Note: This was too good to pass up, but as per Cathy B's instructions, here's a little background. Come September, it's been four months with no new X-Files and we at the abbey are starting to chomp at the bit. There's still a good two months to go before the start of the season and we're getting cranky. Autumn, the OBSSE's leader and mail administrator figured that one weekend we could all rant about one thing that ticked us off about Scully. It was dubbed RP Weekend (Rampid Pissiness) and there were no holds barred. Cathy just couldn't make her rant about Scully, but HooBoy! what she said rings true for many philes, Scullyists and Non-Scullyists alike. As for the ignorant slut comment- well... everybody was an ignorant slut during RP Weekend so if you're reading this Chris, don't take it too hard. ;) Sonya --- Subject: OB You knew it was coming...My RP rant Date: Sun, 12 Sep 1999 19:44:31 -0400 From: "Catherine J. Blatz" Reply-To: obsse@listserv.oit.unc.edu To: obsse@listserv.oit.unc.edu Ahem. I tried to make this a rant about Scully. Really, I did. But I just can't do it. Try as I might, I can't blame Scully for the writers' missteps - logic and internal consistency (whassat?) do not allow it. Once upon a time there were two FBI agents. One of them, Fox Mulder, believed in the paranormal and in aliens. He believed that there were aliens on earth, that they had abducted his sister, and that there was a governmental coverup about it. The other, Dana Scully, didn't believe any of that. She didn't think there were any aliens. She was a scientist; a logical, practical woman with a great respect for evidence and facts. She wasn't inclined to believe anything that she couldn't witness with her eyes or corroborate with her science. These two had a lot of crazy adventures together. Mysterious things happened to them. Were they caused by paranormal factors, or natural ones? It was hard to say. The two agents' interpretations of the events differed. Sure, sometimes Mulder would see something really crazy like leaves swirling in a forest and an impossibly bright light filling the sky, or a letter opener flying across a room to slice open a wall. Scully didn't see those things; she always managed to arrive a moment or two too late. But that's life. At the end of the day, these two people would agree to disagree. After all, though the possibility was certainly there, there was no hard evidence proving the existence of any of the things Mulder suspected or saw (or thought he saw). So Mulder and Scully would carry on that way, bringing their disparate points of view and differing methods of investigation to all manner of unexplained happenings. Ask them their positions on aliens and the paranormal, and their answers might go something like this: MULDER: I believe in the paranormal. I don't have any proof yet, but I know what I saw. I saw my sister vanish into a bright light. I know the truth is out there, and I'm going to find it. SCULLY: I don't believe there are any answers beyond the realm of science. Most "alien" sightings turn out to be hoaxes or hallucinations. So-called "recovered memories" are unreliable. Just because we don't understand something doesn't make it extraterrestrial. Scientific analysis doesn't support the suggestion that any of these things are of anything but ordinary, earthly origin. That was a show called The X-Files. And that was a character called Scully - patient with Mulder's fantastic claims but skeptical of them, asking only for evidence, for proof, before she would believe them. What do we have, six years later? We have aliens. Oh yes, there are aliens. We've seen them enough that action figures were commissioned with their likenesses. We have spaceships. Scully was in one of them, in fact. She crawled and was carried through it for several minutes, passing more aliens along the way. Then, once she was out, she fell down on top of it and had a brief ride on it before it dumped her onto the ground and then sailed off into the clouds, right above her head. Evidence? We got evidence. Leaving aside the mysterious implants that were discovered right in the pilot episode, we now have a chip of seemingly futuristic technology in Scully's very own little neck, apparently holding her cancer at bay. We have (or had) a little boy who appeared to be quite genuinely psychic, whose DNA had properties not found in human beings. We have a giant claw with the same genetic properties. Not to mention the many, many indications of what is at the very least a governmental conspiracy, ranging from Scully's missing three months (or whatever) to her biological daughter with the toxic green blood to the constant interference from various shady mysterious MIB types. Ask our two their positions on aliens and the paranormal now, and their responses might go something like this: MULDER: You wouldn't believe the stuff I've seen over the past few years. I've seen aliens, several times, actually. I was in a spaceship, even rode on it, and watched it fly away. I met my sister, or a clone of her at least. And there's definitely a conspiracy to cover all this stuff up - I can even tell you who's behind it. My father was in on it, in fact. Just recently I watched half of them be burned to a crisp by mysterious fire-wielding aliens as they all waited for their spaceship to arrive. SCULLY: I don't believe there are any answers beyond the realm of science. Most "alien" sightings turn out to be hoaxes or hallucinations. So-called "recovered memories" are unreliable. Just because we don't understand something doesn't make it extraterrestrial. Scientific analysis doesn't support the suggestion that any of these things are of anything but ordinary, earthly origin. Was Scully's position, when the show began, a reasonable one? Absolutely. She wouldn't have accepted the things Mulder was claiming on faith. No sane person would have. She believed all these things had logical explanations, and it was her job to find them. Is her position - largely unchanged, as it is, from the very first episode of the very first season - still a reasonable one? HELLLLLLL NOOOOO!!!!!!!!! Scully has gone from a smart, curious, skeptical woman with a firm belief in the scientific method - not to mention a representation of the average person reacting in disbelief to unbelievable happenings - to a closed-minded, obstinate, intractable, repetitive, unreasonable, selectively blind, denial-ridden dimwit with the observational powers of a jar of mayonnaise. She was literally scooped up and dumped on her ASS by the aliens, who then waved to her as they flew away, and what does she say? "I was woozy. I don't know what I saw." Her skepticism has long ceased to be an endearing quirk and has become not only ridiculous and infuriating but a handicap to the natural progression of the storyline. Do I blame Scully for this? HELL NO, again. Scully is a fictional character. When you create a fictional character, perhaps the most crucial, perhaps even the ONLY crucial thing you have to do is to keep the character consistent. You can invent the most far-out, eccentricity-riddled character and still keep him within the realm of believability as long as he behaves in a manner consistent with his character as created. What the 1013 writers have done with Scully is to reduce her to a caricature of her old self. I don't care HOW skeptical or HOW reliant on science she is, and I don't care HOW much an admission that aliens exist would shake up her carefully ordered universe. NO ONE, not any human being on this planet, could go for SIX YEARS seeing the things Scully has seen and experiencing the things that she's experienced and remain CONVINCED that there are no such things as aliens. Someone who did that would have to be (a) mentally ill, (b) incredibly dull, or (c) an unreasonable fanatic. Scully, as conceived and as originally written, is NONE of these things. It's her methods that are different from Mulder's, not her mental faculties or her ability to process basic facts. 1013, and Chris Carter in particular, have clung ridiculously and stubbornly (one might even say fanatically) to the tenet that for The X-Files to work, Mulder has to be the one that believes in aliens, and Scully has to be the one that doesn't. This is simplistic to the point of being pathetic. Chris Carter doesn't seem to be capable of thinking outside of archetypes and cliches. He can do reverse cliches, sure - make the MAN the believer (so everybody can sympathize with him and he can be your lifelong Mary Sue) and the WOMAN the skeptic. Ooh, unusual. Unexpected. I thought ALL women believed in whatever hooey was dangled in front of them and ALL men were the logical ones. How revolutionary to find out that isn't true. But take something VERY elementary like how to make a character react believably to an evolving situation, and he's stuck like a broken record. "Scully doesn't believe in aliens. Mulder's the one who believes in aliens. Scully's the skeptical one." Never mind that the situation has changed drastically - that far from being a theoretical possibility that provided endless ground for Mulder and Scully to cover in their debates, the aliens are now running around killing people regularly, waving at Mulder through train cars and nuclear reactor doors, and threatening to take over the planet and incubate their young inside human bodies. This is not a show about the possibility of aliens, and how different types react to it, anymore. It is a show about ACTUAL, LIVING, BREATHING, EXISTING ALIENS. But Scully's character has not changed. She's stuck like a pop-cultural relic in the show of six years ago, one-sidedly debating the philosophy of possibility. "What does it take?" Mulder asks her in "The Beginning." "For this thing to come up and bite you on the ass?" He, whose character has managed to grow and adjust along with the circumstances of the show, is understandably exasperated. Scully doesn't even answer him; she starts babbling about science again. She's not Scully anymore in these instances, she's some two-dimensional, poorly written Scully parody who functions fine under ordinary circumstances but when faced with the absolute certainty of aliens is unable either to accept them or to provide a credible reason for her attitude. Scully is not a fanatic. She's smart as a whip. She trusts Mulder and she's gone on a journey with him in which she's witnessed incredible things that have challenged - and bested - her beliefs. The ONLY, and I do mean the ONLY reason that she still doesn't believe is that Chris Carter and his staff don't know how to write her that way. I don't know why this is. Is it because they all identify so completely with Mulder that they're incapable of guessing how Scully, Carter's own creation, would react to a given circumstance? Is it because they're lazy and they think that "drama" is people fighting, even when the fight has become ridiculous and without context? Is it because they're all male chauvinist pigs and have no respect for the character of Scully unless they can cast her as (a) the Virgin Mary, (b) an unattainable lust object, or (c) a victim of sexual and medical cruelty to be pitied from a distance? Who can tell. All I know is that Carter created an incredibly complex, strong, warm, intelligent, caring, spiritually (and physically) beautiful female character, and that over the course of six seasons she has been so mishandled, miswritten, and f***ed with so that she can be crammed into whatever he considers to be the "antagonist" role (or the "victim" role, whichever fits) of whatever dubious storyline he comes up with that there are times when she's barely recognizable anymore. Carter needs to get it through his thick blond sun-addled head that it's no longer working. It is simply not possible to advance the storyline but have the characters remained unchanged. It's unrealistic and it breaks the bubble of reality and consistency that's essential to a believable story. He needs to put down the peyote, send the stripper home, stop moping about his letterboxed director-trick showcase episode not being nominated for an Emmy, and THINK. He needs to COME UP WITH a way to retain the yin and yang, give and take, dark and light of the Mulder and Scully relationship, but update it so that it fits in the context of the show he's coaxed into a seven-year run instead of being a nonsensical relic. I can give him a hint right now. The contrast between Mulder and Scully, the fundamental difference that makes the show work, has NEVER been whether or not there are aliens. It's about Mulder's intuitive leaps versus Scully's methodical evidence-gathering; his lifting them toward the sky and her keeping them in sight of the ground. Scully's not going to turn into Mulder if she believes in aliens. She's going to turn into a Scully who sets out to prove what's going on, to expose it, to bring the harsh and unforgiving light of reason into the dark corners inhabited by the conspirators. A Scully who uses her strengths - objective analysis, scientific observation, sense of justice - to work with her partner towards their common goal. The drama lies in her and Mulder's different ways of going about things, their different interpretations of each new revelation, and the ways in which they deal with and support each other - NOT in forcing one character to retain an implausible skepticism long after it's ceased to make any logical sense. I continue to be amazed that Gillian Anderson is able to take the contradictory, frequently nonsensical material she is given and imbue Scully with the sympathy, humor, credibility, and beauty that she does. For that, she deserves a boatload of Emmys. And besides, Chris Carter is an ignorant slut. Cathy B. all ranted out. :)