Oh, hi, we're in a stretch of really really good, but really really depressing episodes, apparently.
Also, for some reason, it seems this show, along with a lot of shows, are pretty horrible at depicting myths and legends from say, Spanish speaking countries or parts of Africa, but when it comes to depicting Jewish culture, they actually do a reasonable job. Can't imagine why that is.
Being familiar with the legend of the Golem, I pretty much called it early in the episode. Especially when I saw someone sculpting a human form in the mud.
This is one of the few episodes of the show that really ends with complete closure. There's no mystery left at the end, and Mulder's research and theories actually turned out to be completely right, so this was very straightforward. I won't say I enjoyed it, because having been raised Jewish and having studied a lot of the horrors that were perpetuated against the Jewish people, it's pretty uncomfortable to watch, but it was a good episode.
What to say about the guy running the print shop. Ugh. I've been fortunate in my life in that I haven't really encountered that level of anti-semitism. I was also raised Reform and haven't practised in nearly two decades, so I've never dressed or styled my hair in ways that would clearly indicate being Jewish. Hasidim and other Orthodox Jews tend to look very obviously and stereotypically Jewish, which makes them more frequent targets of Neo-Nazis.
But this guy, Brunjes, even illustrates how utterly stupid and ignorant these bigots are, because his paranoia trumps even logic as he accuses Mulder of possibly being Jewish or working for the Jews, or any of the usual crap people like Brunjes believe. And the material he prints is some seriously absurd conspiracy shit (which apparently was only slightly modified from samples provided to the writers by the ADL). I mean, really, if Jews really had as much power and influence as this guy thinks, do you think they'd have allowed themselves to be so violently persecuted throughout history?
Yeah, I didn't think so, either.
But either way, this guy clearly does, and he's clearly covering for the people who beat Isaac Luria to death. And I do agree with Mulder and Scully in this one - the goal is justice, and no matter how awful these people are, they really don't deserve to die at the hands of a magical mud creature that cannot think for itself. They deserve to be put on trial and convicted of murder, then locked away for ever, or possibly executed if you believe in that sort of thing, but vigilante justice is a bit on the sketchy side.
Especially when it's done by proxy.
The metaphor here really does derive from the various Golem legends, in which the Golem eventually turns on its creator or becomes independent and destructive. In this episode, there are some serious unintended consequences, specifically that the FBI got involved and that Mulder was willing to believe there really was a mystical being going around killing these Neo-Nazis. The Golem didn't turn on its creator, so we're meant to believe it had some level of sentience, even though in the actual Golem legends, they are unintelligent, unaware creatures.
There's also the issue that Judaism doesn't generally support the idea of personal vengeance anyway. Ariel is going to have some major atoning to do come Yom Kippur.
But in the real world and in the context of The X-Files, a person can't really be held responsible for creating a monster, especially one whose existence would be very difficult to prove in court. Like, maybe if you created a robot that went out of control that's one thing? But we're talking about a mud Golem here, which most people, even Jews, don't actually believe is possible. So how do you even put that on trial?
The ending is certainly not a happy one, because Isaac is still dead, but Ariel gets to use her family's ceremonial ring to 'marry' him, before rubbing the letter, aleph, from his hand to alter the word, 'אמת' (truth) to 'מת' (death/dead). But she at least gets some form of closure - after getting revenge, of course.
Unrelated, but another side effect of the out-of-sequence airing of these episodes is that Scully already knows she has cancer as of the airing of this episode, but it was written to take place before 'Leonard Betts', which changes the interpretation somewhat. At the end of 'Memento Mori', Scully indicates that she intends to return to work. Much like in season 2 when she returned from her abduction, she's getting right back into it now, not forgetting, but almost trying to distract herself.
Otherwise, this was just a run-of-the-mill monster of the week, wasn't it?
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