The Police in X-Files

          The X-Files episode we watched, "The Unnatural," makes interesting use of cops in their narratives. While I haven't watched any other episodes of the X-Files, given that the show is about special agents in the FBI, it's unsurprising that the main narrator and the audience's point of the view in the episode is the cop Arthur Dales that acts as a bodyguard for the baseball player/alien Josh Exley (whose not-so-subtle last name hints at his extra-terrestrial status). I found the dynamic between these two characters to be kind of bizarre. At the beginning of the flashback sequence, Dales approaches Exley with a racist wanted poster asking for the murder of the baseball player and says (and I'm paraphrasing here) that he has no strong feelings about black people, Jews, communists, or any of the targets of the KKK, but that he won't stand for them threatening to murder members of the community. This statement of colorblindness stood out to me because 1) it almost seems to be an example of the 90s neo-liberal milieu that Ramzi Fawaz discussed in their article "Space, That Bottomless Pit" in which capital "mystifies continued racial, gendered, and sexual inequality," where racial inequality is ignored in favor of some strange universalism, and 2) despite its failure at demonstrating anti-racism, it's perhaps more anti-racist than I was expecting a police officer to act given the 1940s setting and may have been necessary to for audiences in the 90s to connect with the character. 

        While this initial attempt at anti-racism and the close bond that Dales and Exley form by the end of the episode would seem to suggest some form of reconciliation of differences has occurred between the police officer and the baseball player, there are still aspects of the film that demonstrate the police officer's attempt to "otherize" the black-coded alien character of Josh Exley. For example, Dales makes several attempts at uncovering the identity of Exley by consulting other police officers or crime lab technicians about Exley's background info and the green goo that mysteriously appears on the baseball mit after Exley takes a hit to the head. Here, Dales essentially runs background checks and what audiences in the 90s might have interpreted as genetic testing on Exley, not because Exley has committed any crime, but because Dales sees Exley as a suspicious character. 

        The tension that Dales has towards Exley—enough tension to cause him to stand over Exley while he sleeps—seems only to resolve when Dales can attribute the behavior he observes in Exley to an "other" state of being. Essentially, Dales only becomes comfortable with Exley's behavior when he knows that it can be explained by an irreconcilable difference between the two characters, by the fact that this seemingly odd behavior is in an inherent part of the "alien" identity of Exley. This fact becomes even more obvious when the two characters have an intimate discussion while throwing a baseball back and forth, as they smile and bond while they talking about how truly alien they are to each other, even though all the viewers sees is a black man tossing the ball, not an extra-terrestrial.

        Another detective in the episode, who is, like Exley, also an "undercover" extra-terrestrial being, ends up hunting Exley down and dressing as a KKK member in their final confrontation. This character serves as a more overt representation of the ways in which the police have collaborated with or participated in the KKK or other white supremacist organizations throughout history (and perhaps the alien's perception of how a cop would act on Earth), but I think his interaction with Dales also perhaps demonstrates a reading of Dales' actions as part of systemically racist machine. Dales certainly seems to act in good will throughout the episode, protecting Exley from an possible assassination attempt and refusing to work with the FBI when federal agents begin investigating Exley, but Dales' act of profiling Exley is what ultimately tips off the Klan-robe-donning-alien-cop to Exley's identity and gets Exley killed. When Dales calls another police station while doing a background check on Exley, the alien hunter is informed of Exley's presence and Exley becomes a target for the police because of it. The lab test that Dales has the in-house chemist run on the alien goo that came from Exley's head only confirms the "othered" identity of Exley for alien cop, as he arrives at the lab, destroys the results, and kills the chemist. Even when Dales, the "good cop" within the narrative of the episode, tries to act in good will, he ultimately still contributes to a system that allows the police in the story to target and kill the black-coded "alien" figure in the episode.