4x20: Small Potatoes

[wendelah1]

Egad. Day six already. True confession: I have watched "Small Potatoes" several times just for the scene in the X-Files office where David Duchovny is playing Eddie Van Blundht, the human shapeshifter. Eddie, who has locked up the real Fox Mulder in a janitorial closet in the basement of the local hospital, is now practicing his moves in preparation for taking over Mulder's life. Duchovny's a good mimic, and demonstrates a genuine gift for physical comedy. It's a funny, funny scene.



Writer: Vince Gilligan
Director: Cliff Bole
Originally aired: April 20, 1997

Synopsis: After five babies in succession are born with tails in the small town of Martinsburg, West Virginia, Mulder and Scully head down to investigate.

Most Memorable Quote:
Mulder: I have a theory. Do you wanna hear it?
Scully: Van Blundht somehow physically transformed into his captor and walked out the door, leaving no one the wiser?
Mulder: (pleased) Scully, should we be picking out china patterns or what?

Links:
Transcript
A Good Fic Spoiled: X-Files, "Small Potatoes" by Plaid Adder. I recommend all of her meta series on The X-Files.
Autumn Tysko
Sarah Stegall
Confusion of Rape and Desire in the X-Files Universe by fialka. Addresses "Small Potatoes," also "Post Modern Prometheus."
Only Connect: Scully in Season Four - Part 1 | Part 2 by emily_shore.

Fanfiction:
Isometry by syntax6. Wendy's note: Touches on the events of "Small Potatoes."
Summary: The story of a man, a woman and their lucky pickle. Season 4 cancer era. Rated NC-17.
Small Fries by Kel. Written for Virtual Season X.
Summary: Mulder and Scully investigate the case of some six-year-old shapeshifters.

Comments

[badforthefish.livejournal.com]

Honestly as far as GoT is concerned it is a mixed bag. On the one hand you have some very empowered, strong female characters and on the other depictions of rapes as casual happening of medieval violence which is not to everybody's taste. But let's face it, in medieval times and modern times rape is a war reality. There was ONE instance where the producer fucked up and a rough sex seen which had been written as consensual ended up on screen as undeniable rape, which made a lot of ink flow and created a lot of outrage. Yeah, GoT fucked up on that one, but shit happens. I don't think we should see a male misogynistic conspiracy underneath all this. I consider myself a bona fide feminist but I also think that some people read way too much into things and give men motives they don't necessarily have. Men are more guilty of genuine cluelessness than nefarious misogynistic intent.

Again about GoT and I finish my rant, a male character was castrated on the show and not a peep was heard against it on the Interwebz. Double standards are a bitch.

[wendelah1]

"I consider myself a bona fide feminist but I also think that some people read way too much into things and give men motives they don't necessarily have. Men are more guilty of genuine cluelessness than nefarious misogynistic intent."

I don't care if it's a conspiracy or not. Being clueless isn't an excuse for sexism or racism or any other ism, especially since white men still overwhelmingly fill positions of power in the entertainment industry. Women (and racial and sexual minorities) deserve to see their realities reflected on their television screen just as much as the people in power do. What we see on screen can reinforce the status quo or it can challenge it. I really can't speak to the GoT controversy and so I shouldn't have raised it at all. Sticking to "Small Potatoes," the attitude that gets reinforced here is that serial rape is a fit subject for making jokes, so it's not a big deal then. Am I right? In a thread further down, I was told we need to "lighten up" about it because this episode is supposed to be funny. That's the problem. Rape isn't funny. It's just not.

Vince Gilligan is such a big effing deal now because of the success of "Breaking Bad." Why should I lighten up on him? If anything, he should be held to a higher standard. He pulls the same shit in one of my all time favorite episodes, "Bad Blood," in that scene at the end where the sheriff puts chloral hydrate into Scully's coffee. In order to watch it, I have to tell myself that if she was raped, she would have reported it, but I don't really know for sure because it's all left deliberately ambiguous. But here's the last thing Scully says: "Anyway, I was drugged." Obviously, to Mr. Gilligan, being drugged and possibly raped is fine to make jokes about. What else can I infer?

[badforthefish.livejournal.com]

This is the third time my computer crashes while trying to edit that post. Grrrr.

I didn't say it was an excuse, just that it isn't a deliberate attempt to belittle women. And if people got what they deserved, women and otherwise, I'd be spotting the Pearly Gates from my living room window. The world of men is a world of men. It sucks in many ways and is unfair in many ways but getting all riled up about the subtext of a TV episode honestly isn't big on my list of priorities. Yeah they're using rape as a plot device, just as people use racism and murder as a plot device. These things are dramatic life points, so writers are going to use them as a source of inspiration and use them in comedy too. In the X-Files, people of all genders die a lot. Rape is a horrible thing but for me it is no worse than torture or murder. I suspend my outrage to watch TV shows, the death of people on it doesn't really affect me. Neither does this. It is a comedy. I refuse to go down the "oh but they're making fun of rape" path because I believe it is utterly preposterous. IMO this is one instance when you should not make a gender issue of a comedy episode. Besides Bergson said that laughter is cruelty. A French stand up comedian Coluche, once said: "you can make fun of everything, just not with everybody." I guess we French hold nothing sacred, any subject is fair game, which for Anglo-Saxons makes us insensitive bastards but there you go. This "You can't make fun of that" PC attitude has always rubbed me the wrong way.

[estella-c.livejournal.com]

Me too. Hell, I make fun of God, assuming that he has a terrific sense of humor.

[wendelah1]

I'm going to ask the same question of Fish. Is there anything that's off limits for you? How about murdering children? The rape of women is okay to joke about so what about raping children? How about genocide? I haven't seen many people making jokes about murder or torture but maybe I'm just not watching the right (or wrong) shows.

My point is that joking around about rape trivializes the crime. Trivializing it makes it more likely to be committed.

Making jokes about God doesn't hurt God. Please don't try to make the same claim for jokes about rape.

Rape Joke by Patricia Lockwood.

[wendelah1]

Your personal response to this episode or anything else on television isn't at issue here. So you aren't bothered by the portrayal of rape, torture, or death. Fine. I am but that's also beside the point.

I see a huge difference between using murder and torture as a plot device and making jokes about those events. So let's stick to discussing humor. Is there anything that's off-limits to you for humor? Murder and torture are okay to joke about? Really? I haven't seen many comedians making jokes about murder or torture but maybe I'm watching the wrong shows. Raping women is an okay topic for screwball comedy, what about raping children? What about torturing children? Murdering children? Infanticide? Genocide? Suicide bombers? I'm not talking a serious plot here, or a throw-away line of black humor--I mean an entire comedic plot about infanticide or pedophilia. That's not a problem for you?

[badforthefish.livejournal.com]

I would have to answer no, because I'm a heartless, soulless monster with no regards for human kind, because let's face it, that's the subtext isn't it?

First I would like to bring some nuance to this statement: So you aren't bothered by the portrayal of rape, torture, or death.

I am not bothered by the portrayal of FICTIONAL rape, torture and death. Show me a documentary on those same topics, on the other hand, depicting real life events with real people and I will react with horror and disgust like everybody does (or should).

I'm not sure how to phrase this right but it's like this big concrete wall between subjects matter that are used for a joke and reality - a complete disconnect between the fictional state of the joke world and what happens in the real world. I guess this is what allows me and other French people to find humour in topics that are taboo elsewhere.

I looked at the various things you named and I could find an example of jokes I've heard at some point for nearly all of them - mostly in France tbh - though I can't say I've heard rape jokes per say. I guess this is where the line gets drawn.

Infanticide: check, when that dead baby was found in the freezer of a French woman a few years back, we had jokes about that on national radio.

Genocide: check, at some point Nazi jokes were quite popular at Uni, mostly because they used terrible puns. The same people who laughed at those jokes went on to loudly protest when Faurisson came to give a lecture on "Gas Chambers never existed." IIRC he had to find another place to give his speech to avoid riots.

Pedophilia: check, the Catholic Church gave a lot of fodder to many French stand up comedians.

Torture, I can't recall, though, I would bet there are many a Guantanamo jokes around.

Suicide bombers. Check. A few days after 9/11, the satyrical puppet news on Canal +, posted this fake Sport newspaper headline: "Allah 1 - God 0".
I did feel bad for finding it funny, but I did because it was so outrageous. And yet, I will always regret watching the documentary of the event done by those French rookie Firemen because I can still hear the sound the bodies made when they fell and it still twists my stomach in horror whenever the memory resurfaces.

I'm not trying to prove my humanity here, merely trying to give evidence of this peculiar dichotomy.

Sometimes I find things that are highly innapropriate funny. I am not sure why I do, I just know that I grew up among people who behaved the same way. There is a very strong cultural factor to this I suspect. I guess the bigger the outrage the more disconnected from reality it feels?

Who said rape was an OK topic for screwball comedy? Is this how you interpret my finding Small Potatoes funny?

An entire comedy plot about infanticide or pedophilia wouldn't be my cup of tea because I don't find those subject matters appealing in any way. But it wouldn't be a 'problem' for me if they existed because they would be fictional stories, with characters, not real flesh and blood people.

Nameless characters from a joke have no substance - or named characters that are so removed from the person who is laughing's reality. I guess this is the reason why I have a hard time mustering outrage. Funny is funny. People are amused by different things. The mechanisms of laughter are most likely highly complex and I'm neither a neurologist nor a philosopher.