The X-Files, a sci-fi TV drama, has come back on television again for a 10th season. The show has become a huge hit among millennials not only when it first aired in 1993, but also today because of its appearance of the first nine seasons on Netflix we've all been shamelessly binge watching. But not many know there was a huge impact of the X-Files on society, more specifically the influence came from the character Dana Scully herself.
Dana Scully was, and still is, a strong female character on the show, The X-Files, in which she worked along side her fellow FBI agent, Fox Mulder. She was in a male-dominated field as a medical doctor and an FBI agent. This instance caused a rise in whats now known as "The Scully Effect".
The Scully Effect is described as an influence of many young women, even a decade after the show aired, pursuing careers in medicine, science and law enforcement. Though the topic itself is under academic inquiry of media influence on society, even Gillian Anderson herself, who played Dana Scully on the show, noted that she has known of the Scully Effect's impact. When asked about the Scully Effect at San Diego, California's Comic-Con in 2013, Anderson responded,
"...No, I had no idea. It was a surprise to me, when I was told that. We got a lot of letters all the time, and I was told quite frequently by girls who were going into the medical world or the science world or the FBI world or other worlds that I reigned, that they were pursuing those pursuits because of the character of Scully"
The science adviser of The X-Files, Anne Simon, even acknowledged the realness of the effect. Simon was also a biology professor and asked her intro to bio class how many of them were influenced by Scully's character and she claimed, "half the hands in the room went up".
Dana Scully was a female role that was given the opportunity to be something other than just a sexy sidekick to David Duchovny's character, Fox Mulder. Gillian Anderson, though beautiful, was not a sexualized female character by any means. She was given the platform as a truly intelligent woman on television. The tropes between the characters were gender reversed as well. Mulder was "the believer" and Scully was "the skeptic" which gave us female that worked hard with science and evidence to back up her beliefs, rather than just believing things at face value.
Media and television affects society in many ways, a lot of times it can be a negative influence for women. The character of Scully seemed to give a noticeable positive influence on young women in society and appears to still do so with The X-Files still being relevant in culture today.
