ABSTRACT
One of the most successful of American sf television series, The X-Files (Fox, 1993–2002) centers on two FBI agents, Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) and their investigations into paranormal activities. Their cases, collectively known as “the X-files,” usually lead to findings that the FBI’s bureaucracy deems embarrassing (and therefore threatening) and that often require extensive redaction to create an acceptable “official story.” Yet there are forces within the FBI that support the X-files, resulting in an ongoing tension between Mulder and Scully’s mandate to uncover the “truth” and a perceived need to keep that truth hidden. In the nine seasons of the television series, as well as its two adaptations to the big screen in 1998 and 2008, that “truth” takes on multiple levels of significance while—thanks to the demands of the televisual and cinematic strategies of The X-Files—it remains rather elusive. It is in that very tension, or truth’s elusiveness, though, that we may glimpse a crucial issue in such cross-media adaptations.
