Did The X-Files Change the Face of Science?

Or, how Agent Scully got inside girls' heads and what she did there

When I was a very small girl, I loved watching Bewitched on our family’s 13-inch black and white TV. I was enchanted by how Samantha could do magic just by twitching her mouth, and how her daughter Tabitha could cast toddler spells by wiggling her nose. I spent hours practicing Samantha’s lip twitch. I was certain that if I could just get my muscles to move as fast as hers did, I, too, would prove to have special powers. I wanted to unlock that in myself. I knew better than to believe in magic; I knew it was all make-believe. Still, I loved what it stood for. I loved the example of a woman with absolute agency, in full possession of herself. I loved the idea that I, too, might have depths of power just waiting to be unearthed, that with a little practice, I could do anything.

Kids who copy what they see on screens, who see in imaginary characters a model of who they might themselves become: this is a thing.

Consider archery. In 2012, the films Brave and The Hunger Games were released. Both featured strong heroines who could do amazing things with the bow and arrow. Over the next two years, the sport of archery grew 86 percent in the U.S., with girls’ participation increasing by 105 percent. When asked what drew them to the sport, 7 out of 10 girls said that they were inspired by either Katniss Everdeen of The Hunger Games or by Princess Merida from Brave. By 2016, archery had become the fastest growing sport in the U.S., with fictional characters inspiring people across all ages and genders to take up the sport. In addition to Katniss and Princess Merida, other fictional role models included Robin Hood, Legolas, Green Arrow, and Hawkeye from The Avengers. In a study conducted by the Geena Davis Institute, researchers found that fictional characters were as likely as real archers to inspire people to take up the sport.

Or, consider chess. When The Queen’s Gambit premiered on Netflix in October of 2020, it became the streamer’s biggest success to date, racking up over 62 million household views within a few weeks. By January of 2021, Chess.com had added over 2.3 million new players — and had seen a 15 percent uptick in the proportion of girls and women signing up. Merchandisers and private teachers saw the same pattern: Anya Taylor-Joy’s portrayal of a young female chess prodigy was getting girls and women into a game that has traditionally belonged to men.

We are copycats. Or, to elevate the language, we could say that we are driven by mimetic desire. The concept comes from the philosopher Rene Girard, and the idea is that what we want arises from what we see others wanting. For better or worse, humans are profoundly imitative creatures — our desires do not come from an inner, authentic self, but from models we see in the world. As Luke Burgis puts it in his book Wanting, “The truth is that my desires are derivative, mediated by others, and that I’m part of an ecology of desire that is bigger than I can fully embrace.” There is more than philosophy at work here — there is neurology. Humans are hardwired for mimicry. Our brains contain mirror neurons, cells that light up when we act — and also in response to the actions of others. This “mirroring” is thought to be critical for learning, which often involves imitation, and also for emotional connection, social bonding, and group formation.

Mimesis itself is neutral — it’s just the human operating system. Depending on circumstances, it can lead to violence — mobs, after all, are profoundly mimetic by definition; they arise from spontaneous social contagion. Mimesis can also be positive: hence, the role model.

Storytelling is a powerful mimetic mechanism. It allows us to model ways of being — and kinds of wanting — that we may not be seeing in our daily lives, and it allows us, too, to propagate those models across time and space. Consider the amplifying effects of film and television, which can deliver stories far beyond the small circle of family and friends, sending them out to audiences of millions. Sometimes, they become a shared generational experience — or even an experience shared across generations (think: The Wizard of Oz, Mary Poppins, or The Sound of Music). And sometimes, those shared experiences become spontaneous widespread action. This is what we are seeing when girls take up archery after watching The Hunger Games.

And there is more happening here than simple mimetic desire. Neuroscience has shown that when we are involved with a story, we become our favorite characters — our brains experience the characters’ lives as if they were our own. Girls who took up the bow and arrow after seeing The Hunger Games did not only want to be like Katniss, they already were Katniss. Likewise, girls who took up chess after seeing The Queen’s Gambit were already grandmasters, at least in their mind’s eye. Imitation contains aspiration — I want to be be like that girl. Story amplifies the effect by adding identification: I am that girl. The combination of aspiration and identification is a powerful motivating brew: it generates great energy and drive.

Or it does, for a little while. The desire lasts just long enough to buy the bow and arrow, or pay for chess lessons. Just long enough, we might cynically say, to get us to spend money on stuff we will never use. Then the desire wears off. It doesn’t last. Or does it?

When The X-Files premiered in 1993, Gillian Anderson’s character, Dr. Dana Scully, was a new sort of television heroine. A trained physician with a subspecialty in physics, Scully joined the FBI only to be assigned to keep an eye on Agent Mulder, whose interest in paranormal activity and government conspiracy had earned him a basement office and a less-than-stellar reputation. The pairing inverted the usual gender roles — Scully is consistently the hardheaded skeptic, the rationalist who won’t be swayed by anything other than grounded, evidentiary reasoning, while Mulder operates more in the zone of intuition and belief. When Mulder argues that there are things happening that don’t obey the laws of physics, Scully counters that this is only because we have yet to uncover the scientific basis for these phenomena. Scully modeled a new way for a woman to be. She was a rigorous scientist operating at the top of her field. She was a badass, very able to handle herself and her gun in the field. She was also beautiful and feminine. The combination was like catnip. For nine seasons, Scully captured the imagination of a generation of girls who saw her on TV and wanted to be like her. This became known as the Scully Effect.

But was it real? Was it lasting? It’s one thing to watch an episode of TV and announce you want to be like one of the characters when you grow up. It’s quite another to actually arrange your life around that desire and see it through. What ever happened to those girls who grew up watching Scully on TV every week? How strong was the mimetic desire Scully inspired? And how lasting was it? The Geena Davis Institute wanted to find out. So they commissioned a study. The results, published in 2018, were remarkable.

Thousands of women over the age of 25 — old enough to have watched The X-Files while it was airing — were surveyed. Nearly two-thirds of those who were familiar with Dana Scully said she increased their belief in the importance of STEM (science, technology, engineering, medicine), and half said that Scully increased their own personal interest in STEM fields. Ninety-one percent said that Scully was a role model for girls and women — and two-thirds of the women currently working in STEM said that Scully was their own personal role model.

Today, women make up nearly half the college-educated work force (48 percent). But they hold only 24 percent of all STEM jobs. Of all the graduate degrees women earn, only 10 percent are in STEM fields (for men, the number is 24 percent). The Scully Effect suggests that one reason young women don’t go into STEM fields is that they can’t see themselves going into STEM fields — and that one way to change that is simply to show young women relatable images of imaginary women who could see themselves going into STEM and did.

The Scully Effect thus suggests a broader, more general truth: The right story at the right time can transform our sense of what is possible for us — and can even sustain us through years of effort as we work to turn our vision for our lives into lived reality. Storytelling plays a powerful role in shaping how we see ourselves, our lives, and our futures — not just for girls and women, but for anyone.

If we want change in the real world, we must change how we do make-believe. We must tell stories that model a previously unimaginable way to be. We’ve seen that it works for archery and for chess; we’ve seen that it works for personal goals, interests, and ambition. Can stories do the same for ideas? Beliefs? For how we understand ourselves at the level of culture? Could stories help us overcome polarization? To become a better, sturdier, happier version of ourselves? Absolutely. More on this in future posts.