Interview with Chris Carter

If you boast any familiarity with my blog, you probably already know that -- across the last five years -- I have written frequently abut the TV and film productions of Chris Carter and Ten Thirteen Productions.

There are many reasons why I find myself continually drawn back to Carter's oeuvre. In broad terms, these reasons involve television history, the artistry of the particular programs, philosophy, and of course, personal taste.

Historically speaking, The X-Files and Millennium have grown virtually synonymous with the decade of the 1990s. Carter's programs captured the Zeitgeist of that epoch in sometimes challenging, sometimes stunning fashion.

By the end of the decade, various Ten Thirteen productions had gazed at the teen culture ("Syzygy,") pondered the Human Genome Project ("Sense and Anti-Sense,") skewered nineties tabloid culture ("The Post-Modern Prometheus"), satirized Scientology ("Jose Chung's Doomsday Defense"), peeked behind the closed-door mores of our affluent gated, McMansion communities ("Arcadia," "Weeds"), considered domestic terrorism ("52266"), dissected the mentality of cults ("The Field Where I Died"), and much more. This is Who We Were.

In terms of my continued appreciation of these series, I find myself again relying on Roger Ebert's insightful and useful refrain -- that it isn't what a movie (or TV program) is about that's important; it's how that production is about the narrative that truly matters.

And the "how" of Chris Carter's genre programs -- The X-Files, Millennium, Harsh Realm, and The Lone Gunmen -- is also the thing that perpetually intrigues and fascinates me. Specifically, I enjoy that these productions invariably deploy symbolism and literary allusion to further their themes. I've written about that facet in regards to Millennium, specifically, in my essays: "Enemies Within: Chris Carter's Millennium and America's Suburban Apocalypse, and "Snakes in the Grass and Snakes in the Open: Animal Symbolism in Millennium's Second Season."

I also admire the unconventional and cinematic visuals forged on these series, which stand apart from the majority of dramatic programs in television history. Television tends be...visual radio.

But not The X-Files, Millennium or Ten Thirteen's other works. They regularly utilize expressive, unconventional camera-work and always seem to find a way for the image to marry theme. If you have any doubt of this fact, just go back and watch The X-Files episode "Triangle," a dizzying, audacious balancing of "real space and time" with "fantasy space and time" in the Bermuda Triangle. It's Alfred Hitchcock's Rope meets the split-screen climax of De Palma's Carrie meets The Wizard of Oz. And that's just one example.

Notably, Carter's programs were also at the vanguard of the movement in dramatic television towards multi-episode, multi-season story arcs. And gazing across nearly 300 hours of filmed entertainment, I find myself fascinated by the connections between Ten Thirteen's many works; and the consistency of world view I see across the spectrum of Carter's universe.

For shorthand, you might call this "the Chris Carter mystique," or his "brand." It's the same thing with Joss Whedon (another artist I deeply admire): the alert viewer will be aware within minutes that he has stepped into Chris Carter's world.

So, after I received a happy birthday note from Chris Carter last week (!), I decided this was a great opportunity to open a dialogue with him regarding some of these ideas. To my delight, he agreed to a wide-ranging interview, and that's what you see transcribed below. I re-arranged the interview to group my questions by themes to present, hopefully, a cohesive picture.

The Building Blocks: Symbolism, Story Arcs, and "The Chris Carter Man"

JKM: One of the threads I've noticed running throughout your work is your use of symbolism.

For example, the Yellow House as paradise and then paradise lost in Millennium. Or the Arthurian Chair in Harsh Realm. I guess my question is simply, why?

CARTER: I don't set out to throw these symbols in as anything other than what interests me.

It's done on a case-by-case basis, and then they only become symbols to everyone else. What I can say about everything that I've created or worked on is that it's been about what interests me at the time.

JKM: In terms of Millennium and the yellow house -- this perfect place of safety and happiness -- where did that idea came from?

CARTER: It came out of the bigger concept of a guy who was trying to paint away the darkness.

I had worked on X-Files for three to four years at that point, and we were dealing with some very dark subject matter. After awhile -- after writing about that dark subject matter and realizing how powerful it can really be -- you try to come up with remedies, yourself, for the darkness. It's not always fun to write about the darkness.

JKM: So the yellow house was a place of safety for you, as well as for Frank?

CARTER: It was. And it's funny, when I look back at Millennium now, I think, in a way, the concept was actually too complex. Especially when I look at shows that have become hits, like CSI, or other procedurals. They don't deal with ideas like the yellow house. They don't deal with things like family, necessarily.

JKM: But that's what made Millennium so great. It had all those elements. I know I wrote once that Millennium must be the most-often imitated show in TV history. But other series have sort of stripped it down to the component parts: the paranormal angle (Medium, Ghost Whisperer); the forensic (CSI) angle, the serial killer (Criminal Minds) angle. Everybody's taken a page from it, but nobody's been able to sort of re-assemble the totality of it.

CARTER: It was also a show set on a specific schedule, which was the countdown to the Millennium, and of course nobody can duplicate that in this decade. It had...complexity.

And it's funny, when it went off the air it did so with ratings that are better than many of the shows that are on the air right now. In a weird way, if you look at Millennium and Harsh Realm, you can say that Harsh Realm kind of booted Millennium off the air, which now -- looking back -- is very unfortunate.

JKM: It would have been good to have them simultaneously.

CARTER: That would have been my preference as well.

JKM: Another aspect of your work that I see repeated throughout is the depiction of men. My wife is a therapist,and as much as she enjoys the way Joss Whedon writes women, she likes the way you write men. She's suggested a clinical classification: The Chris Carter male.

In short, the leading men in your programs are chivalrous and heroic, but essentially unavailable emotionally to the women in their lives. Frank Black blocks himself off from Katherine in the act of protecting her. To save his Sophie, Hobbes elects to stay permanently separated from her in Harsh Realm, and so on. Is this representative of your view of men, or just something that you find dramatically interesting?

CARTER: I'd have to say it's dramatically-interesting to me. It's what's withheld that counts, or that is important.

If the character is remote or unable to speak about these things -- because it's series television we're talking about here -- it becomes something that needs to be discovered. So if you discover these things too quickly; if a person is too emotionally available, it actually takes away from the interest in the character. It makes that character less dramatically interesting.

JKM: And less tragic?

CARTER: The characters are tragic. That's what makes them interesting. Their flaws and their weaknesses. And also their strengths. By not telling his wife about the darkness, Frank is painting it away. By not telling her about the polaroids, he's painting it away. It's a strength, but one which could be viewed as a weakness in terms of how men relate to women.

JKM: Not to push a point, but it does seem that your men seem to suffer from this quality, but the women don't have that level of remoteness.

CARTER: I think that's the women's strength. They stay there. They don't shy away from the entanglement. From the darkness. That says a lot about the women. Look at Scully. She's a very, very independent person. Her strength is measured against Mulder's; it's not measured by Mulder.

JKM: There's a period of rebellion against Mulder, by Scully. Like she's rejecting in a sense, his control, his remoteness.

CARTER: In season five you can say that for sure. They really have a falling out. They're of two different minds. Scully actually pursues Mulder's path, and Mulder, in a weird way, pursues Scully's. That was all a plan.

JKM: You don't see relationships go up and down and back and forth like that on many of the dramatic series today. Take CSI For example.

CARTER: Well, they are murder mysteries and they work very well as that. I think that programs that are character pieces work on an additional level.

JKM: Which brings us to another topic. In terms of genre history -- Star Trek, Kolchak, programs like that -- they were not able feature a story arc.

CARTER: That arc -- which arcs over nine years -- has been the subject of a lot of debate.

JKM: Does that mean you long for the days when TV stories were simpler? When you could just say, "next week, we start over."

CARTER: You look at Law & Order. It's an amazing television series. It really has what you're talking about. It starts anew each week, and it doesn't feature characters' personal lives over and over again. That is not part of the series. It's a luxury. I never figured out how to create something that would interest me that would be as simple as that.

JKM: And that may be the very thing that precludes a series like Millennium from running for nine years. Some people can't take that journey, but the people who do take the journey usually end up feeling very rewarded.

CARTER: We did an X-Files charity day recently, and we had a lot of people there from all over the world. One of the things that someone said to me -- and pointed out as a regular watcher of the show -- she said: "people say the mytharc of the show is complicated. It's not complicated. You just have to pay attention to it."

I think one of the things that happened, certainly -- and this is part of it being a nine year show - is people say that it got too complicated. I think that what it did -- rather than becoming overly complicated -- it became stretched-out. It took on a complexity given there were 202 episodes.

JKM: In some sense, broadcast television in the 1990s -- before DVD box sets -- worked against you there, I think. It's very difficult when you have to stop your story momentum for Thanksgiving, or play-off games, week-in and week-out. This was the case with Twin Peaks as well. But when you watch a season on DVD -- in a week or two weeks -- it's easier to see how it all makes sense. I don't know what this fact says about our attention span, but it seems that series like Millennium and X-Files are much preferable to watch on DVD, back-to-back, rather than with weeks of interruption in-between.

CARTER: Of course, when you're producing the series, it is a week-by-week experience. So you're not thinking about the DVDs. I never thought about the DVDs. You really are thinking about what it is-- week-to-week -- that interests you. You do it simply on that basis. So when you hear that people watch it from beginning to end, it's very satisfying that what you were pondering, and working out carefully, elaborately, and painstakingly plays out on a grander scale.

JKM: It does. Millennium, in my opinion, is one of the most pure works of art I've ever seen on television. It holds so many resonances of things half-spoken and suggested. It's a beautiful puzzle.

CARTER: I appreciate you saying that. That was what it set out to be, and I know that's what the writers set out for it to be. In the second season -- which I had so little involvement in because I was working on The X-Files and The X-Files movie -- Glen Morgan and James Wong came in and put their stamp on it. They added layers to it. It was truly a collaboration of points-of-view, and of I guess you would call it an artistic approach to what was I think, an interesting subject matter.

JKM: Taken together, all the seasons lead you to this inevitable conclusion about what is going to occur at the Millennium. You almost have three meditations from three perspectives-- in three seasons -- on the same subject, about the same man, the same organization, and the same situation.

CARTER: If there is a mystique, it's truly collaborative. On The X-Files it was also truly collaborative. There were so many good people that came to work on the show: who wrote the show, who directed the show, and who became involved in the show. It's one of those things where you have to spread out the accolades for what the series became; and what they did

JKM: I think Millennium is the first time I heard on network television the descriptor "the culture of fear" as applied to the United States. In the last decade, we've certainly become well-acquainted with the culture of fear in this country. But not many of us were thinking about that in the 1990s. But you were. And your shows were. All of your programs feature this brand of "anticipatory anxiety." You know, there's going to be a doomsday. An alien invasion in 2012. Millennium went through many end of the world scenarios. Even Harsh Realm. What were you seeing that other people weren't seeing? How did you tap into this?

CARTER: I don't know. That is a sensibility of mine. I just sensed that there was something bad coming. Probably, the combination of Y2K and the Millennium; the Millennial anxiety everyone was feeling. The word "Millennium" wasn't actually a popular coinage. People didn't know what Millennium meant, by and large, so while there was nervousness, it was truly an instinctual gut nervousness. There wasn't a whole lot of intellectual effort being put into the decade, into the turn of the century.

JKM: But you started doing this in 1993, even before people started talking about Y2K or the Millennium. The Cold War was over. We had peace and prosperity. We had no enemy. We had all this technology, and the economy was booming. But you still found this underlying uneasiness. If you look at it today, your programs are even more timely. People wondering about vaccinations, the government, etc...

CARTER: Oh, there's much more paranoia today.

JKM: In a decade in which a lot of people seem to think nothing happened, your shows were saying a lot's happening. You even issued a challenge in the opening credits of Millennium when you flashed up the words, "who cares?"

CARTER: Right. "Who cares" came up, and then the question mark came up a moment later. It really was a two-edged sword. Frank Black represented the people who had the weight of that worry on their shoulders. The few people who actually were looking forward; or feeling the anxiety. Who weren't lost in, as you say, the good times.

JKM: If you look across Millennium, X-Files, Lone Gunmen, and Harsh Realm, you also see that in addition to the anticipatory anxiety, you return again and again to the idea of the unelected privileged -- a small group, a cabal -- whether it be the Syndicate, the Millennium Group of the military industrial complex in Harsh Realm dominating the many. Is that something really interests you?

CARTER: Yes, it interests me, and it's continuing to interest me. Sometimes, I don't even stop to consider these things, but I'll find something of interest. A conversation with someone, for instance. I'm looking at the Zeitgeist of today and trying to make sense of it in what I'm doing. Sometimes these things are commercial, and sometimes they aren't.

JKM: That's the tragedy of Harsh Realm. The show got better and better and better, but only three episodes actually aired. At the end, you're left mourning what could have been.

CARTER: I feel the same way. I look at a show like Dollhouse, and if we would have been given the opportunity that Dollhouse had...we might have lasted. The same thing happened to Joss Whedon with Firefly. He had a great idea and didn't get a chance to develop it.

JKM: In creating your shows, you had to research the paranormal, conspiracy theories, Scripture, forensic science. Are these all interests of yours?

CARTER: I always had this question that I would ask myself and I would ask the writers as we went forward. Why this story? And why this story now? Those questions set the bar high, and they were relevant philosophically and dramatically to their times. It's important, as a television writer, to ask yourself that question. It deepens the work. That's not to say it's always a good thing. Sometimes it makes it less accessible or more intellectual than it needs to be.

JKM: Which brings up the end of the X-Files series. I'm sure you're aware of the conventional wisdom: that the series sort of petered-out in the last two years and was not so good. But I watched Season 8 recently and it is incredibly creative; it can stand up beside any other season of the X-Files.

CARTER: Thank you.

JKM: Was it just that we had gotten so attached to Mulder that we couldn't make the leap to a new leading man? Or did the culture move beyond The X-Files at that time?

CARTER: It was easier to say, it's not the X-Files anymore, because it had changed. The characters changed. Mulder became the absent center, which was an interesting approach, I think, and made for an interesting season. It changed, though, and so -- like it or not -- people who would tune in to see Mulder and Scully wouldn't see them anymore. But creatively, the show sort of took on a new life. The stories were interesting, and the new characters made the stories interesting.

JKM: Robert Patrick was terrific. And in Doggett you suddenly had a non-veteran set of eyes on these X-Files cases. You saw someone with vulnerability in "Via Negativa," for instance. We always knew after seven years that Mulder and Scully would be there for each other, but we didn't know yet about Doggett. He was alone, in a way, and suddenly you had this new uncertainty, which the show got a lot of mileage out of, in my opinion.

CARTER: It was kind of meta-X-Files because it was commenting on itself at the same time, and the show turned inward, in a way. The characters deepened. The concept deepened. And I think for some people that was interesting and for some people it became inaccessible.

Expressing Terror and Mystery: The Visuals of The X-Files and Millennium

JKM: One thing that's important to me as a viewer and a critic is the visual component of television. Not all TV looks like the X-Files or Millennium. They're very cinematic. Why is that important to you?

CARTER: First of all, in television people haven't quite been given the opportunity to produce things that were so visual. It was sort of by demand on our part. We had to tell these really scary thriller stories, and they couldn't be done from one angle, two-shots. They needed to be done in a multi-faceted, delivery-of-information way. So we got to emulate a lot of what I loved about film, and we got to do it on a television schedule.

It didn't happen right away, but not long after we started, we were given what I call respectable budgets. We needed to tell these stories in interesting visual ways; we took an artistic approach. We were one of the first shows to give credit to the director of photography and the production designer, and other people up front in a television show. So we had the budget and the desire to push the limits. I always say "we didn't understand what we didn't understand" about producing a TV show like this. We tried everything.

I point to something like the conning tower coming out of the ice in season two ("Colony"/"Endgame.") We refrigerated a sound stage, brought in tons of snow and ice and built this conning tower. I didn't know you couldn't do that. So we just started doing things.

JKM: It seemed as if we were watching a movie every week. So much so, that I must hold you responsible for the fact that horror movies in the 1990s didn't do particularly well. Every Friday night, for many years, you could get a better experience at home watching The X-Files or Millennium instead of going to the theater and being disappointed.

CARTER: I always said that we weren't doing horror and couldn't do horror based on the standards-and-practices that were applied to the shows. We did an episode like "Home," and the day after we did it I was given a very stern lecture about never, ever pushing those limits again.

And you see where horror went after The X-Files. The Saw series for instance. It had to push limits that we couldn't push on television.

JKM: Given those limitations, would it be possible to do another series like The X-Files today?

CARTER: I don't think so. I mean, we had 22 days to shoot "Kill Switch" -- that's including second unit work too -- but 22 days. That's just unheard of. That's why I don't think there will ever be another series like The X-Files. People ask me that, and I just don't think there can be in today's climate.

JKM: In general terms, what are some of your film inspirations?

CARTER: For The X-Files, I point to Silence of the Lambs (1991). Another movie that I love -- which is horror in a certain kind of way -- is the David Lean version of Great Expectations (1946).

The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008)

JKM: I want to talk to you about I Want to Believe. Although critics including Roger Ebert, The Flick Filosopher, Whitney Pastorek, Stephanie Zacharek, and myself all appreciated the film, by and large it was met with savage, dismissive reviews. I mean, people -- including critics -- just categorically refused to engage with it.

Do you think this was because it was not at all the typical summer blockbuster -- it featured few big special effects and almost no gunfire --- or because the subject matter was so dark that people just weren't willing to engage with it?

CARTER: I think it was about as you say, the summer blockbuster mentality, and what we delivered and what was expected. What we attempted to do; and what the audience expected.

All these things played into how I Want to Believe was received. It's funny, but on the series, we prided ourselves each week with making a little movie. Then, when it came time to do the second X-Files movie, we were given the money and the opportunity to make, literally, a little movie. That's what we did. We realized we had no money for big special effects. We had to come up with a story that didn't rely on those special effects, and hence wasn't a summer blockbuster kind of movie.

So we came up with a movie that was about faith and forgiveness and redemption. And then you put it up against The Dark Knight in late July, in the heat of the summer, and what happened to us was that we met with some valid criticism, and also what I call lazy criticism.

But we also met with box office results that showed there was a hardcore X-Files audience out there, six years after the series had been off the air. The people who had hoped for another X-Files movie -- or were willing to see another X-Files movie -- were probably hoping to see something bigger than the first X-Files movie.

JKM: In a way what you gave us was bigger emotionally than what you gave us in the first X-Files movie.

CARTER: That's a feature of not having a money to do anything else that was bigger than the first X-Files movie.

JKM: Father Joe is a really fascinating character in the film. And how you use him in I Want to Believe really challenges the audience. You tell us this is someone society has judged as irreedemable, and yet on the other hand, as the film points out, we have this little work called the Bible that preaches forgiveness and redemption. And our culture says it believes in those things. And so Father Joe is looking to be redeemed, and is doing positive things, so why can't people take that extra step and at least try to forgive him?

CARTER: It's an idea I've been holding onto for a long time; the idea that Father Joe lived in this complex with these other men, where they sort of policed each other. I had read about that a long time ago, and I always thought that was so intriguing and relevant to the idea of redemption, the idea of forgiveness, of living life after the point of judgment.

Another thing that wasn't talked about much in the criticism of the film was the Frankenstein idea. I had run across something on the Internet: a Russian doctor creating two-headed dogs. I mean he was really doing this...creating two-headed monsters. It's a Frankenstein story, yet nobody really reviewed it as a kind of modern Frankenstein story.

JKM: Some critics also suggested the film was homophobic or anti-gay.

CARTER: It was the opposite.

JKM: That's how I read it. It was about going to extreme possibilities to save the life of someone you care about. Whether it was the sick boy, Christian, Mulder's obsession with the case, or the villain's obsession...he was going to do anything to save his lover's life....

CARTER: Don't give up. He wasn't giving up. I always said that the film was really a multi-layered love story. There was the love between Mulder and Scully. Then there was the Russian character who had been collecting these body parts and his love for his partner. So the love stories reflected each other. But again, I just want to say that some criticism of the film was valid.

More Millennium? More X-Files? The Truth is Out There...

JKM: Bottom line, did I Want to Believe make enough money to ensure production of a third X-Files movie?

CARTER: I wouldn't use the word ensure. But because of the business the movie did, especially the international business, it is a possibility.

JKM: I know that you're paying attention to this. There's been this fantastic movement, and a group, called Back to Frank Black, dedicated to the resurrection of Millennium. The show seems more popular now than ever. Is a Millennium feature film something you are interested in pursuing?

CARTER: I would like to do it. But it is going to take interest on the studio side for it to happen. Everyone involved with Millennium has left the studio. The people there now know it ran for three years and that it starred Lance Henriksen, and that's all. You have to find reasons to interest them.

JKM: Given that the Millennium is passed -- and without giving away specifics -- what kind of storyline would interest you for a Millennium motion picture?

CARTER: Considering we're engaged in a War on Terror that is ongoing, I'd like to see Frank and the Millennium Group distill something from that war that is...interesting.

JKM: If you could take one episode from any one of your shows and put it away in a time capsule for 100 years...and say this is who we wre in the 1990s, this is who Chris Carter was, what episode would it be?

CARTER: Well, I think maybe "Post-Modern Prometheus." In a weird way, it captures so much. And I really like that moment at the end with Mulder and Scully dancing together. It's just a sweet moment.

JKM: I wouldn't presume to tell you your answer is wrong, but I also really liked The Millennium pilot.

CARTER: David Nutter did a great job shooting that. I love the final moment with the polaroids, when Frank realizes this isn't over. That it's just beginning...

JKM: Thank you so much for sharing your time with me today.

CARTER: Thank you.

From The Vanishing Hitchhiker to the Killer in the Back Seat: A Brief Survey of Urban Legends in Film and TV

I feel extremely fortunate in the fact that I was blessed with a happy and secure childhood. Yet despite my suburban cocoon of safety and contentment, I do recall -- sometimes only hazily -- that the outer fringes of my universe in the 1970s seemed populated by bizarre and inexplicable stories.

As a child, I didn't understand where these odd tales originated, but they circulated in and out of my buttoned-up world in hushed whispers and muted warnings, and they made me wonder about the nature of life beyond the borders of Glen Ridge, my affluent home town.

There were spider-eggs in Bubble Yum, you see...

And Little Mikey -- that freckled, friendly kid from the Life Cereal commercial ("He likes it! Mikey likes it!") -- died horribly when he drank soda and ate Pop Rocks at the same time.

Allegedly, his stomach exploded from the excessive carbonation...

Even as I grew older and more discerning, additional strange stories seemed to seep into the corners of my formerly inviolable daily life, suffusing the outer limits of my existence with a free-floating sense of mystery, irrationality and the unknown. And those "new" legends were even more bizarre than the two listed above.

To wit: a certain popular male movie star of the 1980s had appeared at the emergency room late one night with a, um..."colo-rectal" intruder.

And did you hear about the two teenagers who got...stuck...while having sexual intercourse? They had to be pried apart by rescue workers using heavy machinery...

These are America's urban legends, and for whatever reason, my safe, comfortable, upper middle-class town in the late 1970s-and-early-1980s seemed like a hot-bed for many of the most notorious ones. A breeding ground, actually, because we even had specific urban legends on my very street (Clinton Road); ones that didn't proliferate widely like the well-known examples, but that were just as potent and affecting to my impressionable young mind.

If you peeled the same scab off three times, your skin wouldn't grow back...

Oh, and there was a haunted house on the hill leading down to the Magic Fountain Ice Cream Parlor (near Bloomfield Avenue), and you had to hold your breath when you walked by it...or the house would steal it.

I bring up these stories -- and these odd, half-memories -- because, in the last few weeks, I've had the pleasure of reading two meticulous, scholarly resources on the sources, transmission, and nature of such urban legends; both penned by the amazing, acknowledged pioneer in the field: Professor Jan Harold Brunvand. These books are: 1981's The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and Their Meanings, and the exhaustive follow-up, 2001's Encyclopedia of Urban Legends.

Brunvand's life work is the collection, researching, tracking down, and explanation (with occasional debunking...) of America's urban legends. The resourceful author isn't merely a dogged investigator, he's a skilled communicator and storyteller, and his rigorous, academic books actually make damn fine cover-to-cover reads too. In fact, I couldn't put them down.

As our informative guide into the shadowy realm of contemporary myth, Brunvand explains that urban legends are those "bizarre, whimsical, 99 percent apocryphal yet believable stories "that are too good to be true." They are too odd, too coincidental, and too neatly plotted to be accepted as literal truth in every place they are told." (Encyclopedia of Urban Legends, Norton, "Introduction," 2001, xxiii).

Brunvand furthermore reports that urban legends are folk narratives involving both the recent past and normal human beings (rather than ancient epochs, and characters like kings and knights...).

He also states that urban legends "gain credibility from specific details of time and place or from references to source authorities." (The Vanishing Hitchhiker, Norton, 1981 page 3). This means, essentially, that urban legends are transmitted from a friend of a friend...right to you. Somehow, we tend to believe that the transmitted tale is only removed from us (and our normal lives...) by one, measly degree of separation. And often, police or other "officials" (like fire-men or hospital workers) are dragged into the bizarre stories so as to lend them further verisimilitude and a veneer of authenticity.

So far as general theme and purposes go, urban legends appear to concern, primarily, the terrain of subconscious fears. Fears of "foreigners" and their customs (the Chinese restaurant, for instance, seems to be a hot zone for urban legends...); fears of marital infidelity ("The Cement Cadillac" story), and even fear of women. Urban legends also reflect fears of embarrassment/humiliation ("The Surprise Party"); fears of big, impersonal corporations ("The Spider-eggs in the Bubble Yum"/"the Rat in the Coke Bottle"); fear of sexual perversity ("The Colo-Rectal Rat/Gerbil"); even fear of technology ("The Cat/Baby in the Microwave").

In short, all the common anxieties of modern life and in particular "progress," seem to have at least one urban legend attached to them.

In his comprehensive Encyclopedia of Urban Legends, Brunvand discusses briefly the relationship between urban legends and mass media (film and TV), focusing the conversation in particular on the 1998 slasher film Urban Legend, and a few other productions (notably Candyman ([1992] and When a Stranger Calls [1979]). These references fascinated me, and I began to weigh some of the myriad connections between the horror genre and urban legends.

If You See Sally: One Step Beyond's Ghost in the Road

In the spirit (hopefully...) of Brunvand's work, I've decided to survey here some further examples of filmed urban legends. For instance, the great paranormal anthology hosted by John Newland, One Step Beyond (1959-1961), leapt head-first into the long-lived, much-told and constantly-evolving urban legend of the "Vanishing Hitchhiker" with the classic episode "If You See Sally."

That third-season installment (directed by Newland and written by Howard Rodman and Roberta Martin) aired in prime time on October 18, 1960, and concerned a lonely, sleepy night driver who picked up winsome Sally Ellis (Anne Whitfield) -- a grieving, tragic figure trying to find her way home -- only to learn that she had actually died years earlier. He had been sharing his front seat with a ghost...

This story of a phantom hitchhiker proved so powerful -- and so resonant -- that the makers of One Step Beyond received a whopping forty-five letters from viewers in which those audience-members described their own similar experiences. "In one variation," a letter described, the tired driver gives the young hitchhiker his sweater because she was cold. "When he is told that the child is dead...he immediately asks what happened to his sweater. The garment is retrieved on the headstone of the child's grave..." (Gary Gerani, Fantastic Television, Harmony Books, 1977, page 29).

The common urban legend of the "Vanishing Hitchhiker" likely goes all the way back to early America, and the age of horse-drawn carriages. The legend is considered by some academics a "rare hallucinatory event," one that "lingers in our collective imagination from a time when man first drove horse and chariots. Late at night, exhausted and alone on a dark road, the vulnerable driver may summon the ancient hitchhiker from his unconscious." (Remy Chauvin. Parapsychology - When the Irrational Rejoins Science, translated by Katharine M. Banham, McFarland, 1985, page 71).

One Step Beyond was not alone in depicting the story of the "Vanishing Hitchhiker," though "If You See Sally" is the most accurate and faithful filmed interpretation of this urban legend. Angelic/demonic hitchhikers have also sprung up on The Twilight Zone ("The Hitchhiker"). And one ghostly hitchhiker even hosted his self-named anthology series, HBO's The Hitchhiker. What seems most potently expressed by the story of the Vanishing Hitchhiker is the fear that -- alone on a dark stretch of road -- your trajectory crosses with that of the supernatural; that alone in your vehicle (with no recourse and no help...), you somehow pierce the invisible world of the supernatural and interact with it.

Over the years, this urban legend has continued to develop in unique ways. The ghostly hitchhiker -- eternally wandering the back roads of purgatory -- has morphed, in many such stories, into a "well-dressed" prophecy man: one warning of impending disasters, both natural and man-made.

Check The Children: The Baby-sitter and the Man Upstairs
The 1979 film, When a Stranger Calls, directed by Fred Walton, dramatizes the harrowing story of a teenage babysitter, Jill (Carol Kane). She is harassed on the job (and late at night to boot...) by unsettling phone calls. Alone in the dark house of her employer, Dr. Mandrakis, she becomes increasingly terrified as the calls grow more explicit...and more threatening.

More accurately described, this element of the narrative is the subject of the film's fifteen minute preamble, an almost perfect, text-book cinematic visualization of isolation, fear of the dark, and escalating terror.

In this taut sequence, Walton's camera often adopts the perspective of the long-shot angle and thus establishes Jill's location, but also the emptiness and quiet all around her. These moments are interspersed with "jolts" on the soundtrack that remind us how Jill is unfamiliar with her surroundings. The refrigerator ice-maker suddenly kicks in, for instance, with a loud ca-chunk, and the audience feels startled along with Jill. Walton also cuts to various insert shots of seemingly-innocuous house decorations (lamps, phones, the chain-lock on the front door, the fireplace, a ticking clock...) not only to establish the terrain of the incident, but to interrupt the cinematic flow of space/time.

Instead of a long, immaculate master shots -- suggestive of continuity and fluidity - these dramatic close-ups start to jangle our nerves in a manner reminiscent of the jarring and sudden (and frequent) ringing of the telephone. The insert shots come quicker and quicker as the menacing phone calls repeat, and Jill seems to wander increasingly into dark, unlit corners of the house..

We know, of course, the punch-line. The menacing caller is already inside the house, upstairs (where he has brutally murdered the Mandrakis children.) The killer was actually calling downstairs on a second phone line!

In his texts, Brunvand explains that stories like "The Baby-Sitter and The Man Upstairs" are designed as a warning to women; that the murder of the innocent children therein represents the young woman's "ultimate failure as a future home-maker and mother;" and that "the killer's positioning upstairs -- above the female sitter -- may signify the traditional dominant role of men in sexual and power relationships." (Encyclopedia of Urban Legends, page 29).

The urban legend inspiring When a Stranger Calls also boasts two other narrative components worth mentioning. First and foremost: a fear of modern technology subverted. The "convenience" of the household telephone becomes a gateway to terror and deceit; a trick that keeps the imperiled baby sitter tethered to the phone cord (and plugged in to the wall...) when she should be running like hell to escape.

And secondly, there's the notion here of an important "first job," a first responsibility egregiously failed. Young adulthood or adolescence is a span of extreme anxiety because it's the first time that a person engages with the outside world (beyond family and school...) in a way evoking, duty, responsibility and even monetary recompense. A failure the first time out on such an important endeavor is a very real fear for the young and diligent, and this urban legend exploits that fear...ruthlessly.

This latter explanation (a first responsibility failed...) may even explain one of the subconscious fears elicited in John Carpenter's Halloween (1978), another horror film involving a killer...and babysitters. Note that Linda and Annie are murdered by Michael Myers, and that they are the teenagers who forsake their "duties" (babysitting) for sexual interludes with boyfriends. Laurie Strode ultimately survives, perhaps, in part because she never lost sight of her responsibility (protecting her wards Tommy Doyle and Lindsey). It's not just that she's a virgin and then are promiscuous. It's that she takes her responsibilities and job seriously, and they don't.

Don't Flush Your Pets Down the Toilet: Alligators in New York's Sewers

There is a long-standing myth (repeated in an "urban legend" graduate class in Candyman in 1992...) that vacationers to sunny Florida returned to their New York City apartments with baby-alligators as pets.

Then, when the alligators grew too large (and inconvenient), the same pet-owners flushed the wee beasties down their toilets. Thus, -- as it became known around the world -- giant, hungry alligators dwell in New York's sewer system..

This myth was the impetus behind the humorous, Jaws-styled 1980 horror film Alligator, directed by Lewis Teague and starring the redoubtable Robert Forster.

In fact, the urban legend about alligators in the sewers was the very reason the director made the film in the first place. "The reason I said 'yes' to Alligator is that I always found the myth that there alligators in the sewers of New York amusing," he told me in an interview for Horror Films of the 1980s, "so I wanted to make an amusing film."

There are many "messages" that serve as the foundation of this strange urban legend, but primarily we see the theme of responsibility ignored. Pet owners take their "beloved" pets out of their natural environment and then treat them poorly -- and Mother Nature is scorned. Despite an attempt to get rid of the baby alligators, nature finds a way, to quote Jurassic Park (1993), and the alligators unexpectedly thrive in the new "technological" eco-system of the sewers.

Later in the 1980s, fear of radioactive fallout and contamination (no doubt-enhanced by well-attended anti-nuclear rallies across the States, productions like The Day After, and the escalating Cold War) led to a variation on the alligators in the sewer meme. The legend morphed into "radioactive waste" in the sewers, and that idea informed horror films like C.H.U.D. (1984) and Jason Takes Manhattan (1989). Here, the idea of irresponsibility was transferred from individual pet-owners to a bloated Federal Government.

Interestingly, as Brunvand points out in the Vanishing Hitchhiker (page 96), there is some basis in fact for the urban legend about alligators in the Big Apple's sewers. In his book, Brunvand reproduces a story, in fact, from The New York Times, dated February 10, 1935, entitled "Alligator Found in Uptown Sewer." Apparently, a group of youths found the offending beast in a manhole near East 123rd Street and the Harlem River. Yikes!

The Killer in the Back Seat; Or Smoking Can Be Hazardous to Your Health

The 1983 horror anthology Nightmares, directed by Joseph Sargent, also dwells explicitly in the terrain of urban legends. The first story in the film, "Terror in Topanga," depicts the misadventure of a harried, disorganized housewife, played by Cristina Raines. She runs out for cigarettes late one night. And even though an escaped mental patient and psycho-killer is loose in the nearby Topanga area, she needs her fix ("non-addicts cannot understand," she tells her irritated, baffled husband).

By herself, the housewife drives away in the family car, and nearly runs out of gas on her cigarette run. She stops at an isolated gas station (the only one that happens to still be open at such a late hour...) and is unexpectedly accosted there by a suspicious-looking attendant. The terrified housewife is unaware that the attendant is actually trying to protect her...and that the escaped mental patient is already in her back seat...waiting to strike.

"The Killer in the Back Seat" (and the narrative of "Terror in Topanga") seems an amalgamation of a few core ideas common to urban legends. Again, the lonely car ride becomes an opportunity for interface with something out of the ordinary (as in "The Vanishing Hitchhiker"). Again, as in "The Killer Upstairs," a female is isolated and alone (an aspect enhanced by the Nightmares filmmakers; here with the sounds of crickets and coyotes on the soundtrack during the late night excursion...). And again, a woman is tricked and arrives at the wrong conclusion (the mistaken identity of the killer).

Furthermore, this is a cautionary, anti-progressive tale in two ways. First, the female "caretaker" has failed in her "female" duties (having run out of groceries/supplies/cigarettes at an inopportune time). And secondly, her "need" for cigarettes (a dangerous vice...) imperils her life and well-being. Anti-smoking messages -- in which smoking was literally a fatal habit -- also appeared frequently in horror films of the 1980s, serving as the impetus for a tale in another anthology, Cat's Eye (1985).

Brunvand writes (on page 229 of The Encyclopedia of Urban Legends) that this "classic automobile horror legend" of the killer in the backseat was first reported in 1968 by Indiana University students. Given that specific derivation, one can't help but note that this legend arose shortly after the era of "cruising," a popular teenage activity of the early 1960s (and featured prominently in the George Lucas movie American Graffiti.) Given that teenagers engaging in this activity spent an inordinate amount of time in their cars (whether dining with window trays, attending drive-in movies, or just making out...), it's entirely logical that tales of horror would thus shift their primary locale from houses to automobiles.

The film Urban Legend (1998) repeated the "killer in the back seat" trope as its opening gambit, too.

Defrost, Cook or Explode? The Baby/Cat/Gremlin in the Microwave Oven

Since the 1950s and the so-called Age of Anxiety, Americans have embraced and integrated a remarkable number of technological advances into the very hearth and sanctuary of family life: the home.

Telephones, dishwashers, refrigerators, microwave ovens, computers, security/alarm systems, and more have come along and changed (and ostensibly improved...) the way we manage our lives.

It's only natural then, that each of these "advances" has been met with some form of push-back, resistance, and suspicion. And indeed, many urban legends concern an extreme paranoia regarding out-of-control or dangerous technology. We saw this dread manifested with the treacherous telephone in "The Baby-Sitter and the Killer Upstairs." Another trenchant example involves the microwave oven.

Again in this case, there seems to be a direct connection between women and urban legends: the backwards idea that women are abdicating their "kitchen" or "cooking" responsibilities by preparing meals with the "miraculous" and time-saving microwave oven.

And the fact that it is often a baby who ends up sizzled inside a microwave oven in urban legends represents another warning against progressive, non-traditional women: it's a failure of their responsibility as care-givers, since the child days. Amazing how many of these urban legends are often really about maintaining the status quo between men and women, isn't it?

The 1984 Joe Dante horror film, Gremlins, trades on a fear of technology (one evidenced as early as World War II). Here, malevolent little creatures gum up the works of a Norman Rockwell-style small town and wreak havoc. They cause automatic elevator chairs to become dangerous projectiles; they drive heavy construction vehicles into houses; they cause traffic accidents by changing traffic light signals willy-nilly. The gremlins are Loki (the spirit of mischief) personified...but always with an angle towards recognizing the hazards of modern technology. The victim is heartland America, and the American Dream.

In an interesting reversal of the "Baby/Cat in the Microwave Oven" urban legend, a dedicated Mom (Mrs. Peltzer) defeats the perils of technology (a malicious Mogwai) by harnessing another technology: the microwave oven. She gets the creature inside the device and broils him alive...in a memorably gory (and oddly PG-13...) sequence. Here, the Mother is decidedly the hero figure and the microwave is a weapon defending order, not a weapon of chaos and disorder. Thus Gremlins qualifies, perhaps, as an urban legend subverted or upturned.

The Man with the Hook meets Bloody Mary
Candyman (Tony Todd) -- a modern horror icon -- is actually a hybrid of two of the most notorious urban legends. The first such legend is the story of "The Hook" or the "Killer with A Hook."

This tale involves -- again -- an escaped and murderous mental patient who, for some arcane reason, boasts a hook for a hand. Cut to lover's lane, as two teenagers are passionately making out. It's coitus interruptus as they hear a warning on the radio to look out for the killer with a hook; that he is loose in the area.

The male teenager desires to ignore the warning, of course, but the girl is spooked and demands that they leave lover's lane immediately. Realizing he's not going to get laid on this night, the boy angrily drives the car away. It's not until he arrives at his girlfriend's house and opens the car door for his scared prospective partner that the boyfriend sees the strange metal hook stuck to a door handle. Brunvand sees the severed appendage -- a hook -- as a phallic symbol, a representation of the frustrated teen male's unsuccessful bid to get laid.

The story of "the killer with a hook" became the teaser sequence for a second season segment of Chris Carter's Millennium. That episode, "The Pest House" was written by Glen Morgan and James Wong and directed by Allen Coulter. It aired February 27th, 1998 (the same year, incidentally, the story appeared in Urban Legend). On Millennium, the entire "Hook" legend was lovingly re-staged, but with a new and gruesome ending: the amorous boyfriend (Brandan Fehr) ends up gutted and hanging upside down over the roof of his car...for his girlfriend to find.

The second urban legend recruited by the makers of Candyman is known, sometimes, as "Bloody Mary." In this legend, a group of teenage girls share a sleep-over and dare each other to say Mary's name five times aloud while gazing directly into a bathroom mirror. If they should do so, it is believed that Mary will leap out of the mirror and scratch the face of the summoner. As Brunvand describes it, "Bloody Mary" -- with a bathroom setting, with teenage girls as percipients, with blood-letting as a theme -- is a thinly-concealed parable about the onset of menses.

Candyman blends the idea of the Hook-Man Killer with the legend of Bloody Mary. Here, Candyman is summoned by a person calling out his name in the mirror five times. When Candyman appears, he doesn't scratch you...but rather cuts you "gullet to groin" with his sharp, rusty hook. In the original film, a graduate student (Virginia Madsen) crafting her thesis on the subject of urban legends uncovers the story of Candyman at the dangerous urban projects, called Cabrini Green. It's interesting to note that Candyman only continues to "exist" as a bogeyman so long as his story (the urban legend) is disseminated among followers (his "congregation.") Candyman seduces his victims with the promise that they -- like he -- will become immortal as new elements of his tale, of his oft-repeated myth. It's the Gospel of Candyman.

At the same time that Candyman depicts a hybrid of urban legends, it also comments on urban legends. At Cabrini Green, dangerous black gangs prey on innocent residents (also black Americans). The underlying message seems to be that rather than taking on black-on-black violence in such communities, it is easier and more convenient to create mythological/phony "boogeymen" who can be blamed for it. Instead of looking at the mirror, literally, and honestly facing problems within the community, it is simpler to look "outside" for an external monster.

As the title of this piece indicates, this post is but a brief survey of urban legends appearing on film and television. There are many other titles to explore. The CW series Supernatural crafted an episode about the "Bloody Mary" myth during its first season, for instance. Also, films like The Hitcher (1986) deal with other elements of popular urban legends, namely what Brunvand calls "The Dreadful Contamination" (for example, human fingers in a plate of french fries). Indeed, horror films and urban legends overlap to a remarkable degree. Both forms serve as cautionary tales, warnings, taboo-breakers, and modern myths. And the dedicated works of Professor Brunvand go a long way towards explaining why there is this connection, this symbiosis between horror and urban legends. Both "genres" know what scares us.

Which urban legends did you grow up with? And which ones stay with you to this day? Ever find any Bubble Yum with spider-eggs inside?

And by the way, Little Mikey is apparently alive and well...

Think or Eaten: Millennium Interview Parts 3 and 4

Part III and Part IV of my detailed interview with Think or Be Eaten host (and great guy...) Vyzygoth on the subject of Millennium (1996-1999) are now posted online.

In Part III, we look at the third and final season of the Chris Carter series. And in Part IV, we cover more generalized thematic ground; material not related directly to seasons or specific episodes. Have a listen! It's good stuff!

Think or Be Eaten: Millennium Season 2

The second part of my four part interview with Vyzygoth at Think or Be Beaten regarding the brilliant 1990s Chris Carter series Millennium, is now posted online.

This time, Vyz and I talk specifically about the changes in the series' second season, including the opening up of the stories, the additions to the Group's mythology, and the changes in characters from the first season. We look at some 1990s contexts informing episodes, specific episodes such as "Somehow Satan Got Me," and more. Take a listen here. Hope you enjoy it!

Millennium and Muir at the Grassy Knoll

The first part of an extensive three-part audio interview on the subject of Chris Carter's brilliant series, Millennium (1996-1999), has now been posted by radio host Vyzogoth over at "The Grassy Knoll."

In this initial interview, I discuss with Vyzogoth some of the symbols, themes and specific contexts underlining Millennium's stellar first season. In Part 2 (available on April 27), we go on to discuss the specifics of Season Two.

Here's the link to the site. Check it out!

Snakes in the Grass and Snakes in the Open: Animal Symbolism in Millennium's Second Season

During Millennium's (1996-1999) first season, haunted behavioral psychologist and criminal profiler Frank Black (Lance Henriksen) faced a slew of bizarre, perverted and deadly serial killers.

In many important ways, these anti-social antagonists reflected aspects of this American life in the 1990s, whether it was the rise of affluent (and essentially segregated...) wealthy "gated" communities ("Weeds"), sexual dysfunction in the New Age of Viagra ("Loin Like a Hunting Flame"), or even a reckoning with new, widely-available technologies. "Wide Open, for instance," involved a serial killer evading high-tech home security systems. Many episodes of the Chris Carter series thus served as dramatic, controversial and valuable social commentary, with the serial killers serving as the very tool which enabled us to gaze in the mirror at the world we had created. I wrote an essay on this topic (Enemies Within) you can review here.

During the second season, Millennium shifted perspective, narrative focus, and tone in many dramatic ways. Some critics had complained that the show in its freshman incarnation was essentially "Serial Killer of the Week," though often these naysayers didn't stop to consider how the serial killers were being used to drive the program's sense of social awareness. Regardless, the resulting change of focus shepherded by producers James Wong and Glen Morgan led to a rather dramatic "opening up" of Frank's world; one that would change the very nature of both the Millennium Group (now rather definitively a cult, right down to secret code words...), and the bizarre threats/crimes Frank would be called upon to investigate.

Gazing back across the second season today, one can see how the series regularly deployed animals -- or animal symbolism -- to fill the didactic role previously held by the human serial killers, though serial killers did appear in some episodes such as "The Beginning and the End," and "Mikado."

Why animals? Perhaps because animals have been vital in the development of mythological systems throughout history, and across virtually every culture that ever existed. In Western societies of the Middle Ages, in particular, animals represented specific traits and could therefore be utilized as symbols to convey moral and religious lessons in works of art. Some examples: animals can represent victims of technology, industrialization or wars. Also, animals sometimes equate with the concept of "purity," existing in a wild, natural state and therefore utterly free of man's sins and vices. Some passion plays and other didactic forms of theater utilized animals to represent specific modes of behavior (human vices, again, for example.)

Considering Millennium's didactic qualities, it was only "natural" then that the drama would marshal animals and symbols of animals to help us understand in the 1990s "who we are." This shift from serial killers to animal symbols was apparent almost immediately during Millennium's sophomore season, commencing with the second episode in the queue, "Beware of the Dog."

In this tale, Frank Black is ordered by the Millennium Group to visit the remote town of Bucksnort, an isolated burg where a couple of elderly vacationers have been murdered in a vicious animal attack. Upon arrival, Frank uncovers an entire town dreading sundown: the span in which a pack of wild dogs consistently emerge to terrorize the citizens.

What Frank soon discovers is that these dogs, in fact, "represent evil" and are overrunning the town of Bucksnort because the world -- leading up to the Millennium -- is losing its sense balance...in favor of Encroaching Evil. In the New Testament, the apostle Saint Andrew was once called upon to expel demons in the form of dogs from an imperiled city, and that's the role Frank explicitly takes on in this second season installment. Another obvious reference: hell hounds. In Celtic myth, hell hounds are believed to be the Devil's dogs, and similar canine beasts called "cadejo" also turn up in Central American and South American myth.

Also in "Beware the Dog," Frank first meets "The Old Man" (R.G. Armstrong), the Elder leader of the Millennium Group, a figure who warns him "you have no idea about Evil." Though that may be a bit of an exaggeration since Frank's been around the block with Evil quite a few times (he did battle Lucy Butler in "Lamentation"), it is nonetheless a line of dialogue that resonates throughout the remainder of the season. Indeed, Frank frequently finds himself countenancing different mythologies that concern the apocalypse or End of the World...implicitly about Evil. Already, "Beware of the Dog" harks back to The New Testament and Saint Andrew, and to those aforementioned devil dog legends.

Just two episodes later, in "A Single Blade of Grass," Frank again faces a myth of "End Times" and one explicitly connected to animals, or involving animal symbolism. Here, Frank travels to New York City to discover the identity of a corpse found on a construction site. Before long, he is enmeshed in a Native American ritual, one which is meant to forge a contact with the spirit world and spur an Indian version of the Apocalypse.

A sign that this apocalypse has begun in earnest is the return of an...animal; the buffalo, in particular. What the buffalo represents, in terms of abstract symbolism, is that which was "taken" by the white man's colonization of America: both the land and the wildlife. In the final scene of the episode, Frank escapes a ritual involving human sacrifice and -- on the streets of Manhattan -- sees several Buffalo miraculously running by just feet from him. The prophecy was true...the buffalo did return to their home, as the cult believed, but the sign did not mean what they hoped it would mean (an end to white man's dominion). Instead, the buffalo are quickly followed by clowns in a circus...a sign that belief in this legend is foolish, silly, or misplaced. Frank notes the irony, and wonders if the things we wish to come true will do so in the way we would like.

What else did the return of the buffalo represent? One might make the argument that the presence of buffalo in the technological jungle of the Big Apple is a sign -- like the dogs of Bucksnort -- of a word disordered, unbalanced. Of wild-life shattering or violating man's carefully-organized world. If we began to add up these bizarre animal occurrences, a pattern emerges, and we see it in the last episode of the year. But more on that below.

Later during the season, an episode entitled "The Hand of St. Sebastian" also explicitly trades in animal symbolism. The episode begins in 998 AD with a fledgling Millennium Group in Eastern Europe battling evil, divisive forces. One Millennium Group member is shot and killed in a bog.

A thousand years later, Peter Watts and Frank Black exhume his preserved corpse, and emblazoned on his back is a tattoo of the Millennium Group's symbol: the dragon or snake forever devouring its own tail. The Ouroboros. This Gnostic Symbol represents the ephemeral, self-devouring nature of our terrestrial, material existence...a direct contrast to a spiritual life.

More than that even, the Ouroboros represents a cycle, and going back to "Beware of The Dog," the Old Man tells Frank of the "divine life" (a spiritual existence), and about "cyclical systems" of "birth and death." Even before Ron Moore utilized the concept in the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica, we have an example in science-fiction television of the idea that "this has all happened before and it will all happen again."

This idea of the cycle, captured so beautifully by the snake-image of the Ouroboros is reinforced thematically in an important manner. How so? Well, "The Hand of St. Sebastian" make us privy to two Fin de siècle moments of identical nature, even though they are separated by centuries.

In 998 AD, Millennium Group members face betrayal from enemies within ("the snake in the grass" one says) and enemies outside ("the snake in the open"...the term utilized to describe the Catholic Church). This is the cycle that Peter and Frank unconsciously repeat -- down to identical dialogue -- in 1998 AD. Again, let me make the point: Peter Watts specifically makes note of the snake in the grass and the snake in the open. History repeats. The Millennium Group Members of 998 AD prevented the End of the World; and that's what Peter Watts claims to be doing a millennium later. The two men in the past are balanced with the two men in the present, and the Ouroboros ties them together, explaining that this is a cycle which will repeat forever and forever. Perhaps next in 2998.

One of the most important episodes in Millennium's second season is the two-part epic "Owls" and "Roosters," which depicts a growing schism inside The Millennium Group. Both of the warring factions -- as you can plainly see -- are named after...animals.

The "Owls" are a secular group; a faction of atheists/non-believers who are certain that a scientific, cosmic (meaning astronomical) apocalypse is coming in sixty years. The moniker "owls" is important because, traditionally, Owls represent Evil/Satan in Christian myth. They are associated with a lack of faith. Outside of Christian tradition, by contrast, Owls --- in Greek myth, for example -- represent something else entirely: wisdom, knowledge and scholarship (thus science, secularism). Also, as the episode points out, "Owls" are a symbol of night-time and sleep, which is critical since the "Owls" in the Millennium Group believe it is not yet the dawn of the apocalypse; that we are in a sixty year "night" until that dawn.

By contrast, the "Roosters" in the Millennium Group believe in a Christian, religious apocalypse that will arrive in 2000-2001. They believe it is already the Dawn of the End, and thus -- like "roosters" -- are crowing rather loudly about it. In Christian myth, roosters tend to represent prescience (advance knowledge), reliability, watchfulness and faith. They are also, in some circles, a sign of "spiritual resurrection," and that's an end that this group of devout believers want to "force," in some sense. In China, a red rooster is reputed to ward off flames or fire; while white roosters are known for chasing ghosts. Both of these ideas find resonance in Millennium. The Roosters inside the Millennium cult do indeed want to ward off the fires of the End Times; and, in some sense, we know they are chasing ghosts, since the world did not end at the turn of the century.

Finally, it is impossible to ignore that it is an animal that brings forth the apocalypse in Millennium's season ending two-parter "The Fourth Horseman"/"The Time is Near." The man-made plague called "The Marburg Variant" begins its reign of terror...in chickens. Again, not coincidentally, The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse are often linked with animals, at least according to visions in Ezekial. Given that the "End Times" begins with animal-bred disease on Millennium (a forecast of avian flu?) one can gaze across the breadth of Season Two -- from "Beware The Dog" to "A Single Blade of Grass," to "Hand of St. Sebastian" to "Owls" and "Roosters" -- as ominous forecasts, with the animal allusions as token indicators -- warning signs -- of the impending apocalypse.

I would be remiss, and not entirely truthful, if I failed to note that animal symbolism is merely one (important) facet of Millennium's complex second season narrative structure. Many episodes deal with other important issues of the day, ones highly relevant in the context of the 1990s. "Sense and Anti-Sense" looks fearfully at the Human Genome Project, which began in 1990 and issued a complete genome profile in 2003. "Monster" studies the troubling issue of false accusations of child-molestation, an idea going back to the late 1980s and early 1990s when there was a bit of national hysteria around such accusations. One case in Washington State, circa 1994 had a child pointing the finger of abuse at forty three people -- including a pastor - all of whom were later proved innocent. Not that abuse doesn't occur and shouldn't be punished, only that in such cases one has to tread carefully. That point was made cleverly in "Monster" when Frank himself was accused of being a child abuser by a diabolical child sociopath.

I might note, too that "Monster" did include some rather specific animal imagery/myth: the day care teacher's recitation of a fable called "Henny Penny" (also known as "Chicken Little"), a story that involves hysterical cries that the "sky is falling."

The episode "Goodbye Charlie" involved the hot-button issue of Euthanasia, which Dr. Kevorkian had brought into prime-time with his assisted suicide; performed on an episode of 60 Minutes (November 22, 1998). "The Mikado" involved the new technology of the Internet becoming haven to a Zodiac-type serial killer called "Avatar." Even the incredible, deeply-affecting "Luminary" appeared based on a 1996 best-selling work of non-fiction called "Into the Wild" about a boy who gives up his material wealth for a simpler life in wild Alaska.

Yet, I would argue it is the animal symbols that are truly crucial to a deeper understanding of this season of Millennium in one important respect: the defining and explanation of the Group's nature. The "conspiracy" episodes of Millennium -- the ones involving the Group -- almost all involve animals of some variety. From the introduction of "The Old Man" in "Beware of Dog" to the Group's Civil War in "Owls"/"Roosters" to the fruition of the Group's secret agenda to force the end in "The Fourth Horseman"/"The Time is Now," animal mythology and symbols pervade the narrative.

Whether the animals are meant to reveal nature disordered, reveal human vice, or represent spiritual evil and eternal cycles, "when animals attack" on Millennium, they are -- like the serial killers that preceded them -- showing us who we are.

Enemies Within: Chris Carter's Millennium and America's Suburban Apocalypse

In the first season episode of Millennium entitled "Wide Open," violent crime consultant and dedicated family man Frank Black (Lance Henriksen) sits pensively on the front porch of his idyllic yellow house on Ezekial Drive (a symbol first of paradise; then of paradise lost). There, he laments the American culture of the 1990s, one "besieged by our own fear."

His wife, a therapist named Catherine (Megan Gallagher), counters "if you're not afraid...you're in denial."

As Chris Carter and the writers of Millennium might succinctly state the matter: "This is Who We Are."

Or at least, this is who we were during the Age of Millennium (1996-1999), pre-Y2K. The question then becomes, why is this who we were? And do we today remain this way? Have we changed at all, and can we ever change? Why is America perpetually a hotbed of fear and terror...even in times of peace and prosperity?

As always, we found answers in context. In 1996, as Millennium commenced its freshman season on Fox, our nation prepared to send President Bill Clinton back to the White House for four more years. His first term had witnessed a Federal siege gone tragically awry in Waco, Texas, the Oklahoma City Bombing by Timothy McVeigh, societal unrest following the O.J. Simpson murder trial, and the gathering of intolerant forces on The Right, forces that were now unified for the first time in American history by one factor: an irrational, overwhelming hatred for Clinton, whom many considered morally corrupt: a philanderer and perhaps even a murderer.

Culturally, popular films including Silence of The Lambs (1991), Seven (1995) and Copycat (1995) focused squarely on the presence of serial killers -- insane, malevolent bogeymen - prowling America in virtual anonymity and freedom. On television, The X-Files sometimes cast its investigative gaze on society's monsters too, in episodes such as "Beyond the Sea" and "Unruhe," among others. Mainstream television "news" magazines, especially the sensational Dateline and 48 Hours seemed to feed America a never ending diet of serial killer "true" horror stories.

The ascent of the serial killer to a position of prominence in the American Imagination (in the American Reptilian Brain, really...) was the result of several important factors. First, there were high profile serial killers actually making news as the 1990s began. Jeffrey Dahmer (1968-1994) of Milwaukee murdered seventeen people and practiced, among other things, necrophilia and cannibalism. His heinous crimes captured the imagination of a fearful nation. As did those of Ted Bundy (1946-1989), a sociopath and serial killer executed by Florida state officials in 1989.

Almost as important as the crimes themselves, however, was the coverage given these terrible crimes by the expanding, ratings-seeking, mainstream media. The just-born 24-hours new cycle (a courtesy of Cable News Nets), made Dahmer's horror show in Milwaukee a nightmare for all Americans, no matter the region of the country (or even the considerable distance from the real life crimes). From Florida to Rhode Island, from Texas to Seattle, people were afraid of other monsters like Dahmer....ones bred in secret, just waiting to pounce. It wasn't merely cable news that fed this burgeoning fear, either. The Internet -- booming into the mainstream of 1990s life - provided predators a new "in" to the private lives of innocent Americans at the same time that they could remain secretive (and dishonest) about their true identities and perverse agendas.

But there were other factors too, that made the serial killer America's trademark ghoul during the 1990s. In particular, the ability of Americans to travel cheaply and easily cross-country after the 1970s resulted in a nation whose traditional roots became... scrambled. Due to the affordability of air flight and easy access to interstate highways, the communal hearth of old America -- the small town where everyone knew you, your parents and your grandparents -- was shattered, perhaps permanently. In its stead arose the suburbs, new, young communities in which neighbors had no shared history with other neighbors; in which virtual strangers lived across the street.

As it is so in all great horror (and indeed, all great art), Millennium reflected the culture in which it was built. The series selected as its central setting the new hunting fields of the serial killer: suburban America. And though it was (and remains...) tempting for blinkered critics to dismiss Millennium as simply "the serial killer of the week," it became evident on a close viewing of the series that there was something deeper -- something philosophical --happening in Chris Carter's new creation.

In particular, Frank's experiences with serial killers of various stripe served a distinctly didactic purpose: to tell us not so much about the monsters hiding beyond the white picket fences; but to share with audiences something about ourselves, about the world we've built. In the final analysis, Millennium is not about the monsters; it's about our response to the monsters.

This is who we are.

In "Wide Open," for instance, our protagonist Frank Black investigates the case of a serial killer who attacks families that have installed high-tech alarm systems in their fancy suburban homes. The alarm key-pad notes comfortingly (in telling close-ups) that the house is "All Secure," though that's plainly not the truth. While the homeowners are away, the killer enters the house lawfully (at a real estate open house). Then, he waits until the family returns home -- and alarmed-up -- to strike with brute force. The family never sees what's coming...the enemy within.

This killer, Frank informs us, is "teaching us a lesson about our pretensions to safety...about how vulnerable we are." Similarly, it is Millennium teaching the audience that very lesson: an alarm system keypad does not guarantee safety when you drop your guard, when you don't know who has been inside your home, when visitors or strangers enter and leave. Accordingly, by episode climax, an imperiled family is rescued by a more traditional style, old-fashioned "security system:" the family dog. The canine does away with the home invader, pitching him over a second story ledge and onto (and through...) a glass table in the foyer below.

The serial killer in "Wide Open" gives himself the name "John Allworth," a name that provides him a sense of value and importance in a society that does not value him. And, desiring his fifteen minutes of fame (like Dahmer achieved fame), Allworth utilizes other convenient technologies -- not just the alarm -- to get attention and make his point. He leaves messages for the police on their voice mails, and sends a videotape of the murders to the real estate agent showing the house/crime scene. At the same time he is teaching us a lesson, Allworth is becoming "famous." In no other previous decade could the killer utilize this m.o. (outsmarting the alarm systems) or connect with his victims (videotape) in this fashion. He is a creature of the technological nineties; of the suburban lifestyle.

Notably, one victimized family in "Wide Open" is named "Highsmith." Highest of all Smiths, In other words. The typical American family. The name Highsmith simultaneously indicates "importance" (high) and the quality of being "average" (Smith is a common name). This is Millennium's tactic, perhaps of telling us that any one of its viewers (even the Smiths; even us) could be the next victim of this particular criminal. The episode also features some subtle imagery that suggests the suburbs themselves bred this particular monster. There are messages of violence everywhere. One real estate company is advertised with the motto "Killer Views. Killer Prices." The camera lingers on this catchy motto a little too long to be a coincidence.

The serial killer's profession in "Wide Open" is another important factor in understanding the didactic purpose of Millennium. Allworth is a school crossing guard, one who is "helping children to safety" by his own definition. This line of dialogue serves as a direct contrast to the episode's opening quotation ("The children are far from safety. They shall be crushed at the gate without a rescuer.") Easy translation: the children are the future, and if they are killed or corrupted...all our tomorrows die with them. Allworth believes he is teaching the children a lesson when in fact he is perpetuating a cycle of violence (he was an abused child; and his crime spree has left a shattered orphan behind...one who may pick up his tricks in the years to come...). Or, as Frank notes, "tragedy begets itself."

Speaking of "gates," Frank Spotnitz's "Weeds" is another first season episode of Millennium that focuses squarely on a 1990s development and/or trend: the rise of the affluent gated community. Here, a deranged serial killer prowls a rich suburban development despite the presence of 24-hour private security; despite perimeter walls, despite a community watch group. We see images of the entrance gates closing, but what use are gates when the enemy is already within?

In "Weeds," a homegrown madman kidnaps the children of immoral homeowners and makes the children (again!) suffer for the sins of the father. Ghoulishly, the perpetrator makes the youngsters drink his blood because he considers himself a holy "purifier." Though acting far outside the bounds of the law, this killer successfully exposes to Frank (and to the audience...) the sick underside of affluent America. In every home dwells an adulterer, a fraud, a hit-and-run driver, or some other corrupted personality. Expensive homes and a private police force don't make up for or excuse sin.

One scene in "Weeds" is set inside a fancy home. Playing on the TV in the background is a clip from Irwin Allen's Land of the Giants (1968). This particular clips reveals a diverse group of people (of different color and sex) being physically trapped inside an oversized cage by a giant. It isn't hard to discern that the "cage" in "Weeds" is the affluent gated community itself, and the malevolent Giant the secret "sins" that keep residents in a state of perpetual fear, alienation, estrangement and self-loathing.

Another sequence, set at the community's conference center, makes the point about "strange" neighbors explicit. The episode cuts to close-ups of various residents as if to ask: who are you? What secret do you cloak? Just as these people don't know their neighbors, we don't recognize them as either friend or foe. Any one of them could be the killer....

The title "Weeds" explicitly suggests that something undesirable has sprouted up in suburbia, and the killer this time is a man driven by deep feelings of disillusionment. He hates the hypocrisy he sees all around him, and wants to root out sin. The view of the suburbs proffered by "Weeds" is absolutely merciless, then. Accordingly, when we see through the killer's eyes, we view all the residents of the community as old, decaying hags; their souls filthy and contaminated. Not to make too huge a leap, but this is also how many people saw Bill Clinton: as a sinner in the highest office of the land, contaminated by moral corruption. Never mind that those who led the charge against him were also adulterers and hypocrites (Newt Gingrich, Henry Hyde, and Bob Livingston -- Republicans all -- had engaged in extra-marital affairs and held high office too).

In other episodes of Millennium's first season, Frank returned to the suburbs of America agin and again and found only more horror and immorality. He uncovered it in Ogden, Utah in "Covenant" while attempting to determine if a man -- a police officer -- had actually murdered his wife and children in cold blood. The man had lived by the motto (hung on a sign in his workshop) "If a man fails at home, he fails in life." And yet, as Frank learned...the man did fail at home. His wife was actually the murderer...driven to such horrible crimes by her husband's infidelity with another woman. Again, the sins of the father were passed to the children: who were killed for his trespasses.

Child molestation ("The Well Worn Lock") and domestic violence ("The Wild and the Innocent") also came home to the suburbs in various installments of Millennium's first, sterling season. It wasn't just the crime of the week as some asserted; it was the immorality of the week, and Millennium -- in strongly didactic terms -- provided suburban America a look in the mirror. Sometimes our new technologies bedeviled us (in the form of home alarm systems, or the Internet), sometimes new cultural trends (gated communities...) achieved the same end. But always it came down not merely to the predator in our midst; but the failures of our society that gave rise to the predator in the first place.

In Millennium, the enemy within was both the predator and his prey. "Blood Relatives" in sin, perhaps, to choose the title from another Millennium episode.