How the State Failed Dana Scully: A Reflection on The X Files on its 30 Year Anniversary
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This month marks thirty years since Special Agent Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) first walked into the windowless basement of the FBI where Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) reigned over strange, unsolved cases known as The X Files.
When it first aired in 1993, The X Files perfectly encapsulated the sceptical mood that encircled end of history era America. In the years following the Cold War, the political climate - both within the series and outside of it - found no obvious international threat, and began to look upward instead. Relegated to the underbelly of the FBI, The X Files cared more for asking the right questions than finding the right answers in its quest for a philosophical and actualised “truth”. It is from this sidelined view that, over the course of the series, Mulder and Scully become privy to the internal failings and conspiracies of the state institutions they serve.
The X Files portrays its two main characters with equal footing: the measured and rational Scully balances the intuitive believer Mulder. In the FBI basement where they work, Scully and Mulder’s roles subvert gender norms. Scully’s presence in a male-dominated space even created a wider cultural shift: the character spawned the phenomenon known as the ‘Scully effect’ attributing a marked increase in women enrolling in STEM subjects and law enforcement positions to her role in the show. One 2018 study found that nearly two thirds of women who work in STEM view Scully as their role model.
As a scientist, Scully follows the facts only as she understands them, never choosing rationality over the evidence in front of her. In the pilot episode she tells Mulder, “What I find fantastic is any notion that there are answers beyond the realm of science. The answers are there. You just have to know where to look.” Seven years later, in the season 7 finale Scully remains dutifully taciturn. When asked directly if she has seen an alien she admits only “I have seen things that I cannot explain. I have observed phenomena that I cannot deny.”
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“It is not a coincidence that Scully is the first character we see experience an alien abduction. Throughout the series, we see the concept of abduction used as a dual metaphor for the state invasion of the individual body as well as the great ‘unknown’.”
However, outside the isocracy of her partnerships with Mulder and with science, we see Scully face adversity in being a gender minority in the FBI. In an essay exploring Scully as a feminist hero, Melanie Robson points to scholar Linsay Steenburg’s writings on postfeminist criminal investigators. Here Steenberg asserts that Scully “[does not] shift between the roles of investigators and investigated [but rather occupies] both roles simultaneously”.
We see this as Scully risks higher stakes than her male co-workers in her day-to-day work. Multiple times throughout the series Scully becomes a victim of assault, home invasion and abduction by the very people she is investigating. Beyond this, it is Scully who is endangered (either physically or professionally) by investigative shortcuts taken by Mulder and the other male agents around her, despite her being a stickler for following procedure correctly. This dual role of victimised and investigator also permeates into those who are close to Scully in her personal life; it is due this precarious status that Scully’s sister Melissa is mistakenly killed by a rogue agent.
Robson goes on to talk about Scully how utilises her moral and rational strength rather than physical strength to defend herself. This need to protect herself extends to Scully’s personal brand of feminism which, in early seasons, is mostly concerned with self-preservation. One key scholar, Linda Badley explains how “rather than challenge patriarchy directly or join forces with women activists, Scully channels her anger/ambition into fitting into the system.”
However, as a viewer, we can see clearly how this limited feminism fails Scully. She does not allow herself to be emotional and she is not afforded time to develop relationships outside of work or family. Scully is routinely pitted competitively against other women in the series for Mulder’s attention. She has no sex life, and, when we do see her engage in flirtation, it affects how seriously she is taken professionally, often for comic effect. Scully’s commitment to being saved by rationality, science and logic is undermined consistently in a series where the wildest conspiracy theories are almost always proved true. Scully’s struggles clearly portray that no matter how hard one works within a faulty system, the system itself cannot be beaten.
It is not a coincidence, then, that Scully is the first character we see experience an alien abduction. Throughout the series, we see the concept of abduction used as a dual metaphor for the state invasion of the individual body as well as the great ‘unknown’. For Scully’s abduction, we see her explicitly named as a target by members of The Syndicate, the shadowy internal organisation who assigned her to The X Files in the first place.
Following her abduction, Scully is missing for a month - two episodes - before returning in a critical medical condition with no memory of what has happened to her. During her abduction, the audience has been privy to Scully being experimented on and, later, Scully discovers a computer chip has been inserted in the back of her neck and DNA added to her bloodstream. However, despite these clues, the exact medical tests that were conducted during her abduction are never fully revealed.
The X Files presents the experience of the abductee as an issue of body autonomy. The side effects of these experiments lead to infertility and a terminal cancer diagnosis. In the aftermath of Scully’s cancer diagnosis, we see her engage with collective womanhood for the first time. As Scully seeks truth, she finds that her abduction experience is one shared by multiple women. Choosing to follow the advice of a self-organised abductee support group becomes an act of empowerment for Scully and this choice is rewarded in her story arc. Through joining the women who have shared her trauma, Scully regains her memories, sources medical treatment for herself and, despite apparently being rendered infertile by the experiences, bears two children. It is through this action of engagement that we witness Scully’s faith become realised as her desire of ‘I want to believe’ moves to a decisive ‘I will believe’.
Following the closure of The X Files department, Scully’s interactions with state institutions shifted massively. She gives evidence against The Syndicate in a formal hearing. During this presentation, her nose starts to bleed, and she collapses due to complications with her cancer treatment. This once again presents how Scully’s rationality and hard graft is no match against institutional violence, yet it shows Scully in her truest light; that despite her failing health, she has carefully gathered and calculated evidence in a resistant act to find the truth she now believes in.
This change in Scully trickles down into her day-to-day interactions with the woman around her. Her scepticism is less barbed. She becomes a source of comfort for the most vulnerable people around her, even the abductee mother of a Syndicate member. Whilst the state institutions Scully lives and works in fail her, by the end of the series, this is no longer where she places her trust. Having accepted, more readily than Mulder, that answers may never come, Scully is able to funnel her belief into herself.
Words: Hannah Gibson