Reading the X-Files: Mulder and Scully's "Partnership" and the Question of Queer Marriage, Empedocles (8X17)

(I'm going to be doing a few of these as I'm studying the show closely for a paper I'm writing; they're close readings of intellectually compelling moments in specific episodes. For the blog, I'm going to stick to moments about pregnancy, fertility/infertility, parenting, and queer stuff. Hopefully you'll find them interesting.)

There are a million things I love about the X Files:

1. The incredible hotness of the protagonists.
2. The gonzo way nothing ever makes good sense but somehow it is always AWESOME.
3. That there are spaceships and hot girls with guns .
   
4. That the government simultaneously is evil and full of good people who want to save the world.
5. Did I mention the hotness? Oh, I did? Let me say it again. THE HOTNESS.

Tell me you don't kinda want to make out with at least one of these people.

But what I really love is the relationship between Mulder and Scully. Here we have a smokin' hot vibe between two gorgeous people who are totally devoted to each other, which is simultaenously not a standard heterosexual love story. Despite the fact that we get teased about it plenty, we don't get any mushyness until nearly the end of the serious--the first kiss comes in season 7, and it's not even unambiguous that they're involved until season 8, and then just barely. Instead, we see the World's Longest, Smartest Seduction, consisting of moments of comfort and protection as the world is ending, a never-ending procession of banter and flirtation, and a lot of time spent in hospital beds. They reverse typical gender performances: Scully is the scientist, the rationalist, the hard-edged one, while Mulder is all feelings, hunches, instinct. They are equally likely to do caring work for each other, as well; this is a relationship built on equality and cooperation, at work and (presumably) outside of it.

And it gets really interesting when they're having a kid.

The expectant parents and a large pizza.

(OK, ten-second recap: Scully's infertile due to alien abduction, Mulder stole her eggs from the humans who work with the aliens, they try to conceive via IVF and fail, she *magically* gets pregnant with a baby that may or may not be an alien hybrid implanted by the bad guys and simultaneously he gets abducted by aliens, he is returned dead and they bury him, then they dig him up and he's not dead anymore. There's no explicit proof within show canon that they've ever slept together up to the point we're talking about, but there are significant hints, and there has been no definitive statement about the parentage of the baby. Does that make sense? No? Go with it, Scully, as Mulder would say. Just remember the writers were probably high at the time.)

The episode I'm talking about here is Empedocles (TWoP recap; Episode Transcript). This is the second episode after Mulder has come back to life. In the previous episode (Three Words), he has said he feels cut off, out of place, doesn't know where he fits in, and it's clear he means with with regard to Scully and her pregnancy. There is no on-camera discussion of the paternity of the child, although a minor character later asks him about his possible involvement, which results in a Serious Mulder-Scully Mutual Look (if you've ever seen the show, you know what I mean). By my reading, they seem to be on the same page, and that page is that Mulder is most definitely 'involved.' However, his exact relationship to Scully and the baby is left purposely unclear, in part because of doubt that the baby is really human. Three Words ended with Scully driving getaway vehicle for Mulder's bust into a federal data facility: that is, everything normal except for the Scully Waistline Situation (she's at about 7 months, and looks fantastic, as Gillian Anderson always does, even in the early, puffy-hair-and-white-tights phase, and the strange, long-hair-and-sad-looks Season 9 thing).

The scenes from Empedocles that I want to analyze here are 3 and 4 in the transcript. Mulder shows up on Scully's doorstep unexpectedly. They engage in supercute banter: Rational!Scully has an attack of pregnancy brain, Mulder posits the pizza delivery boy as a possible father for the baby, there is a significant double entendre around the phrase "nice package," etc. The attitude is light, lighter than usual for them; the vibe is definitely more couple than friends, but, as with everything on this show, it's not perfectly clear.

There is this exchange:

SCULLY: I feel like I'm stuck in an episode of Mad About You.

MULDER: Well, uh, yeah, but small technicality. Mad About You was about a married couple and we just work together.

SCULLY: Yeah, well, you know what I'm talking about.

MULDER: I do, I do.

This is the show's greatest fiction: they "just work together." People, these folks are in six kinds of lurve. They've called each other best friend, soulmate, touchstone, only person I can trust, and a million other things. He was the executor of her living will as early as season 2. They tried to have a kid together, and then succeeded (I believe). When his body was discovered and then again at his funeral, she was treated as a widow. These people? Are. So. Totally. Together.

But what they are isn't named. The only word they ever use to describe who they are to each other to the outside world is 'partner.' The word was given to them by the FBI, but, of course, it has a double meaning: it's what most queer folks, and a growing contingent of radical folks in heterosexual relationships call their significant others. Mulder and Scully aren't married; in fact, it's meant to be unclear if they are even in a romantic or sexual relationship. (But they so totally are.) The name they have for it is ambiguous: they "just work together." But when Scully says, "You know what I mean," look what he says: "I do, I do." I don't think it's irrelevant that he responds to her assertion (that they've become a quipping sitcom couple, complete with bad pizza man jokes) with marriage words. In that moment, whatever the world thinks, the solidity and commitment of their relationship is established. They're partners. Just the type for whom the word means forever.

Then, crisis. Scully doubles over in pain, clutching her belly. Mulder rushes to her side, orders the pizza guy to call 911. We cut to Scully being rushed into the hospital on a guerney, Mulder holding her hand, the nurse knowing her name. (It's been a dramatic pregnancy.) Mulder corrects the nurse on the gender of Scully's OB-GYN, and we get this exchange.

ER NURSE: Who are you? The husband?

MULDER: No.

ER NURSE: Then you wait outside.

Scully is whisked away, and Mulder is left alone, looking desperate. My beloved wife, at this point in the episode, said "Come on. Everyone knows the right answer to that question is yes." And we know this, because we know if we were ever somewhere without our legal paperwork, the question would be "Are you her sister?" and the answer would be "yes," without a doubt, because there is no way we would be separated. Scully and Mulder, partners-which-means-everything, are separated here becasue they don't have the magic words. Partnership, that safe word that can mean "we just work together" or can mean "we aren't telling the government we're fucking" or "we disagree about the structural utility of the institution of marriage" or "we are too busy saving the world to pick out a china pattern" is here shown to be socially less, to be entirely insufficient at the moment of crisis. He can't do anything but stand there.

Although it isn't explicit, I want to read a critique of the dominance of 'marriage' into this moment. No one watching this show has any doubt about the fact that Mulder should have followed Scully into that ER. After all, they seem to spend all their time in ERs together. It's like date night in X-Files-land. Because this is a "personal" crisis (e.g., neither of them has been shot, abducted by aliens or serial killers, or attacked by goo), the badge-flashing routine doesn't work here, so they are forcibly separated. Because their "partnership" does not map on to our conventional notions of how relationships should be patterned, an injustice is done in that waiting room.

What is the solution here? Is it for Mulder and Scully to get married? Emphatically, no, at least in my opinion. (OK, if they show up in the movie that's coming out this summer wearing wedding rings, I'm not going to be upset. In fact, I'ma squee like the crazy mushy fangirl I am. Not that it's gonna happen.) They don't need to be married. No one needs to be married. Mulder and Scully don't need the approval of God and the District of Columbia to establish who they are to each other. All they need is a Crown Victoria, a pair of Sig Sauers, and an alien invasion to fight.

The solution I would articulate would be to allow people to determine their own words and practices. The question would be "Are you the next of kin?" The metaphysical state of marriage would be reserved for those who desired it (like myself, which I should talk about sometime). The legal state of becoming a family would be available to any arrangement of individuals who agreed to care for each other, regardless of whether their relationships were romantic, sexual, or biological. Mulder and Scully can just be Mulder and Scully (and potentially extraterrestrial fetus makes three). But in a world of compulsory heterosexuality and the sanctity of marriage, Mulder stands on the wrong side of the ER doors, waiting with the pizza men of the world for something to change.