attacks Gothic. Axiology and Genre remain. As does the presumed discourse this typology is running non stop while thumbing it's nose at culture.

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          • Aurora of the Philosophers
        • Hesiod's Theogony
        • Periplus of Hanno
        • Ctesias' Indica
        • Sanchuniathon
        • Sima Qian
        • Syncellus's Enoch Fragments
        • The Book of Enoch
        • Slavonic Enoch
        • Sepher Yetzirah
        • Tacitus' Germania
        • De Dea Syria
        • Aelian's Various Histories
        • Julius Africanus' Chronography
        • Eusebius' Chronicle
        • Chinese Accounts of Rome
        • Ancient Chinese Automaton
        • The Orphic Argonautica
        • Fragments of Panodorus
        • Annianus on the Watchers
        • The Watchers and Antediluvian Wisdom
      • Medieval Texts >
        • Medieval Legends of Ancient Egypt >
          • Medieval Pyramid Lore
          • John Malalas on Ancient Egypt
          • Fragments of Abenephius
          • Akhbar al-zaman
          • Ibrahim ibn Wasif Shah
          • Murtada ibn al-‘Afif
          • Al-Maqrizi on the Pyramids
          • Al-Suyuti on the Pyramids
        • The Hunt for Noah's Ark
        • Isidore of Seville
        • Book of Liang: Fusang
        • Agobard on Magonia
        • Book of Thousands
        • Voyage of Saint Brendan
        • Power of Art and of Nature
        • Travels of Sir John Mandeville
        • Yazidi Revelation and Black Book
        • Al-Biruni on the Great Flood
        • Voyage of the Zeno Brothers
        • The Kensington Runestone (Hoax)
        • Islamic Discovery of America
        • The Aztec Creation Myth
      • Lost Civilizations >
        • Atlantis >
          • Plato's Atlantis Dialogues >
            • Timaeus
            • Critias
          • Fragments on Atlantis
          • Panchaea: The Other Atlantis
          • Eumalos on Atlantis (Hoax)
          • Gómara on Atlantis
          • Sardinia and Atlantis
          • Santorini and Atlantis
          • The Mound Builders and Atlantis
          • Donnelly's Atlantis
          • Atlantis in Morocco
          • Atlantis and the Sea Peoples
          • W. Scott-Elliot >
            • The Story of Atlantis
            • The Lost Lemuria
          • The Lost Atlantis
          • Atlantis in Africa
          • How I Found Atlantis (Hoax)
          • Termier on Atlantis
          • The Critias and Minoan Crete
          • Rebuttal to Termier
          • Further Responses to Termier
          • Flinders Petrie on Atlantis
        • Lost Cities >
          • Miscellaneous Lost Cities
          • The Seven Cities
          • The Lost City of Paititi
          • Manuscript 512
          • The Idolatrous City of Iximaya (Hoax)
          • The 1885 Moberly Lost City Hoax
          • The Elephants of Paredon (Hoax)
        • OOPARTs
        • Oronteus Finaeus Antarctica Map
        • Caucasians in Panama
        • Jefferson's Excavation
        • Fictitious Discoveries in America
        • Against Diffusionism
        • Tunnels Under Peru
        • The Parahyba Inscription (Hoax)
        • Mound Builders
        • Gunung Padang
        • Tales of Enchanted Islands
        • The 1907 Ancient World Map Hoax
        • The 1909 Grand Canyon Hoax
        • The Interglacial Period
        • Solving Oak Island
      • Religious Conspiracies >
        • Pantera, Father of Jesus?
        • Toledot Yeshu
        • Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay on Cathars
        • Testimony of Jean de Châlons
        • Rosslyn Chapel and the 'Prentice's Pillar
        • The Many Wives of Jesus
        • Templar Infiltration of Labor
        • Louis Martin & the Holy Bloodline
        • The Life of St. Issa (Hoax)
        • On the Person of Jesus Christ
      • Giants in the Earth >
        • Fossil Origins of Myths >
          • Fossil Teeth and Bones of Elephants
          • Fossil Elephants
          • Fossil Bones of Teutobochus
          • Fossil Mammoths and Giants
          • Giants' Bones Dug Out of the Earth
          • Fossils and the Supernatural
          • Fossils, Myth, and Pseudo-History
          • Man During the Stone Age
          • Fossil Bones and Giants
          • American Elephant Myths
          • The Mammoth and the Flood
          • Fossils and Myth
          • Fossil Origin of the Cyclops
          • Mastodon, Mammoth, and Man
        • Fragments on Giants
        • Manichaean Book of Giants
        • Geoffrey on British Giants
        • Alfonso X's Hermetic History of Giants
        • Boccaccio and the Fossil 'Giant'
        • Book of Howth
        • Purchas His Pilgrimage
        • Edmond Temple's 1827 Giant Investigation
        • The Giants of Sardinia
        • Giants and the Sons of God
        • The Magnetism of Evil
        • Tertiary Giants
        • Smithsonian Giant Reports
        • Early American Giants
        • The Giant of Coahuila
        • Jewish Encyclopedia on Giants
        • Index of Giants
        • Newspaper Accounts of Giants
        • Lanier's A Book of Giants
      • Science and History >
        • Halley on Noah's Comet
        • The Newport Tower
        • Iron: The Stone from Heaven
        • Ararat and the Ark
        • Pyramid Facts and Fancies
        • Argonauts before Homer
        • The Deluge
        • Crown Prince Rudolf on the Pyramids
        • Old Mythology in New Apparel
        • Blavatsky on Dinosaurs
        • Teddy Roosevelt on Bigfoot
        • Devil Worship in France
        • Maspero's Review of Akhbar al-zaman
        • The Holy Grail as Lucifer's Crown Jewel
        • The Mutinous Sea
        • The Rock Wall of Rockwall
        • Fabulous Zoology
        • The Origins of Talos
        • Mexican Mythology
        • Chinese Pyramids
        • Maqrizi's Names of the Pharaohs
      • Extreme History >
        • Roman Empire Hoax
        • American Antiquities
        • American Cataclysms
        • England, the Remnant of Judah
        • Historical Chronology of the Mexicans
        • Maspero on the Predynastic Sphinx
        • Vestiges of the Mayas
        • Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel
        • Origins of the Egyptian People
        • The Secret Doctrine >
          • Volume 1: Cosmogenesis
          • Volume 2: Anthropogenesis
        • Phoenicians in America
        • The Electric Ark
        • Traces of European Influence
        • Prince Henry Sinclair
        • Pyramid Prophecies
        • Templars of Ancient Mexico
        • Chronology and the "Riddle of the Sphinx"
        • The Faith of Ancient Egypt
        • Spirit of the Hour in Archaeology
        • Book of the Damned
        • Great Pyramid As Noah's Ark
        • Richard Shaver's Proofs
    • Alien Encounters >
      • US Government Ancient Astronaut Files >
        • Fortean Society and Columbus
        • Inquiry into Shaver and Palmer
        • The Skyfort Document
        • Whirling Wheels
        • Denver Ancient Astronaut Lecture
        • Soviet Search for Lemuria
        • Visitors from Outer Space
        • Unidentified Flying Objects (Abstract)
        • "Flying Saucers"? They're a Myth
        • UFO Hypothesis Survival Questions
        • Air Force Academy UFO Textbook
        • The Condon Report on Ancient Astronauts
        • Atlantis Discovery Telegrams
        • Ancient Astronaut Society Telegram
        • Noah's Ark Cables
        • The Von Daniken Letter
        • CIA Psychic Probe of Ancient Mars
        • Scott Wolter Lawsuit
        • UFOs in Ancient China
        • CIA Report on Noah's Ark
        • CIA Noah's Ark Memos
        • Congressional Ancient Aliens Testimony
        • Ancient Astronaut and Nibiru Email
        • Congressional Ancient Mars Hearing
        • House UFO Hearing
      • Ancient Extraterrestrials >
        • Premodern UFO Sightings
        • The Moon Hoax
        • Inhabitants of Other Planets
        • Blavatsky on Ancient Astronauts
        • The Stanzas of Dzyan (Hoax)
        • Aerolites and Religion
        • What Is Theosophy?
        • Plane of Ether
        • The Adepts from Venus
      • A Message from Mars
      • Saucer Mystery Solved?
      • Orville Wright on UFOs
      • Interdimensional Flying Saucers
      • Flying Saucers Are Real
      • Report on UFOs
    • The Supernatural >
      • The Devils of Loudun
      • Sublime and Beautiful
      • Voltaire on Vampires
      • Demonology and Witchcraft
      • Thaumaturgia
      • Bulgarian Vampires
      • Religion and Evolution
      • Transylvanian Superstitions
      • Defining a Zombie
      • Dread of the Supernatural
      • Vampires
      • Werewolves and Vampires and Ghouls
      • Science and Fairy Stories
      • The Cursed Car
    • Classic Fiction >
      • Lucian's True History
      • Some Words with a Mummy
      • The Coming Race
      • King Solomon's Mines
      • An Inhabitant of Carcosa
      • The Xipéhuz
      • Lot No. 249
      • The Novel of the Black Seal
      • The Island of Doctor Moreau
      • Pharaoh's Curse
      • Edison's Conquest of Mars
      • The Lost Continent
      • Count Magnus
      • The Mysterious Stranger
      • The Wendigo
      • Sredni Vashtar
      • The Lost World
      • The Red One
      • H. P. Lovecraft >
        • Dagon
        • The Call of Cthulhu
        • History of the Necronomicon
        • At the Mountains of Madness
        • Lovecraft's Library in 1932
      • The Skeptical Poltergeist
      • The Corpse on the Grating
      • The Second Satellite
      • Queen of the Black Coast
      • A Martian Odyssey
    • Classic Genre Movies
    • Miscellaneous Documents >
      • The Balloon-Hoax
      • A Problem in Greek Ethics
      • The Migration of Symbols
      • The Gospel of Intensity
      • De Profundis
      • The Life and Death of Crown Prince Rudolf
      • The Bathtub Hoax
      • Crown Prince Rudolf's Letters
      • Position of Viking Women
      • Employment of Homosexuals
      • James Dean's Scrapbook
      • James Dean's Love Letters
      • The Amazing James Dean Hoax!
    • Free Classic Pseudohistory eBooks
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