5 Feet of Fury

‘The Technocratic Elite in Popular Culture’

An interview with Paul Cantor about his new book on that topic:

I’m not sure that The X-Files has become more powerful since it went off the air. After all, at its peak it had high ratings and an even higher profile in our culture. Still, it’s worth noting that the widespread prediction that The X-Files would drop off the cultural map after 9/11 has proven to be wrong. In the last part of my book, I argue that The X-Files still has much to tell us about the War on Terror and the assault on civil liberties in the United States. And in my last chapter, I show that The X-Files gave birth to all the alien invasion narratives that have proliferated on television since 9/11.