The Post-Modern Prometheus
Encyclopedia
"The Post-Modern Prometheus" is the fifth episode of the fifth season
of the American science fiction television series The X-Files
. It was written and directed by series creator Chris Carter
and aired in the United States on November 30, 1997 on the Fox
network. The show centers on FBI Special Agents Fox Mulder
(David Duchovny
) and Dana Scully
(Gillian Anderson
) who work on cases linked to the paranormal, called X-File
s. In this "monster of the week
" episode, Mulder and Scully investigate reports of a mysterious creature that has impregnated a middle-aged woman. They find that the "monster", nicknamed the Great Mutato, is the genetic creation of a Frankenstein
-like doctor. The Great Mutato is first ostracized, and later accepted, by his community.
Carter's story drew heavily on Mary Shelley
's Frankenstein
and particularly on James Whale
's 1931 film version
of the story. The script had been written specifically with singer Cher
and actress Roseanne Barr
in mind, but both were unavailable at the time of shooting. Talk-show host Jerry Springer
appeared as himself, and Chris Owens
(who appeared in later episodes as FBI agent Jeffrey Spender
) played the Great Mutato. The episode was filmed in black-and-white, with a sky backdrop created to imitate the style of old Frankenstein films. Owens wore makeup and prosthetics that took several hours to apply. The episode was nominated for seven Emmy Award
s and won one. It was praised by one critic as "a classic", and by another as the "most striking" stand-alone episode that season.
(David Duchovny
) receives a letter from Shaineh Berkowitz, a single mother who claims to have been mysteriously impregnated, while unconscious, by an unknown "presence" 18 years ago, resulting in the birth of her son, Izzy. Now she is pregnant again, following a similarly unexplained attack. She has heard about Mulder's expertise in the paranormal from The Jerry Springer Show
and wants him to investigate. Mulder and his X-File
s partner, Special Agent Dana Scully
(Gillian Anderson
), travel to rural Indiana
. They meet Shaineh and her son Izzy and learn that the description of the creature that attacked her, with a lumpy head and two mouths, is very similar to a comic book character invented by Izzy. His monstrous creation, called the Great Mutato, is inspired by a mysterious creature that has been seen by many of the locals. Izzy and his friends take the agents to a wooded area where they see the Great Mutato from a distance.
They meet an old man who angrily tells them that there are no monsters and sends them to see his son, a genetic scientist named Francis Pollidori. Dr. Pollidori shows them his experiments on Drosophila
which include a fly with legs growing out of its mouth. He tells the agents that the same kind of experiment could, in theory, be performed on humans. Afterward, Mulder tells Scully that he believes that Dr. Pollidori has created the Great Mutato, acting as a modern-day Victor Frankenstein
.
Later, Dr. Pollidori's wife Elizabeth becomes unconscious and is attacked in the same manner as Shaineh. At the crime scene, Mulder and Scully find a chemical residue from an agricultural agent used to anesthetize animals, that leads them to suspect Old Man Pollidori, who is a farmer. Dr. Pollidori comes to his father's house and angrily confronts him. Later, the Great Mutato, who lives with Pollidori Sr., finds his dead body and tearfully buries him in a barn.
Mulder and Scully go looking for Pollidori Sr. and find a shallow grave, as well as photographs of the man with the Great Mutato. Meanwhile, Dr. Pollidori leads an angry mob of townspeople to his father's house, demanding that Mulder and Scully turn the "murderer" over to them. The agents find the Great Mutato hiding in the basement as the crowd gathers upstairs. Someone accidentally sets the barn alight and in the ensuing confusion, the mob realize that the agents are protecting the monster in the basement. The Great Mutato speaks to the crowd and explains that he was created 25 years before, the result of a genetic experiment by Dr. Pollidori. Unknown to his son, Pollidori Sr. rescued Mutato and cared for him, but was unable to provide a friend or mate for the boy. The old man attempted to emulate his scientist son's experiments, attempting to create hybrids from his farm animals. Mutato asks Dr. Pollidori to create a female companion for him, but the scientist says that he cannot—that Mutato was a mistake. The townspeople realize that Mutato is not a monster after all and Dr. Pollidori is arrested for the murder of his father.
Mulder feels that it is unjust for Mutato not to get a mate and so he demands to see the writer. He and Scully take matters into their own hands and take Mutato, along with the townspeople, to a Cher
concert.
had long wanted to write a Frankenstein
-inspired episode, but had found it difficult to reconcile Mary Shelley
's "unbelievable" tale with the stories being told on the show. To achieve his vision, he made the conscious choice to write a script that blurred the real world with the X-Files reality and that had a distinct fantasy element. In particular, he wanted to evoke James Whale
's 1931 film version
of Frankenstein. He said, "I wanted to tell a story as moving to me as the Frankenstein story had always been." The idea for the genetic engineering story developed via The X-Files science advisor, Anne Simon. Carter visited a friend of Simon, a scientist at Indiana University in Bloomington
, who had been able to genetically manipulate flies so that they grew legs from their eyes. After Carter had come up with the character of the Great Mutato, he discovered that there was a character on the comedy animation show The Simpsons
with the same name (though pronounced differently). He contacted The Simpsons creator Matt Groening
who gave Carter permission to use the name. Like two-thirds of the episodes of the series, "The Post-Modern Prometheus" was a "monster of the week
" episode, standing separately from the mythology of The X-Files
.
's music, Carter became "fixated" on her songs and wrote "The Post-Modern Prometheus" specifically for her. He knew her through her sister, a fan of The X-Files, and knew that Cher was interested in appearing in the show. Comedy actress Roseanne Barr
had also expressed an interest, and he wrote the part of Shaineh Berkowitz for her. Both Cher and Barr were unavailable at the time of shooting the episode and were replaced by celebrity impersonator Tracey Bell and Pattie Tierce respectively. Tabloid talk show
host Jerry Springer
appeared as himself. These casting choices went against a long-standing tradition on The X-Files of only casting actors who are not well-known faces.
Seinfeld
regular John O'Hurley
had auditioned for several roles on the show but Carter had not previously thought of him as "an X-Files actor". For the part of Dr. Pollidori, however, Carter considered him "the absolute perfect casting choice". The Great Mutato was played by Chris Owens
, unrecognizable in heavy makeup. Owens had played a younger version of The Cigarette-Smoking Man in two episodes of season four and was later cast as the recurring character of FBI Special Agent Jeffrey Spender
.
Stewart Gale, who played Izzy Berkowitz, was a "non-actor" whom Carter passed one day sitting on the back of a truck. Carter convinced Gale's father—who was initially suspicious of the director's credentials—to let Gale travel to Vancouver to take part in the episode. The characters of Izzy's friends were also played by inexperienced actors. One was a snake handler on the set of The X-Files
movie, (the filming of which overlapped that of season five), and the other worked at Carter's local coffee shop in Vancouver.
. The stormy skies in the episode were an added visual effect
, emulating the atmosphere of old Frankenstein movies. Carter also opted to use a wide-angle camera throughout the episode which forced the actors to act directly at the camera, rather than to each other. According to Carter, it also enabled him to give scenes in the episode a more surreal staging than was usual for the show.
The makeup for the character of the Great Mutato was designed and created by Special Effects supervisor Tony Lindala. Constructed from latex, and containing an articulated second mouth, it cost $40,000 and took between five and seven hours to apply. In addition to the mask, Chris Owens wore contact lenses and dentures. Lindala also created "Baby Mutato" costumes for the twin infants featured in The Jerry Springer Show
scene. He said, "[t]he little babies kept tearing their hair off, we kept gluing it back on".
, and was, according to him, his best that season. He described the main theme as "a very dark, macabre, insidious sort of nasty waltz". The episode features three Cher
songs: "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore
", "Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves" and "Walking in Memphis
", which is played at the end of the episode when the agents take the Great Mutato to a Cher concert.
" (season one
), "The Beginning
" (season six
) and in the overreaching "mytharc
" of the show that revolves around shadowy Syndicate
leaders who salvage alien spacecraft for their own technological use and create human-alien hybrids. The episode's title is a play on the subtitle that Mary Shelley gave her novel, "The Modern Prometheus", and the Frankenstein-like doctor shares his name (albeit with a slightly different spelling) with Shelley's contemporary, John William Polidori, who was present at the conception of her novel. Several lines in the episode come directly from James Whale's 1931 movie Frankenstein. According to film studies writer Linda Badley, this episode, along with season four's "Home
", foreshadows Scully's impending motherhood and her realization in following episodes "Christmas Carol
" and "Emily
" that her body has been used to create a "monstrous" human-alien hybrid.
Despite her physical absence from the episode, Cher's presence can be felt throughout. Three of her songs feature on the soundtrack in scenes featuring the Great Mutato. The character watches her 1985 movie Mask
, and derives comfort from the loving relationship between Cher's character and her son, who has a disfiguring genetic bone disorder. According to film scholar Diane Negra, Cher's persona is "the marker for transformative empowerment" in the episode. At the end of the episode, Mulder and Scully take the Great Mutato from his small town to a Cher concert, where she picks him out of the crowd to dance with her.
network. In its original broadcast, it was watched by 18.68 million households, according to the Nielsen ratings
system. It received an 11.5 rating/16 share among viewers meaning that 11.5 percent of all households in the United States, and 16 percent of all people watching television at the time, viewed the episode. The episode was nominated for seven 1998 Emmy Award
s by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, for Outstanding Writing, Outstanding Directing, Outstanding Art Direction, Outstanding Cinematography, Outstanding Single-Picture Editing, Outstanding Makeup and Outstanding Music Composition. Graeme Murray, Greg Loewen and Shirley Inget won the award for Outstanding Art Direction. Chris Carter was also a nominated for an award for Outstanding Directing by the Directors Guild of America
.
Writing for the Daily News, Eric Mink gave the episode a rating of four stars and praised it as an outstanding episode in a weak early fifth season of the show. He said that the two stars acted "flawlessly", and that Chris Owens' performance as the Great Mutato was "especially touching". He summed up his review, saying "[w]ith Shelley's classic as inspiration, Carter and company have created a classic of their own." In a review of the whole of the fifth season, Michael Sauter of Entertainment Weekly
said that "The Post-Modern Prometheus" was the "most striking" of the season's stand-alone episodes.
The X-Files (season 5)
-Episodes:Episodes marked with an asterisk are part of the series' mytharc. Episodes with a double asterisk are part of the series' Alien Mythology....
of the American science fiction television series The X-Files
The X-Files
The X-Files is an American science fiction television series and a part of The X-Files franchise, created by screenwriter Chris Carter. The program originally aired from to . The show was a hit for the Fox network, and its characters and slogans became popular culture touchstones in the 1990s...
. It was written and directed by series creator Chris Carter
Chris Carter (screenwriter)
Christopher Carl Carter is an American screenwriter, film director and producer. He is the creator of The X-Files and Millennium.- Ten Thirteen Productions :...
and aired in the United States on November 30, 1997 on the Fox
Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as Fox Network or simply Fox , is an American commercial broadcasting television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the...
network. The show centers on FBI Special Agents Fox Mulder
Fox Mulder
FBI Special Agent Fox William Mulder is a fictional character and protagonist in the American Fox television shows The X-Files and The Lone Gunmen, two science fiction shows about a government conspiracy to hide or deny the truth of Alien existence. Mulder's peers consider his theories on...
(David Duchovny
David Duchovny
David William Duchovny is an American actor, writer and director. He has won Golden Globe awards for his work as FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder on The X-Files and as Hank Moody on Californication.-Early life:...
) and Dana Scully
Dana Scully
FBI Special Agent Dana Katherine Scully, M.D. is a fictional character and protagonist on the Fox television series The X-Files , played by Gillian Anderson. She also appeared in two theatrical films based on the series...
(Gillian Anderson
Gillian Anderson
Gillian Leigh Anderson is an American actress.After beginning her career in theatre, Anderson achieved international recognition for her role as Special Agent Dana Scully on the American television series The X-Files. During the show's nine seasons, Anderson won Emmy, Golden Globe, and Screen...
) who work on cases linked to the paranormal, called X-File
X-file
On the television series The X-Files, an X-File is a fictional case that has been deemed unsolvable by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The files constitute an unassigned project outside the Bureau mainstream that is more or less concerned with unexplained phenomena. -First X-Files:The very...
s. In this "monster of the week
Villain of the week
"Villain of the week" is a term that describes the nature of one-use antagonists in episodic fiction, especially ongoing American genre-based television series...
" episode, Mulder and Scully investigate reports of a mysterious creature that has impregnated a middle-aged woman. They find that the "monster", nicknamed the Great Mutato, is the genetic creation of a Frankenstein
Victor Frankenstein
Victor Frankenstein was born in Napoli, is a Swiss fictional character and the protagonist of the 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, written by Mary Shelley...
-like doctor. The Great Mutato is first ostracized, and later accepted, by his community.
Carter's story drew heavily on Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley was a British novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus . She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley...
's Frankenstein
Frankenstein
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel about a failed experiment that produced a monster, written by Mary Shelley, with inserts of poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley started writing the story when she was eighteen, and the novel was published when she was twenty-one. The first...
and particularly on James Whale
James Whale
James Whale was an English film director, theatre director and actor. He is best remembered for his work in the horror film genre, having directed such classics as Frankenstein , The Old Dark House , The Invisible Man and Bride of Frankenstein...
's 1931 film version
Frankenstein (1931 film)
Frankenstein is a 1931 Pre-Code Horror Monster film from Universal Pictures directed by James Whale and adapted from the play by Peggy Webling which in turn is based on the novel of the same name by Mary Shelley. The film stars Colin Clive, Mae Clarke, John Boles and Boris Karloff, and features...
of the story. The script had been written specifically with singer Cher
Cher
Cher is an American recording artist, television personality, actress, director, record producer and philanthropist. Referred to as the Goddess of Pop, she has won an Academy Award, a Grammy Award, an Emmy Award, three Golden Globes and a Cannes Film Festival Award among others for her work in...
and actress Roseanne Barr
Roseanne Barr
Roseanne Cherrie Barr is an American actress, comedian, writer, television producer and director. Barr began her career in stand-up comedy at clubs before gaining fame for her role in the sitcom Roseanne. The show was a hit and lasted nine seasons, from 1988 to 1997...
in mind, but both were unavailable at the time of shooting. Talk-show host Jerry Springer
Jerry Springer
Gerald Norman "Jerry" Springer is a British-born American television presenter, best known as host of the tabloid talk show The Jerry Springer Show since its debut in 1991...
appeared as himself, and Chris Owens
Chris Owens (actor)
Christopher Bradley "Chris" Owens is a Canadian actor.Owens was born in Toronto, the son of Jeannette, a jazz singer, and Garry Owens, a jazz drummer....
(who appeared in later episodes as FBI agent Jeffrey Spender
Jeffrey Spender
FBI Special agent Jeffrey Frank Spender is a fictional character in the American Fox television series The X-Files, a science fiction show about a government conspiracy to hide or deny the truth of alien existence. Spender was in control of the X-Files office after Fox Mulder's and Dana Scully's...
) played the Great Mutato. The episode was filmed in black-and-white, with a sky backdrop created to imitate the style of old Frankenstein films. Owens wore makeup and prosthetics that took several hours to apply. The episode was nominated for seven Emmy Award
Emmy Award
An Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...
s and won one. It was praised by one critic as "a classic", and by another as the "most striking" stand-alone episode that season.
Plot
FBI Special Agent Fox MulderFox Mulder
FBI Special Agent Fox William Mulder is a fictional character and protagonist in the American Fox television shows The X-Files and The Lone Gunmen, two science fiction shows about a government conspiracy to hide or deny the truth of Alien existence. Mulder's peers consider his theories on...
(David Duchovny
David Duchovny
David William Duchovny is an American actor, writer and director. He has won Golden Globe awards for his work as FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder on The X-Files and as Hank Moody on Californication.-Early life:...
) receives a letter from Shaineh Berkowitz, a single mother who claims to have been mysteriously impregnated, while unconscious, by an unknown "presence" 18 years ago, resulting in the birth of her son, Izzy. Now she is pregnant again, following a similarly unexplained attack. She has heard about Mulder's expertise in the paranormal from The Jerry Springer Show
The Jerry Springer Show
The Jerry Springer Show is a syndicated television tabloid talk show hosted by Jerry Springer, a former politician, broadcast in the United States and other countries...
and wants him to investigate. Mulder and his X-File
X-file
On the television series The X-Files, an X-File is a fictional case that has been deemed unsolvable by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The files constitute an unassigned project outside the Bureau mainstream that is more or less concerned with unexplained phenomena. -First X-Files:The very...
s partner, Special Agent Dana Scully
Dana Scully
FBI Special Agent Dana Katherine Scully, M.D. is a fictional character and protagonist on the Fox television series The X-Files , played by Gillian Anderson. She also appeared in two theatrical films based on the series...
(Gillian Anderson
Gillian Anderson
Gillian Leigh Anderson is an American actress.After beginning her career in theatre, Anderson achieved international recognition for her role as Special Agent Dana Scully on the American television series The X-Files. During the show's nine seasons, Anderson won Emmy, Golden Globe, and Screen...
), travel to rural Indiana
Indiana
Indiana is a US state, admitted to the United States as the 19th on December 11, 1816. It is located in the Midwestern United States and Great Lakes Region. With 6,483,802 residents, the state is ranked 15th in population and 16th in population density. Indiana is ranked 38th in land area and is...
. They meet Shaineh and her son Izzy and learn that the description of the creature that attacked her, with a lumpy head and two mouths, is very similar to a comic book character invented by Izzy. His monstrous creation, called the Great Mutato, is inspired by a mysterious creature that has been seen by many of the locals. Izzy and his friends take the agents to a wooded area where they see the Great Mutato from a distance.
They meet an old man who angrily tells them that there are no monsters and sends them to see his son, a genetic scientist named Francis Pollidori. Dr. Pollidori shows them his experiments on Drosophila
Drosophila
Drosophila is a genus of small flies, belonging to the family Drosophilidae, whose members are often called "fruit flies" or more appropriately pomace flies, vinegar flies, or wine flies, a reference to the characteristic of many species to linger around overripe or rotting fruit...
which include a fly with legs growing out of its mouth. He tells the agents that the same kind of experiment could, in theory, be performed on humans. Afterward, Mulder tells Scully that he believes that Dr. Pollidori has created the Great Mutato, acting as a modern-day Victor Frankenstein
Victor Frankenstein
Victor Frankenstein was born in Napoli, is a Swiss fictional character and the protagonist of the 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, written by Mary Shelley...
.
Later, Dr. Pollidori's wife Elizabeth becomes unconscious and is attacked in the same manner as Shaineh. At the crime scene, Mulder and Scully find a chemical residue from an agricultural agent used to anesthetize animals, that leads them to suspect Old Man Pollidori, who is a farmer. Dr. Pollidori comes to his father's house and angrily confronts him. Later, the Great Mutato, who lives with Pollidori Sr., finds his dead body and tearfully buries him in a barn.
Mulder and Scully go looking for Pollidori Sr. and find a shallow grave, as well as photographs of the man with the Great Mutato. Meanwhile, Dr. Pollidori leads an angry mob of townspeople to his father's house, demanding that Mulder and Scully turn the "murderer" over to them. The agents find the Great Mutato hiding in the basement as the crowd gathers upstairs. Someone accidentally sets the barn alight and in the ensuing confusion, the mob realize that the agents are protecting the monster in the basement. The Great Mutato speaks to the crowd and explains that he was created 25 years before, the result of a genetic experiment by Dr. Pollidori. Unknown to his son, Pollidori Sr. rescued Mutato and cared for him, but was unable to provide a friend or mate for the boy. The old man attempted to emulate his scientist son's experiments, attempting to create hybrids from his farm animals. Mutato asks Dr. Pollidori to create a female companion for him, but the scientist says that he cannot—that Mutato was a mistake. The townspeople realize that Mutato is not a monster after all and Dr. Pollidori is arrested for the murder of his father.
Mulder feels that it is unjust for Mutato not to get a mate and so he demands to see the writer. He and Scully take matters into their own hands and take Mutato, along with the townspeople, to a Cher
Cher
Cher is an American recording artist, television personality, actress, director, record producer and philanthropist. Referred to as the Goddess of Pop, she has won an Academy Award, a Grammy Award, an Emmy Award, three Golden Globes and a Cannes Film Festival Award among others for her work in...
concert.
Conception
Series creator Chris CarterChris Carter (screenwriter)
Christopher Carl Carter is an American screenwriter, film director and producer. He is the creator of The X-Files and Millennium.- Ten Thirteen Productions :...
had long wanted to write a Frankenstein
Frankenstein
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel about a failed experiment that produced a monster, written by Mary Shelley, with inserts of poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley started writing the story when she was eighteen, and the novel was published when she was twenty-one. The first...
-inspired episode, but had found it difficult to reconcile Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley was a British novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus . She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley...
's "unbelievable" tale with the stories being told on the show. To achieve his vision, he made the conscious choice to write a script that blurred the real world with the X-Files reality and that had a distinct fantasy element. In particular, he wanted to evoke James Whale
James Whale
James Whale was an English film director, theatre director and actor. He is best remembered for his work in the horror film genre, having directed such classics as Frankenstein , The Old Dark House , The Invisible Man and Bride of Frankenstein...
's 1931 film version
Frankenstein (1931 film)
Frankenstein is a 1931 Pre-Code Horror Monster film from Universal Pictures directed by James Whale and adapted from the play by Peggy Webling which in turn is based on the novel of the same name by Mary Shelley. The film stars Colin Clive, Mae Clarke, John Boles and Boris Karloff, and features...
of Frankenstein. He said, "I wanted to tell a story as moving to me as the Frankenstein story had always been." The idea for the genetic engineering story developed via The X-Files science advisor, Anne Simon. Carter visited a friend of Simon, a scientist at Indiana University in Bloomington
Bloomington, Indiana
Bloomington is a city in and the county seat of Monroe County in the southern region of the U.S. state of Indiana. The population was 80,405 at the 2010 census....
, who had been able to genetically manipulate flies so that they grew legs from their eyes. After Carter had come up with the character of the Great Mutato, he discovered that there was a character on the comedy animation show The Simpsons
The Simpsons
The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...
with the same name (though pronounced differently). He contacted The Simpsons creator Matt Groening
Matt Groening
Matthew Abram "Matt" Groening is an American cartoonist, screenwriter, and producer. He is the creator of the comic strip Life in Hell as well as two successful television series, The Simpsons and Futurama....
who gave Carter permission to use the name. Like two-thirds of the episodes of the series, "The Post-Modern Prometheus" was a "monster of the week
Villain of the week
"Villain of the week" is a term that describes the nature of one-use antagonists in episodic fiction, especially ongoing American genre-based television series...
" episode, standing separately from the mythology of The X-Files
Mythology of The X-Files
The mythology of The X-Files, sometimes referred to as its mytharc by the show's staff and fans, follows the quest of FBI Special Agents Fox Mulder , a believer in supernatural phenomena, and Dana Scully , his skeptical partner. Their boss, FBI Assistant Director Walter Skinner was also often...
.
Casting
After spending a summer listening to pop singer CherCher
Cher is an American recording artist, television personality, actress, director, record producer and philanthropist. Referred to as the Goddess of Pop, she has won an Academy Award, a Grammy Award, an Emmy Award, three Golden Globes and a Cannes Film Festival Award among others for her work in...
's music, Carter became "fixated" on her songs and wrote "The Post-Modern Prometheus" specifically for her. He knew her through her sister, a fan of The X-Files, and knew that Cher was interested in appearing in the show. Comedy actress Roseanne Barr
Roseanne Barr
Roseanne Cherrie Barr is an American actress, comedian, writer, television producer and director. Barr began her career in stand-up comedy at clubs before gaining fame for her role in the sitcom Roseanne. The show was a hit and lasted nine seasons, from 1988 to 1997...
had also expressed an interest, and he wrote the part of Shaineh Berkowitz for her. Both Cher and Barr were unavailable at the time of shooting the episode and were replaced by celebrity impersonator Tracey Bell and Pattie Tierce respectively. Tabloid talk show
Tabloid talk show
Tabloid talk shows are a genre of American television programming talk shows that achieved peak viewership during the late 20th century. Airing mostly during the day and distributed mostly through broadcast syndication, this genre originated with The Phil Donahue Show and was popularized by the...
host Jerry Springer
Jerry Springer
Gerald Norman "Jerry" Springer is a British-born American television presenter, best known as host of the tabloid talk show The Jerry Springer Show since its debut in 1991...
appeared as himself. These casting choices went against a long-standing tradition on The X-Files of only casting actors who are not well-known faces.
Seinfeld
Seinfeld
Seinfeld is an American television sitcom that originally aired on NBC from July 5, 1989, to May 14, 1998, lasting nine seasons, and is now in syndication. It was created by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, the latter starring as a fictionalized version of himself...
regular John O'Hurley
John O'Hurley
John George O'Hurley is an American actor, voice actor, and television personality. He is known for the role of J. Peterman on the NBC sitcom Seinfeld and was the host of the game show Family Feud from 2006 to 2010.-Early life:...
had auditioned for several roles on the show but Carter had not previously thought of him as "an X-Files actor". For the part of Dr. Pollidori, however, Carter considered him "the absolute perfect casting choice". The Great Mutato was played by Chris Owens
Chris Owens (actor)
Christopher Bradley "Chris" Owens is a Canadian actor.Owens was born in Toronto, the son of Jeannette, a jazz singer, and Garry Owens, a jazz drummer....
, unrecognizable in heavy makeup. Owens had played a younger version of The Cigarette-Smoking Man in two episodes of season four and was later cast as the recurring character of FBI Special Agent Jeffrey Spender
Jeffrey Spender
FBI Special agent Jeffrey Frank Spender is a fictional character in the American Fox television series The X-Files, a science fiction show about a government conspiracy to hide or deny the truth of alien existence. Spender was in control of the X-Files office after Fox Mulder's and Dana Scully's...
.
Stewart Gale, who played Izzy Berkowitz, was a "non-actor" whom Carter passed one day sitting on the back of a truck. Carter convinced Gale's father—who was initially suspicious of the director's credentials—to let Gale travel to Vancouver to take part in the episode. The characters of Izzy's friends were also played by inexperienced actors. One was a snake handler on the set of The X-Files
The X-Files (film)
The X-Files is a 1998 American science fiction-thriller film written by Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz, and directed by Rob Bowman. It is the first feature film based on The X-Files series created by Carter that revolves around a fictional FBI paranormal investigation unit called the X-Files...
movie, (the filming of which overlapped that of season five), and the other worked at Carter's local coffee shop in Vancouver.
Filming
"The Post-Modern Prometheus", like all the episodes of the show's first five seasons, was filmed in Vancouver. Despite being the series creator, and one of the main writers for the show, this was only the third episode that Carter directed for The X-Files. His decision to film the episode in black-and-white—in homage to James Whale—brought more challenges than he expected. The director of photography, Joel Ransom, had to spend longer than usual lighting each scene because of the grayscaleGrayscale
In photography and computing, a grayscale or greyscale digital image is an image in which the value of each pixel is a single sample, that is, it carries only intensity information...
. The stormy skies in the episode were an added visual effect
Visual effects
Visual effects are the various processes by which imagery is created and/or manipulated outside the context of a live action shoot. Visual effects involve the integration of live-action footage and generated imagery to create environments which look realistic, but would be dangerous, costly, or...
, emulating the atmosphere of old Frankenstein movies. Carter also opted to use a wide-angle camera throughout the episode which forced the actors to act directly at the camera, rather than to each other. According to Carter, it also enabled him to give scenes in the episode a more surreal staging than was usual for the show.
The makeup for the character of the Great Mutato was designed and created by Special Effects supervisor Tony Lindala. Constructed from latex, and containing an articulated second mouth, it cost $40,000 and took between five and seven hours to apply. In addition to the mask, Chris Owens wore contact lenses and dentures. Lindala also created "Baby Mutato" costumes for the twin infants featured in The Jerry Springer Show
The Jerry Springer Show
The Jerry Springer Show is a syndicated television tabloid talk show hosted by Jerry Springer, a former politician, broadcast in the United States and other countries...
scene. He said, "[t]he little babies kept tearing their hair off, we kept gluing it back on".
Music
The score was devised by series composer Mark SnowMark Snow
Mark Snow is an American composer for film and television.Born in New York, he grew up in Brooklyn, graduating from the High School of Music and Art and, afterwards, the Juilliard School of Music...
, and was, according to him, his best that season. He described the main theme as "a very dark, macabre, insidious sort of nasty waltz". The episode features three Cher
Cher
Cher is an American recording artist, television personality, actress, director, record producer and philanthropist. Referred to as the Goddess of Pop, she has won an Academy Award, a Grammy Award, an Emmy Award, three Golden Globes and a Cannes Film Festival Award among others for her work in...
songs: "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore
The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore
"The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine " is the name of a song written by Bob Crewe and Bob Gaudio. It was originally released as a single by Frankie Valli in 1965 on the Smash label and has been recorded by numerous artists since, including The Walker Brothers, Cher, and Keane.- Frankie Valli original :The...
", "Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves" and "Walking in Memphis
Walking in Memphis
-Cher version:"Walking in Memphis" is the first European single by American singer-actress Cher from her twenty-second studio album, It's a Man's World. It was released in the end of 1995 by WEA. The song was performed in some shows in Europe, and in her tours since the Do You Believe? Tour.-Song...
", which is played at the end of the episode when the agents take the Great Mutato to a Cher concert.
Themes and cultural references
"The Post-Modern Prometheus" is the most obvious reference to Frankenstein made by the series, although traces of the story are seen elsewhere, in "Young at HeartYoung at Heart (The X-Files)
"Young at Heart" is the sixteenth episode of the first season of the American science fiction television series The X-Files. It premiered on the Fox network on February 11, 1994. It was written by Scott Kaufer and series creator Chris Carter, and directed by Michael Lange. The episode featured...
" (season one
The X-Files (season 1)
The first season of the science fiction television series The X-Files commenced airing on the Fox network in the United States on September 10, 1993 and concluded on the same channel on May 13, 1994 after airing all 24 episodes....
), "The Beginning
The Beginning (The X-Files)
"The Beginning" is the first episode of the sixth season of the science fiction television series The X-Files. "The Beginning", which was the first episode of the series to be filmed in Los Angeles, features an alien loose in the Phoenix, Arizona area....
" (season six
The X-Files (season 6)
The sixth season of the science fiction television series The X-Files commenced airing on the Fox Broadcasting Network in the United States on November 8, 1998, concluding on the same channel on May 16, 1999, and contained 22 episodes. The series was developed by Chris Carter, who also serves as...
) and in the overreaching "mytharc
Mythology of The X-Files
The mythology of The X-Files, sometimes referred to as its mytharc by the show's staff and fans, follows the quest of FBI Special Agents Fox Mulder , a believer in supernatural phenomena, and Dana Scully , his skeptical partner. Their boss, FBI Assistant Director Walter Skinner was also often...
" of the show that revolves around shadowy Syndicate
Syndicate (The X-Files)
The Syndicate is a fictional "shadow government" group featured in The X-Files television show and feature film created by Chris Carter. They were also known as The Elders, The Consortium, and The Group...
leaders who salvage alien spacecraft for their own technological use and create human-alien hybrids. The episode's title is a play on the subtitle that Mary Shelley gave her novel, "The Modern Prometheus", and the Frankenstein-like doctor shares his name (albeit with a slightly different spelling) with Shelley's contemporary, John William Polidori, who was present at the conception of her novel. Several lines in the episode come directly from James Whale's 1931 movie Frankenstein. According to film studies writer Linda Badley, this episode, along with season four's "Home
Home (The X-Files)
"Home" is the 75th episode and the second episode of the fourth season of the science fiction television series The X-Files. The episode first aired in the United States and Canada on October 11, 1996 on the FOX Network, and subsequently aired in the United Kingdom...
", foreshadows Scully's impending motherhood and her realization in following episodes "Christmas Carol
Christmas Carol (The X-Files)
"Christmas Carol" is the sixth episode of the fifth season of American science fiction television series The X-Files. It was written by Vince Gilligan, John Shiban and Frank Spotnitz, and directed by Peter Markle. It aired in the United States on December 7, 1997 on the Fox network...
" and "Emily
Emily (The X-Files)
"Emily" is a 1997 episode of The X-Files television series. It was the seventh episode broadcast in the show's fifth season. "Emily" continues the storyline start in the episode "Christmas Carol" where Scully discovers that she has a daughter brought to life after her abduction.- Plot :In a...
" that her body has been used to create a "monstrous" human-alien hybrid.
Despite her physical absence from the episode, Cher's presence can be felt throughout. Three of her songs feature on the soundtrack in scenes featuring the Great Mutato. The character watches her 1985 movie Mask
Mask (film)
Mask is a 1985 American biographical drama film directed by Peter Bogdanovich, starring Cher, Sam Elliott, and Eric Stoltz. Dennis Burkley and Laura Dern are featured in supporting roles. Cher received the 1985 Cannes Film Festival award for Best Actress....
, and derives comfort from the loving relationship between Cher's character and her son, who has a disfiguring genetic bone disorder. According to film scholar Diane Negra, Cher's persona is "the marker for transformative empowerment" in the episode. At the end of the episode, Mulder and Scully take the Great Mutato from his small town to a Cher concert, where she picks him out of the crowd to dance with her.
Broadcast and reception
"The Post-Modern Prometheus" was first broadcast in the United States on November 30, 1997, on the FoxFox Broadcasting Company
Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as Fox Network or simply Fox , is an American commercial broadcasting television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the...
network. In its original broadcast, it was watched by 18.68 million households, according to the Nielsen ratings
Nielsen Ratings
Nielsen ratings are the audience measurement systems developed by Nielsen Media Research, in an effort to determine the audience size and composition of television programming in the United States...
system. It received an 11.5 rating/16 share among viewers meaning that 11.5 percent of all households in the United States, and 16 percent of all people watching television at the time, viewed the episode. The episode was nominated for seven 1998 Emmy Award
Emmy Award
An Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...
s by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, for Outstanding Writing, Outstanding Directing, Outstanding Art Direction, Outstanding Cinematography, Outstanding Single-Picture Editing, Outstanding Makeup and Outstanding Music Composition. Graeme Murray, Greg Loewen and Shirley Inget won the award for Outstanding Art Direction. Chris Carter was also a nominated for an award for Outstanding Directing by the Directors Guild of America
Directors Guild of America
Directors Guild of America is an entertainment labor union which represents the interests of film and television directors in the United States motion picture industry...
.
Writing for the Daily News, Eric Mink gave the episode a rating of four stars and praised it as an outstanding episode in a weak early fifth season of the show. He said that the two stars acted "flawlessly", and that Chris Owens' performance as the Great Mutato was "especially touching". He summed up his review, saying "[w]ith Shelley's classic as inspiration, Carter and company have created a classic of their own." In a review of the whole of the fifth season, Michael Sauter of Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
said that "The Post-Modern Prometheus" was the "most striking" of the season's stand-alone episodes.