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CASEFILE 19975X06:
THE POST MODERN PROMETHEUS KISS CONSPIRACY
PREFACE
This is possibly the most well-known topic covered in my “Looking Back” section, but I felt it was necessary to discuss, due to the absolute grip it had on the shipper community’s webpages. Especially because it seems that a lot of people did not seem to question its origin back then. To be cheesy for a second…I think we all want to believe this image is real. It isn’t, though.
HISTORY
Referred to as a ‘fandom myth’1, the Post Modern Prometheus kiss scene situation started with the distribution of a screen capture of “alternative scene” in which Mulder and Scully share an unscripted kiss at the end of the Season 5 episode Post Modern Prometheus.
We know nothing about the clear origin of this image, i.e the specific website it originated from and such (and believe me, I’ve looked). Cross that out! I have found the origin. Two fairly widely-circulated shipper-sites, The Shipper Haven and The Echo Cavern both credit the user ‘FramePhantom’ as the creator of the kiss image, as well as a lesser-known site, ShipperDome.
To my knowledge, it seems that FramePhantom’s original page is not online anymore. Or, this image could have possibly only been posted through the XF newsgroup or similar chat site, which would explain the lack of a website in these people’s credits. As seen in the quotes section, it seems that the knowledge that the image was faked degraded over time, and slowly started to become canon in the world of deleted scenes, with many users referring to it as something regarded as common knowledge.
“pmpkiss.jpg - *SHIPPY ALERT* B/W manipulated episode pic (Post-Modern Prometheus), Mulder and Scully dancing, kissing…” - Little Slice of 'Shipperdom
“I think this is a manipulated pic from Post-Modern Prometheus. But it does look real doesn't it??” - Mulder and Scully, will they ever be an item?
“Pmpkiss.jpg Visual Fiction. A--rather well--manipulated pic of Mulder and Scully during the dance scene. What /should/ have happened!” - The Hanger
“There is also a pic of Mulder and Scully kissing on the lips that was cut out of Post Modern Prometheus.” - Link Now Defunct
“Did you know there was a scene at the end where they kissed, but they cut it out!? One more in the book against CC!!! Let's get him!! No, wait, he created the darn show, didn't he?” - A Sensless Shipper Site
“a pic of Mulder and Scully dancing in Post-Modern Prometheus (not the kissing one!)” - The X-Files Scavenger Hunt
It has raised a certain Mandela effect with many fans, who claim they have in fact seen a clear video of the kiss, that Fox is deleting it off Youtube when it’s uploaded, that they have a VHS tape of it somewhere in their attic, that their friend does 2. This myth has been stirred up again and again since the 25 odd years or so since its debut. Whether it be a falsely animated gif gaining traction on a message board, or me, this year, going onto my favorite X-Files discord and saying “wow this whole thing about a photoshopped kiss is crazy” and promptly awakening an age old fandom discourse. The cycle starts anew.
Though, I cannot go without mentioning the main reason people still think the image is real: Frank Spotnitz’s 2014 blog post in which he claims the following when asked about the PMP kiss:
“...the kiss was not scripted, but David and Gillian wanted to do a take with a kiss, so it was filmed.” 3
Despite Spotnitz’s claims, this image is completely fake. It was made with photoshop, or whatever photo-editing software was most common on computers in 1997-ish. As mentioned before, in its early use, it was credited to the user ‘FramePhantom’, and it was referred to with hypothetical terms, i.e ‘this is what should have happened’, ‘this is what we wanted to see’, as these people were aware of it’s manip nature. It’s fake! This is a disappointing conclusion but unfortunately it is true. (I mean…just look a little closer at the image.) That being said, I’d like to expand a bit more on the complete situation, with Spotnitz’s claims in mind.
MY THOUGHTS:
What I believe to be the most likely explanation is that Frank Spotniz, after experiencing years of David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson’s artistic choices (See: proposing various unscripted kisses along the years, as seen in the outtakes for Memento Mori4 and Fight the Future5, and likely some others we don’t know about and probably won’t till ever…or if GA or DD decides to write a tell-all memoir…), his memory was overcompensating, and simply assumed, well, this person asking me about this kiss seems pretty sure of themself…that probably happened. But…I also think it is extremely possible that there was an unscripted kiss on set that day, but there just isn’t photographic or videographic evidence of it accessible to the public. Honestly, that is the most probable answer, in my opinion. This especially makes sense when you remember their dancing at the end of the episode wasn’t scripted either, so maybe they decided to take it a step further.
1. [The Post Modern Prometheus Kiss Scene]↩
2. [Hi. Let’s Talk Deleted Scenes!]↩
2. [The Post-Modern Kiss.]↩
1. [Memento Mori Deleted Kiss]↩
2. [Fight the Future Deleted Kiss]↩