Thoughts Carter

Thoughts on Chris Carter and the Net:

New Satesman & Society; February 21, 1997

The truth is out there. And it is that the Net is for nerds, vaccination buys
peace of mind, and airports are finally fun

         Friday, 11 pm. I'm at the National Film Theatre on London's biggest building
         site, the South Bank, to see a "previously unseen" episode of The X Files.
         I'm here for research purposes -- I'm off to the set in Vancouver next
         week to interview the show's female lead, Gillian Anderson -- but I'm
         interested to see who else has been enticed to give up their Friday night
         by the promise of a live satellite link-up with the show's creator, Chris
         Carter. Most of them are encouragingly sane, laughing at the episode's
         more ridiculous moments, but a handful seem to have taken the show's
         dark paranoid conspiracies rather too literally.

         Carter is blond, annoyingly healthy-looking and a confirmed non-believer.
         He bats away questions about UFOs and paranormal happenings on set
         with a smile (Had anything bizarre ever happened during filming? "The
         catering is pretty bizarre").

         Only one question causes him to look disconcerted, when someone asks
         about his decision to axe from an upcoming episode an improvised kiss
         between Anderson's character, Dana Scully, and her FBI partner Fox
         "Spooky" Mulder. "How did you know that?" he asks, explaining that the
         decision had only been taken a few days beforehand.

         Such information is, of course, mainly passed around on the Internet, so I
         spend much of the next day drinking coffee at a cybercafe and wading
         through some of the 3,912 sites dedicated to Anderson (the computer
         nerds' sex symbol, for those who haven't succumbed to X Files obsession).
         There's the Gillian Anderson Estrogen Brigade ("a haven for women who
         find Gillian Anderson attractive, talented, witty, and altogether
         wonderful"); the rules for an XFiles drinking game; files of her interviews;
         but most of all, there are an awful lot of pictures of the actress without
         many clothes on, confirming all my prejudices about the Net.

The truth is out there, but on the whole it's quicker (and cheaper) to go
and buy the book instead.

--Sheryl Garratt