Reading the X-Files: Mulder and Scully's "Partnership" and the Question of Queer Marriage, Empedocles (8X17)
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| Title: | Reading the X-Files: Mulder and Scully's "Partnership" and the Question of Queer Marriage, Empedocles (8X17) |
| Creator: | brooklynmili |
| Date(s): | March 25, 2008 |
| Medium: | online |
| Fandom: | The X-Files |
| Topic: | Queer Het |
| External Links: | here, Archived version |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Reading the X-Files: Mulder and Scully's "Partnership" and the Question of Queer Marriage, Empedocles (8X17) is an essay by brooklynmili.
It discusses why Mulder and Scully's relationship is not a standard heterosexual love story.
Excerpt
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.