On a very young Fox network, a sleepy and little funded show about two FBI agents looking into the paranormal started on a Friday night in September thirty years ago. It wasn’t exactly a recipe for getting good ratings. But The X-Files was destine to take a more noble road.
The show, which debuted David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson in their early careers, later relocated to a Sunday night primetime spot and invaded several pop culture subcultures as its viewership and budget increased.The “Simpsons” crossover made reference to the show, and the song “One Week”.
X-Files
The Barenaked Ladies featured Cigarette Smoking Man, the show’s foreboding villain. In the midst of the show’s nine-season original run, “The X-Files: Fight the Future” debuted in theaters in 1998. A sequel was release in 2008, and the show returned for two revival seasons in 2016 and 2018 after that.
What started off as a cult favorite became so popular that both fans and non-viewers knew of the series and the iconic Fox Mulder and Dana Scully (Duchovny and Anderson) characters. The will-they-won’t-they chemistry of the primary couple and the discussion surrounding their relationship altered the terminology used by fandoms.
“The ‘X-Files’ name itself… I think that’s turn into a ‘beam me up, Scotty’ or’set phasers to stun,'” said Paul Booth, a media and pop culture professor at Chicago’s DePaul College of Communication who specializes in fan studies.
It’s just become a part of the zeitgeist of popular culture to call classifie materials “X-Files.”
X-Philes, or fans of the program, convened online to discuss ideas and behind the scenes rumors while submitting fanfiction, fan art, and other content during the show’s peak popularity in the mid-to-late 1990s. I am a Phile who watched the entire series, participated in fanfiction as a teenager, posted on message boards, and eventually co-wrote a rewatch blog as an adult.
In other words, I witnessed firsthand how “The X-Files” influenced internet culture, fandoms, larger pop culture, and even people’s daily lives. Even now, its effect is still noticeable.
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