"You know I wouldn't want it any other way..."
Via metafandom, I read an interesting discussion in carmarthen's LJ about the paucity of inspiring and multifaceted female characters on television, and the way that male screenwriters often have difficulty writing women that aren't stereotypes. Which is absolutely true. So there I was, reading away through the comments, ticking off all the boxes and mentally nodding my head, when I came across this comment by rachel_martin64:
It seems to me that in TV Land, the shorthand for "strong woman" is "bitch." That's the shortcut that male writers take. Want to have a "strong female character" on your show? Write her as an unpleasant, mouthy, insolent, know-it-all, castrating bitch. No, I didn't like Scully on X-Files. I didn't like Sam on SG-1. I didn't like Buffy. I don't like most TV heroines. I find it a lot easier to identify with the males, who are written as 3-D human beings.
It's no exaggeration to say that I was stopped dead in my tracks and sat blinking at the computer screen in amazement. Scully? Scully, not a three-dimensional human being? Surely you didn't mean... Scully?
Too much of my reaction to this statement was emotionally driven. It still is now. I like Scully, and it surprises me to realise that other people don't see her the way that I do. Yet I think it's a statement that's worth analyzing, because it's been said before, and it's been said about other female characters. Do male writers actually cast strong women in this mold, or is it something about the way that we as the viewers perceive them? And is Scully a bitch... really?
Let me start by reiterating my first comment from the thread: Personally I've always thought of "bitch" as a term that male viewers used for female characters (or female people, for that matter) who somehow got 'out of line' or in other ways failed to live up to their views of what femininity actually is. In general I doubt that a similar term would be used for males who were written with the same characterisation.
This fact is particularly obvious to me when I consider the implication of terms like "mouthy" and "insolent". It seems strikingly obvious to me that Scully is actually significantly quieter and more respectful of authority than her male partner, yet it's Scully who is described in this way. It would be odd, in fact, to hear Mulder called mouthy and insolent, even though he sometimes is, because it implies that these are negative qualities and it implies that the holder of these qualities is claiming an importance for themselves that they don't deserve. Mulder is talkative, sure, and he's no respecter of persons in his search for the truth. He's certainly insubordinate. But insolent? To call him that would make him sound like a small child talking back to the teacher, or a slave talking back to his master. And that's exactly what it makes Scully sound like. These, in my mind, are strongly gendered terms suggesting that Scully doesn't quite know her place in the hierarchy.
How about "know-it-all"? Well, yes, she is. She's also an FBI agent with an honors degree in Physics, a medical degree and training as a forensic pathologist. She and Mulder lecture each other all the time on the subjects of their expertise, trying to bury one another in their expertise and the fluency of their language. This is a potentially annoying trait, and one which the show sometimes plays up for comic effect (in "War of the Coprophrages" or "Bad Blood"). Yet again, the use of the term as a criticism of the character makes her sound like a schoolgirl lecturing her teacher, like Lucy from "Peanuts". Try "intellectually arrogant". Because she is. She has a right to be.
Now we come down to the real heart of the matter: the question of whether Scully can accurately be described as a "castrating bitch". Now, I myself have sometimes thought of her as bitching at Mulder. From time to time she ends up following him around, tagging at his heels and complaining somewhat querulously: "MUL-der, where are you going? Mulder, what are you doing now? Mulder, you don't believe that, do you?" If I wanted to be uncharitable, I could say that she nags Mulder, quite a bit. This is something that people, and particularly women, end up doing when they're in a one-down position. If you hold the authority in a relationship, you can just say "Mulder, stick with me," or "This is the avenue of inquiry we're going to pursue," or "Mulder, enough". If you don't hold the authority, then all you can do if you want someone to listen to you is to follow them around, and keep complaining. Which Scully does, but this is a symbol of her weakness in the partnership rather than her strength.
It's not beyond the realm of possibility that some of Scully's fellow law enforcement officers might consider her a "bitch" if they had to work with her closely. I've wondered before whether they would put up with her. To Mulder, however, the role that she plays in their partnership is a very important one. As he makes clear in the movie, she may be an irritant, but she's an important irritant:
SCULLY: Why did they assign me to you in the first place, Mulder? To debunk your work, to rein you in, to shut you down …
MULDER: But you saved me! As difficult and as frustrating as it's been sometimes, your goddamned strict rationalism and science have saved me a thousand times over! You've kept me honest ... you've made me a whole person.
No castration in evidence here, unless being made a whole person can somehow be equated with becoming an androgynous eunuch. (Hmmm.....)
In my mind, Scully isn't a token or a shortcut to characterisation at all. She's a fully realised, fully three-dimensional woman who has her strong points and has her flaws. She has some masculine qualities that can be considered markers of the stereotypical 'strong woman' on television: her intellectual aggressiveness, her denial of the emotional side of her nature. Yet the softer sides to her character are also explored in the series: her religious faith, her close relationship with her mother. Scully also has some negative traits that are stereotypically female, most notably her co-dependency and her tendency to attach herself to male authority figure. And all these traits and flaws, some of them typical of her gender and some not, are what make her a real person. There are plenty of other ways to portray an interesting and validating female character on television--and I suppose I can see why viewers might get tired of a never-ending parade of slayers and FBI agents and forensic pathologists, if that was all they were given--but that doesn't necessarily make Dana Katherine Scully any less relevant or real.
Everyone sees something different in a character, especially one as well-developed as Scully. The television screen is a mirror in which we see ourselves, and our perceptions of gender, reflected back at us. Sexism on television exists, and male screenwriters have played their part in contributing to it. (For one thing, very few female characters on television have realistic or meaningful female friendships. This is something that male screenwriters just don't seem to be able to portray.) Yet it is important to recognise that we, as viewers and as women, also have expectations of how women *ought* to act, and that our expectations about depictions of femininity are just as important as what is portrayed on screen.
It seems to me that in TV Land, the shorthand for "strong woman" is "bitch." That's the shortcut that male writers take. Want to have a "strong female character" on your show? Write her as an unpleasant, mouthy, insolent, know-it-all, castrating bitch. No, I didn't like Scully on X-Files. I didn't like Sam on SG-1. I didn't like Buffy. I don't like most TV heroines. I find it a lot easier to identify with the males, who are written as 3-D human beings.
It's no exaggeration to say that I was stopped dead in my tracks and sat blinking at the computer screen in amazement. Scully? Scully, not a three-dimensional human being? Surely you didn't mean... Scully?
Too much of my reaction to this statement was emotionally driven. It still is now. I like Scully, and it surprises me to realise that other people don't see her the way that I do. Yet I think it's a statement that's worth analyzing, because it's been said before, and it's been said about other female characters. Do male writers actually cast strong women in this mold, or is it something about the way that we as the viewers perceive them? And is Scully a bitch... really?
Let me start by reiterating my first comment from the thread: Personally I've always thought of "bitch" as a term that male viewers used for female characters (or female people, for that matter) who somehow got 'out of line' or in other ways failed to live up to their views of what femininity actually is. In general I doubt that a similar term would be used for males who were written with the same characterisation.
This fact is particularly obvious to me when I consider the implication of terms like "mouthy" and "insolent". It seems strikingly obvious to me that Scully is actually significantly quieter and more respectful of authority than her male partner, yet it's Scully who is described in this way. It would be odd, in fact, to hear Mulder called mouthy and insolent, even though he sometimes is, because it implies that these are negative qualities and it implies that the holder of these qualities is claiming an importance for themselves that they don't deserve. Mulder is talkative, sure, and he's no respecter of persons in his search for the truth. He's certainly insubordinate. But insolent? To call him that would make him sound like a small child talking back to the teacher, or a slave talking back to his master. And that's exactly what it makes Scully sound like. These, in my mind, are strongly gendered terms suggesting that Scully doesn't quite know her place in the hierarchy.
How about "know-it-all"? Well, yes, she is. She's also an FBI agent with an honors degree in Physics, a medical degree and training as a forensic pathologist. She and Mulder lecture each other all the time on the subjects of their expertise, trying to bury one another in their expertise and the fluency of their language. This is a potentially annoying trait, and one which the show sometimes plays up for comic effect (in "War of the Coprophrages" or "Bad Blood"). Yet again, the use of the term as a criticism of the character makes her sound like a schoolgirl lecturing her teacher, like Lucy from "Peanuts". Try "intellectually arrogant". Because she is. She has a right to be.
Now we come down to the real heart of the matter: the question of whether Scully can accurately be described as a "castrating bitch". Now, I myself have sometimes thought of her as bitching at Mulder. From time to time she ends up following him around, tagging at his heels and complaining somewhat querulously: "MUL-der, where are you going? Mulder, what are you doing now? Mulder, you don't believe that, do you?" If I wanted to be uncharitable, I could say that she nags Mulder, quite a bit. This is something that people, and particularly women, end up doing when they're in a one-down position. If you hold the authority in a relationship, you can just say "Mulder, stick with me," or "This is the avenue of inquiry we're going to pursue," or "Mulder, enough". If you don't hold the authority, then all you can do if you want someone to listen to you is to follow them around, and keep complaining. Which Scully does, but this is a symbol of her weakness in the partnership rather than her strength.
It's not beyond the realm of possibility that some of Scully's fellow law enforcement officers might consider her a "bitch" if they had to work with her closely. I've wondered before whether they would put up with her. To Mulder, however, the role that she plays in their partnership is a very important one. As he makes clear in the movie, she may be an irritant, but she's an important irritant:
SCULLY: Why did they assign me to you in the first place, Mulder? To debunk your work, to rein you in, to shut you down …
MULDER: But you saved me! As difficult and as frustrating as it's been sometimes, your goddamned strict rationalism and science have saved me a thousand times over! You've kept me honest ... you've made me a whole person.
No castration in evidence here, unless being made a whole person can somehow be equated with becoming an androgynous eunuch. (Hmmm.....)
In my mind, Scully isn't a token or a shortcut to characterisation at all. She's a fully realised, fully three-dimensional woman who has her strong points and has her flaws. She has some masculine qualities that can be considered markers of the stereotypical 'strong woman' on television: her intellectual aggressiveness, her denial of the emotional side of her nature. Yet the softer sides to her character are also explored in the series: her religious faith, her close relationship with her mother. Scully also has some negative traits that are stereotypically female, most notably her co-dependency and her tendency to attach herself to male authority figure. And all these traits and flaws, some of them typical of her gender and some not, are what make her a real person. There are plenty of other ways to portray an interesting and validating female character on television--and I suppose I can see why viewers might get tired of a never-ending parade of slayers and FBI agents and forensic pathologists, if that was all they were given--but that doesn't necessarily make Dana Katherine Scully any less relevant or real.
Everyone sees something different in a character, especially one as well-developed as Scully. The television screen is a mirror in which we see ourselves, and our perceptions of gender, reflected back at us. Sexism on television exists, and male screenwriters have played their part in contributing to it. (For one thing, very few female characters on television have realistic or meaningful female friendships. This is something that male screenwriters just don't seem to be able to portray.) Yet it is important to recognise that we, as viewers and as women, also have expectations of how women *ought* to act, and that our expectations about depictions of femininity are just as important as what is portrayed on screen.