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Just in case there actually is someone out there who doesn't know what our sexy Ciggy Man is all about... ~ Mez
Known as 'Cigarette-Smoking Man' or simply 'CSM' in the scripts, and publicly as 'Cancerman', 'Old Smokey', 'CGB Spender' and various other aliases and appellations we won't repeat in polite company, he's the inscrutable, Morley-sucking conspirator X-Philes love to hate. Or in my case, hate to love.
Ahem...
CSM is a high-level operative within the Syndicate (aka the Consortium), a clandestine organization whose focus is any matter relating to extraterrestrial lifeforms. Existing beyond the knowledge or constraint of any government power, its members carry out their work in the perpetual twilight world of cloak and dagger. And they've got a lot to do. Because there are aliens among us. And they want their planet back.
The Syndicate are collaborating behind the scenes with these alien colonists, paving the way for their re-establishment on Earth, and have done since 1973. The main thrust of their work, referred to as The Project, is to create a human/alien hybrid which will be genetically predisposed to survive the colonist takeover method -- a plague -- and serve as a slave race.
Obviously this requires the abduction of private citizens for experimentation purposes. While abductees may later recall encounters with little grey aliens, these are usually false memories, planted with the use of hypno-hallucinogenic drugs to make the victims look foolish if they should choose to share the experience. It's the Syndicate who are behind most of the abductions, not the colonists.
In return for their cooperation, the Syndicate and their families will be granted sanctuary at the time of colonization. But there was a price to pay: to obtain the alien DNA necessary for the hybridization process and ensure their devotion to the Project, the Syndicate upper echelon were each forced to sacrifice a loved one to the colonists, with the promise they would be safely returned when colonization begins.
(CSM turned over his wife, whom he later confesses he never loved. But that's another story.)
If this all sounds a bit like a Vichy redux (read about WWII France), you're right. Unlike the Vichy Regime, however, the Syndicate were faced with a choice between total annihilation of the human race and their own survival. It's very easy to see the immorality of their decision to collaborate when looking at it as one of the billions doomed to die. But what the Syndicate bought with their sin was access to the alien technology and DNA -- and the time to exploit these to find a weapon.
The task of concealing this nightmarish scenario from the general public belongs to CSM, whose ruthless cunning and talent for subterfuge and disinformation aren't wasted on the job. By playing on the vast collection of resources at his disposal, the man can bury evidence faster than Congress can spend a surplus. He's got Washington in his hip pocket. Draw his attention by getting too close to the truth or opening your mouth when you shouldn't and you'll likely end up dead. Or wish you were.
Unless, of course, you're Fox Mulder.
He and CSM are opposite ends of the same stick: Mulder consumed by his search for his sister, Samantha, whom he believes was abducted by aliens when they were children; CSM purposely staying just one step ahead in order to discredit Mulder and protect the Project. Scully, with her clinical view of the world and her propensity for explaining the unexplainable, proves to be an unwitting tool in CSM's efforts to debunk Mulder's investigations.
CSM isn't consistent in his work at 'keeping Mulder down', however. Half the time it seems he has a soft spot for the agent; and due to the fact that he and Fox's mother appear to have a history there's ongoing debate over whether Mulder is CSM's illegitimate son. It may all be misinterpretation, but CSM did have access to the Mulder family from the start: Fox's father was a Syndicate member and good friend of CSM until Samantha's disappearance.
An absorbing game of cat and mouse is the general course of things between CSM and Mulder until Season 6, when Mulder finally runs headfirst into what he thinks he wants to know. He learns the colonists do indeed have his sister (the story goes she was taken as part of the original agreement between the Syndicate and the colonists), and all about the Syndicate's part in colonization. He may also be learning what CSM already knew: 'Humankind cannot bear very much reality.' (T. S. Eliot)
Subsequent episodes ride roughshod over all this as one might expect, leaving viewers to make up their own minds about Samantha's true fate and whether or not there really is an alien invasion in the cards. CSM is left at the helm when the high mucky-mucks of the Syndicate are exterminated, but few of his activities are disclosed after he steals what's purported to be an alien implant from Mulder and has it implanted in himself.
The last time we see CSM is in the Season 7 finale, where he's left for dead by an underling. The alien theme moves on without him. But no death is final in the X-Files. And until the last show airs, whenever that may be, there remains the possibility that CSM will rise again.
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The following won't make sense unless you're somewhat familiar with the series. And even then....
- - - - - - - - - -
Season 9 Spoiler alert!
It is with hair-tearing, breast-beating sorrow that I must confirm the following:
CSM is dead.
Now here's the real surprise. I approve. And I haven't even seen the finale, "The Truth", yet.
Oh, I railed against it at first. Like many a CSM fan, I held out hope for an eleventh hour redemption, a final twist within a twist. I guess that's because I never really did believe Chris Carter when, in the past, he called CSM a real devil. He spent such an inordinate amount of time establishing the credibility of the character that one suspected we were being intentionally misled.
And maybe that, in a nutshell, is the genius of Chris Carter. Maybe he was saying evil doesn't come to your door carrying a pitchfork. It wears an all too human face. It believes its cause is just, and it will try to trick you into believing too.
This inscrutable quality is what made CSM an unparalleled tv villain by contemporary standards, one who played on the fears of every would-be armchair conspiracy theorist: an unnameable, unstoppable, unrelenting super-spook with ostensibly righteous convictions and the wherewithal to further his secret agenda, right or wrong. You can't boiler-plate an antagonist like that any more than you can intentionally write a blockbuster. Neither can you rid yourself of him easily. And once CSM evolved beyond his creator's expectations into The Perfect Nemesis, all bets were off.
How, then, do you deconstruct such a character without undermining all you've built him up to be? Well, we know that knocking him off his pedestal down a flight of stairs isn't convincing. It's just too easy. So you place him on the back burner for two seasons and kick around a few ideas. Then...reality steps in.
In order to appreciate CSM's fate in 'The Truth' you have to leave behind whatever motivates you to search for his redeeming qualities and accept Chris Carter's contention that CSM really is an evil dude. Because the design of 1013's final judgement was purposeful and unforgiving. Filmed well after 9/11, CSM's final scenes echoed the vengeful spirit of a nation whose freedoms had been used against her to indiscriminately murder thousands of innocents. I needn't identify the sadistic string puller behind that plot. Or that he was rumoured -- for a time, anyway -- to be holed up in a cave.
The X-Files series finale figuratively ties CSM to this real-life "Satan". Justice was served, right down to the much hoped for destruction of said cave and its inhabitant. It condemned CSM to the grim ranks of those throughout history who would try to ruthlessly manipulate others to their own ends in the name of a 'righteous' cause.
In the end, it was a rather brilliant piece of writing.
.............
[Disclaimer: The views expressed in 'Pretzel Twist', good or bad, belong solely to Mez. Hey, even webmistresses need to spew now and then.]
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This Boy Can't Swim
by Catatonia
~ @ ~ @ ~ @ ~
This boy can't swim, he's wearing too many skins
I hope he sinks, then he'll forget everything.
Dreamt up the lies that would hold it together
Then realised those he lied to were cleverer
Left on the side they have long since rejoined him
Back in the fold, thick as thieves, they will weigh him down.
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