The X-Files 20th Anniversary Blogging: "Chinga" (February 8, 1998)

Although The X-Files (1993 – 2002) and Stephen King boast different creative approaches and styles, they have in common at least one crucial quality. 

Both the TV series from Chris Carter and the literary works of the "king" of horror seek to re-write or re-interpret old horror myths in terms of technological modernity. 

King’s stories possess modern settings and contemporary 20^th century-born characters -- as well as allusions to modern pop culture (usually music) -- and yet also delicately revise the vampire myth (Salem’s Lot), the haunted house paradigm (The Shining), and other “monsters” for an age of reason largely devoid of traditional Gothic elements.

And as I’ve written before, this is The X-Files’ end game as well: making relevant for the “meta” 1990s the bugaboos of old, from the werewolf (“Shapes”) and the vampire (“3”) to ghosts (“How the Ghosts Stole Christmas.”) 

The X-Files steadfastly creates a new Gothic brand or architecture, and encodes in its very lead characters the tension between the Gothic and the Rational; belief and skepticism.  Its narrative structure is often epistolary -- in the form of Mulder and Scully’s reports to the F.B.I. -- and thus deliberately reflective of the ultimate Gothic horror story -- Dracula -- -and its clash between the exotic (and “foreign”) and the very latest in scientific advancement.

We get the idea then, in The X-Files, of the ultra-modern reckoning with the romantic, or supernatural.  The tools of science -- whether forensics or behavioral psychology -- thereby replace the crucifix, garlic, villagers’ torches, and other tools of the Old World, but serve, oddly enough, roughly the same purpose....monster hunting.

Given such common ground, it’s not a surprise that Stephen King should co-write an episode of The X-Files with Chris Carter, or that it should -- like King’s best literary works -- revamp an old “monster” for modern consumption, in this case the “evil doll.”    

That evil doll just wants to “play” and “have (murderous…) fun” in “Chinga.” Accordingly, the episode -- while intensely violent -- also boasts a playful nature. The episode proves intensely creepy and even a bit over-the-top in its presentation of an ambulatory toy as the walking, talking, murdering Id of an anti-social child.   

Yet simultaneously, “Chinga” is also able to have wicked fun with its premise; so much so, in fact, that Carter and King even find time to reference Chucky, the "celebrity" killer doll of the Child’s Play film series.

On a weekend getaway in Maine, Scully runs afoul of a bizarre X-File: a grocery store terrorized by a seemingly demonic force. 

In truth, however the evil originates from a little’s girl’s doll.  The girl herself, Polly (Jenny-Lynn Hutcheson), is deemed autistic, and her mother, the beautiful Melissa Turner (Susannah Hoffmann) -- a recent widow -- is suspected of being a witch.

When dead bodies start to accumulate in the small town, the girl’s evil doll -- who was fished out of the nearby bay and was apparently infused with occult powers by a coven years ago -- becomes Scully’s prime suspect.

Automatonophobia is the fear of an object that falsely represents a sentient human being.  A resident, perhaps, of the Uncanny Valley, the automaton -- the doll, the dummy, or the puppet -- is often featured in horror history.  The long-standing fear of automatons may originate from ancient religious rituals, which suggested that inanimate objects could sometimes house the voices of the "un-living."

That’s precisely what happens in “Chinga.” An inanimate object houses the life-force of a long-dead, and extremely malevolent witch.

But again, the “demonic doll” trope gets a modern make-over here, courtesy of Carter and King.  The doll is not just a malevolent, ambulatory toy, but the sinister Id of a girl, Polly, deemed “autistic” (and thus unacceptable?) by society-at-large.  

Inexpressive and yet incredibly demanding, Polly is herself a suspect in the episode’s gruesome murders, and the doll seems to act according to her bidding, or at least impulses.

To wit, the doll’s victims are those unfortunates who have in some way angered Polly, whether a potential boyfriend for Mum, a day care worker who slapped the misbehaving girl, or a testy ice cream counter employee.  The anti-social aspect of an autistic child is thus the episode’s real “monster,” only with the doll serving as its walking, talking avatar. The doll behaves according to Polly’s desires.

Intriguingly, “Chinga” also forges an under-the-surface connection between an ancient witch’s coven and a very catchy song, “The Hokey Pokey,” which proved a dance sensation in America in the late 1940s. 

In “The Hokey Pokey Dance” (as per the lyrics…) participants stand in a circle and make gestures in what -- not entirely uncharitably -- could be deemed…. ritualistic fashion.  

Is it possible that the soul of a witch was once was placed into a doll using a similar kind of witch’s circle, or a bizarre incantation?  

That’s a certainly a possibility inherent in the story. “The Hokey Pokey” recurs several times in the episode, and universally heralds the doll’s murders.  It’s very much like the incantation at the beginning of a ritual sacrifice.

“Chinga” also locates terror in King’s favorite setting: a tiny, gossip-laden New England community where everybody knows everybody else and everybody has an opinion about everything.  The locals in “Chinga” trace their roots right back to Salem and the notorious Witch Trials, and that historical drama is the episode’s ground zero for the horror: The New England witch story.  Or more snappily, New England Gothic (think: Let’s Scare Jessica to Death [1973]).

Uniquely, “Chinga” handicaps The X-Files’ intrepid investigators by separating the established “team,” and sending Scully out alone to play roles of both believer and skeptic. 

Meanwhile Mulder -- the acknowledged believer -- is left at home, as it were, in the office to twiddle his thumbs while Scully must work things out in isolation.  Although surely it wasn’t intentional, this approach actually forecasts the series’ eighth season, where Scully must contend with Mulder and his legacy, the show’s “absent” or “missing” center.

“Chinga” has been criticized as being incredibly gory (and it is…), but the episode works beautifully in terms of the overall Scully character arc.  She concludes, rather atypically, that the supernatural is to blame for a series of killings, and makes her decisions based on that conclusion.  In the absence of Mulder, Scully must absorb or assimilate his viewpoint, and so is able to destroy the evil doll -- a representation of the Gothic -- with a distinctly un-glamorous tool of modernity: the microwave oven.

Again, that’s a bit of an in-joke, or a tongue-in-cheek facet of “Chinga,”  the use of a totally average, totally de-romanticized household object to quell the invasion of the Gothic. Forget hypnotism, or DNA analysis...just press "START."

Perhaps not surprisingly, the dead doll of “Chinga” doesn’t stay dead for long.  The Gothic may not be dispensed with so easily, despite the advances of the push-button age.

My X-Files retrospective returns in two weeks with an all-time classic episode “Bad Blood.” Next week: Halloween-a-thon 2013!