Warning: this post is one big plot spoiler.
I was a fan of the X Files while it had its run on television. The show was an entertaining ride through all manner of paranormal experience--from UFOs to changeling monsters and mind twisting powers. So when the girlfriend, kid and I were looking to fill an afternoon on vacation in L.A., I suggested we go to the movies to check out the X Files: I Want to Believe movie.
I wanted to believe that it would be a decent flick along the lines of the old series. It wasn't. We spent most of the movie trying to decide which was worse: the acting, the screenplay, or the musical score. And I lost big points with the teen for suggesting this over Batman. Fandango, I want my money back.
But what's germane to this blog is that the movie contained some subtle and not-to-subtle LGBT defamation.
One of the main characters is a pedophile priest, but his criminal predilection is loosely connected with gay men as one of his alter boy victims has grown up to be a gay organ snatcher. He and his husband (the script says they "were married in Massachusetts") run a scam to kidnap women and harvest their organs and limbs in a back alley medical complex. Then, as the alter boy/now man lies dying of cancer, the camera shows him with a reattached female arm (note the nail polish) as he awaits a full body transplant from a woman. It all felt very Silence of the Lambs to me.
I wasn't quite ready to pick up the phone and call GLAAD on this one. It was just too difficult to pick apart what was a terrible script and what was defamation. But if you've had the displeasure of plunking down $9.50 to see this flick, I would love to know if the reference to the killers' Massachusetts marriage and the male-to-female body snatching raised your hackles as well.
At the very least, can we organize around making sure the next X Files movie isn't such a pathetic imitation of a good TV series? Scully and Mulder, we've come to expect better.
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That's too bad! I used to like the X-Files.
Why do movies still have to resort to tired, old stereotypes for shock value? Haven't we moved past all of that crap...
Waymon Hudson | July 30, 2008 12:11 PM
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I've never seen an entire episode of the X Files. I wouldn't have gone to see this in the theater to start with, but it won't even make my Netflix queue now...
Bil Browning | July 30, 2008 4:49 PM
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And the whole thing about the priest's connection to the guy, so he (Father Joe) could protect his victims from him .... erm, was the message he had to molest him as a kid to get that connection? That really bothered me, and the movie, which had me barely involved up until that point (with Father Joe in the hospital) it totally lost me. Maybe that wasn't what was meant; maybe I'm dense. But that just made me queasy.
fantwho | July 31, 2008 3:01 AM
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I really used to like that show, what with the interesting plots and strong female lead character and all. Too bad!
Alex Blaze | July 31, 2008 9:44 AM
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I haven't seen this yet, but I can say that Hancock had some very anti-gay some sprinkled throughout. Which was both disappointing and unnecessary.
Shaka McGlotten | July 31, 2008 5:46 PM
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