Criminal Investigations and Spiritual Quests: The X-Files as an Example of Hegemonic Concordance in a Mass-Mediated Society

Abstract

Disillusioned by science's betrayal of its promise of unlimited progress and dissatisfied with the world it helped create, many Westerners have spurned science and turned to nonscientific ways of knowing. The X-Files, a television series broadcast on the Fox network, is a site where the tension between Western science and nonscientific ways of knowing is dramatically depicted. The present study explores this tension using Condit's model of hegemony in a mass-mediated society. Although the X-Files appears to challenge science's privileged position within Western culture as the sanctioned means of developing an understanding of and control over natural phenomena, this study suggests that the series actually reaffirms the dominance of science while acknowledging the presence of alternative ways of knowing, thus serving as an example of the kind of accommodation that Condit says makes hegemonic concordance possible.