The Stupendous Yappi Knows You Will Read This Post (revisited)

I've been writing reviews for Supernatural for about two years now.  I started about mid way through the fifth season, and this past weekend I just finished my review on episode 15 of the seventh season!  In preparing for my review of "Repo Man", I asked a friend of mine from twitter if she was going to do a lot of discussion on the juxtaposition of Jeffrey and Sam.  She told me she would be touching on their growing dependence on their demon/devil but that was really it.  She said that I always analyze deeper than she does and that it's "my thing".  I never really thought about that.  

As a writer, I read a lot of advice on how to write.  People always seem interested in how to make writing meaningful, but actually I read somewhere that you should write the story you want to tell and let PhD's come up with the bigger meaning.  I guess I'm one of those people that overanalyzes things...But hey, that's my thing--trying to find meaning in what at times seems like a meaningless world.  

The first television show I truly fell in love with was The X-Files.  It premiered when I was in high school, and I didn't start watching it live until the fourth season.  As an adult now, and about the age that Mulder and Scully are in the series, the show takes on some different meanings.  I see Scully's struggles even more clearly now than I did fifteen years ago. I tried to do a complete marathon a few months back and I couldn't make it...not because I got sick of the show, or felt bogged down by the at times questionable mythology, but because it cut me like it never did before.  I could see so much more of Scully's pain over trying to find meaning while at times standing there feeling completely impotent watching someone fight veritable windmills.  When I first started watching the series, I wasn't a fan of Scully's. The friend who got me into the show couldn't understand why.  It didn't take me long to realize why I didn't like her...because I AM her.  I told my friend what I had figured out and she smiled.  She said that is the very reason she was so shocked...

In the spirit of my pontifications over television, and seeing even escapism as a garden of wisdom and knowledge, I thought I would repost one of my first rambles on a television show.  The X-Files was the first television show that motivated me to write.  Back then, posting forums were the easiest way to talk with internet buddies about television shows.  There were no chat rooms, no blogs, no twitter and television studios got most fan sites shut down...but we had the TV Guide's onine forums, and I practically lived in the X-Philes  Forum.  I was so heated over the ending of season four, the first season finale I watched live, that I had to write about it to get out my aggression...so here is a copy of my posting from May 1997.  I wrote it at the local library on their ancient old computer because I didn't have a computer of my own at the time and school was done so I couldn't write it in the computer lab!  Although I would grammatically change some things, maybe tweak some others, I'm surprised how much it still sounds like me...I guess it is like Jacob Dylan says "I ain't changed, but I know I ain't the same"...oh, and I've added in some screen caps from the Season Four finale entitled Gethsemane.  Yes, that is a Biblical reference.  Screencaps are taken from http://www.chrisnu.com.  

"I wanted to believe, but the tools had been taken away"--so opens the first episode of the second season of the x-files. Mulder was talking about the closing of the x-files. I write this now because of the last ep. of the fourth season, Gethsemane, that aired last night. The writers want us to believe that Mulder has killed himself because he had been lead to believe a lie. I always thought he was stronger than that. But then again you never know. Believe the lie--that was the little saying that took the place of the usual--the truth is out there. And I look at the idea of believing, and people comment that there isn't much that I believe in--there isn't anything that really motivates me...well, I have one real central belief--Beliefs are dangerous. How many men, and women have killed/ been killed or both for some belief? a world that put five spikes through a man to hang him on a cross for his belief that the world could be a better place--or a world that shot down a man for having a dream. And I'm not talking about only religion or even just lines in the sand, but simply for the quest to find the truth. 

But there is no real truth--the truth is subjective. We see what we want to see and hear what we want to hear. That is the only real truth. My generation is pitied and chastized by previous generations because we are told we don't understand. They branded us, labelled us 'x' because 'x' marks the unknown and we are the lost generation. We have nothing to fight for and therefore have nothing to believe. 

Maybe it's just that arrogance that is a characteristic of generation x that speaks now, but I feel that we are the generation that chose not to believe the lie. When my parents were growing up, they practiced drills so they would know what to do in case of an attack--the Communist threat was real to them--that was their truth. Now, we know better--we know there never was a real threat to us--the cost was too high for them. But they chose to believe the lie. There was the threat to our boys in Viet Nam--the papers and all estimates told us that we were winning--yet the television was showing us otherwise, so our country divided and those who no longer chose to believe the lie turned on those they should have fought to protect--our own soldiers. But those truths were reality then--they were the foundation of American beliefs and now we know they were lies. So where do we go from here? When we know that people themselves aren't the problem, but others perceptions of people? And that truth isn't important, but our perception of the truth? 

We realize that the world is rapidly becoming smaller and that to get along, we need to understand other people's perceptions on reality, on the truth. So we build international connections by freeing our minds on the internet and we try to find meaning in what appears to be a meaningless world. Many times, we are scoffed at for attempting to find meaning where there is none, like in a program about alien conspiracies on FOX network... but all I can think about is what Pablo Picasso once said:

"Art is a lie I tell you in order to explain the truth."

And so despite all else, and even because of all that is before, we turn to the artforms of theatre, television and film for meaning that may or may not exist. But whether it does or does not exist is not even the question because once again, it is all based on perception.

[interjection: the actual quote is "Art is a lie that tells the truth".  Ok, I'm done.]

no wait, one more thing...for those of you who don't know, here is the Stupendous Yappi!  He was played by Duchovny's stunt double (if memory serves) and is from the amazing episode "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose" 

He shows up as the narrator for the "alien autopsy" tape in another episode written by Darin Morgan "Jose Chung's From Outer Space".