*Getting Millennial*
The way television's been getting, the tube has been flirting with the quatrains of Nostradamus. When I sat down to watch my usual progression of programs this week, I began to realize that television is picking up where Hollywood film has left off: supernatural phenomena and apopcalyptic reckoning. Now after months of warnings, television is also getting into the act of prostelyzing. I don't know why. Ever since The Blair Witch Project(1999), Hollywood caught on to the fact that everyone likes to be scared. Therefore, the trend is now to make everything scary and downright disorienting. Well, I did get frightened when I watched End of Days(1999) with Arnold Swartzenegger. It didn't have the same flighty flair as True Lies(1994), Commando(1985) or Eraser(1996). Nope. This time, Arnold was a fallen hero prone to evil and redemption at the same time. As Jericho Cane, the actor is following yet another trend of anti-heroes: he is a mark of spiritual awakening in a world devoid of hope or light. Darkness has fallen over not only the real world…but in the realm of make-believe.
And of course, television has also paraded their share of fallen heroes trying to "end" the evil before the turn of the century. Complete with fire and brimstone.But it isn't just End of Days, however. In fact, there has been a whole string of shows since the last few months that tried to be the arbiter of bad news. Within the world of television, not only do demons try to take over the world…but zombies and computers too. Yep. No one is safe in TV Land. Heck if life ran as it did on The Simpsons ,Y2K and X-files, it would be time to head for the hills and duck for cover.
What's so fascinating about these shows is that they are trying to bring out the worst possible scenarios. Taking a cue from the long line of soothsayers preaching doom at the end of the century, a whole group of programs dabble with all sorts of nightmare-like terror. At least The Simpsons was rather glib about it. Blaming it all on Homer (being the Safety Officer at Burns' nuclear power plant), the show takes the premise about what might happen if Y2K was poised to strike. Planes fall out of the sky. Toasters and microwaves turn into Mini-HALs. Even Krusty's pace-maker goes on the blink. Mass looting. But for the saving grace of Marge, Lisa and Maggie, they at least get on the right ship (in a nod to Maté's When Worlds Collide[1951]). No such luck for Bart and Homer. In such a scenario, they either have to take a doomed space cruise with the "undesirables" of popular culture. Or…they opt for going into space and explode. With Homer making the decision, guess which one they took?
But when the end of the world paranoia features the X-files , here's where getting millennial gets good. This episdoe explored cult-like behavior, prevented a take over from evil forces and questioned what these doomsday scenarios might mean.
At first, the X-files seemed like a cross between Night of the Living Dead(1968) and Silence of the Lambs(1991). Starting out in its usually sedate and gloomy manner, things started to cook with Mark Johnston (as the Necromancer) quoting from the Bible and trying to raise the dead. But when Mulder and Scully get into the action, they continued their usual battle of belief and skepticism on whether "grave robbing" was the same as being buried alive. Being buried alive takes on a new meaning when Frank Black (from the now defunct show, Millennium) is seen staring blankly at a football game between Boston College and Notre Dame. Scully and Mulder. without getting anything thrown on them, walk into the psychiatric ward housing Black and begin to persuade him to help solve the crime committed by the Millennium Group. Black isn't convinced. Instead, he coldly stays quiet and distant--until the end of the program.
What interests me about that episode is how Scully sees the belief system behind the "end times". Scully keeps her cool--even when fully witnessing the treachery of the Millennium Group herself. She believes that the turn of the century is not the Millennium. The year 2001 is the starting date. She believes that some ritual was involved in the case, but it seemed like general run-of-the mill stuff. However, the lines between skepticism and rationality are blurred when Scully grows slightly vunerable after her first run-in with Johnston and an "undead" Sherriff revived by magic. In a twist of fate, the encounter shatters her faith in logic. She begins to get a little paranoid as she continues her part of solving the case. This is futher solidfied when she asks Black whether the Millennium Group is capable of such apopcalyptic fury. When Black doesn't answer, she realizes with uneasiness that she has to discover this on her own. Although not outwardly believing in "magic" as it stands, she does what she can to find Mulder and get closer to the perpetrator of the crime. These actions seem to dictate that she's more open-minded than in previous episodes. Even though "sense and reason" are pervasive throughout her capicity to solve crimes, there's just that small possibility that the unexplainable could happen. And it does. Although the climax showcased Black at his best when finally meeting up with the Millennium Group, the "unexplainable" still continues to persist. In what seems like a surreal moment, she shares a New Year's kiss with Mulder and asks, "The world didn't end?"
It was at this point I began to ask whether she meant the finality of the case--or whether it was a subtle comment on the yet another cult--the legion of fans who wanted the two main characters together romantically. Talk about a whole set of new theories being espoused.
"Getting Millennial"©1999 by Ceci M.
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