Dana Scully: the Restricted Heroine

Abstract

The popular heroine Dana Scully, protagonist of the TV series The Xfiles (1993-2002), is a clear example of the contradictory status of all heroines created by men that are nonetheless attractive to female audiences. On the one hand, female spectators admire her as an example of personal and professional honesty but feel frustrated by her weak points, which are emotional. They don’t know whether to read them as realistic features –women are like that– or as plain misogyny: the male creators of the character force her to go in direction no woman in her place would go. After considering her origins, characterisation and development, especially in the last two seasons in which she becomes a mother, I conclude that the ambiguous feminine response she generates is inevitable. Feminist textual criticism reaches thus a dead end: we should give up deploring the absence of a clear feminist stance in men’s texts to vindicate the presence of women in the positions they monopolise in the film and TV industries. Only thus can we really learn what kind of popular heroine we women really want.