Cringe Quarantine

CC is often credited as being a pioneer in his commitment not to sexualize Scully. Everyone (CC, 1013, media, fans) frequently claims the decision not to emphasize Scully’s sex appeal was rare for TV at the time. This is kind of true, if maybe a little overstated.

By the time Never Again aired, in 1997, primetime TV also had Captain Janeway, Buffy Summers, Murphy Brown, Elaine Benes, Anita Van Buren. These are not “de-sexualized” characters necessarily, but also not at all accurately described as oversexualized stereotypes. Some of those characters predated Scully.  It was a less common choice to deemphasize a female character’s sex appeal on TV, but it’s also not really fair to say it was all Baywatch babe caricatures all the time. I think we can say this was something that was actively changing in the 1990s that would continue to evolve in the next decades. I do think it’s worth observing that some writers of the time had figured out how to write complicated female characters … who also sometimes had sex.

One quibble I have with the “1013 was special because they didn’t sexualize Scully” claim is that … they did sexualize Scully. All the time? No. But sometimes? Absolutely. 

Some of this I just don’t really think is debatable. If this had been a series starring DD and Nicholas Lea, would Krycek nervously take off his clothes in the pilot to show Mulder his bug bites? Well, of course we would have written outstanding horny fic about it if he had, but come on: NO WAY. (Because 1993, heteronormativity, etc.) As it was, they knew they were sexualizing the female lead a little and exploiting both leads’ sexual chemistry as a tease to get audiences interested in their pilot. Come on. They knew. This isn’t rocket science. They had a little show on Fox, and they were trying to get people to watch. 

(There was an interview years ago when GA said something to this effect, too. Something like: the bumps could have been anywhere on my body, but they had to be a place I had to take off my clothes.)

As many have pointed out over the years, Scully was also semi-regularly a focus of male sexual fantasy. Sometimes this was pathological and violent (see: Donnie Pfaster, twice). Other times, this was benign and played for gentle laughs (see: Frohike, Pendrell). Sometimes, the fantasy was quite vividly enacted on screen (see: Philip Padgett, Guy Mann). Please note that I’m not saying this should or shouldn’t have happened, only that it did. 

That said, I think Carter did take pains to avoid sexualizing Scully as an overall principle, and I think this was effective. He emphasized her intellect and her professional motives. We love Scully for this. It’s part of what makes the character who she is. Credit where credit is due.

Unfortunately, he did seem to believe that Scully being seen as a serious character meant not having sex at all. I don’t want to erase asexuality, and I sometimes hear people saying they recognize that in Scully. If this works as representation for people, it’s positive. But for me, I just don’t see Scully written as ace. I think she was being written, by men, as embodying an old trope about women not having sex or being too overtly sexy to be seen as trustworthy or taken seriously (see: Madonna-whore complex).

Now mind you, Mulder’s sexuality was a problem for the show, too. For sure. As with Scully, they wanted him devoted to the quest / platonic partnership only, which means he couldn’t really have an outside romance as a competing motivation for him.  I’d argue this did eventually paint the writers into a MSR corner, because both characters’ energy and emotions were really only focused towards one another as an extension of their quest. But they did let Mulder have porn, lots of suggestive talk, sexually aggressive exes (see: Phoebe, Diana), several ambiguous possible sexual encounters (see: Marita, Diana), and one unambiguous one night stand (see: Kristen). 

Scully does eventually get an ex who directly comes on to her—and notice who gave him to her. She also gets a vibrator in canon—also a female writer—but that takes decades, people, decades. Mulder’s been carrying on with that porn forever by that point.

I think this relates to my cynical idea that Carter’s insistence on avoiding sexualizing Scully is really about his protection of Mulder as his hero / protagonist, not Scully herself. More on that later.

One of my least favorite pieces of “Chris Carter deemphasized Scully’s sexuality” evidence is Ye Olde Story About The Busty Baywatch Network Scully. If you look at any number of interviews with Carter dating back to, say, 1994-1998, he often tells the same story about the network wanting to hire a leggy busty actress to play Scully and him insisting on Plain Jane Gillian Anderson instead. Often Pamela Anderson, the lead actress of Baywatch, is specifically mentioned in the story, or sometimes it’s just a “Baywatch type” actress. 

The repetition of this story is kind of gross, for two big reasons. Reason #1 is that it frames Carter as a hero for ... what? Rejecting the network’s toxic beauty standards to hire absolutely stunning GA, who, yes, is short, but isn’t exactly a radical rethinking of what’s attractive? I understand that Gillian Anderson isn’t “a Baywatch type,” but it’s not like she wasn’t a woman considered sexually appealing by MANY people. Including, incidentally, Chris Carter, who outright admitted Scully was his type. 

It is absolutely good we got GA. No one questions that. But in my opinion Carter got way too many kudos for choosing this supposedly non-sexy actress for Scully. Because honestly. “non-sexy GA” can’t even be said with a straight face. Even DD eventually started saying in 1996 that this story was weird and overdone, although he said it in a kind of an awful way: “That’s overblown. You look at Gillian, and she’s a beautiful woman. And how often do you see Scully in a bathing suit? Gillian’s not 6 feet tall and doesn’t have what’s-her-face’s tits, but she’s got as nice a face as any of them.”

Reason #2 is that Carter’s story seems to remind GA at every turn in those early years that she wasn’t hot enough for success if it weren’t for him insisting on her. This has an especially icky residue given her struggles over body image and equitable salary. (If you don’t think it had the potential to have that effect, just take a gander at DD’s quote when he was probably sincerely trying to be supportive above, and try to get into the toxic 1990s mindset of how people talked about women’s bodies.) 

Finally, one more complication regarding the sexualization of Scully: jealousy. I’d argue the jealousy trope was a kind of sexualization. The show has no issue with jealousy for vaguely sexual / romantic motives coming from Scully, even though the “hot women jealously bickering over the male hero” is a trope that seems pretty clearly derived from straight male sexual fantasies, too. Scully shows jealousy of female rivals for Mulder’s respect or trust early and often. Again, not saying this should or shouldn’t have happened: only that it did. (Actually, if you know me or my fanfic, you know I’m pretty down for some jealousy stories lol.)

In earlier seasons, Scully’s jealousy is played for laughs and is more ambiguously motivated, mixed up with professional jealousy. For example, she’s threatened by Bambi Berenbaum not only because she’s a hot woman who has Mulder’s attention, but also because she’s a competing scientist.  By the Diana arc, Scully’s jealousy is tightly tied to plot and is angst-ridden. It’s also much harder to explain, at least in late season 5’s The End, without romantic jealousy as some sort of driving motive. We can say in One Son there is a professional explanation—she thinks Diana is dirty and Mulder is being disrespectful of his partner—but why on earth is Scully sitting heartbroken in that car in The End if not for personal reasons?

And then there’s this, some cut dialogue from Sixth Extinction that has Scully and Diana arguing over Mulder. Here both characters are written managing to reference one another’s physical appearance in a way that has absolutely no relevance to their ostensibly professional conversation.

There’s no universe in which you can convince me this is in character for Scully (or for Diana really), and it frankly shows objectification of both female characters. But this dialogue was cut, so maybe someone felt similarly at 1013. 

Mulder is not shown as being jealous in the same obvious, overt way, and I don’t think Carter would have let that happen. This is where I start to suspect that the whole “Scully isn’t sexualized” claim of Carter’s is actually more about his protection of Mulder’s character than Scully’s. 

Carter didn’t want to sexualize Scully because he didn’t want Mulder to be seen as the kind of male character who would seriously be distracted by lust for his co-worker and partner beyond easy, low-commitment jokes. He wanted Mulder to be seen as pure of heart (porn aside) and entirely devoted to his quest. He wanted him to have a partner he wouldn’t be thinking dirty thoughts about, especially because 1013’s writers often seem to have a worldview in which desire and respect can’t coexist. And he wanted Scully to be uncomplicatedly devoted to supporting him.

So Scully is jealous of female attention of Mulder because it’s consistent with her devotion to the work, and Mulder is equivalent to their work. But Mulder’s not going to be shown spinning too much about male attention to Scully because he’s gotta stay single-mindedly devoted to the quest. (Until it is a threat specifically to his work, as when it’s Doggett replacing him on multiple levels.) 

Of course, by creating characters who only are interested in this mutual quest and in supporting one another— and then by casting constantly-handsy Duchovny and longing-eyed Anderson and presumably directing them to keep all that shit under control all the time — CC definitely created the perfect hothouse conditions for MSR. Apparently directors were telling them to dial back their performances of scenes all the time. And honestly, that feeling of constant restraint reads in the final cut. Even when they are just sitting there talking about a corpse they always look like they are holding back and buttoning in all these feelings. It’s constantly sexually charged. Desire and respect appear to be sharing space all the time. It’s a textbook case of getting the opposite of what you’re ostensibly trying to do.