Photo: the layout department at Ms. got
ahold of onepublicity photo, of Xena, sword in hand, shouting her battle
cry, glaring right at the camera. Then they went a little crazy, using
the SAME photo on the cover and FOUR times in
the article, in different sizes and at different angles.
Title: "Xena: She's Big, Tall, Strong--and Popular"
Author: Donna Minkowitz [Go Donna!]
A six-foot-tall woman dressed like a warrior walks into an ancient "
bar" filled with men. When one pats her ass, she knocks him across the
room. After that, every man in the bar is polite to her and her woman
companion.
Three children stare gratefully at the fighter who has saved their
village from an invading army. "Did you see the way she finished off
those guys?" one boy chirps. "Zing! Pow!"
In successive weeks, a mortal woman rescues Prometheus, defeats the war
god Ares, enters the underworld, and returns
from it. In between, she saves poor farmers from enslavement and defends
women from a roving band of rapists. "You like
shoving women around so much?" she says to one. "Try me!"
***
Many feminists have been dreaming of mass culture moments like this
since feminism came into being. But we've
almost never seen these fantasies realized. The Bionic Woman smiled too
much. Even Cagney and Lacey worried about looking "overmasculine." No
woman television character has exhibited the confidence and strength of
the male heroes of
archetype and fantasy--or if she did, she was a one-episode fluke, and
her anomalous presence could reassure viewers
that next week all the regular women characters would be back, nervous
and self-questioning as ever.
Until now. Each week since September 1995, Xena: Warrior Princess has
begun with these words: "In a time of ancient gods, warlords, and kings,
a land in turmoil cried out for a hero. She was Xena, a mighty princess
forged in the heat of battle." The grim warrior, played by Lucy Lawless,
wanders through the ancient world, protecting the powerless--chiefly
women, children, and poor people. Xena, an "ancient Greek" hero invented
out of whole cloth by the series' producers, doesn't apologize for being
a better fighter than almost every man on earth. And she doesn't smile
at men unless she really, really likes them--which is seldom.
Xena is a spinoff of the popular Hercules: The Legendary Journeys,
itself a feminist and progressive retelling of Greek myth. But its
female protagonist was initially conceived as an evil figure. Executive
producer Rob Tapert says he based Xena on the "evil warrior princesses"
portrayed by Hong Kong cult film star Lin Ching Hsia in movies like 'The
Bride with White Hair' and 'The Swordsman' II and III.
When Xena first appeared as a guest character on Hercules, she pillaged
the countryside at the head of a rapacious army and murdered thousands.
She delighted only in profit and cruelty. Xena, who came from a family
of farmers like the ones whose homes she burned, was eventually called
"princess" because she was such a powerful warlord.
MCA TV, the studio to which Tapert proposed the spinoff, and which now
syndicates the show, was not pleased with the character's image. "The
studio said, 'Can you get her turned around so that she's good?'" Tapert
remembers. "I said, 'I guess, but it won't be as much fun.'" After
initial misgivings, I, for one, am glad about the change. Xena's writers
have used their hero's evolution as the backdrop for a sophisticated
discussion of morality. Xena isn't good because of innate virtue. She
has genuinely struggled with questions of ethics and has finally chosen
to act or her moral impulses. In fact the show's greatest innovation may
not be the toughness of its female lead, but her deep awareness of her
own desire to exploit and intimidate others.
Xena continually confronts the parts of herself that are least likable.
She keeps meeting people who are terrified of her because of the
atrocities they've seen her commit. And though she's reformed, Xena is
one hero whose ethical struggles are never over. In one episode, after a
prolonged period of imprisonment and beatings, Xena slugs her best
friend, Gabrielle. The punch is presented as stemming from the
imperfections that are a part of us all--even feminist superheroes.
In just one season, Xena has become the most successful new action
series in syndication, and has ranked as high as
number 11 overall, beating out Baywatch and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
Many local station masters initially refused to
air the show because "they thought no one would want to see a woman
hitting men," says executive producer Tapert, "but they were wrong."
Tapert and coexecutive producer Sam Raimi had built their careers with
male fantasy thrillers and cult movies like Darkman, but Tapert was
eager to try his hand at a fantasy story with a female hero. "I believe,
in the
basest and crassest of ways, that there's a formula to stories about
heroes," Tapert says, "and no one had ever tried to do it before with a
woman hero. Or if they did, they made excuses for her being a woman."
Fighting men and refusing to smile aren't the only ways that Xena breaks
the rules. There's also sex:
<> The warrior princess doesn't have a boyfriend. Xena has taken a
number of male lovers, including, on occasion,
Hercules, but never settled down with any of them. "That will never
happen," promises Tapert.
<> Xena is one of the first white women in TV history to passionately
kiss a black man onscreen. Several times, in
fact. She was in love with this character, a warrior named Marcus, who
reappeared in several episodes.
<> In our interview, Tapert spontaneously brings up the possibility that
Xena also has love relationships with women. "People ask me frequently
about Xena's sexual orientation," he informs me, "especially about her
relationship with Gabrielle. I tell them that she has had a string of
lovers in her life and that now she is trying to get control of her
emotions." It's hard to imagine a more ambiguous statement, but it's
certainly not an utter denial. Indeed, Tapert proudly tells me that the
show "has become a favorite with gay women" and that some lesbian bars
have special Xena viewing nights. (So do a number of women's prisons.)
"Early on, the studio came down on me, because they wanted to make sure
no one perceived Xena and Gabrielle as lesbians," the producer says. He
doesn't seem to be trying very hard to accede to their demands.
On the show's Web site, male and female viewers allude supportively to
Xena's perceived sexual relationship with
Gabrielle, whom Xena rescued from a forced marriage in the opening
episode. Ever since then, the pair have been
inseparable. Gabrielle, a girlish storyteller with lots of pluck but not
much combat skill, functions as a feminine foil for her kick boxing
friend. (As the season has progressed, Gabrielle has gradually learned
how to defend herself under Xena's tutelage. In the season's final
episode, Gabrielle led the people of her home village in a successful
stand against an imperialist army.)
The Xena-Gabrielle friendship is a deeply committed one. The women risk
their lives for each other, refuse to leave each other for men, even
work on "issues" in their relationship, such as Xena's reluctance to
include Gabrielle in situations that might become dangerous. Despite the
innuendo, the two women are never overtly sexual with each other, as
they are with men (although Gabrielle, fascinatingly, is a virgin, a
status depicted as neither superior nor inferior to Xena's status as
sexually active). If they are lovers, it is mostly in the covert Batman
and Robin way.
Whether Xena is gay or straight is ultimately beside the point--but it
is disturbing that in a show set in ancient Greece, not one of the
characters has an identifiable gay or lesbian relationship. "I've
proposed that to the writing staff, but I have to tread very carefully,"
Tapert says. "We don't want to alienate people. We don't want to
alienate kids."
While Xena is breaking new ground in its treatment of sex, it doesn't
ignore the old standby of adventure films--violence. But even here,
there's a progressive gloss on the mayhem. Unlike some feminist fantasy
figures--say, Hothead Paisan--the warrior princess and her sometime
costar Hercules never attack out of vengeance. They nurse their enemies'
wounds after a battle. And they kill only to defend themselves.
Still, Xena isn't primarily a political vehicle, but a delightfully
cheesy schlock drama that often looks like Spartacus, American
Gladiators, and Mad Max rolled into one. It wouldn't he entirely
truthful to say that the show doesn't romanticize violence. Half its
thrill comes from the blows our hero administers to exploiters and
rapists. So much time and love are devoted to the combat scenes that we
might as well see the ecstatic Pow! and Zap! titles they used on the
sixties Batman TV series. It's probably impossible to completely
separate fantasies of ethical resistance from fantasies of breaking
heads and making people crawl. But for what it's worth, Xena and her
creators try hard to do just that.
All these surprises, plus the campy story lines, add up to a program
that is extremely popular with young adults of
both sexes. According to Tapert, Xena's most faithful viewers are women
and men ages 18 to 34. That's almost
identical to Hercules' demographics, except the strongman pulls in more
kids. "Hercules has a much bigger audience
among girls and boys ages four to six, the toy-buying demographic,"
Tapert says. "Xena's audience is older and
probably a little hipper." Tapert will not speculate as to why this is.
Are little boys unwilling to watch a woman
warrior? The conventional wisdom among producers of children's
television is that boys won't watch shows with
female leads, but girls will watch shows with female or male leads. If
that's right, why aren't girls watching Xena by
themselves? Is it possible that parents object to Xena's feminist
content?
Though they apparently aren't watching the show enough to make a dent in
the demographics, young girls do write fan
letters by the hundreds to Lucy Lawless. "I'm thrilled," she tells me in
a phone interview from her native Auckland, New
Zealand. "They write about how encouraging it is to see someone who's so
strong. Mostly very young girls. I have all
these photos of little girls with Xena costumes on." Tapert says Lawless
got a letter from a pair of five- and
six-year-old sisters who refused to use their proper names. "They just
wanted to be called Xena."
But Lawless seems defensive when asked if she thinks Xena is a feminist
show. "No, I don't! Well . . . yes, it
is. But it is not anti-men! I suppose it could be called feminist in
that it's about women who do not see themselves
as at all limited by their femininity. Personally, I never believed in
glass ceilings or in being handicapped because
of being a woman, but if women draw strength from the show, that could
be called feminism. Though we're not male-bashing in any way!"
Lawless says she is not a feminist, though she does allow that
"feminists might identify with me because I'm
unapologetic in what they think is a male-dominated world . . . no, I
guess, what is a male-dominated world, but
in my microcosm [New Zealand, women are not disadvantaged, except by
their own fear." Lawless says that as a child she never longed to see a
woman superhero like Xena, because "I never saw it lacking from my
life." Good thing she's a good actor.
Lawless also differs from Xena in her approach to athletics: she's not
in the least delighted with the physical training she's had to endure
for the role. "I've been trained and bullied into some level of
proficiency. When I started, my coordination was hopeless." In fact, her
grueling schedule of weight training gave her a back injury, Lawless
says. As for her costume, a sort of sleeveless leather-breastplated
jumpsuit that, nicely enough, doesn't emphasize her breasts, Lawless
describes it as "hellish to wear." In Auckland, where the series is
filmed, "in winter it's utter cold, and you're running along some cliff
with the wind whipping at you, in this costume that leaves your lungs
bare, and it's tight. Being in constant discomfort
can make you cry, especially if you're doing bloody kung fu."
I suppose a worker-friendly environment and a politicized star would be
too much to ask from a show that has already favorably portrayed the
Amazons (Gabrielle became an honorary Amazon after a mysterious bonding
ceremony with the Amazon Queen) and created a feminist ending for The
lliad (Xena to Helen of Troy: "What do you want to do?" Helen: "No one's
ever asked me that before!").
Sex appeal is surely another reason that people watch the show.
"Everything about the show is sexy," Lawless offers, "because it has
this energy--charisma, self- confidence. We want to take people out of
the humdrum." But a friend of mine took one look at Xena's long legs and
tight leather breastplate and decided that the warrior princess was just
another R. Crumb drawing in the guise of a feminist hero.
Is Xena sexually objectified by the show? If so, does it matter? The
answer probably depends on your definition of objectification. On the
Internet, Tapert says, there are arguments between men and women as to
whose hero Xena is:
"whether she's a hero for women, or a hero and a sex symbol for men."
Although having men treat a feminist hero as a sex object might make
many of us uncomfortable, I can remember
only one occasion on which Xena's sex appeal was depicted offensively--a
commercial for the show in which a male
character stared up at the warrior and sighed, "Those boots! That
leather! Those legs!" It's worth noting that Hercules'
star, Kevin Sorbo, displays his body just as much as Lawless does.
"We've gotten a lot of feedback, from both straights
and gays, that people really like it when Kevin takes his shirt off,"
Tapert says. It's important to consider, too, that men who are Xena fans
may be motivated by factors other than sex appeal. Many women fans
somehow manage to bring
together an appreciation for Xena's feminism with an appreciation for
her body. Why is it so difficult to imagine men doing the same?
Finally, if straight men find Xena erotic, it may be a sign that their
eroticism is changing. Both Hercules and Xena make occasional, coded
references to women dominating men sexually ("You're cute when you're
nervous," Atalanta, Greek mythology's powerful runner, told Hercules in
one episode, lifting the blushing hero high in the air). Then again,
some men who watch the show may simply be excited by a woman who refuses
to be subservient. Or by a woman of tremendous physical strength and
courage. "She doesn't fall into this svelte, silicone image," Tapert
says. "She's a big woman with big shoulders, big hiphones, and big
thighs."
And a bloodcurdling battle cry.
[Blurb]
Donna Minkowitz is writing a book about the religious right and the gay
movement for the Free Press.
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