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Xfile home6/23/2023 ![]() Their dialogue is even more didactic than usual for Carter, who tends to use Mulder and Scully as mouthpieces, at times at the expense of their characters. ![]() It’s important what they believe,” he replies, referring to these so-called “ear-witnesses,” while also baldly stating one of the episode’s themes. “Since when do you believe in God?” the ever-skeptical Scully asks. “Music as if from the heavens themselves,” Mulder says. Can anything truly good come from all of this?Ĭut to Mulder and Scully’s basement office, where the agents are embroiled in debate over footage of people reacting to some kind of sound from the skies. The terror of lives suddenly snuffed out. If anything, Carter goes out of his way to merely present the facts of the situation. There’s nothing funny about what happens in this sequence. The building explodes - with a bit of dodgy digital effects that nonetheless pack a potent punch. The mythical Tower of Babel is thought, by some, to be one.) Shiraz and his friend join hands and say one more prayer before walking into the gallery. (A ziggurat is a towering structure, basically a terraced pyramid, that originated in ancient Mesopotamia. The two of them are then back in Shiraz’s car, driving up to the Ziggurat art gallery. He eventually arrives at his destination, a motel where he affectionately greets another young Muslim man (Johnny Ghorbani). The music changes to some brash country, and Shiraz rolls up his windows as the three hiss racist insults at him. Then he turns to his right: A guy and two girls - an all-American trio in every way - are eyeing him disdainfully from their car. (Pay special attention to how the characters in this episode use music to focus and/or distract themselves.)Īt a traffic stop, two attractive women walk past Shiraz’s vehicle. Then Shiraz is in his car, driving along a road in “Southwest Texas,” the music still playing and, seemingly, centering him. Music starts to play - Arabic lyrics set to a dubstep beat. He walks to his kitchen and makes a sandwich, blessing the food before he takes a bite. We see Shiraz at morning prayer, calm and serene. If I were to try and summarize this strange beast, it would be something like, “A screwball comedy about getting inside the head of a Muslim suicide bomber.” The bomber’s name is Shiraz (Artin John), and he’s the focus of the episode’s teaser sequence, which is key to decoding much of what follows. “Maybe the question of our times.” Let’s look for some answers. “That’s the question,” his partner Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) responds. “How to reconcile the two - the extremes of our nature?” special agent Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) muses toward episode’s end. The truth is surely somewhere in between. On first glance, I found the whole affair aggressively unpleasant, but a second viewing snapped me around to overwhelmed admiration. I can’t say that any revulsion is unjustified, since writer-director Chris Carter goes out of his way to prod and provoke. It’s my suspicion that “Babylon,” the fifth installment of the new X-Files mini-series, will be widely despised.
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