This essay investigates representations of southern places and cultures in the genre-straddling television series The X-Files (1993-2002). In one sense, every episode of this series traffics in the exceptional, savoring each successive manifestation of the paranormal, the monstrous, the conspiratorial, and the radically alien. But in another sense, the show crosses paranormal, cultural, and regional borders in remarkably unexceptional, even homogenizing ways.
I argue that the series has a vested interest in presenting transregionalism as a homogenizing force that does not offer a sturdy, viable, optimistic alternative to its casually grounded regionalism. Instead, the series crosses regional (and cultural, and racial and ethnic, and various other) borders in ways that eerily and relentlessly deconstruct both region and transregion. Perhaps most obviously, the series frequently sets scenes in generic warehouses, offices, garages, laboratories, and other dark, shadowy, nondescript spaces that evoke a dark, networked, federally investigated homogeneity that simultaneously stores, covers up, and promises “the truth.” As the poster on Fox Mulder’s FBI office wall says, “the truth is out there”—and “out there” could be anywhere.
About the presenterEric Gary Anderson
Eric is an Associate Professor of English at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA, where he teaches courses in Native American Studies, Southern Studies, and Vampires. He is a co-editor of Undead Souths: The Gothic and Beyond in Southern Literature and Culture, a collection of essays forthcoming from Louisiana State University Press in Fall 2015. From 2012-14, he served as President of The Society for the Study of Southern Literature.