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| Madness is always more fun when shared... |
Welcome.
Endearing or just plain weird?
Sometimes, it’s just not possible to share everything with the one you love. No matter how much you try to lecture them, cajole them or not-so-subtly leave books lying around the house open at the right page for them to trip over and read by accident, it just doesn’t work. If they’re not into it, they’re just not into it.
So who can you turn to?
I was at a party recently where someone said: ‘A good friend will say to you just before you go into an exam, "good luck, I hope it all goes well.” Your best friend will say "Hurry up and get it done so that we can go and get stoned."' While I am neither a student (too long ago), nor do I make it a habit to get stoned (too square), I do agree that your best friend will often drag you into doing things that may not necessarily be good for you - but might be excessively fun.
Why ‘folie à deux’?
'Folie à deux’ is French for a type of madness or delusion shared by two. There are two reasons for making this the name of our blog.
Firstly, being a teenager is no easy job. We’ve all been through it – the overnight hair growing in weird places, the hormones making you feel extra mad, extra horny or extra everything, the boys (or girls) not noticing you, the awkward moment where you don’t get picked for the team. Life is cruel when you’re fourteen. So some of us took refuge in places other than the real world. Whether that was hero-worshipping bands, or sportspeople or actors, we all found someone or something on which to misplace our overflowing passions, to become obsessed with to the point of delusion. Many years (and broken hearts) later, Clara and I managed to bump into each other at university – and guess what? We discovered we weren’t crazy and actually out there the whole time there had been someone else who was equally obsessed with
Star Trek/Doctor Who/Battlestar Galactica/Jane Austen (delete as applicable to you - we love ‘em all!)
The second reason that this blog is called
folie à deux is because Clara and I both share
one big obsession that gave rise to them all –
The X Files. If you’re an X-phile you’ll already know that our blog title is also the title of S.5 ep.19. In the episode, Mulder may or may not be sharing visions of a killer insect that hides in plain sight, with a call centre worker who is driven crazy and pulls a gun on his colleagues.
The X Files...But that’s so nineties!
Yep, we heard you – it’s a bit retro to like The X Files. Watching the pilot episode that was filmed in 1992 is a bit like being smacked over the head by a hangover from the eighties. There’s a still a trace of big hair, shoulder pads, cheesy synthesised music (sorry Mark Snow, but I guess locking you in a broom cupboard with a mini-keyboard and no food until you could come up with something paid off in the end) not to mention that the aspect ratio of those early episodes doesn’t fill our mighty big flatscreen TVs these days.
So why are you bothering to watch it again?
Aha! But we’re not re-watching it. While we are definitely getting high on the nostalgia of revisiting the series, there are plenty of ways of watching it anew, now that our brains aren’t addled by excessive hormones. Here are five reasons why it’s worth it:
1. We’re talking internet fandom genesis here. Before the early nineties, no one had communities in which to share their ideas or just connect with one another. There was no incubator for fans to nurture their obsessions, to chat, share fanfic or swap nitpickings. However, the burgeoning of a little thing called the internet fanned the flames. With home PCs becoming an everyday reality, internet chatrooms and message boards sprang up and the X Files became one of the first shows to gain a cult following in this way. Even we poor mugs in the UK who only got to see everything after the event managed to at least keep abreast of developments by chatting to our Stateside brethren.
2. Scully is one of the best-drawn, independent female characters on television. Dana Scully had her own narrative. She had her own belief system and issues that didn’t always involve her male counterpart, which was unusual for primetime television shows back then. Not to mention her kick-ass scientist braininess (way ahead of you Walter White*) and a tenacity in her pursuit of the truth that was equal to Mulder’s. Even her looks caused a disagreement between Chris Carter and the studio execs – they wanted someone leggier and blond. OK, so she did spend a fair amount of time getting hit over the head and just missing out on paranormal phenomena. But while there are plenty of other female characters of note – Buffy (
Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Starbuck (
Battlestar Galactica), Sydney Bristow (
Alias), Olivia Dunham (
Fringe) to name a few - if Scully hadn’t blazed a trail, these others wouldn’t have had a path to follow.
*Vince Gilligan, creator of Breaking Bad sharpened his pencils writing on the X Files first)
3. The show was flipping scary. Hats off to the directors for daring to film 75% of the show in semi-darkness. Taking its cue from Twin Peaks, there was no show on television at that time that had such a creepy atmosphere, so much so that some of my friends were actually banned by their parents from watching it. Some of the most memorable episodes gave us iconic ‘frights of the week’. Who can forget Tooms stretching impossibly down the tiny aperture of that chimney or the giant flukeworm?
4. The writers knew how to play on said fears. The nineties was a time of uncertainty. We were on the cusp of becoming truly global. Post-Cold War, our economies were becoming more and more closely intertwined. The World Wide Web was in our own homes and technology was leaping ahead, sometimes out of our own control and understanding, a theme that comes up time and again in The X Files. The government’s capability to listen and watch was greater than ever and the writers played on this paranoia as much as possible, evoking the Nixon era with shady government informants and shadowy figures that hung around in the background smoking or in underground car parks. Of course this all seems terribly pertinent now in a post-Snowden era, yet we weren’t quite there yet – Mulder and Scully both still visit the library and look things up phonebooks (Oh em gee a library! Ha, you actually had to use an index? What’s that?!)
5. It had the most excruciatingly slow-burning love story in TV history. If you threw your television out of the window when Mulder and Scully became an item, then you should probably leave this blog now. We are unashamed 'shippers and along with the rest of them we were cackling and hugging ourselves with glee, while rocking back and forth and rewinding every moment our two heroes brushed against each other or exchanged a tender stare over a decomposing body. That aside, come on people. They blatantly wanted to jump each other from day one. We don't know about you but we haven't seen the like of the chemistry between Anderson and Duchovny on the small screen since.
Oh yes – and the new series is coming out soon isn’t it?
You betcha! So kick back and let us take you on a hopefully not too confusing story arc of a journey from conception through to new series and hopefully we can share our ‘folie’ with you too!
Much Geek Love to you all,
Nat and Clara x
