Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast
Ever had something you love dismissed because it’s “just” pop culture? What others might deem stupid shit, you know matters. You know it’s worth talking and thinking about. So do we. We're Tracie and Emily, two sisters who think a lot about a lot of things. From Twilight to Ghostbusters, Harry Potter to the Muppets, and wherever pop culture takes us, come overthink with us as we delve into our deep thoughts about stupid shit.
Deep Thoughts About Stupid Sh*t: A Pop-Culture Podcast
Deep Thoughts about The X-Files
The truth (about casual sexism and gendered violence) is out there!
In today’s episode, Emily grapples with the troubling implications of her first fandom. She shares with Tracie how writing, directorial, and payment decisions on the The X-Files did Gillian Anderson and Dana Scully dirty, why her head-canon is that Mulder and Scully had sex in the pilot, and why Chris Carter owed his characters a real relationship or the ability to date other people. Also, we go into what it means that Mulder’s porn habit was played for laughs, the ways Special Agent “I Want to Believe” Mulder may have contributed to the mainstreaming of conspiracy theories, and how Emily and Scully both have a weakness for handsome men.
Join us as we investigate the cultural phenomenon that launched a thousand “ships” (not to mention fanfictions).
CW: Discussions of rape and loss of bodily autonomy.
Our theme music is "Professor Umlaut" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Learn more about Tracie and Emily (including our other projects), join the Guy Girls' family, secure exclusive access to bonus episodes, video versions, and early access to Deep Thoughts by visiting us on Patreon.
Mentioned in this episode:
Pamela Anderson was originally attached to the role of Scully
Kumail Nanjiani’s The X-Files Files
Conspiracy theories are mainstream now. Can the new ‘X-Files’ stand out?
The Scully Effect
Gillian Anderson: I Was Offered Half Duchovny’s Pay for ‘The X-Files’ Revival
More on the Bechdel Test: Deep Thoughts about Gender in Pop Culture: Tools for Feminist Analysis (BONUS)
I'm Emily Guy-Burken and you're listening to Deep Thoughts about Stupid Shit, because pop culture is still culture, and shouldn't you know what's in your head? Today, I will be sharing my Deep Thoughts about the X-Files with my sister, tracy Guy Decker, and with you. Let's dive in.
Speaker 2:Have you ever had something you love dismissed because it's just pop culture, what others might deem stupid shit? You know matters, you know what's worth talking and thinking about, and so do we. So come over, think with us as we delve into our Deep Thoughts about Stupid Shit. This show is a labor of love, but that doesn't make it free to produce. If you enjoy it even half as much as we do, please consider helping to keep us overthinking. You can support us at our Patreon there's a link in the show notes or leave a positive review so others can find us and, of course, share the show with your people.
Speaker 1:So, tracy, tell me what you know about the X-Files and how you know it.
Speaker 2:X-Files, yeah, so I think a lot of what I know about the X-Files is essentially from being your sister, because the X-Files I think it must have been broadcast, like while I was in college, maybe.
Speaker 1:The first season was my freshman year of high school, your senior year of high school. And so it really gained momentum when you were in college and it aired on Friday nights.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I didn't watch a lot of TV in college because remember these are the days when internet was still dial up.
Speaker 1:So if you're, watching TV.
Speaker 2:You were actually watching broadcast or like a DVD, or I mean we still had VHS back then and I didn't have a TV in my dorm room, maybe the whole time, but certainly not in the beginning, and so you'd have to go to the lounge to watch it.
Speaker 2:It was a hassle and so I didn't, mostly not because I was above it but just because it was hard, so I did not catch the bug at the time. I've seen a few episodes. Most of what I know about the X-Files I know because you have told me so like I know there's something about a smoking man who's like deep throat the informant, not like a not safe for work thing, and I know like I've seen an episode or two where the implication was that Mulder is like a porn addict or at least a porn consumer. And I know about the Scali Effect, which is a post show where women were going into a STEM because they were trying to emulate Dana Dana, oh, cool, same as some Dana Scully, same as some Dana Barrett, and Ghostbusters Just made that connection.
Speaker 2:And I know the truth is out there and whistle, whistle, whistle and that's like it. I really I don't, I just know it was like sort of a police procedural, but kind of not, because there was this spiritual but not spiritual, but what's the word? I'm looking for Supernatural, supernatural, and the supernatural is real. Mulder's a believer, scali's a skeptic. That's what I know. So I have implied already in what I've shared that you are super into the X-Files, but why are we talking about this today?
Speaker 1:So, as you say, I was super into the X-Files. It was kind of an interesting fandom that I was part of, because there's a phenomenal podcast called the X-Files that Kumail Nanjiani, the comedian and actor.
Speaker 2:Oh, I know that guy, he's cool, I like him you introduced me to him as well.
Speaker 1:Actually, yes, and so one of the things that he talks about that I think is really interesting and important and is hard for people who didn't live through it to imagine is that when it was broadcast TV, if you missed an episode it was gone. That was it, it was gone. So my love for this show is unlike my love for current shows, because I was just okay with missing episodes. That was the era of what they called appointment TV, where like, oh, no, no, no, don't disturb me. And I actually I had a friend in college who talked about how her mom would call at like 9.30 on Sunday night because by then it had moved to Sundays, and she'd be like mother, you're calling during the high holy hour of X-Files, do not call. So what that meant was I consider myself an X-Files fan.
Speaker 1:I have not seen every episode. Some of that is because I missed a bunch when it was airing. Some of that is because, once it was available, I would buy it on VHS even, and DVD, but you'd only be able to get a couple episodes at a time because they wouldn't release all of them Once it was available and streaming I ended up like because I knew, based on reviews and stuff like that. I'd skip ones where I'm like I don't need to see that, and I still have not seen the final season that came out in 2018. I saw one or two episodes and then I said I'm good, I don't need to finish this.
Speaker 2:So yeah, they had like a reunion season or something?
Speaker 1:No, no, they had two. They had one that came out in 2016 and another that came out in 2018. So they had 11 seasons total.
Speaker 2:I had no idea.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was an important part of my I call it like my literary DNA, like it was an important part of, like, what I understand about storytelling and what I like about long form storytelling is part of the reason why I'm interested in it and why I want to talk about it, but it also had quite a bit of the very 90s era feminism, where you get one woman who has all of the goodness in her and the not like other girls and it overemphasizes.
Speaker 1:The fact that there is really only one female character in the show Makes it problematic in ways that Dana Scully deserves better and Jillian Anderson deserves better.
Speaker 1:And looking back on it because I did a I believe it was in 2016 when the new season came out I was like you know what I want to catch up, like I missed a bunch from season eight and season nine, like so. So I'm all caught up. So I did a full rewatch up until about the end of season seven and then I was like I really don't need eight and nine before the 2016 season came out and I realized a lot of the things that I was uncritical about when I was growing up, particularly as pertain to how Mulder viewed the world treated Scully, treated his job, treated other people was not great and I really overlooked how amazing Scully was. Now I was alone in that. I mean, like most people were like Scully's the best, and it's not that I didn't think she was, I just was so focused on how unbelievably gorgeous David DeCovne was in his prime, like I still do this day. I'm like this thought process is not working.
Speaker 2:That you are fairly predictable, I have to say.
Speaker 1:What's funny is I mentioned something to my friends in my book club. I was talking about how I had a crush on David DeCovne Tom Ellis who plays Lucifer, andy Sandberg, the comedian who's in Brooklyn Nine-Nine. And then it was a book club meeting was at my house and my husband came outside like to bring drinks or something, and I went back in like he was just hey, everyone walk back in. And so my friend Jillian said like what do all four of those men have in common? I was like, oh, that's a really good question. And I was like 30 minutes later it hit me. It was like big noses and broad shoulders and funny, it's good to know your type.
Speaker 2:So that's my type. It's good to know your type.
Speaker 1:So, in any case, the influence of the X-Files is still being felt on so many things on television the way television is written, how it launched the careers of a number of television writers, how why procedurals are so popular it can be traced back to this, but I also kind of want to talk about how the mainstreaming of conspiracy theories may also have come from this, and I really want to talk about the casual sexism and violence towards women that was just considered normal in this, that I did not even see until really recently, and how that's something we really need to engage with.
Speaker 2:Okay, all right. So there's some stuff at stake here. So for those of our listeners who, like me, or have only a passing acquaintance with the show, or maybe not at all, can you give us like the nuts, like what's the deal, what's the conceit of this show and how does it kind of play out? Who are the characters?
Speaker 1:You know that meat and potatoes here.
Speaker 1:So the show begins with FBI agent Dana Scully being assigned to work with FBI agent Fox Mulder. She is relatively new to the FBI. She is a medical doctor but instead of going into practice as a doctor, she was recruited by the FBI and she saw it as a place where she could distinguish herself. She liked the idea of doing something different. She majored in physics for undergraduate and then went to medical school. So she is like very, very earthbound logical scientific method. So that's why she's chosen to partner with Fox Mulder, who has, like, a PhD in psychology and did very, very well in the FBI when it came to things like tracking serial killers, things like that. But for the past few years he's been following like this passion project of his called the X-Files. It's called the X-Files because you find out much later the person who started it. It was all of these different weird phenomenon that the FBI was asked to investigate and most of them remained unsolved and the only place who would fit in the file cabinet was in the X because there was so big.
Speaker 2:Because it was so big, so big Got it. That's really silly Okay.
Speaker 1:So you don't find that out until like season six or seven, I don't even remember. So Fox Mulder is driven by the fact that his younger sister disappeared when he was 12 and she was eight. He believed she was abducted by aliens. He has memory of the abduction and there's no real closure for him at the beginning of the series. They give him closure multiple times throughout the series and keep changing the story of what happened. But so they start working together. They find they really like each other and become friendly.
Speaker 1:There is an undercurrent of like this odd romance between them that goes throughout. Mulder is extremely sarcastic and funny and so, you know, is consistently making jokes and things like that. Scully was kind of assigned to debunk him, but she is willing to keep an open mind in that she's not gonna be like that's impossible, no way, like I mean, she does say that quite a bit, but she's like show me the proof and I'll believe you that sort of thing. And so it sets up this interesting dynamic that is frustrating because Mulder has proven right like 90% of the time. So the very first episode has them investigating deaths and disappearances of a group of young adults from the class of 1989, because it debuted in 1993. So they were four years out of high school in, I believe, in Washington state, but somewhere in the Pacific Northwest because that's where they were filming. So they would set things in the Pacific Northwest quite a bit and that's kind of where it starts off.
Speaker 1:There is an overarching mythos about an alien invasion, that the government is working, the black, shadowy figures from the government are working with the aliens to allow them to take over. It does not make much sense because they were making it up as they went along. I feel very vindicated because even as a kid I preferred the monster of the weak episodes. So some episodes were about the greater mythology of the aliens and all of that and how the cigarette smoking man who was this kind of shadowy figure, he was not actually an informant. They actually had a couple of informants, one named actually they called Deep Throat, and then when he got killed they had another one named X or Mr X, who also got killed.
Speaker 2:So what I'm hearing here is that being an informant for a scholarly mulder was a dangerous activity.
Speaker 1:So there's this overarching mythos, but then there's monster of the weak, where they run into just weird, bizarre things Like Deep.
Speaker 2:Throat doesn't have anything to do with the alien invasion. I remember an episode where there was this family who thought the Civil War was still going on and it was like many, many, many layers of incest. It was actually very disturbing, which is maybe why Still remember it. It was a very disturbing episode.
Speaker 1:It's one of the best episodes I've seen. Oh so disturbing. And it was actually after it aired the original time that it wouldn't air it again. I understand why.
Speaker 2:It's gotta be 20 years or more since I saw it and I still, sometimes I'm like ugh Because the mom, who was also the daughter, who was also the sister, had like was she?
Speaker 1:paraplegic or something. She was missing all her limbs Because she'd been in a car accident and there was something about the family that was so inbred that there were different things and she felt no pain, so she's screaming.
Speaker 2:I remember her screaming.
Speaker 1:That was when she's screaming because they found her, yeah, and she's screaming while in childbirth. But then there's another point where, like, they find her and she's screaming to get her sons to come help her, her son husband, brother.
Speaker 2:That was a really discerning episode. Sorry, I totally didn't railed you so, but that story, like that story about this family who thought the Civil War was still happening in the 90s, had nothing to do with the like bigger story arc of the aliens who were invading Earth with the help of the US government.
Speaker 1:And I think from a storytelling perspective, I think even my teenage self recognized that it was unlikely that Chris Carter was the showrunner and the creator and his team had any idea where they were going. So that's part of the reason why and part of it was like back then that's how you wrote television.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean still today. I think sometimes it's like the difference between British television where they're like this is three series, three seasons and American television and they're like how long can we keep this going?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so this monster. The week episodes were very much more satisfying to me because they were complete. Yeah, so there's so much to talk about. I was a little nervous about this one just because it's such a big topic. So I wanna talk about Scully and I wanna talk about her relationship with Mulder. So Scully is, I mean. To Chris Carter's credit, he pushed back against Fox executives who wanted to cast I swear to God, pamela Anderson.
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:I swear to God.
Speaker 2:So they wanted like FBI-.
Speaker 1:They wanted the leaky blonde.
Speaker 2:They wanted boobalicious. They didn't want an actual scientist.
Speaker 1:Yes, and so, and he pushed back against that. And that's not to say that Jillian Anderson is an absolutely drop dead gorgeous. Yeah, she's beautiful, but she's five foot two, so and they actually had to have a special box for her stand on, so she made the shots and they had to coven me.
Speaker 2:She's not like a living Barbie, though.
Speaker 1:Yes and I believe that this was intentional, especially in the first two, maybe even three seasons. Her dress, the way she dresses, is quite dowdy and some of that like fits the character because she's someone who's like I want to be taken seriously, so some of that seems like it fits there. But I think that was also Chris Carter very intentionally saying we are not sexualizing this character, which is fantastic. But that very first episode, the bodies of the kids who they find have a really weird two marks on their back, like right above where their hips are. And so the first night after everything's happened, some weird stuff is happening.
Speaker 1:It's kind of freaking, scully out because like this does not fit, like the science that she's learned, like she's sure there's an explanation, but it's a little freaky. The power goes out in the motel and she's getting undressed to take a shower and she's like, oh my God, and feel something. And she's like, do I have those marks? And so she goes to Mulder to ask him to look. Thing is, where they are is a very, very easy spot to wear a shirt and just lift it up a little bit. She's still wearing a robe and she takes it off, so she's just wearing her underpants.
Speaker 2:So much for not sexualizing this character.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's frustrating, it's so frustrating.
Speaker 2:One imagines it was a compromise. I mean, if the network wanted them to cast Pamela Anderson, they're like okay, fine, you can have Jillian Anderson, you can have her sister Jillian, you can have Jillian. But we need to at least imply, we need to be reminded, that she has tits.
Speaker 1:And like you can see nothing, but it's some of it. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And that's why I say we need to be reminded that she has them. We don't actually get to see them.
Speaker 1:And considering the way she dresses, it also is kind of like no, don't worry, she's not fat.
Speaker 2:Oh, that hurts, because it's true.
Speaker 1:So that undercuts so much. I mean it's undercut so much of what the character of Skelly represents and it's so infuriating. There's also the fact that in the early seasons I don't know if this was Fox or Chris Carter Now Jillian Anderson was 24 when she was cast and David DeCovne was 32. So really could be a significant age difference. She was paid, I think, half what he was paid, even though she was. The show wouldn't work without her.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 50% of the protagonist.
Speaker 1:And it was very intentional. She was not allowed to walk beside him. They always wanted her walking behind him and shot behind him and things like that, making it clear he was the center. Oh, now, one of the things, one of the major storylines, came about because of something kind of unplanned. Jillian Anderson ended up getting pregnant during that first season. First person she told was David DeCovney, and because she was like I'm afraid they're going to fire me and that was actually. That's how I know the Pamela Anderson they were like Fox executive is like oh okay, just replace her, write her out. I don't know if DeCovney went to bat for her or what, but basically Were the actors friends.
Speaker 2:Yes, I mean, I'm friendly enough that he was the first one that she told yeah.
Speaker 1:There were points where they couldn't stand each other because it was a 24 episode season filmed in Vancouver at night because so much of the stuff is led. They just got real sick of each other. But they're close enough friends and continue to be that. When he got divorced, he stayed with Jillian Anderson for a couple weeks while getting on his feet Okay. So there's genuine friendship there, even though there were points where they actually hated each other.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's how friendship works sometimes.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So in any case she was worried she was going to get fired. What they ended up doing was, instead of writing her out of the show entirely, they created a storyline where she was abducted by aliens, and so that's what happens at the beginning of season two. So they are like covering her with like big coats and stuff like that for as long as they can, and she's only gone totally for one episode and then she's abducted. They show like some of her memories of being abducted and one of them is like inflating her stomach, which is actually just her actual, like nearly full term pregnant belly, and like the aliens do experiments on her.
Speaker 1:And then she comes back. She just appears after Mulder and her family have decided to just accept that she's dead, and that gets into the second thing that's a little bit problematic about the way that Scully is treated. So I think it's marvelous the way that they wrote the alien abduction of Scully into it, because that brings in a lot of really interesting storytelling stuff, because this is the person who's the skeptic, who's actually had something supernatural happen to her. She doesn't entirely remember it, she's not sure exactly what happened. The issue is that like medical and body violence being perpetrated against Scully becomes a through line for all 11 seasons.
Speaker 2:So gross. I feel like for a moment there. I was like the kid at the beginning of the Princess Bride. I was like abducted by aliens is cool. And then it turned dark yeah.
Speaker 1:And that's. I mean it's a horror show. And if that were just what was happening to Scully, not okay, I mean like that would be a storytelling choice. But over and, over and over again the storylines involve violence against women and some of that is that you know it's the FBI, like they're investigating crimes. But there's one episode that I'm very grateful I didn't see when it came out. I only saw it much later.
Speaker 1:Where it's? It looks like it's ghosts, it turns out it's like astral projection anyway, in a like an old folks home and the one of the nurses who worked there reports having been raped, but while she's like clearly beaten up, there's no DNA evidence and she says, well, cause, it was a ghost. And for the first time Scully is like we need to investigate this, while Mulder is like she's just, you know, trying to get out of a job she hates, I know, and that kind of thing happens. And some of that has to do with the fact that Chris Carter doesn't get it. At the beginning of the most recent season, or maybe it was the 10th season, I don't remember. But one of them, scully, has two children. One was conceived and born from her abduction and she does not even know this child exists until she comes upon her when she's about three years old and she dies like almost immediately after meeting her. The baby does the baby.
Speaker 1:The three year old. Her name was Emily.
Speaker 2:And Emily was a alien baby, alien human hybrid.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which is, I think, had something to do with why she died. And then season eight and like I'm not as clear on this, season seven ends with Scully discovering she's pregnant and Mulder being abducted. Is Mulder the dad? It's implied that and it's implied in season eight that she asked him to be her baby daddy. Yeah, but like through artificial insemination, like there's there's suggestion of that, not the old fashioned way. Not the old fashioned way is the suggestion and any ex files fans who like want to correct me because I don't remember this stuff very well because I only I watched it sporadically. Back then I was pretty annoyed that David Dacovani basically left the show. He only appeared in a few episodes of season eight and then like one or two of season nine.
Speaker 2:Right, because you're in it for David to cut me, like in case we hadn't established that already.
Speaker 1:Precisely so. That's the implication. You find out in the reboot that the child is and she ended up having to give that give the baby away because reasons he was in danger. People were coming after him. It was like the best thing she could do for him was to make sure that he was obscure. And you find out that the baby is actually the biological child of the cigarette smoking man.
Speaker 2:It was not an informant.
Speaker 1:No, no, he's, he's the main villain.
Speaker 2:Oh, he's a bad guy, mm. Hmm, okay, so he's a government agent like working with the aliens to overthrow human life on earth? Yeah, okay, and so the cigarette smoking man swapped the sperm vials they okay.
Speaker 1:The way. That's because people were like oh was she? Was he raped her Cause there's a point where he abducted her in, I think, season seven.
Speaker 2:How many times was this one? When we get kidnapped, I know.
Speaker 1:And Chris Carter responded no, it was a medical impregnation. And people were like how is that not rape? It's a non consensual medical impregnation. Sounds like rape to me, so Chris Carter doesn't really get it. And one example of this there are 218 episodes of the show. Of the 218 episodes to were directed by women, and 11. Were written primarily by a woman. Now, of that, one of the directors and one of the writers is Gillian Anderson, and in the 2018 reboot, he had zero women in the writer's room.
Speaker 2:So but not even Gillian.
Speaker 1:Not even Gillian. And when they brought it back in 2016, they offered her half of David DeCovne's salary again. Still, yeah. And she's like why am I fighting this again? Because she and I completely comprehend this, partially because she was 24, but she also like it was after about season three by the time. It was like this is a hit and it relies on both of these people. That she's like pay me what I'm worth and do not make me walk behind this man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so all of the weird stuff about like the medical impregnation and the abduction and all the like this she being a damsel in distress bullshit would be something that I could wrap my hands around in a way. So, like Carter was very intentionally trying to subvert the expectations, because Mulder is the believer, he goes by gut feelings and he is the more emotional of the two of them. We see Mulder cry quite often, whereas Scully is the logical and rational one who refuses to jump in where angels fear to tread and who is even although they both do this, but even in the first season. One of my favorite episodes from that season is one where her father passes away very suddenly, out of kind of out of nowhere, and she goes to work the next day and Mulder's like I thought you'd take today off and she's like I have to work and so that her, the way that she channels her grief, is in a very masculine, coded way. Well, she overperforms, yeah, and that's so.
Speaker 1:There's some really interesting stuff there. The problem is that it still leans into a female stereotype, because she ends up being his nag. She's the one like are you not noticing that this is not gonna work? Have you not realized that we need to do X, y and Z? So there's still kind of the like long suffering woman who actually sees what's going on, overcorrecting and protecting the dreamer of a man who is so genius and brilliant but can't handle little things. So the other thing that, as an adult watching this, I really, really resented was there's a through line you mentioned about how Mulder's is written to be like addicted to porn or something along those lines. It's something that they bring up and play for jokes, which okay, it seems. Now.
Speaker 2:The one I saw. I've seen like three episodes total in my life, but the one that I saw was like he was actually watching something about like a B swarm and people, but she assumed it was porn because he's on Like. I think I even had to ask you, like, what the hell was going on when I watched that episode 20 years ago.
Speaker 2:And you were like, oh yeah, he watches porn, so she thinks it's porn. Yeah, so my knowledge of it it was like funny sort of, because it wasn't what she thought it was. But yeah, how are you feeling about that? How are you like understanding that as a point of defining this character?
Speaker 1:It now strikes me as extremely sad. At the time it was this like kind of funny thing, but what it strikes me is Was me titillating, since you were in it for David DeCovne and now there's this thing where he's watching porn.
Speaker 2:Is that titillating?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that was part of it and I think, like the implication was supposed to be, he's so single-minded, he does not have time for other parts of his life, and this is one part, and so this is his shortcut he doesn't have sex, he just watches porn. He doesn't have sex, he doesn't have time for it or romantic relationships or romantic relationships or anything.
Speaker 1:So this is his outlet and there is an episode either season one or season two it's still pretty early on where Scully is at his apartment because she's looking for him I don't remember and so she's listening to messages on his answering machine and there's like a sexy woman, like traditional, like breathy woman voice, like Mulder you stood me up, you bastard and like. So there's. And then there's an implication that like he was dating casually or something, but that goes away and some of that has to do with how TV shows are, like if it's TV show, you don't see anything else of their lives. And then once people are invested in the relationship between Mulder and Scully, it's, you know, like you don't wanna suggest that anymore.
Speaker 1:Right, right, Once it becomes a ship to buy the fans that you you let the fans have their ship and then and that also, I think, was another aspect of like Chris Carter reminding us that Mulder is a sexual person, without it being in any way threatening to the relationship with Scully 90s.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I mean, for those of you who are just listening I'm making a face. I am making an incredulous face right now.
Speaker 1:So the thing that gets me is there is no, there's nothing on Scully's side that is similar. So we do see she's got a relatively large family. She's Catholic, and that's one of the other interesting things. She is a well fleshed out character because she is, I wouldn't say, devout Catholic, but she has faith, even though she is a One of science Scientist, whereas Mulder is an atheist. But you know, I was happy to like. Oh, you saw Loch Ness Monster. You know playing table tennis with Bigfoot. Sure, sign me up.
Speaker 2:All in on the lay lines and the theory of Atlantis and Loch Ness Monster and all the things that Janine asks if Winston believes in.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, so that's interesting. It leads to some really interesting storytelling beats and stuff like that. So she does have like a little bit of you know. She's got two brothers and a sister, her parents her mother is a recurring character but you don't really see friends. You see her go on one date early on first or second season and then that's it. Then further along and I'm really frustrated by this now In season I think four, maybe five Scully has a cancer journey. Turns out she was given the cancer as part of the abduction.
Speaker 2:Those are called in aliens man.
Speaker 1:They really usher up. The aliens put something in her body and the removal of it is what caused the cancer. So it's TV cancer, because TV cancer is always nose bleed cancer Right.
Speaker 2:Because you still look hot while your nose is bleeding. I mean, chilly Nanderson does, but yeah, I don't think I know.
Speaker 1:Not everybody so, and it's also. It's just a little bit of, it's a little laid to the leg nose bleed. It's not a gush.
Speaker 2:It's not like. I'm not like whether you have to hold your head back so it doesn't drip on your clothes. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:So anyway, that season you learn that she has cancer and the very next episode you see her get into like kind of an argument with Mulder and be really frustrated with him, and she ends up going home with a guy that she's I don't remember. I don't think she's like he turns out to be who she's looking for, but she doesn't realize it, like she's in I believe it's Philadelphia, to go after this particular ex file. Mulder, who has never taken any vacation, is being forced to go on vacation because of the FBI policies and so he's sending her by herself and she's like I don't wanna do this. This is stupid. Why are you making me do this? The bad guy I mean, he's not a bad guy, he's being controlled by his tattoo.
Speaker 2:It's a story as one is.
Speaker 1:He is extraordinarily handsome and so like it's Canon that Scully goes for a pretty boy Like I do, and so she acts a little bit out of character and goes home with him. Now Fox, for whatever reason, had them wake up in different rooms, like the guy sleeping on the couch and Jilly and Anderson is like this does not make sense. They clearly fucked, please. And they're like nope, we're not doing that to our sweetly Scully. And at the end of it, like she and Mulder are still at odds and he's like well, I don't understand why you did this. And she's like this is my life. And he's like but it's our. And like that's where the episode ends. Anderson thought that that episode was gonna come sometime before the episode where they find out she has cancer and she was pissed that it came out after because it took away all of that agency. It was all about her.
Speaker 2:It was all about her reacting to the cancer instead of actually just having desire and agency. Yeah, wow.
Speaker 1:And then I like, on seeing that I was just like it did not go like that, she also ends up getting a tattoo in that episode Cause, like the guy who got the tattoo and who's like being kind of controlled by the tattoo, like he had just gone through a divorce and like they end up bonding over the fact that, like you know, my life isn't going the way I thought it would. And, yeah, he was just like I felt more control when I got my tattoo. It's just like, all right, I'll get one too. And I want that for Scully, not because she's afraid of dying, so I wish I like this is so big that it's hard for me to get my hands around, like all the things I want to say, because I love Scully as a character.
Speaker 1:I love her subtle humor, her logic, her reasoning. I love her loyalty to Mulder, even though it drives me nuts, because it's like go do something else with your life because this broken man child is just dragging you down. But at the same time you can understand sort of like my teen self could understand. My adult self is just like mm-mm, this is like when I was dating guys for their potential. Like you may be right, he may be awesome when he's 45, but don't wait around for that. Find someone who's awesome now, can I?
Speaker 2:ask you something, then. So I'm hearing about sort of the ways that the show is giving and taking at the same time with Scully in terms of representation, in terms of a fully formed protagonist in this woman's body which you know, oh my God. So the sort of give and take of that, one of the things that you said when I asked you about why we were talking about it. You talked about the exceptionalism of Scully and the 90s feminism of that exceptionalism. Can we talk about that for a minute? Because I feel like we've talked about the way it's been subverted through bodily autonomy or the lack thereof, and through, even in the order of those episodes, like removing even psychological autonomy from her by sort of making it like because of her being in distress. So let's talk about the other side of that coin and the exceptionalism that you kind of hinted at.
Speaker 1:So one of the things and I think that Carter did this intentionally because he wanted to show how tough she was but Scully is in two male dominated professions as a medical doctor and as an FBI agent and so she's consistently going up against powerful men or rooms of powerful men and holding her own and there are many examples of like institutional sexism that she's going up against. And the thing is like it is awesome to watch but at the same time like Wow, that sucks, that. It's like you got to be one fiery five foot two redhead who knows her shit to be able to do anything about any of this and even then it's just like slight push forward and then Twice as good for half as far.
Speaker 2:Half as far and actually the meta she's twice as good to get half the salary if we conflate the character and the actor a little bit.
Speaker 1:And I do want to say, like I feel that twice as good to get half as far is often described what it's like to be a black woman or black man, and I want to say, like for white women, particularly attractive ones, it's not that same kind of difficulty.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, I mean in that scale it's actually more like she has to work like one and a half times Right or yeah, yeah, yeah. So there is certainly privilege to being an attractive white woman, absolutely.
Speaker 1:So, but we don't see many other women in the bureau. So there is a character who ends up coming along in, I think, season seven, played by Mimi Rogers, who was actually a friend of David Covneys, who is a former girlfriend of his, and there is tension and jealousy between them. Even as they like, there is a sense of respect for each other's abilities, but it's not exactly a backdelt test.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was just going to say, like, how is Allison backdelt?
Speaker 1:So that's not until season seven, you said, I think so it might have been a little earlier, but it's relatively late. I am sure there are other female agents that we run into on occasion. There are certainly women that we see involved in the case of the week. Involved in the cases there are female law enforcement officers, and I'm thinking of one in particular. There's an episode called Sizzigie, which is a particular fan Called what. Sizzigie S-Y-Z-Y-G-Y. Sizzigie. Ok, so you get what you get?
Speaker 2:Is that what it is?
Speaker 1:Is it like S-Y-Z-Y? So you what? No, no, I think it's an astronomy term, because that's what it's about is like the stars align in a particular way and it makes everybody irritable, and so there's the. So it's like an astrology thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, mercury and retrograde or some shit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it actually, for really unclear reasons, it makes these two girls who have the same birthday. This came out in, I think, 1995, because they had been born in 1979, which is the year I was born and we're turning 16. And so the astrology gave them hyperkinetic powers. It's not explained. It's a hilarious episode because everybody's irritable. It's the episode where Mulder and Scully keep going sure, fine, whatever to each other and they get into an argument, and again it's all because of the astrology, where Scully is like I'm going to drive, never let me drive. He's like you can't reach the pedals with those little feet of yours.
Speaker 2:Wow, ok, so the writer's room had fun with that one. Yes.
Speaker 1:So the chief of police there is a woman and she's played by a very attractive actress and there is a sense of she thinks Mulder is attractive and there's some weirdness there because everyone's already irritable because of astronomy magic. So I am sure there are other examples. Those are the ones that come to mind most easily. So it really does feel like there can be only one kind of feminism.
Speaker 2:So it sounds like vis-a-vis Bechtel test, which, listeners? If you don't know what that is, I'll link to our bonus episode where we explain it. But it sounds like maybe individual episodes might pass. But in general in terms of the recurring characters.
Speaker 1:Well, except that she has a pretty healthy relationship with her mother. Ok, so all right, and then enter sister until her sister dies.
Speaker 2:So OK, All right. Well, that's good Again, though, as we have said in every episode, I think is a really low bar. It's a really low bar.
Speaker 1:It is so. One thing I want to talk about is so Chris Carter had three very specific influences for creating this. The most direct one is a movie called Cold Check, the Night Stalker. Never heard of it. Yeah, it only aired for one year, from 74 to 75.
Speaker 1:It starred, I think, his name, darren McGovern. He was the father in a Christmas story, because I was looking at the pictures going like how do I know that guy? He's so familiar and he's the old man, he's Ralph, he's old man. And so he played a newspaper reporter, I think in Chicago, who looked into weird phenomenon that were happening. And Chris Carter had said I love that show, but it didn't really make sense that all this weird shit is happening all in Chicago, so it would make more sense if it was going all over the country. It was a show, it was a TV show. Yeah, I thought you said it was a movie. Oh, no, no, no TV show. I might have misspoken. So that's one. Another one, and I was, and was not surprised to hear this was Moonlighting. Do you remember Moonlighting?
Speaker 2:Totally with Bruce Willis and who was Civil Shepherd. That's right Civil.
Speaker 1:Shepherd.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that as a little little twin apes thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And then the third one was Twin Peaks, which had come out just the year before.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, I was totally thinking about Twin Peaks when you were saying how if you missed one, you just missed it. I was like that's why I stopped watching Twin Peaks. Because, I don't know if you remember, but Rachel, my friend Rachel, she was really, really into it and we would watch it together and try to talk about it. And then I had to miss it for like a track meet or something, and it was like you couldn't come back. You had no idea, because even if you saw them all, you didn't know what the heck was happening at Twin Peaks. So if you missed one, forget about it. Anyway, sorry, that was a digression.
Speaker 1:So I want to talk about the influence of moonlighting, because what people remember about moonlighting was the relationship between Maddie and David.
Speaker 2:But they were PIs, weren't they?
Speaker 1:Yeah, but they ended up they were private investigators. They end up they have a well they won't they on again, off again kind of romance that they end up getting together in like it ran for four years, so I think in like the third year, something like that. And I can remember during the time when I was watching religiously, so like when I was in college, it was coming on on Sunday nights. That was my Sunday night ritual and this was like where TV fandom started. You know, it's where the word shipper comes from, is from the X-Files.
Speaker 2:I did not know that. Yeah, the X-Files is what?
Speaker 1:because the X-Files fandom invented the word shipper. Because Star.
Speaker 2:Trek fandom has been like taking the little you know action figures and making them have sex for you know, for 50 years.
Speaker 1:Well, and this is, I think the difference is that X-Files fans wanted it to happen on the screen and not just in fan fiction, and so that's.
Speaker 2:So you mean the like, the actual, like pressure on the studio to kill their fan fiction fantasies, sort of, but also just Like a splash of Star Trek, at least what I've read Not that I've read very much, but I've read a couple Was for good.
Speaker 1:I have yeah, this is more like you could be a non-fan fiction reader, right, or anything like that, and be a shipper and be like come on, chris, bring them together. When are they going to kiss? And feel like a great deal of resentment about how long it took Ship sent is short for relationship, right, correct?
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah.
Speaker 1:I remember reading, like in fandom stuff, people saying like you know, people who are pro-shipper or anti-shipper and anti-shippers were like if you look at moonlighting, how terrible it went downhill after they got together.
Speaker 2:I sort of remember dad saying something about how it was the kiss of death if they actually kissed Mm-hmm, and the thing that gets me is that that is like a reductive point that I think has caused a great deal of bad television. Well, it's really interesting, though, because it is an idea that is presented as fact.
Speaker 2:Like my recollection of dad saying it was actually about castle, like much, much, much, much later, right with Nathan Fillion and I don't even remember the woman's name, but you know where he was, it was Lucifer, but he was an author instead of the Devil Like near the end of his life, I remember him sort of stating like as a fact when you have a slow burn like this, they get together and that's the end of the show.
Speaker 1:As we're recording this. Tracey and I are both very obsessed with Good Omens.
Speaker 2:Why could stop? I could stop whenever I wanted to. I just don't want to.
Speaker 1:So for the first time in my life, even though I have been a member of various fandoms, the first time in my life I am reading fan fiction.
Speaker 2:I have, like Dabble, been like oh, what's this about? And then completely scratch the itch with like one one, one shot. And now, no, actually I did read a full novel from Lucifer, but now I'm like I can't get enough, like my family hasn't seen me in a couple of days because I'm so deep in our cup of our own.
Speaker 1:So I bring this up because I know that the X Files is a part of the reason why I have a great deal of affection for it, and that's not even the right word. I love slow burn and yearning. I love it. And I can even remember when I was like a kid, kid like 12. I read the first book in a series and you know it was the kind of like mom really likes these, you know, spunky heroin, solving murders type thing, and there was a guy she was flirting with throughout the first book and I remember thinking like I don't want to read the second because they'll be married and it'll be boring, which really need to maybe spend some time unpacking.
Speaker 2:Really interesting though, because, listeners, you can go back and listen to our Beauty and the Beast episode, and we'll do other fairy tales. That's kind of old that's older than X Files that once they get married, the story stops being worth telling.
Speaker 1:And so the reason why I'm bringing this up now and moonlighting being an influence on Chris Carter is I don't know much about moonlighting. I remember watching it. I remember like it being always the like. Well, this is why them getting together is the kiss of death. And I do remember one truly terrible episode that I watched post them getting together because it was so bad. It stuck in my mind and I was probably 10.
Speaker 1:But is that because of bad writing or is it because getting together is the kiss of death? And what interesting stories could they have told if they had let Mulder and Scully have a life together much earlier? So instead, they put these characters through so much more anguish and they chip away at the competence of Dana Scully, who continues to come back again and again and again to this like half life with a co-worker. So I have read a fan theory and I actually this is now my head cannon that I told you about. The episode where she drops the robe and its mosquito bites is what she's freaking out about, which is understandable. And the next scene you see she's sitting on his bed, he's sitting on the floor and they're just chatting like they're getting to know each other and someone's like what if they had sex during the commercial? And so this is like post-coital and like they're just sleeping together the entire time, Like that is the story that I believe. I want that to be the case. They both have so much more agency that way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, more satisfying life for Scully, for why she keeps coming back.
Speaker 1:Yes, and it's also like then she has a full life if that's the case Right, rather than her worker or her work husband, yeah, it also kind of excuses some of the Mulders very touchy and he's kind of sexually harassing her in ways that like she always smiles and like you know it's the 1990s like oh, it's fine Not patting her butt, but that becomes acceptable if they've just been quiet. They have a sexual relationship, yeah, and they're keeping quiet about it because they know they're working on a fly with their superiors.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we've been talking for a while now. I want to make sure I feel like there's. You talked about conspiracy theories when we first started Do you want to give me like a quick, like a quick nutshell of your analysis of the role of this show in contemporary mainstreaming of conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1:So yeah, the show is a huge cultural phenomenon. I mean it was everywhere and everything that Mulder, you know, his thing is. The truth is out there, I want to believe, and he's constantly searching for, like, the top of the conspiracy so he can blow it wide open and he keeps getting a little bit closer and then, you know, loses all the evidence and it is fiction. It is very clearly fiction. But this show did bring this kind of cultural consciousness to the idea that there is something to look at as a conspiracy, in part because Mulder's proven right so many times and even when, like, he's talking about the government conspiracy and Scully is like how would you keep all of those people from from blabbing or you know, whatever logical reason he's proven right.
Speaker 1:And that's not to say that X-Files invented modern conspiracy theories, like I'm not saying that, and you know we had prior to this, we had plenty of media that kind of put forward conspiracy theories. I'm thinking of the movie JFK, you know, I'm sure there are people who believe that what was put forth in that film is what happened. But I do think it's interesting that some of this has to do with the fact that when X-Files aired, it aired from 93 to 2002. And so you know there's concern about conspiracy theories. And then 9, 11 happens right towards the end of it, and so that already like primes people to think of. Like this horrible, big, huge thing happened. There has to be more to it than what we watched on TV.
Speaker 1:And now here it is, 22 years later, and everywhere you turn is a conspiracy theory and I don't know, like I don't know where to put that. This piece of media that I adored, and part of the reason why I loved it so much, was because I did love the fact that Mulder was tenacious in finding the truth and doing his own research. When I have so much disdain for the folks who are like, do your own research, you know, like OK, are you setting up the double blind experiments? So often, people who say that are not.
Speaker 2:in fact they're accepting whole cloth, something that somebody else has said. Who claims to have done the research?
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, and the show kind of challenged that and that, challenge that, engaged with that a little bit in the 2016 episodes.
Speaker 1:Like one of the episodes, or maybe multiple ones, had Joel McHale playing right wing TV or radio journalist, kind of in the kind of like Carlson or or or Rush Limbaugh, and he reaches out to Mulder I believe might have been Scully about something that Mulder has has believed conspiracy wise and that's. That's the sort of thing where it's like OK, so Chris Carter is acknowledging that it's just a quick jump from like the government is covering up aliens in Area 51 to like there's a deep state. Right, we talked in our last bonus episode I don't know when that will air, but about what I feel like authors and creators owe to their characters. There's something they owe to the audience as well. Did Chris Carter owe something more to his audience? Now, I would say definitely he owed more to his characters and his audience. In terms of the relationship between Mulder and Scully, he had decided he's like they are never getting together and they just teased us for however many yeah 118 episodes.
Speaker 1:But the thing is like David DeCovney and Jillian Anderson have a ridiculous amount of chemistry. I mean ridiculous.
Speaker 2:So there's, there's. I would never get together, but he also didn't give them. Other other options yeah.
Speaker 1:And so, like it was, like he was like you know, this is the thing I wrote. I'm not changing anything, but he was very much influenced by fans, like this is the first show that was ever influenced by fans, and he was known to read the fandoms online. This is the first show that had an online fandom, yeah, and so, like he owed something to the people who were not making it up when they saw like this spark between these two characters who truly, like, one of the things that's kind of cool about it is they do respect each other very much, and the fact even that they call each other Mulder and Scully instead of their first names no, mulder makes it clear that he's never liked his first name. Even as a child, he made his parents called him Mulder because his first name is Fox. Does that to an innocent child?
Speaker 1:That's a dog's name, yeah, and it's like Scully. When he meets her, he calls her Scully, and partially it's a distancing thing because he's like oh yeah, you're here to spy on me, but it's also kind of a respect thing in the same way that you know, if it had been a male agent who'd been sent, he would have done the exact same thing. Anyway, that is something that I think I don't know that Carter has grappled with, because I feel like he has just let criticism just wash over him without taking it in.
Speaker 2:Well, I I feel like we could talk about this for another hour but actually have an appointment in four minutes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's 218 episodes. Even if I've only seen 150 of them, I got a lot to say.
Speaker 2:So let me see if I can quickly sum up what I heard and you can fill in what I missed. So what came through loud and clear is that David Dacopney is sexy AF in the show. He is my type, so that that I heard heard that Some of the interesting things I heard that you know, dana Scully is a problematic and like very complicated character, both a role model in her just excellence, being a role model in her excellence, but also sort of forced to code as masculine in order to make it through and therefore exceptional. She is the exception to her gender as opposed to a role model for, at least within the universe of the show as you described it to me. Also, part of that kind of complication of her is that she has her bodily autonomy and actually her psychological personhood autonomy, subverted and undermined by the actual events of the show and the directorial choices of the show runner. There's some kind of weirdness with the relationship between them, so that there are hints about each of them being a sexual being, but also complete denial in canon that that is ever exercised between the two of them, even though there's clearly desire, the way in which Mulder's conspiracy theories are rewarded over and over and over again, possibly probably contributed to the mainstreaming of conspiracy theories as a political ideology in contemporary America.
Speaker 2:And there are no women in the writer's room. No women in the writer's room, right. And also oh, this is like a meta thing, but I noticed it thinking about sort of what is dissatisfying about a long form storytelling that is being made up as you go, because then you can't do the. You can't place Chekhov's gun or whatever that you know. You can't place the thing where you're like hey, pay attention to this, because it's going to come back later, which is so satisfying to the viewer If you don't know where you're going. You can't place those breadcrumbs along the way.
Speaker 1:What I miss Jillian Anderson is amazing. The episode that she wrote and directed it very, very much implies that she and Mulder had sex, and it's in seven seasons.
Speaker 2:It's like a new.
Speaker 1:Carter yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean through him.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, and it also that that also has like a backstory of her having slept with a married professor of hers in college, so like not that that's admirable, but like she's more complex than just exactly, she's the saint scully of the red hair, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, who's exceptional in every way?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:All right, cool. So next time we're going to have a little pattern interrupt. So tell me about what? What are we doing next time?
Speaker 1:So my my friend, lynette Davis, is going to be joining us to talk about anime. I am like an anime newbie I know next to nothing about it, so I'm really looking forward to hearing what she has to say.
Speaker 2:Me too. It's a big hole in my pop culture repertoire. So I'm excited to have her help me see. You know what's in there and why it matters. All right, well, until then, see you next time.