The X-Files will continue its consistent pattern of behind-the-scenes of sexism into the upcoming Season 11, which won’t feature the work of a single woman screenwriter.
TVLine reports that X-Files creator Chris Carter, who returned to the series for a six episode “limited run” in 2016, has finalized his writers room roster for the new season, expected to premiere early in 2018. Returning writers include Carter, Darin Morgan (who wrote legendary episodes “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space” and “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose”), Glen Morgan and James Wong (who together wrote classic episodes “Ice,” “Home” and “Die Hand Die Verletzt”). These are the writers responsible for The X-Files as we think of it today — conspiratorial, wry, creative, occasionally grotesque.
They’ll be joined by Gabe Rotter, Benjamin Van Allen and Brad Follmer, who don’t have writing credits but did work their way up within The X-Files ranks from various assistant positions (a fairly standard career path).
Good for them.
But the era of all-male writers rooms needs to be brought to an end. There’s just no way around this: Fox, Chris Carter or other elements in control of The X-Files just don’t give a shit about the despicable gender imbalance behind the camera. And it’s worse than that, since The X-Files has a consistent history of sexism in its production and financing.
Though The X-Files became famous for the chemistry between its two leads, Fox was determined, for years, to keep Agent Scully (Gillian Anderson) in a sidekick role. According to The Daily Beast, “The studio initially required Anderson to stand a few feet behind her male partner on camera, careful never to step side-by-side with him.”
Far more shocking, however, was that the exact same attitude prevailed on The X-Files reboot. Fox offered Anderson half of what they offered Duchovny to return. A look at their respective credits over the past few years should highly the offensive absurdity of the situation (after negotiations both were paid equally for The X-Files relaunch).
“Even in interviews in the last few years, people have said to me, ‘I can’t believe that happened, how did you feel about it, that is insane.’ And my response always was, ‘That was then, this is now.’ And then it happened again! I don’t even know what to say about it,” Anderson told the Daily Beast. “It is sad.”
A 2015 survey conducted by the Writers Guild of America found that women represented only 29 percent of staff writing positions in broadcast and cable TV. Fully 11 percent of TV shows had no women writers (the numbers are even worse for minority writers).
But while it’s an industry-wide problem, it redounds doubly on The X-Files, who has publicly demonstrated a repeated pattern of misogyny that continues even under intensive media scrutiny. They’ve been told — over and over — they have a problem, but are refusing to address it.
Compare the imagination on offer in the crappy new episodes of The X-Files (exception: “Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster”) with something like Rick and Morty , which hasn’t seen its imagination or wit damaged in the slightest by its gender-balanced writers room (a practice Rick and Morty co-creator Dan Harmon carried over after former NBC programming head Angela Bromstad pushed him to hire more women writers on Community). The X-Files changed genre storytelling in the 90s, but an ossified writers room (that allowed Carter to unleash his worst storytelling instincts) is to blame for rebooted X-Files complete failure to innovate, evolve and offer something new to an exploding TV sci-fi landscape.
