Since it premiered in 1993, The X-Files revolutionised gender roles in television. One of the defining shows of the 1990s, the show was praised for its subversion of gender roles and the casting of a supposedly-equal male and female crime-fighting duo, the antithesis to the stereotypical 'lone-wolf' masculine hero. The characters themselves seem to reverse traditional roles. Mulder, the male hero, seems to embody typically feminine characteristics of being emotional, imaginative and impulsive, whereas Scully, the female hero, is ever the stoic and rational cynic. I decided that these factors would make The X-Files the perfect study of how language varies based on gender.
Before I began my investigation, I read a selection of essays and blog posts criticising the gender roles in The X-Files to gain background knowledge on the topic. It surprised me to find that many people have …show more content…
I chose two particular episodes, one from 1996 ('War of the Coprophages') and one from the 2016 revival ('Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster'). I chose to use two episodes twenty years apart as I felt this would provide the most accurate representation of the gendered stereotypes present during both decades. I also chose to use these two specific episodes as they were both written by the same screenwriter, Darin Morgan, and thus any differences in language cannot be put down to a different screenwriter. It was also important to take genre into consideration; as The X-Files is a television series, spoken lines are carefully constructed and pre-planned rather than improvised. It is, therefore, possible to argue that the conversations between the two characters are not natural and therefore not representative of true gender roles. It is also likely that the screenwriter of the show deliberately excluded stereotypes and presented female characters in a favourable light so as to not cause controversy and risk of losing
Before I began my investigation, I read a selection of essays and blog posts criticising the gender roles in The X-Files to gain background knowledge on the topic. It surprised me to find that many people have …show more content…
I chose two particular episodes, one from 1996 ('War of the Coprophages') and one from the 2016 revival ('Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster'). I chose to use two episodes twenty years apart as I felt this would provide the most accurate representation of the gendered stereotypes present during both decades. I also chose to use these two specific episodes as they were both written by the same screenwriter, Darin Morgan, and thus any differences in language cannot be put down to a different screenwriter. It was also important to take genre into consideration; as The X-Files is a television series, spoken lines are carefully constructed and pre-planned rather than improvised. It is, therefore, possible to argue that the conversations between the two characters are not natural and therefore not representative of true gender roles. It is also likely that the screenwriter of the show deliberately excluded stereotypes and presented female characters in a favourable light so as to not cause controversy and risk of losing