Captain Ahab and Comrade Arntzen (12/4/96)

Bob Foster  > wrote:
>Merna/Michael Anderson wrote:
>> 
>> I figure, they couldn't amputate Mulder's arm because that would REALLY
>> be ripping off STAR WARS.  So, they amputate Krychek's arm.  That way
>> they can rip off Star Wars AND all of those Bond-type movies that have
>> an impaired or disfigured villain. MYRKE
>> JUST an observation.
>
>
>	We also now have another important Twin Peaks crossover: The 
>One-Armed Man!  Just *another* observation-  Rebecca
Here's another take on the missing arm (sorry if this comes off as kind of
rambling -- I'm still trying to work out these ideas): some people have
suggested that Krycek and Uniblonde are a kind of bizarro mirror image of
Mulder & Scully.  The arm thing could fit in with this.  We already know
Mulder is Captain Ahab -- now Krycek is too, only missing an arm, rather
than a leg.
Also, I think the whole arm thing gives M & K the official Mortal Enemy
stamp of approval.  Yes, the arm ties into the whole
James-Bond-disfigured-villain thing (and if you ask me, the series has
been going WAY too far in the James Bond direction, but more on that in
another post), but the difference with most of them (and I'm not a huge
Bond fan, so i could be wrong) is that Bond did not play a role in their
disfigurement.  Same with the one-armed men in "The Fugitive" and "Twin
Peaks".  Instead, I think Krycek is going to tie in more closely with the
Obsessive Personal Vendetta because of Missing Limb theme (Captain Ahab,
Captain Hook, etc.).
This switch to official mortal enemy status could change everything (if it
doesn't become an ignored loose end, that is).  Sure, Mulder hated Krycek
before, but his feelings were also confused: he was seriously entertaining
the possibility that an alliance could be forged based on their mutual
interests, and plus there was the repressed attraction.  We don't know
much about Krycek's thoughts, but he could conceivably have been pretty
conflicted, too.  Well, we can say good-bye to the overt UST (and I was
just starting to enjoy it!).  All such confusions and conflicts are
obliterated in the white heat of the full-scale, archetypal, mortal enemy
relationship.  And you gotta imagine, Mulder is longing for this.  He may
believe in extreme possibilities, but I've gotten the impression that he's
not very comfortable with moral ambiguities.  He likes things to be Black
or White, True or False, Good or Bad.
Now, the covert UST will still be there, but it will just feed the mortal
enemy obsession, which is a very intimate relationship.  Our boys are
probably still headed for a *very* intense consummation of their passion.
After all, even Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty, those most
cerebral of mortal enemies, ended up locked in hand-to-hand combat,
plummeting down a raging waterfall (now I ask you, *what* could be more
fraught with sexual subtext than that?).
EP

more from this thread...

Alyssa Fernandez  > wrote:
>
>As for Mulder as Ahab, if I recall The Conversation on the Rock
>correctly, Mulder said then that he wished he had a peg leg.  He
>suggested that a visible handicap like a missing limb lowers people's
>expectations, relieving a little of life's pressure...
>
>Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, depending on how you look at it),
>amputations seem to work in just the opposite way for villains.  If they
>were malevolent before they lost that arm or leg, they become absolutely
>swollen with rage afterwards.  As Scully says in Quagmire, the
>Ahab-figure becomes "so consumed by...personal vengeance against life,
>whether it be its inherent cruelties or its mysteries, that everything
>takes on a warped significance" to fit the revenger's "megalomaniacal
>cosmology."  
>
>Mulder has Scully to help him fight this tendency toward megalomania. 
>She's there to support him through the cruelties, to hold life's
>mysteries up to the light of reason, to give him balance.  Krycek, as
>far as we know, has no one.  I was a bit disappointed at first that CC
>made Krycek lose an arm; I thought it was just a shock tactic.  But now
>I'm hoping it means we're in for new depths of villainy.
>
Great ideas!  I seem to have this weird blind spot about "Quagmire" --
seems like every time I post something someone will say "Oh, that fits in
with the Conversation on the Rock" and they are totally right and it's
something I never thought of before.
Yeah, what does make the difference between Missing Limb as Cop-Out and
Missing Limb as Reason for Vendetta?  Maybe it's that Mulder's obsession
(as I see it) is not about gaining something, it's about avoiding
something.  Yeah, I know that it looks like he's trying to get Samantha
back, but what he's really doing (IMHO :) ) is avoiding an overwhelming
sense of guilt.  He's been forced into this obsession and he would get out
of it if he could, and a missing limb would be a perfect excuse that would
shout to all the world "No, honest, he never wanted anything to happen to
his sister and the only reason he's not devoting his entire life to
finding her is that he's crippled!"  I've been mulling this idea over ever
since deb ("...or whatever") suggested it and it bugs me that I can't put
a label on what this dynamic is called, but it certainly feels right.
Krycek, on the other hand, seems to be motivated by gain, not avoidance
(maybe -- he's kind of an enigma, actually) -- he doesn't need to be
excused from anything.  He wants his arm!  He could really use that arm in
pursuit of his ultimate goal! (whatever that may be). And (in the immortal
words of a bunch of social psychologists back in the 40's) "the existence
of frustration always leads to some sort of aggression"!
(My goal is to write a psychology textbook in which every single example
is drawn from the X-Files :) ).
EP