Gillian Anderson – Bitch Flicks

In Rewatching ‘The X-Files,’ One Thing Is Clear: Mulder Is a Real Jerk

I realized something even worse: Agent Mulder is not a dreamboat. In fact, he’s an asshole. An asshole who spends most of the series mansplaining to Agent Scully. … Twenty years after ‘The X-Files’ debuted, it’s still rare to see a female character who’s as complicated and resilient as Scully — especially who works in science.

This guest post written by Sarah Mirk originally appeared at Bitch Media and appears here as part of our theme week on Women Scientists. It is cross-posted with permission.

When I was in junior high, I had one major extracurricular activity: watching The X-Files. I loved the spookiness and the drama surrounding FBI agents Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) and Fox Mulder (David Duchovny). During the long summer months, I got X-Files consumption down to an efficient science. This was long before Netflix, back when binge-watching required serious devotion. Each day, I would walk down to the video store and rent a $2 VHS of two X-Files episodes. Then, at 9 p.m., I could watch another X-Files rerun on FX. That means I could squeeze three X-Files episodes into each 24-hour period. In my downtime, I read the unofficial X-Files guidebooks. It was a great summer.

Though I stopped watching the show as I got older (even 14-year-old me could clearly see when the show jumped the shark in season six), I remembered The X-Files as an excellent show. Agent Scully was a confident scientist. Agent Mulder was a dreamboat. I loved them both and thought they were the kind of odd couple that’s clearly made for each other. Then, last year, Fox announced that the original stars would be coming back to TV for an all new X-Files miniseries this January. I giddily started rewatching episodes.The X-Files is certainly a lot cheesier and low-budget than I remembered through the haze of nostalgia. But that’s not the biggest difference. Before finishing even one episode, I realized something even worse: Agent Mulder is not a dreamboat. In fact, he’s an asshole. An asshole who spends most of the series mansplaining to Agent Scully.

A lot of the fun of The X-Files, of course, comes from the sparky dynamic between Mulder and Scully. He’s a conspiracy theorist who instantly points to aliens, ghosts, or an errant chupacabra as the culprit for many of the crimes the pair investigate. Scully, meanwhile, is a forensic doctor whose criminal hypotheses stem from her extensive understanding of anatomy, chemistry, and biology. I’d always loved seeing the partners bounce contrasting ideas off each other. But watching the show as an adult who’s had two decades or so to reflect on everyday sexism, it’s suddenly obvious just how much bullshit Scully has to put up with. Not only does Mulder routinely dismiss her extremely practical ideas, but her knowledge often gets the side-eye from other men in the male-dominated world of law enforcement. In episode after episode, she has to defend her ideas to Mulder, her boss Agent Skinner, small-town cops, and a rotating cast of folks like the Lone Gunmen.

As a teen, I loved how Scully presented herself confidently and competently in the face of truly otherworldly chaos. She’s still a great character for that reason, but watching the show now, instead of rooting for Mulder and Scully as a duo, I find myself rooting for Scully alone. Twenty years after The X-Files debuted, it’s still rare to see a female character who’s as complicated and resilient as Scully — especially who works in science. Meanwhile, many of Mulder’s character traits that I once thought were endearing — his puppy dog attitude, his propensity toward throwing himself into the path of danger, his skepticism toward Scully’s ideas — now feel to me like standard egotistical behavior. As a teenager, I’d never met anyone like Mulder. Now, I’ve met many guys who act a lot like him — although their obsessions are usually not aliens, but Apple products, or politics, or “ethics in video game journalism.”

What stands out about The X-Files while watching it now, though, is how consistently Scully stands up for herself. There are a bunch of episodes where Scully’s no-bullshit attitude toward mansplaining shines. In season-three episode “Jose Chung’s ‘From Outer Space,’” Mulder runs around trying to prove that two upset teens were abducted by aliens while they were on a date. Scully calmly explains that it’s far more plausible that the two teenagers simply had sex and are struggling to deal with the emotional aftermath. This exchange between the agents is classic Scully:

SCULLY: We know that it wasn’t an alien who probed her. Mulder, you’ve got two kids having sex before they’re mature enough to know how to handle it.

MULDER: So you’re saying that all this is just a case of sexual trauma?

SCULLY: It’s a lot more plausible than an alien abduction.

That episode, like most episodes of The X-Files, ends in a gray area. Neither Mulder nor Scully’s ideas are completely vindicated, and it’s not clear to viewers whether the strange encounter was caused by sexual trauma, extraterrestrials, or shadowy government agents. Neither agent is wrong, but the script writers are careful to show neither is objectively right, either. Another fan-favorite Scully episode is season four’s “Never Again.” Gillian Anderson reportedly asked the show writers to put together a script specifically exploring Scully’s “dark side.” The result is this episode that begins with Scully asking Mulder why he has a desk — with a nameplate and all — while she doesn’t. Mulder says he always thought of a corner of the room as “her area” — an explanation Scully doesn’t buy. Then, Mulder heads out on vacation, telling Scully to follow up on a UFO sighting. She argues that it seems like a real waste of time, especially since the witness’s account of the incident sounds suspiciously like the plot of a Rocky & Bullwinkle episode.

MULDER: So you’re refusing an assignment based on the adventures of Moose and Squirrel?

SCULLY: “Refusing an assignment?” It makes it sound like you’re my superior.

MULDER: Do what you want. Don’t go to Philadelphia, but let me remind you that I worked my ass off to get the files reopened. You were just assigned. This work is my life.

SCULLY: And it’s become mine.

MULDER: You don’t want it to be.

SCULLY: This isn’t about you. Or maybe it is, indirectly. I don’t know. I feel like I’ve lost sight of myself, Mulder. It’s hard to see, let alone find in the darkness of covert locations. I mean, I wish I could say that we were going in circles, but we’re not. We’re going in an endless line — two steps forwards and three steps back. While my own life is… standing still.

With Mulder on vacation, Scully winds up going on a date with a man, who (of course) turns out to be driven mad by a tattoo laced with poison ink. Deadly shenanigans ensue and Scully lands in the hospital. When she returns to work, rather bruised, Mulder asks, “All this, because I’ve … because I didn’t get you a desk?” Scully doesn’t give into his guilt trip. The episode ends with the line, “Not everything is about you, Mulder. This is my life.” Television doesn’t get more direct than that.

The “Mulder is an asshole” trend isn’t just something that bugs me — a lot of fans feel the same way. This fall, I was on an X-Files panel at GeekGirlCon in Seattle with five other female fans. In front of a conference room full of several dozen serious X-Files devotees, I was a little nervous to voice my negative feelings about Mulder. But panelist and X-Files burlesque producer (yes, that’s a thing) Jo Jo Stiletto beat me to it. “Mulder is a real dick,” she said, to applause. That quickly became the theme of the panel: recounting the many ways that Mulder shuts down Scully, dismisses her intelligence, and generally belittles her during the series. Every fan had their own story of coming to realize that Mulder is a dick. Instead of reveling in the will-they-or-won’t-they romance between Mulder and Scully, as adults, we all agreed that Mulder feels a lot like a manipulative ex-boyfriend all women are better off without.

When the new miniseries airs this month on Fox, I’ll be watching. But while the show will always hold a special place in my heart, what will keep me tuned into the reboot isn’t Mulder and Scully. It’s Scully, holding her own. Mulder and his eye-rolling can go get permanently abducted for all I care.

Sarah Mirk is Bitch Media‘s online editor. She’s interested in gender, history, comics, and talking to strangers. You can follow her on Twitter.

Murder Spouses and Field Kabuki: The Female Gaze in NBC’s ‘Hannibal’

The show treats the bodies of living women with the same respect that it treats those of dead ones.

This guest post by Lisa Anderson appears as part of our theme week on The Female Gaze.

In discussing the female gaze in media, there’s one television show worth considering that may come as a surprise: NBC’s Hannibal. This plucky little drama has toiled away in bad time slots for three seasons now, winning critical accolades and devoted followers that never translated into ratings. In a landscape littered with crime procedurals that exploit women, Hannibal stands out, and not just for its searing visuals or plot twists. There are three ways that the “gaze” in Hannibal is feminine: the way the show depicts women, the way it depicts men, and the way it depicts sex.

You only need start with the pilot to see that Hannibal is a different sort of show. Not only does it cast two characters who were men in the original novels by Thomas Harris as women – Freddy (Freddie) Lounds and Alan (Alana) Bloom, to be specific – but it gives beefed-up rolls to three characters who weren’t central to the novels’ plots. Those are Jack Crawford’s wife Phyllis, forensic investigator Beverly Katz, and Abigail Hobbes, the daughter of serial killer Garrett Jacob Hobbs. Yet another female character, Hannibal Lecter’s psychiatrist Bedelia DuMaurier, is created from whole cloth. Showrunner Bryan Fuller has been quoted as saying he balanced the cast this way in part because writing a show with only men would have been boring.

As remarkable as the living women in the cast, however, is the way that the show treats dead women, right from the start. Much ink has been spilled about how many law enforcement procedurals fetishize the torture and suffering of women, or depict female murder victims in a titillating way. By contrast, in the opening moments of Hannibal, the protagonist, Will Graham, invites his students (and the viewers) to empathize with a dying murder victim, not with her killer–in spite of his own unfortunate gift for doing the opposite. As he is drawn into the FBI’s investigations of Hobbs’s murders, the first victim is found tucked respectfully into bed, fully clothed. The second crime scene he visits turns out to be one of Hannibal Lecter’s infamous murder tableaus, and while the dead woman there is naked –impaled on antlers – her body is angled in such a way her gender isn’t obvious and the image is fit for network TV.

Hannibal continues its gender-neutral approach to serial murder throughout its run. As many men are murdered as women (if not more), and whenever corpses are found without clothes on, they are shot such a way that they register as human rather than male or female. (The victims of the Muralist in Season 2 are perhaps the best example of this.) Even when a bare breast is shown straight on (such as with one critical character death in Season 2), it goes by quickly and is soft-focused and the nipple is not shown. Most importantly, the murders on Hannibal aren’t driven by misogyny or some twisted sexual motivation. This is not reflective of real of serial killers at all, but the show is more interesting for it. The one exception is Frances Dolarhyde, who comes on the scene in the back half of Season 3, and whose sexual pathology is impossible to get around. Even there, though, his female victims aren’t depicted in a titillating way.

Surely just having lots of good female characters and not depicting crime in a creepy way doesn’t qualify a show has having the female gaze, though, right? No, and in the case of Hannibal, there’s more to it than that. The show makes the most of the attractive male actors in its cast (and their avid fans), and also centers female pleasure in its sex scenes without exploiting the actresses.

The first (and very unsettling) instance of the female gaze that I noticed in Hannibal centers around the above-mentioned Mr. Graham, played by the amazing Hugh Dancy. Early in Season 1, Graham uses his talent for empathy to imagine himself in the place of a mental hospital inmate played by Eddie Izzard. As he mentally reconstructs a murder committed in the hospital by Izzard’s character, we see him with his shirt unbuttoned, smirking at the victim with a mix of smolder and menace before attacking her. In that moment, Dancy seems to be channeling Eddie Izzrard’s own sex appeal. Nor was that the only time the show has made the most of Dancy’s looks: it’s not common for him to be seen shirtless, but it’s not unusual either, and fans on tumblr have gleefully traded stills of the show that feature his rear end. In terms of Will the character, there is, of course, a perennial appeal to a cute man in glasses and cold-weather clothes scritching a dog… but maybe that’s just me. (I doubt it.)

In terms of the female gaze in Hannibal, however, no character is more important than the titular serial killer, played by Mads Mikkelsen. Sex appeal is part of the “Person Suit” that Lecter puts on, whether it’s the dapper, cultured professional that he puts forward in seasons 1 and 2, or the leather-clad, globe-trotting bad boy that begins Season 3. It’s not to lure his victims, though; it’s to conceal his crimes from society. Nor do clothes always make the man–in Season 2, the audience is treated to a slow pan up Mikkelson’s body as he is clad in only swim trunks. (In another example of the show’s twisted vision, Lecter is actually in dire straights at that moment.) In Season 3, there is a brief-but-langorous sequence of Lecter showing off blood. He emerges from the bathroom to have a tense confrontation with another character, rendered decent only by prop placement that would make Austin Powers proud.

The staff of Hannibal make the most of both their talented and attractive lead and the fans’ appreciation for him. The show’s official tumblr literally teased fans for weeks with the prospect of their favorite cannibal in a swimsuit. Even the show’s hilarious and inimitable food stylist, Janice Poon, has described Mikkelson as the “man o’ dreams,” as she jokingly (?) lamented missing the opportunity to brush glaze onto him.

The show’s eye candy doesn’t end with Mikkelson and Dancy, either. Richard Armitage, of Hobbit and North and South fame, joined the cast in Season 3 as Francis Dolarhyde, the Great Red Dragon. Right from his first, dialogue-free scene, he meets the high bar for acting set by Dancy and Mikkelson. But he also got into fighting shape to play the body-building villain of Harris’ novel, and for the most part, if Dolarhyde is in private, he is either wearing only small shorts or implied to be naked.

The way Dolaryhyde is filmed for Hannibal points to the difference between how depicts men and women. His nudity is not necessarily supposed to be titillating – it’s mainly to show off his formidable form and the vivid tattoo on his back, although it certainly won’t be unappealing to those who go in for muscular men. What it is, though, is gendered. By contrast, in the pilot, we see Freddie Lounds sitting at her computer, with her back turned and no shirt on. The mood is casual (especially in comparison to Dolarhyde’s workouts), and there is no posing for a camera that shouldn’t be there, no implication that she might turn. She’s treated as a naked human, not a naked woman. The same comparison can be made between Lecter’s Season 3 shower and the baths taken Dr. DuMaurier, played by Gillian Anderson. The show treats the bodies of living women with the same respect that it treats those of dead ones.

So, what happens when the men and women of Hannibal get together? Speaking strictly in terms of what’s been confirmed onscreen, we’ve had a couple of opportunities to find out. Women are seduced by (and seduce) serial killers, a lesbian character sleeps with a man to get pregnant but later finds a female partner, and there’s even a hallucinatory “five-way” that involves people hooking up with people while thinking of other people (and also… a wendigo. It’s hard to explain). If it all sounds sensational and potentially problematic, only the first part of that is true.

The sex scenes in Hannibal have a few things in common. First, neither female nor male bodies are really exploited. This could be written off as owing to network TV, the networks manage the male gaze just fine in their sex scenes most of the time. Instead, there’s a dream-like, almost art-house quality to the editing and camerawork. Second, they’re always between central, full-drawn characters, who are both acting out of their agency even if there is information that they don’t have. Third, they all have strategic or plot importance – the feelings of the characters and the dynamics between them are as important as what happens physically.

Most importantly, though, the sex scenes in Hannibal always imply that the woman (or women) involved are satisfied. This is usually done with a tasteful shot of an arched back or ecstatic facial expression. Remarkably, in a show where interpersonal relationships of all kinds prove to be fraught and painful, there’s never been a sex scene where it wasn’t clear that a woman was having a good time. This focus on female pleasure, as much as anything else, qualifies Hannibal as a show with a female gaze.

While Hannibal’s female gaze obviously includes the straight female gaze, it’s not strictly heteronormative. Dr. Alana Bloom, played by Caroline Dhavernas, is attracted to both Will and Hannibal, but ultimately ends up in a long-term relationship with a woman. Will and Hannibal both get involved with women, but in a Episode 10 of Season 3, Bedelia DuMaurier – perhaps the person most in Hannibal’s confidence – heavily and repeatedly implies that they’ve been sexual with each other as well. Many viewers were surprised only by the confirmation, based on the homoerotic subtext between the two from the start. While Hannibal still has never had a gay man as one of the central characters, it acknowledges both male and female bisexuality, which is unfortunately a rarity on TV today. Needless to say, this wins the show points in today’s fandom environment, with it’s overlapping interest in social justice and same-sex pairings.

I’m not saying that Hannibal is a perfect show. Feminists have taken issue with it before. I’ve agreed with some of those criticisms and either disagreed with or eventually softened my position on others. With two more episodes left in Season 3 as of this writing, I can imagine ways in which it could still disappoint me. At the end of the day, though, it explodes many of the misogynist tropes of the TV crime procedural and even the texts where it finds its roots, and makes something truly unique and darkly beautiful with the shards.

Sadly, Hannibal has been canceled by NBC, and has not yet found another financial backer. I hope that it finds one, because I’d love for Bryan Fuller to be able to complete his vision. Until then, I’ll probably revisit it on DVD, and encourage those who I think would enjoy it to check it out. I’ll also look forward to his next project: a mini-series of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. I’m sure he’ll bring his singular style to it, and hopefully continued nods to the female gaze as well.

Lisa Anderson is a social services professional and part-time writer living in Nashville Tennessee. Her favorite things include reading, good chocolate, and feminist pop culture deconstruction.

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Check out what we’ve been reading this week–and let us know what you’ve been reading/writing in the comments!

African-American Women in Cinema Film Fest Announces 2014 Lineup (November 19-22) by Tambay A. Obenson at Shadow and Act

Betty White, The Golden Girl From The Golden Days Of Television at NPR

Must-See: Spike Lee Slams The Idea Of a ‘Post-Racial America’ by Jolie A. Doggett at Essence

Natalie Dormer: “We Don’t Have Enough Young, Female Antiheroes” by Victoria McNally at The Mary Sue

In “The Fall,” Gillian Anderson Plays a Detective Who Doesn’t Care About Being Likeable. by Emily Hashimoto at Bitch Media

Trailer Watch: Martin Luther King, Jr. is a Man, Not a Monument, in Ava DuVernay’s ‘Selma’ by Inkoo Kang at Women and Hollywood

Forgotten Women of Film History: Lois Weber by Kitty Lindsay at Ms. blog

Todd Solondz Plots Sort of Sequel to ‘Welcome to the Dollhouse’ With Greta Gerwig (Exclusive) at The Hollywood Reporter

Ryan Potter – Big Hero 6′s “Hiro” by Momo Chang at Center for Asian American Media

What have you been reading/writing this week? Tell us in the comments!

Gillian Anderson, Feminism, and BBC’s ‘The Fall’

The most important thing The Fall is doing, though, is calling out misogyny. Yes, Gibson gets to hand it to Spector, the serial killer, labeling him a “weak, impotent” misogynist, but we already knew that. What I find more intriguing is the way the show implicates the police force and the audience itself for the casual misogyny, assumptions, and stereotypes that perpetuate victim-blaming.

Spoiler Alert

The Fall is a BBC2 crime series starring Gillian Anderson of X-Files fame as Detective Superintendent Stella Gibson in charge of a serial killer case in Belfast. In a lot of ways, The Fall reminds me of the show The Killing because both feature female leads who are strong, capable, and dogged. The way in which The Fall differs, though, is that it impressively wears its feminist agenda on its sleeve.

Before I get into all the amazing things that The Fall is doing right, I want to get out of the way the biggie that I think it’s doing wrong. While this series is taking huge strides to turn a particularly sexist genre on its head, The Fall, like many crime shows, exploits the bodies of the women who are victimized. The camera lovingly caresses and lingers upon these women’s terror, their struggles, their bound limbs, their exposed flesh, and finally their corpses. The excuse can be given that it’s all in the name of “getting into the killer’s head”, but the camera’s gaze goes too far into the realm of prurience, ultimately becoming gratuitous and indulging in fantasies of rendering women helpless and objectified. This is a dangerous trope that threatens to dehumanize its female characters (and women in general), which is the OPPOSITE of what The Fall is trying to do.

Granted the objectification and sexualization of victimized women is disturbing (to say the least), but conversely The Fall provides its lead heroine a strong, unapologetic sexuality. Stella Gibson picks out a sexual partner at a glimpse (fellow officer James Olson who seems to be working the Irish equivalent of Vice), openly propositions him for a one night stand, has sex with him, and then refuses to engage with him afterwards because he can’t keep it casual. Gibson takes on the traditionally ascribed male role as sexual pursuer as well as the one who dictates the terms on which the encounter occurs.

Superintendent Stella Gibson is a woman who knows what she wants.

Due to an unexpected turn of events, Gibson is repeatedly questioned by her police force colleagues about her relationship with Olson, each interrogator is male, and each is accusatory and incredulous at Gibson’s behavior, judgmental of her unapologetic sexuality, her unwitting role in Olson’s infidelity to his wife, and her lack of remorse for her actions as well as her lack of attachment to a man with whom she spent a single night. In a way, these men even go so far as to heap some measure of blame on Gibson for Olson’s death. With a self-satisfied smile, one of her questioners asks, “When did you first meet Sergeant Olson?” Gibson replies,

That’s what really bothers you, isn’t it? The one night stand. Man fucks woman. Subject: man. Verb: fucks. Object: woman. That’s ok. Woman fucks man. Woman: subject. Man: object. That’s not so comfortable for you, is it?

DSI Gibson seems to always have to hold her ground when it comes to her male colleagues. — DSI Gibson has to hold her ground when it comes to her male colleagues.

My jaw dropped when Gibson delivered this speech. She simply and elegantly exposes all the sexism inherent in everyone’s attitude toward her private sexual relationships. She unearths the wider cultural misogynistic discomfort with female sexual agency. I wanted to clap or call someone and say, “It’s happening! Feminism is hitting mainstream TV with a brutal right hook!” Yes. Yes. YES.

Inherent in Gibson’s self-assurance about her sexuality is an even greater independence and self-possession. Gibson is the shining star of a cast full of strong, capable women who take charge when necessary and are very professionally accomplished. In fact, the serial killer solely targets women he finds threatening and emasculating due to their career success (we may or may not learn more about this in the as-yet unproduced Season Two). Not only are many of the female cast members strong, but they’re well-developed AND friends with one another. First, we’ve got the up-and-coming Constable Dani Ferrington played by Niamh McGrady.

Ferrington deeply regrets not taking the break-in at the house of future victim Sarah Kay — Ferrington regrets not taking seriously the break-in at Sarah Kay’s home.

Ferrington very casually comes out as gay to Gibson, her commanding officer. Gibson takes the information just as casually, which is refreshing. Ferrington also strives to protect Gibson by cleaning up her hotel room of its evidence of “male company”. Gibson doesn’t hide her encounter with Olson, but Ferrington’s effort to shield her friend and superior’s private life is admirable. Not only that, but Ferrington comes clean about having responded to a break-in call from one of the serial killer victims and admits that she may have been knocking on the victim’s door while the murder was occurring. Though this admission means Ferrington may face potential charges of incompetence and blame, she behaves with integrity, putting the case above her personal stake in the matter. Ferrington is ambitious, honest, and loyal, and Gibson recognizes and appreciates those qualities and promotes her onto the serial killer case.

Another example of powerful women not only liking each other but working together (and not competing) is the relationship between Gibson and the case’s pathologist, Dr. Tanya Reed Smith, depicted by the talented Archie Panjabi (Panjabi also adds a bit of much needed diversity to the cast).

Chief Medical Examiner Reed Smith & DSI Stella Gibson — Pathologist Tanya Reed Smith & DSI Stella Gibson

Reed Smith is a highly respected police medical professional…who arrives at a crime scene on her motorcycle (badass).

Together, Reed Smith and Gibson examine crime scenes, review the details of the case, and talk about their personal lives. We find out Reed Smith has two daughters and is deeply troubled when she has to perform exams on live victims. With Reed Smith, Gibson lets down her guard and is far more open and honest than she can be with her male co-workers about her transient lifestyle and the duality she finds necessary to separate her professional and private lives. The women bond, sharing coffee and alcohol in friendship and as an important release from the stress of the case.

Strong female characters: Reed Smith & Stella Gibson.

In an unexpected turn of events, Reed Smith shares with Stella a bit of information gleaned from a college friend about an old abusive boyfriend who may match the killer’s M.O. Gibson interviews the victim, and we see this as a potential break in the case. This plot development is crucial because it illustrates the power in the unity of women. Though the old abuses went unreported, this network of women remembers the crimes. Gibson is then able to use her new-found knowledge against the serial killer (Paul Spector played by Jamie Dornan).

The most important thing The Fall is doing, though, is calling out misogyny. Yes, Gibson gets to hand it to Spector, the serial killer, labeling him a “weak, impotent” misogynist, but we already knew that. Even other misogynists can probably recognize that murdering women for sexual pleasure is over-the-top. What I find more intriguing is the way the show implicates the police force and the audience itself for the casual misogyny, assumptions, and stereotypes that perpetuate victim-blaming.

Gibson must insist that the victims not be identified as “innocent” because it implies some women, especially ones coded as sexual, might then be more deserving of brutal murder. Gibson refuses to indulge the media in the virgin/whore dichotomy, and she also declares that no judgements against the victims or their life choices are allowed. With the early blunder in which Ferrington and her partner didn’t take the break-in at victim Sarah Kay’s house seriously, we begin to see that this kind of stereotyping and victim-blaming can be deadly. It takes the emphasis off the perpetrator, and it increases the likelihood of repeat occurrences of crimes against women while also making those crimes less likely to be solved. The Fall is then exposing institutional sexism and misogyny in a radical and important way.

I’m excited to see what Season Two of The Fall will have in store. I trust it will continue to depict its female characters with integrity while ferreting out corruption within the police force and illuminating the nuances of institutional misogyny. It’s wonderful to have a well-produced, well-written, and excellently performed TV show that really strives to advance a feminist agenda. Though this approach seems revolutionary, it’s bizarre that we have so many crime shows that focus on the victimization of women that somehow do NOT employ a feminist lens. I hope The Fall is the first of many crime shows that don’t use the abuse and murder of women as a punchline or an empty premise, but as a means to expose a great inequity in our world that must be corrected or else women will continue to be beaten, abused, raped, and murdered at an alarming rate.

——————
Amanda Rodriguez is an environmental activist living in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio and an MFA in fiction writing from Queens University in Charlotte, NC. She writes all about food and drinking games on her blog Booze and Baking. Fun fact: while living in Kyoto, Japan, her house was attacked by monkeys.

In Praise of ‘The Fall’s Uber Cool Feminist Heroine: Gillian Anderson’s Stella Gibson

The Fall is one of 2013’s television success stories. The five-part BBC crime drama is a compelling, well-crafted production with a fine cast and a terrific lead performance by Gillian Anderson. Set in present-day Belfast–and also shot on location in the Northern Ireland capital–The Fall chronicles the police hunt for a serial killer of attractive, professional women in their thirties. It is created and written by Allan Cubitt–who scripted Prime Suspect 2 (1992, UK)–and directed by Jakob Verbruggen.

Detective Superintendent Stella Gibson (Gillian Anderson)

Written by Rachael Johnson

The Fall is one of 2013’s television success stories. The five-part BBC crime drama is a compelling, well-crafted production with a fine cast and a terrific lead performance by Gillian Anderson. Set in present-day Belfast–and also shot on location in the Northern Ireland capital–The Fall chronicles the police hunt for a serial killer of attractive, professional women in their thirties. It is created and written by Allan Cubitt–who scripted Prime Suspect 2 (1992, UK)–and directed by Jakob Verbruggen.

Anderson plays Detective Superintendent Stella Gibson, an Englishwoman called in from the London Metropolitan Police to review a high profile PSNI (Police Service of Northern Ireland) investigation into the murder of an architect. When another woman of similar looks and background is found murdered, Gibson takes charge of the investigation. The Fall is not a whodunit like Forbrydelsen (2007, DK) or The Killing. We know the identity of the murderer, a certain Paul Spector, from the very first episode. The viewer’s interest lies instead in studying the killer and watching Stella pursue the case.

The serial killer’s personal and professional lives are “normal”: Spector is a young man in a caring profession with a hard-working wife and two small children. He is a bereavement counselor. She is a neonatal nurse. Capably played by Jamie Dornan, Spector is slender, good-looking and athletic. A good family man, he seems to have a loving relationship with his children. His sweet, sensitive daughter adores him. Spector’s wife, Sally Anne (Bronagh Waugh) does not know that she is sleeping with a killer of women. He does not reveal violent, misogynist tendencies in his family life. Nor does he show evidence of any psycho-sexual hang-ups in his marital relations. Returning home from violating the domestic space of a potential victim, he falls into bed and makes love with his wife. Possessing, it seems, a split personality, Spector leads two very different lives. At times, these lives are sustained simultaneously. In one unnerving scene, he stalks a potential victim in a park with his young daughter in tow. At first, Dornan’s Spector struck me as a little too normal to be credible but there is an intensity and arrogance to his character that suggests a darker side. There have been serial killers from very average backgrounds and the makers of The Fall consistently underline Spector’s chilling ordinariness in their observational study of the killer. The writer Allan Cubitt has created a man–not a monster.

As a writer of a series that introduced the world to Helen Mirren’s Detective Chief Inspector Jane Tennison, Allan Cubitt is, of course, well-acquainted with strong female characters. His Stella is a particularly striking, commanding protagonist. Clad in pencil skirts, silk blouses and stilettos, she cuts an elegant, glamorous figure. Amusingly, Stella’s silk shirts have become a fashion column and pop culture talking point in the UK. The character’s ultra-feminine looks, it must be said, aim to signify authority rather than slavishness to an ideal of femininity. Stella is self-governing and goal-oriented. The English outsider has, in fact, an almost patrician manner at times. Her leadership style cannot be characterized as either buddy-buddy or maternal. Stella is a cool rather than cold woman, however. This is apparent when we see her calmly help a male co-worker recover from a traumatic incident. We admire her poise and intelligence. Stella also shows interest in the lives of her female co-workers. Most importantly, she possesses a feminist consciousness: she exposes misogyny while combating male violence against women.

Murderer and Family Man, Paul Spector (Jamie Dornan) — Murderer and family man, Paul Spector (Jamie Dornan)

Entirely at ease in her skin, Stella is, also, very much a sexual woman. One scene in particular stands out. Spotting a good-looking cop at a crime scene, Stella asks her female companion, police constable Danielle Ferrington (Niamh McGrady) to introduce her to him. When he asks her how long the review will take, Stella tells him point-blank: “I’m staying at the Hilton. Room 203.” It is an impressive, amusing display of female sexual sway. They enjoy their night together but when he makes the mistake of texting a sexy selfie the day after, Stella breaks off contact. She has no interest in pursuing a relationship. Stella is also unafraid of exposing sexual double standards. The one night stand becomes a potentially compromising issue for her male co-workers as the plot develops. Stella, however, detects the underlying reasons for their unease. She puts them in the picture: “That’s what really bothers you, isn’t it? The one night stand. Man fucks woman. Subject man, verb fucks, object woman. That’s ok. Woman fucks man, woman subject, man object. That’s not so comfortable for you, is it?”

Police Constable Danielle Ferrington (Niamh McGrady)

Stella is a rational, self-directed, sexual woman. What is unfortunate is that this particular combination of characteristics in a female protagonist is still rare in mainstream film and television. Unusually, the makers of The Fall have not given Stella a troubled back story or a comforting vulnerable side. She does not appear to be haunted by her past and there is no evidence of alcoholism or other psychological problems. Happily, the script does not seem to support the outdated, bogus belief that successful, professional women can only attain real happiness by marrying and having children. Stella does not seem to be mourning a lost love. Nor does she seem to ache for a child. These tendencies, it must be said, invariably surface in Hollywood and mainstream US television’s characterizations of strong women and it is commendable that The Fall does not take that route.

Stella Takes Charge — Stella takes charge

The Fall could be said to exhibit strong feminist principles. Of course, makers of serial killer dramas risk aestheticizing sexualised violence against women. Although they arguably represent an attempt to get into the mindset of the killer, some may find The Fall’s scenes of voyeurism and violence as suspect as those in more plainly exploitative productions. The Fall is, however, manifestly feminist in its refusal to portray Spector as a monstrous other and in its remarkable characterization of its heroine. It is also evident in the direct way it tackles the issue of victim-blaming. In a conversation with Jim Burns, the Assistant Chief Constable of the PSNI (John Lynch), Stella questions the use of the word ‘innocent’ in describing the killer’s victims:”‘Let’s not refer to them as innocent…What if he kills a prostitute next or a woman walking home drunk, late at night, in a short skirt? Will they be in some way less innocent, therefore less deserving? Culpable? The media loves to divide women into virgins and vamps, angels or whores. Let’s not encourage them.” There are other independent, resourceful women in The Fall and other instances of female solidarity. Stella has a good rapport with pathologist, Paula Reed Smith (played by Archie Panjabi) as well as PC Danielle. We see the latter stung with guilt that she was not able to save a potential victim. Danielle’s sisterly camaraderie even extends to removing the tell-tale signs of Stella’s one-night stand on an errand to her hotel room.

Stella with Pathologist Paula Reed Smith (Archie Panjabi) — Stella with pathologist Paula Reed Smith (Archie Panjabi)

The Fall is not without derivative elements and devices but it is a stylish and quite gritty series. A deeply engrossing thriller, it unsettles, frightens and moves its audience. The Fall’s setting is also interesting. Belfast provides a somewhat tense, moody backdrop. Sectarian conflict is not a distant memory and politics shapes everyday lives. While we may ask whether The Fall provides a particularly pioneering or remarkable study of male violence, it is admirable that its creators are not afraid to emphasize the killer’s normality and masculinity. Most importantly, The Fall has given us a new, über cool feminist heroine. The good news is that there will be another season.