Themes
"Gender Bender" has been interpreted as representing contemporary sexual anxieties in a figurative manner, conflating seduction with alien abduction. M. Keith Booker has described the Kindred's shapeshifting as representative of contemporary sexual anxieties caused by the changing gender roles of the decade, coupled with "a basic fear of sexual contact". Antonio Ballesteros González has stated that the episode is representative of the series' exploration of both seduction and abduction, noting that "both are seen as part of sexual aggression", further describing the episode's villain as representing "the fear of sex and reproduction". The lethal nature of the Kindred's touch has been cited as representing the potency of their sexual repression; and has been placed within a science-fiction tradition that depicts aliens or outsiders with a "potent" touch, alongside similar depictions in the films Communion and E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, and the novel The Puppet Masters.
Read more about this topic: Gender Bender (The X-Files)
Famous quotes containing the word themes:
“In economics, we borrowed from the Bourbons; in foreign policy, we drew on themes fashioned by the nomad warriors of the Eurasian steppes. In spiritual matters, we emulated the braying intolerance of our archenemies, the Shi’ite fundamentalists.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“I suppose you think that persons who are as old as your father and myself are always thinking about very grave things, but I know that we are meditating the same old themes that we did when we were ten years old, only we go more gravely about it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)