Does the “X” in X-Files stand for “xenophobia?”

Almost every single police procedural show on primetime television will have an episode dedicated to the linked topics of illegality and immigration. Like Law and Order: SVU’s “Debt,” The X-Files’ “Teliko” and “El Mundo Gira” also incorporate these themes. However, while Law and Order: SVU attempts to give a fair if not detached portrayal of the issues that undocumented sex workers face, the X-Files uses the figure of the migrant laborer or the immigrant as the “Monster of the Week,” dehumanizing and othering these figures and the people who are associated with them.

“El Mundo Gira” (Season 4, Episode 11) begins in a migrant labor camp near Fresno, California, where an undocumented laborer has been found dead. Mulder and Scully are called in to investigate the death, as the woman’s face has been eaten away. The culprit is a fungal infection brought into the country from Mexico by another male undocumented laborer, who is quickly infecting the rest of the people in the camp. Mulder and Scully race to apprehend and give the man an antidote to the fungus, but he crosses the border back into Mexico, still infected. In “Teliko,” (Season 4, Episode 3) an immigrant man named Samuel Aboah from Burkina Faso tries to obtain his citizenship papers while living with an expired tourist visa so he can get a job in New York. It is revealed that he is the “last of an endangered tribe” that lacks a pituitary gland and must kill and eat other people’s pituitary glands to survive.1 Aboah murders several people for their pituitary glands while trying to obtain citizenship in America, eventually being shot in a standoff with Scully. As she types up the report, she wonders if a cure for Aboah’s condition can be found, but resigns herself to the xenophobia that would prevent such a cure from being discovered.

In both of these episodes, the figure of the illegal/undocumented immigrant has brought with them a form of life-threatening destruction to America. The fact that each “antagonist” or “Monster of the Week” is made to be an “illegal” person in the United States speaks to the casual xenophobia that pervades these two episodes. Combine this with the fact that each “monster” (fungus and a hunger for pituitary glands, respectively) has a foreign origin, and suddenly The X-Files has built a case against illegal immigration. Unfortunately, because The X-Files never made itself a hard-hitting exposé of any criminal underworld a la Law and Order: SVU, The X-Files hides behind its status as a science fiction show to avoid addressing its racist and xenophobic tendencies.

1. Scully is quick to point out that the pituitary gland is what creates melanin, meaning that this group of people, when starved of pituitary gland, turns white. This puts an even weirder spin on the episode, something that deserves it’s own blog post.

2. It is also notable that both of these episodes occur in season 4, which aired from fall 1996 to spring 1997. However, in September of 1996, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 was passed, which stipulates that “immigrants unlawfully present in the United States for 180 days but less than 365 days must remain outside the United States for three years unless they obtain a pardon. If they are in the United States for 365 days or more, they must stay outside the United States for ten years unless they obtain a waiver. If they return to the United States without the pardon, they may not apply for a waiver for a period of ten years.” (Wikipedia - for full text click here)