Popular Culture Review Vol. 11, No. 1, February 2000 | Page 28

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Popular Culture Review

until just recently. The other two bodies were much more badly burned. We got
lucky with this one.” The implication is that “Chinese-ness” is inscribed on the
man’s body so that his ethnicity is immediately evident, and hence, made important.
The racial linkage is made more concrete by Mulder, who tells Neary and Scully
that .this has happened to other Chinese males in other Chinatowns (Seattle, Los
Angeles and Boston): “ .. .all Chinese men, between the ages of 20 and 40, all recent
immigrants.” While the stereotyping descriptor of “oriental” is never used, Scully’s
action immediately after this clearly brings the stereotype into play. Her perfunctory
postmortem examination begins with the prizing open the burnt eye of the dead
man. The loaded metaphor of the Asian eye indicates again to the audience that
dead man’s ethnicity is the single most important clue derived from examination.
As X-Files fans know, the fictional “X-Files” section of the FBI is set up to
investigate mysterious happenings, and unexplained phenomena. As such, Scully
and Mulder routinely examine UFO sightings, alien abductions, supernatural
occurrences and supernatural beings. The status of an “X-File” case is usually
under constant scrutiny. Almost every episode entails an archetypal struggle between
Scully and Mulder, the voice of reason versus the voice of the irrational or
supernatural; typically Scully will question their involvement in the case, contending
that a rational explanation exists, and that other authorities should take over.
Tellingly however, a case involving the bizarre, but hardly supernatural, murders
o f recent Chinese immigrants living in various Chinatowns, is not subject to
questioning. It seems for both Scully and Mulder, recent Chinese immigrants are as
worthy of an “X-file” status as their previous cases involving UFOs, and other
unexplained phenomena. The term “alien” here, as that which is exotic, foreign,
outlandish remote and strange is an appropriate term for their encounter.
The recent arrivals, still “alien” to an American culture and encamped within
an ethnic enclave, are contrasted with detective Glen Chao, an American bom
Chinese (an “ABC” as the character abbreviates the term) fully assimilated, with
American values and customs. Asked whether he believes in the ancient Chinese
mythology of the Ti-Yu, the “Chinese hell”, and the Preta, the vengeful ghost of a
murdered man, Chao quips that he’s more haunted by the size of his mortgage
payments, a comment which immediately locates him safely within the ranks of
middle America. Later when Scully and Mulder question Chao’s involvement in
the case, accusing him of protecting “his own,” Chao reacts with clear exasperation
- momentarily deconstructing the “white” assumption of Chinese homogeneity.
However, this is soon overturned when we leam that Chao is in fact involved in an
illegal gaming racket in Chinatown that is linked to the murders; his final
renunciation of this game and his return to the “Occident” also results in his murder.
Chao suffers the same awful fate as Johnny Lo, the threatened reprisal for those
who abandon the game; but Chao’s punishment is also meted out for his dual