In a message dated 97-11-18 15:07:06 EST, Pat Mathews wrote:
> If Scully were emotional, people would say "Just like a woman!" Since
> she's not, they fuss because she isn't showing a full range of emotion.
> All together, now, the modern female marching song ... "Everything we do
> is wrong!"
>
> Patricia (Pat) Mathews
> mathews@unm.edu
Thank you Pat!! Let's not forget, Scully _does_ work for the biggest Old
Boys Club in America - the U.S. Government. And in the FBI, showing one's
emotions - particularly for a woman - is probably not such a good idea. I
mean, after all, these are special agents we're talking about, doing work
which they probably can't discuss with their families. It only makes sense
for them to not only develop "poker faces", but also to develop a certain
detachment - a separation, if you will, of work and home. Because a person
who cannot keep their emotions *well* under control and out of sight probably
would not get hired by the FBI, gender aside. As a woman working for the
FBI, Scully pretty much *has* to overcompensate in order to avoid any
accusations that she *can't* keep her emotions under control.
Also, from interviews I've read, Chris Carter decided to make the female
agent the scientific one because he was tired of the woman in a partnership
always being the more empathic, more "cosmically attuned" half of the duo.
Yes, as the series goes along, Mulder gets proved correct more and more
often, but that was kind of the point of the series from the start. That
there's more out there than we think.
I'd also like to address a comment I saw go by a few days ago, regarding the
season finale/premiere, that Mulder was going to kill himself after finding
out the alien was a fake, but not after finding out that his sister didn't
want anything to do with him. That's not how I saw it. How I saw all that
was that he was going to kill himself after finding out that it was his
crusade that was costing Scully - the only person in the world he trusts
beside himself - her _life_, after realizing finally that the person at the
end of that crusade didn't want him. Not only had the purpose for his entire
_life_ been in vain, but even if he called a halt to it *right then* it was
still going to continue to cost him and those around him dearly.
Otherwise, I'd have to say that I really enjoy the X-files, and also am not
minding too much Scully's continued resistance to the "truth." For a while I
was getting frustrated by it, and even accused her of suffering from "Lois
Lane Syndrome" (a curious inability to see that which is right in front of
your face), until I started watching old episodes more carefully, and
realized that many many things we the viewers witness, Scully got excluded
from "somehow". I'll grant that sometimes it got cheesy (gee, Scully took
the wrong turn in the woods, Scully is on the other side of the door while
this strange thing happens, etc.), but it does explain why Scully can
continue to deny the "truth". There have also been hints along the way that
maybe Scully's refusal to believe stems from some sort of repressed memory
that she isn't willing to track down within herself.
As always, this is just me talking, so feel free to consider it hooey.
Barbara Benesch
BJBenesch@aol.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 25 2000 - 19:07:30 PDT