No one gets out of childhood alive!
Bill Scully is a dick!
Mind you, he does explain how Scully is able to put up with Mulder, on too many occasions, being a dick of equal size.
It was Bill, back in Season Two's 'One Breath', who instigated the shooting of the garter snake. As a patriarchal male, Bill seems to think he has the right of control over his sister's life. He must be vastly offended by Scully's allegiance to a male who, on not enough occasions, demonstrates an acute ability to empathise. Bill Scully, as a true alpha male, has no mechanism by which he can understand, let alone accept, Mulder's feminine side. His sister's devotion to Mulder is one huge slap in his oh so masculine chops!
As objectionable as Scully's family appear in 'Christmas Carol', they seem fairly stable, as much as a Navy family can be, anyway. Scully's father might have been a touch too uptight and maybe authoritarian, but he so clearly loved his daughter. And Melissa was allowed the freedom to grow up outside the box.
There is no evidence of abuse, abandonment or acrimony in Scully's family life. Her attraction to and dependence on authoritarian males stems from her own psychology, not some trauma suffered in her formative years. Mulder is a change of course for this Navy girl, for he is anything but authoritarian. Insensitive and self-absorbed, maybe, but not authoritarian.
Is Mulder controlling, as Scully implies when talking with Jerse in 'Never Again'? He certainly appears so in that episode but not on a regular basis. Without doubt, he is wrapped up in himself and his 'mission' and fails, on too many occasions, to give Scully the credit she deserves. There are, however, enough instances that show his awareness of his dependence on Scully, his need for what she brings into his life.
For all the trauma she has suffered since that fateful day she was assigned to the "FBI's most unwanted", there can be no doubt that the 'mission' is hers as much as it is Mulder's. At any time, the writer of "Einstein's Twin Paradox: A New Interpretation", could have handed her superiors a full debunking of the X Files and thereby earned a transfer to the mainstream. That she doesn't is telling.
So why does she suffer her brother? Why does she not tell him he's a dick?
When I used to teach Psychology in one of Her Majesty's prisons I would tell my students that no one gets out of childhood alive. It was a statement designed to provoke protest. And to lead in to the idea that there are influences on our lives and our sense of self over which we have little or no control. It was a statement designed to make inmates think about who they are and how much control it was possible to have over their own lives. It was a statement born out of the idea that rehabilitation isn't some lily-livered Liberal love-is-the-answer to all their problems. Rather rehabilitation had to be earned by honestly recognising that, despite the consequences of circumstance, choices remained free. Scully didn't get out of her childhood alive.
No matter what she experiences, witnesses or endures, when she returns home she is the little girl that allowed her brother to goad her into shooting a garter snake.
And Bill Scully knows it!
Mind you, he does explain how Scully is able to put up with Mulder, on too many occasions, being a dick of equal size.
It was Bill, back in Season Two's 'One Breath', who instigated the shooting of the garter snake. As a patriarchal male, Bill seems to think he has the right of control over his sister's life. He must be vastly offended by Scully's allegiance to a male who, on not enough occasions, demonstrates an acute ability to empathise. Bill Scully, as a true alpha male, has no mechanism by which he can understand, let alone accept, Mulder's feminine side. His sister's devotion to Mulder is one huge slap in his oh so masculine chops!
As objectionable as Scully's family appear in 'Christmas Carol', they seem fairly stable, as much as a Navy family can be, anyway. Scully's father might have been a touch too uptight and maybe authoritarian, but he so clearly loved his daughter. And Melissa was allowed the freedom to grow up outside the box.
There is no evidence of abuse, abandonment or acrimony in Scully's family life. Her attraction to and dependence on authoritarian males stems from her own psychology, not some trauma suffered in her formative years. Mulder is a change of course for this Navy girl, for he is anything but authoritarian. Insensitive and self-absorbed, maybe, but not authoritarian.
Is Mulder controlling, as Scully implies when talking with Jerse in 'Never Again'? He certainly appears so in that episode but not on a regular basis. Without doubt, he is wrapped up in himself and his 'mission' and fails, on too many occasions, to give Scully the credit she deserves. There are, however, enough instances that show his awareness of his dependence on Scully, his need for what she brings into his life.
For all the trauma she has suffered since that fateful day she was assigned to the "FBI's most unwanted", there can be no doubt that the 'mission' is hers as much as it is Mulder's. At any time, the writer of "Einstein's Twin Paradox: A New Interpretation", could have handed her superiors a full debunking of the X Files and thereby earned a transfer to the mainstream. That she doesn't is telling.
So why does she suffer her brother? Why does she not tell him he's a dick?
When I used to teach Psychology in one of Her Majesty's prisons I would tell my students that no one gets out of childhood alive. It was a statement designed to provoke protest. And to lead in to the idea that there are influences on our lives and our sense of self over which we have little or no control. It was a statement designed to make inmates think about who they are and how much control it was possible to have over their own lives. It was a statement born out of the idea that rehabilitation isn't some lily-livered Liberal love-is-the-answer to all their problems. Rather rehabilitation had to be earned by honestly recognising that, despite the consequences of circumstance, choices remained free. Scully didn't get out of her childhood alive.
No matter what she experiences, witnesses or endures, when she returns home she is the little girl that allowed her brother to goad her into shooting a garter snake.
And Bill Scully knows it!
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