The X-Files Week: "The Calusari"

The second season episode of The X-Files titled “The Calusari” might be interpreted by some reviewers as a new take on The Exorcist (1973), one also featuring a possessed, evil child and a terrified family trying to deal with that terror in its midst.  Although this is a legitimate point, to be certain, the episode actually fits into a certain sub-genre that The X-Files returns to again and again: Foreign or Ethnic Terrors.

In short, The X-Files often features episodes in which Scully and Mulder must attempt to solve a mysterious case but discover that the precepts of Western thought and philosophy are not satisfactory to do so. 

Instead, they must turn their now-opened eyes to philosophies outside of the West, and beliefs that are much older than America itself.  Many horror films of the 1980s also featured what I termed an “Americans Abroad” kind of feel (Beyond Evil [1980], The House Where Evil Dwells [1981]), but in the case of The X-Files the exotic or different lands right in our backyards, a comment, perhaps, on the dawn of the Age of Globalization.

Gazing across the expansive The X-Files catalog, the idea of foreign or ethnic traditions being at the root of a mysterious case or some kind of otherworldly horror emerges in episodes as diverse as “Hell Money” (concerning China), “Kaddish” (about the Jewish Golem myth), and “Badlaa,” which starts and ends with an odd Indian boogeyman, an amputee rolling around a scooter…

But “The Calusari” is also part of this specific tradition, a story about how we, as Westerners, carry our assumptions about reality into any situation, even when those assumptions may have no bearing on reality, or the issue at hand. 

In other words, “The Calusari” appears to be pointed in one direction, but in the end, it points in a different one…

Mulder (David Duchovny) suspects that a ghost is responsible for the horrific death of a two-year old Romanian boy at an amusement park in Maryland. 

Upon investigation with Scully (Gllian Anderson), Mulder learns that the boy’s older sibling, Charlie (Joel Palmer), possesses a Swastika on his hand.  And a swastika, according to Mulder is an ancient symbol of good luck and protection.  Scully, meanwhile, is convinced that she is witnessing a case of Munchausen-by-Proxy case committed by the boy’s superstitious, secretive, ethnic grandmother, Golda (Lilyun Chauvin). 

Soon, Charlie’s father is killed, also under mysterious and possibly supernatural circumstances, and so is Golda.  Mulder consults with the Romanian Calusari which is is versed in the “old ways” and may be able to save Charlie.  As it turns out, Charlie was never separated from the evil spirit of his stillborn twin, Michael.  

Now, that spirit follows Charlie everywhere…

Charlie’s Romanian grandmother in “The Calusari” comes from a different tradition than ours in contemporary America, and her beliefs are considered baffling, and even a little primitive at first to those in mainstream 1990s America. 

“Superstitions are Golda’s life,” viewers are explicitly told.  There’s even the suggestion that her beliefs about children are dangerous.  Scully thinks she’s a criminal, and the rituals Golda uses involve marking the skin, and killing animals for instance.  But are her superstitions -- as we call them -- more aptly termed religious rituals?   How would a Christian feel, in a country of different traditions, seeing his or her beliefs termed superstition and greeted with suspicion?

Whether beliefs about life and death, good and evil are accepted or not all depends on where you live, and with whom, and that is one point of this episode.

And we soon learn in “The Calusari” that Golda is actually protecting Charlie, not attempting to injure him.  The swastika is the symbol in the episode that best makes the point about this woman, and her grim-faced associates in the Calusari.  

At first blush, the swastika is a symbol we as westerners associate with evil, and the Nazis of the World War II era.  It was a symbol of the Third Reich and our first instinct upon seeing it is to recoil in horror.  It’s a symbol of mankind at his worst and most evil.

But the swastika is actually, historically (pre-1930s…) a positive symbol. 

The very word means, in Sanskrit, “to be good.”  The symbol is considered an auspicious symbol in several Indian religions and in other cultures as well.  Accordingly, Mulder is able to interpret the swastika as a symbol of protection in “The Calusari” but he must determinedly step out of western traditions and belief to do so.  He must accept that our definition of certain terms isn’t the only definition to examine, at least in this particular case.

This is also a lesson for Golda’s daughter, Maggie, who marries an American diplomat and then totally eschews all of her own family and religious traditions.  She has abandoned her beliefs so much so that she never conducted the ritual of separation that would have, in her mother’s tradition, saved her son, Charlie. 

Outside the discussion of a foreign belief system, this X-Files episode is, by my estimation, one of the scariest and most disturbing of the first few seasons.  The opening sequence, which finds a malevolent entity leading a two-year old boy to his death at an amusement park by utilizing a pink balloon plays as truly dark and upsetting.  This teaser is one of the best in the series, driven by a sense of inevitability, and made all the more effective because of a parent’s feelings of responsibility/neglect.  This scene is every parent’s nightmare.

Another macabre touch: late in the episode, the leader of the Calusari tells Mulder that he must “be careful” that Evil has seen him and now “knows him.”  Evil saw Mulder’s  face during the exorcism of Charlie, apparently.  This is a plot strand that the series didn’t follow-up on, per se, but makes for a terrifying warning.  How would you like it if the Devil…recognized you?

Someone ought to write an X-Files episode or comic-book issue, where this idea resurfaces…and where Evil finds Mulder.