She is at once, in this scene, both victim and hero. The opening scene of the video is the hearing itself, encapsulating in a short sequence the specific conflict central to my argument: Scully is finally given a forum to speak out, heroically confronting her conspirators, but in the three drops of blood that land on the desk and her subsequent fainting, her victimisation is made palpable. Key scenes from this episode bookend the video essay. This culminates in a formal hearing at which she is forced to present proof of her claims and of Mulder’s whereabouts. One particularly pivotal episode is ‘Redux’ (S5E1) in which someone fakes Mulder’s suicide, and Scully’s claims about the government conspiracy come to a head. There are several key episodes upon which this plot hinges.
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(Badley 2000: 70) In other words, the series is invested in calling out Scully’s victimisation and empowering her to fight back for the wrongs committed against her individually. The X-Files’ agenda is unlike many other feminist texts in that, ‘rather than challenge patriarchy directly or join forces with women activists, Scully channels her anger/ambition into fitting into the system’. The true intervention made by the series is in characterising Scully as tirelessly working to push back against the wrongdoings of the conspirators. (Manion 2015) But this video essay complicates this claim. On the surface, this conspiracy adheres to the claim frequently made about the series, that it is intent to mark Scully as a vulnerable, helpless victim, whose body becomes the assumed property of the state. (S2E6 ‘Ascension’) As a result, she is both rendered infertile and develops cancer, while those responsible work to destroy the evidence.
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The video essay format is crucial for making such an argument: this specific tension can often be located in the composition of the shot, as the smaller-framed Scully is framed against a room full of imposing male figures, or the juxtaposition of sound and image affirm her empowerment.Ĭentral to the multi-season narrative of The X-Files is the plot by an unnamed organisation to abduct Scully and implant alien DNA into her as part of a covert government experiment. As Lindsay Steenberg (2013: 57) points out, postfeminist criminal investigators like Scully ‘do not shift between the roles of investigators and investigated,’ rather, ‘they occupy both of these roles simultaneously.’ To demonstrate this tension, the video essay is structured around the numerous ways Scully is targeted and victimised, while simultaneously working to reverse this victimization.
This video essay argues that this conflict is not one to be reconciled, but rather one that can be observed at play throughout the show’s 11-season run and as operating within Scully’s character. (McHugh 2018: 537) This debate presents conflicting perspectives on who Scully is as a potential figure of female empowerment. For several key scholars, however, Scully’s character perpetuates a strategy frequently deployed with female detectives, in which they are repeatedly rendered vulnerable, juxtaposed ‘against the ubiquitous female victims’ (Manion 2015), and in which their ‘agency is offset by ‘archaic’ representation of victimized femininity’. In the former, she has frequently been hailed a feminist hero and as representing a shift in the way female law enforcement officers (LEOs) are conceptualised in US network television towards increased strength, empowerment and agency. Since the initial broadcast of The X-Files in 1993, a debate around the role of the female protagonist, FBI Special Agent Dana Scully, has circulated in both popular and scholarly circles. Call for Papers: Dead Women & Gendered Death in Visual Culture.Akwugo Emejulu on George Floyd Protests.Polish #strajkkobiet Tells the Government to ‘Fuck Off’.The Sarah Everard Clapham Common Vigil: London,.Global Sisterhood: Focus on Afghan Women.The Hate Speech Directed at Amber Heard Must Unite Women Against Resistance to Our Voices.Heard/Depp: A Movement Built on Absence & What I’m Not Saying.To Take My/Our Past and Future Selves Back: Woman, Life, Freedom.Focus Issue Four: New Materialist Practice (Summer 2019).Focus Issue Five: Feminist Pedagogies (Winter 2020).Focus Issue Six: COVID-19 Crisis-Connection-Culture (Autumn 2020).
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