Quote from: MrColossal on Sat 11/02/2006 21:02:08
How would they go about telling countless writers that worked on that show that the secret symbolism behind the show is that americans are afraid of losing culture and having them all go "Good idea!"
Outwardly, most people these days abhor the thought of prejudice. Yet, evidence has shown that many people in our culture tend to show signs of unconscious discrimination. For example, taking an implicit association test may reveal that a person who consciously says that racism is bad actually has an easier time associating positive character traits with white people and negative character traits with black people than vice versa.
The point is, you don't necessarily have to be outwardly prejudiced to hold prejudiced attitudes. In fact, I'd wager that if it really were the case that the X-Files had racist symbolism, it would most likely be of the unconscious variety. After all, American culture does have a long history of fearing strangers, as evidenced in that cute cartoon in the middle of Bowling for Columbine. I'd say it's quite plausible that despite minorities and women being treated better than before, some of that residual fear still exists in 2006.
That being said, I don't watch the X-Files, and despite having written at least one detective adventure game, haven't seen all that many film noir movies. Therefore, I can't comment specifically on those cases.