The X-Files (TV Program)

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    How TV Shows Like ‘The X-Files’ Trained Us to Be Conspiracy Theorists

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    Pop culture didn’t create the real-world mythologies roiling our politics, but it helped write the scripts“The X-Files,” the alien-invasion conspiracy thriller, had one of TV’s most memorable taglines: “The Truth Is Out There.” It was both a promise and a tease.Read one way, it’s a slogan of hope: The truth has been hidden from you, but you will find it. Read another way, it’s a taunt: The truth is always out there, a mirage, coming tantalizingly close but then slipping through your fingers, goading you to press further.This dynamic was, of course, a boon for a TV series that unfolded at length, over hundreds of episodes, movies and revivals. It is also part of the lure of conspiracist thinking in general.The promise of elusive answers implores you to plunge deeper, deeper, into a thriller of your own, one that you both consume and help construct. It says that the absence of answers is itself a kind of evidence. Proof is proof and so is the lack of proof. All you need to do is follow one more lead, click one more link, chasing your goal like an exotic bird, following its call of truth, truth, truth.Conspiracy-based TV shows did not invent the idea of plots and cabals. As Richard Hofstadter wrote in the 1964 essay “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” panics about the Masons, the Illuminati and more bedeviled public life long before the tube. Nor did TV create the QAnon mythology or the suspicions about the Jeffrey Epstein files that are now roiling the very MAGA movement that coalesced around these and other obsessions.The 1960s TV series “The Prisoner,” created by and starring Patrick McGoohan, surfaced at a time when cultural power was consolidating, also breeding countercultural suspicion. Daily Mirror/Mirrorpix, via Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Mark Snow, Who Conjured the ‘X-Files’ Theme, Is Dead at 78

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      It took a misplaced elbow, a quirk of Los Angeles geography and some whistling from his wife to produce one of television’s most memorable melodies.Mark Snow, a Juilliard-trained soundtrack composer who earned 15 Emmy Award nominations, including one for his eerily astral opening theme to “The X-Files,” a 1990s answer to the timeless “Twilight Zone” theme and the basis of a surprising dance hit in Europe, died on July 4 at his home in Washington, Conn. He was 78.The cause was myelodysplastic syndrome, a rare form of blood cancer, his son-in-law Peter Ferland said.Over an extraordinarily prolific five-decade career, during which he tallied more than 250 film and television credits, Mr. Snow excelled in a field that comes with built-in creative challenges.“Some producers describe their musical idea as ‘fast but slow,’” he said in a 2000 interview with Film & Video magazine. “The director might say he wants to hear music that’s ‘blue with a hint of green.’ Now, no one really knows what those terms mean. That’s a big part of my job, interpreting the search for a project’s musical voice.”Mr. Snow provided music for 90 episodes of “Hart to Hart,” which starred Robert Wagner and Stefanie Powers as a jet-setting couple who double as amateur sleuths, and 40 episodes of “Falcon Crest,” the 1980s prime-time soap opera.Mr. Snow provided music for 90 episodes of the Robert Wagner series “Hart to Hart.”Columbia Pictures , via Everett CollectionHis many other credits included “Starsky & Hutch,” with David Soul (left) and Paul Michael Glaser.via Everett CollectionWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Movies

      What Is the Scariest Song of All Time? Poem? YouTube Video?

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      Times writers revealed their picks. Listen at your own risk.For Halloween, we asked writers and editors around The New York Times for the pieces of art or culture that they turn to when they need a good scare. The result is a collection of audio stories that will send a chill down your spine, make your hair stand on end and keep you entertained.The Spookiest Video on YouTubeMadison Malone Kircher, an internet culture reporter on the Styles desk, says “Ghost Car” is the most frightening online video she has ever seen. Warning: This one has a jump scare.The Spookiest Video on YouTube◆ ◆ ◆Illustration by Julia Moburg/The New York Times; Photo by Bob Olsen/Toronto Star, via Getty ImagesThe Scariest OperaThe final scene of “Salome,” Richard Strauss’s 1905 opera, might contain the scariest song ever written, according to our classical music critic, Zachary Woolfe. He found it “totally terrifying” when he first heard it as a child, and its intensity still overwhelms him years later.The Scariest Opera◆ ◆ ◆Illustration by Julia Moburg/The New York Times; Image: Getty ImagesThe Scariest Thing I Know About the UniverseOur cosmic affairs correspondent, Dennis Overbye, knows a lot of alarming things about the universe. But the one that haunts him most? At any moment, without warning, the whole thing could simply disappear.The Scariest Thing I Know About the Universe◆ ◆ ◆Illustration by Julia Moburg/The New York Times; Photo by Ebet Roberts/Redferns, via Getty ImagesThe Scariest Song I KnowJon Pareles, chief popular music critic, describes why “The Downward Spiral” by Nine Inch Nails, off the 1994 album of the same name, is “perfectly designed to make your skin crawl: structurally, sonically and psychologically.”The Scariest Song I Know◆ ◆ ◆Illustration by Julia Moburg/The New York Times; Photo by 20th Century FoxThe Scariest Episode of TVMargaret Lyons, a television critic, dives into an episode of “The X-Files” so horrifying that executives felt compelled to pull it from syndication.The Scariest Episode of TV◆ ◆ ◆Illustration by Julia Moburg/The New York Times; Image: Sebastian Kaulitzki/Science Photo Library, via Getty Images.The Scariest Poem I KnowCésar Vallejo’s “Piedra Negra Sobre Una Piedra Blanca,” or “Black Stone on a White Stone,” isn’t what you might think of as a traditional Halloween poem. There are no ghouls or goblins in it. But for Juliana Barbassa, deputy Books editor, reading this poem brings up a question that’s much more haunting: “When we consider our single life, our one opportunity to live well,” she asks, “are we doing that?”The Scariest Poem I Know◆ ◆ ◆Illustration by Julia Moburg/The New York Times; American Genre Film Archive + Bleeding SkullThe Scariest Horror Movie You (Probably) Haven’t SeenYou may know Freddy and Jason and Chucky, but Erik Piepenburg, who writes a horror column, would like to introduce you to “The McPherson Tape.” When you watch this 1989 movie, he says, “You’re watching the birth of a genre.”The Scariest Horror Movie You (Probably) Haven’t Seen More