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Truth Is Out There in Elsinore: Mulder and Scully as Hamlet and Horatio, The

Literature Film Quarterly, 2004 by Yang, Sharon R

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Fox Mulder re-enacts the Hamlet myth in many ways. Perhaps most notably, both characters match Helen Gardner's description of the hero's placement in a revenge tragedy: "when the action opens the hero is seen in a situation which is horrible and felt by him and the audience to be intolerable, but for which he has no responsibility" (218). Thus, Hamlet's discovery of the murder of his father, the corruption of his mother, the acquiescence of the court world to these crimes, and the betrayals by trusted friends and family is echoed in Mulder, whose unavoidable inability to save a sister from abducting aliens leads him to discover equal perfidy in his parents, partners, and lovers (Krychek and Diana Fowley), and various official purveyors of truth and order (scientists, secret government agencies, his immediate superiors, FEMA, the UN, etc.). Both live in worlds where familiar symbols of order (family, friends, faith, government, and science) are dangerously deceptive. Especially in "Amor Fati," Mulder is as incapacitated by the treachery of others as Hamlet is by his mother's betrayal of his father, by Ophelia's attempt to open him up for Polonius's and Claudius's benefit, by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's "playing him like a pipe," and by Claudius's own murderous plots. If we are to believe CSM's announcement that he is Mulder's actual father, Mulder's mother seems to have paralleled both Gertrude's adulterous betrayal of her husband and her working with the hero's nemesis, even if ostensibly for the hero's good, when she turns to CSM to abduct and cure her son in this episode. As Mulder's former lover and partner, Agent Diana Fowley echoes Ophelia as well as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern by helping the CSM kidnap and hold Mulder. Much in the vein of Claudius's seizing and plotting to retain control of Denmark, CSM masterminds the capture and holding of Mulder for an experiment that will give CSM great power at Mulder's expense, perhaps even his death.

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The ambience of The X-Files and Hamlet resonates a similarly noir worldview. In both texts, infection or putrefaction, the supernatural, and madness serve as metaphors for the corruption festering beneath the surface of the supposedly stable "Law." Hamlet draws on such metaphors in describing Claudius's sin with "rank, it smells to heaven" (3.3.36); in depicting Gertrude's relationship with Claudius as "rank corruption, mining all within" (3.4.150); and in characterizing the spread of weakness in even a noble character as a corrupting infection (1.4.20-38). In The X-Files, humans are repeatedly controlled by alien intelligences through some form of infection (e.g., "Ice," "Firewalker," "Space," and "El Mundo Gira").3 In fact, the series' overarching conspiracy plot portrays the major alien invasion as infecting humans with an alien form that will use human bodies as incubating hosts, eating them away from within. In addition, as Hamlet's and Ophelia's recognition of the "truth" about those around them, about themselves, and about the order they inhabit maddens them, The X-Files constantly reiterates the maddening results of seeing reality ("Blood," "Grotesque," "Folie a Deux," "Biogenisis"). Finally, the corruption of Claudius's rule by murder is revealed by the "eruption to [the] state" (1.1.72) of the ghost of Hamlet's father; similarly, in "Born Again" "Beyond the Sea," and "Shadows," reincarnations or ghosts return to punish murderers. Also in this vein, Mulder's informants ("Deep Throat," "X," and Marita Covarrubias) recall the ghost of Hamlet's father: all surreptitiously arise to provide Mulder with knowledge of forbidden truth about the corrupt reality; and, though successively eliminated, another successively rises in replacement, like ghosts from the tomb.

Truth Is Out There in Elsinore: Mulder and Scully as Hamlet and Horatio, The

Literature Film Quarterly, 2004 by Yang, Sharon R

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