Introduction

I am using this blog to post academic essays I have written concerning the show Xena: Warrior Princess (1995-2001). Essays were originally produced for my college classes, and are built off of each other (so may contain some overlap). All essays are copyrighted to the author and may not be reproduced without permission. I can be contacted at rightofcaste@gmail.com

My reason for turning to Xena as a productive site of scholarly inquiry emerges partly out of what I see as a lack of interest in the show despite a current boom in academic work being done at the intersection of cultural studies and queer studies. I am curious as to why this show has all but fallen off the queer radar screen.

Xena was a historic show in many ways, and is an incredibly valuable and rich text to analyze, especially for the unique ways it deploys multiple texts of desire. I hope my essays do some justice to the show.

I would like to emphasize that these essays are experimental and are considered works-in-progress. I am still an undergraduate (as of Spring 2010) and therefore still learning a great deal about the theory I use in my essays. These essays are, in a sense, my way of understanding theory through a cultural artifact that I believe is relevant and deserves more scholarly attention. My aim was to take a lot of risks with my arguments, and to be persuasive.

I welcome feedback both on the topic as well as my writing (clarity, persuasiveness) & application of theory.

Xena and the Production of “Queer”

Temporary Note: As of January 10th, I noticed that the citation format of this essay needed correction. This will be fixed within the week.

Note: This essay contains plot “spoilers.”

Are you two…lovers?”¹ This bomb of a question, dropped in 2001, was directed at the two main characters – female fighting duo Xena and Gabrielle – of the long-running action/adventure series Xena: Warrior Princess (1995-2001).² Smirking and nudging each other, the pair look back at their interviewer with a “wouldn’t you like to know?” plainly written across their faces. Xena, taking a deep breath, embarks upon a long-winded response – “It’s like this, technically…” – at which point the camera cuts out, leaving the question lingering in the air. While tantalizing in its potential to be definitively answered, the fact that it never was and, further, still has yet to be despite seven subsequent years of heated speculation among fans, imbues the moment with an air of the prophetic. Forever unresolved, the mystery of Xena and Gabrielle’s relationship offers compelling insight into various aspects of American queer cultural production and audience interpretation of the mid-late 1990′s.

The “are they or aren’t they?” debate that raged around the pair is representative, in many ways, of the socio-political context in which the show was produced. On the other hand, the fact that the argument has yet to come to a close stands in stark contrast to the main trend in representation of GLBT characters in American programming from the mid-20^th century forward: one of a climactic exposure of sexual orientation that leaves GLBT characters at the mercy of acceptance or rejection by a presumably heterosexual audience.³ (Peele) Xena and Gabrielle, whose warrior instincts lend them a creative resistance to being pinned (trapped, even), exist in a liminal space between readability and incoherence – a space inhabited by very few, if any, other characters in the history of mainstream television. Rather than the frustrated dead-end of a negative feedback loop, however, the inarticulateness of their sexual identities actually proves highly productive in terms of theorizing a uniquely “queer” cultural aesthetic, partly in how it contradicts the dominant paradigms developing in the emerging field of GLBT television studies.

The fairly recent boom in academic studies of GLBT televisibility in American broadcasting reveals a particular methodology that systematically excludes an understanding of ambiguous orientation as part of the larger trend in screening “alternative” sexuality. Perhaps the most significant testament to this is Gay TV, Straight America (2006), a work recently produced by eminent gay television scholar Ron Becker. While his study is groundbreaking in terms of its exhaustive documentation of 1990′s GLB characters and its useful analysis of the interaction between GLB representation and the Clinton administration’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, it is equally significant for what it actively ignores. Within the study’s methodical process of tallying, it appears that the most crucial element for identifying whether a character is counted is whether or not they have “come out” as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. Through this practice, Becker establishes a precedent for relying on coming out as the most readily recognizable aspect of GLB existence, in fact what defines that existence for spectators.

Becker’s reliance on an almost taxonomic categorization fuels an understanding of gay, lesbian, and bisexual characters as statically and essentially spectacular, held in thrall by an imperative to solely view them through the lens of sexuality. Rather than their desires being a seamless part of their complex existence – only one of endless axes of identification that dynamically interact – the GLB character must make a spectacle of themselves in order to be rendered coherent. Once a publicly denoted homosexual/bisexual, this aspect of a character can never simply fade into the the grander tapestry of their existence; rather, it becomes the focal point of their purpose, a foil for revealing aspects of the more important heterosexual characters, or simply the butt of the joke.⁴ (Peele) While Becker is not misled in acknowledging this pattern as dominant within ’90s broadcasting, his pointed disregard for a character such as Xena – the hero of one of the most popular shows of that decade, who many consider to be the first and only prime-time lead engaged in a long-term homosexual relationship⁵ – suggests a conscious sleight of those characters whose status as a sexual minority is not spectacularly exposed/discovered or even plays a major part in their everyday struggles.

While Becker’s Gay TV, Straight America is not, of course, the final word on the topic, it does represent an analytical position that has been reproduced by other scholars whose works similarly focus on “outed” characters. Significantly, Televising Queer Women (2008), the first collection of essays solely focused on queer female characters, while including multiple essays on Ellen, Sex and the City, and The L Word, includes nothing more than a passing reference to Xena, despite the show’s incredible influence on current understandings of lesbian audience reception and practice.⁶ This omission, in the context of previous studies such as Becker’s, suggests more than mere oversight on the part of editor Rebecca Beirne, but rather compliance in an approach that requires a certain level of sexual legibility for a character to be considered “queer.” The greatest irony of this approach lies in its interpretation of the word “queer” – a term that inherently contains more than a hint of illegibility, undefinability, and instability.

Beirne’s usage of the term in the title of her study proves strikingly incongruous with the actual content of the essays she collects, in large part because it basically functions as a convenient replacement for the more cumbersome “lesbian/bisexual/transgender.” The common slippage between “queer” and other sexuality/gender-based identity categories such as “gay,” while perhaps colloquially viable, actually causes a great deal of confusion when used within scholarly works such as Televising Queer Women, because the term’s academic origins lend it a connotation that definitionally resists being equated with “gay.” While the G, L, and the B (though, not the T) have been standardized in such a way that their definitions are commonly considered static and denotative, queer functions in much the opposite way. Highly subjective, perpetually contested and redefined, and almost inexpressibly theoretical, queer inhabits the shadowy realm of the connotative⁷ (Doty, xi) – at least for now. A useful image to contrast the two concepts with is one that Becker draws of what the mainstream most readily identifies with gay televisibility: “two dudes kissing.”⁸ This image, lodged within the collective American consciousness, acts as a standard referent for “gay”; “queer,” on the other hand, has no such referent. Perhaps better conceived of as a presence, quality, aesthetic, or affect, queer is produced and constantly reshaped in that space between the two dudes on the screen and the individual viewer, enmeshed within their own unique social/political/personal context.

“Queer,” then, is a quality evoked through a dynamic process of production and reception, and not even necessarily dependent on the presence of denoted homosexual characters. “Gay” is far more palatable, for its representation can remain within the familiar realm of the visual, the tangible – and therefore the targetable. By equating “queer” with “gay,” and then becoming complicit in, if not vocally a part of, a discourse that identifies “gay” as only that which has been spectacularly exposed and judged, scholars strip the term of its productive nuance. The absence of Xena: Warrior Princess from their consideration indicates an avoidance of the queerness of those television characters, such as Xena and Gabrielle, who destabilize both heterosexual and homosexual norms by not adhering to either. An exploration of how queerness operates within the show will allow for consideration of several important questions that are of immediate importance to a field that is becoming increasingly relevant. What is the relation of queer to GLB representation? How is queerness produced within the interaction between cultural producers and audiences? How is queerness on prime-time television erased or promoted within popular and scholarly discourses?

Before delving into specifics, however, it is important to locate Xena within its particular historical moment – one that was particularly fraught with tensions concerning GLBT/queer (mis)representation. Becker’s Gay TV, Straight America offers a useful overview of the so-called “culture wars” that ignited 1990′s America. The time period was marked by a “civil war over irreconcilable value systems” initiated by a heightened awareness of diversity, multiculturalism, and social fragmentation.⁹ (Becker, 4) Increasingly pressured by demands of political correctness, mainstream America entered what Becker refers to as an uneasy state of “straight panic.” The older Baby Boomer generation was forced to confront, perhaps for the first time, that the (white, middle-class, male) heterosexual experience was not universal or even necessarily considered the “default” for the up-and-coming Generation X. While conservatives decried a degradation of morals at the hands of cultural relativism, a growing number of young, upwardly mobile, liberal cosmopolitans, both gay and straight, became a considerable force in shaping the tense socio-political atmosphere.¹⁰ (Becker, 28) These shifts largely took place under the Clinton Administration (1992-1998), whose particular stance on homosexuality in the military set the tenor for some of the country’s most lively debates concerning equality and representation.

“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” – a directive that called for military officials to refrain from actively seeking homosexuals unless given visual/verbal indication of their existence – became representative of Clinton-era America’s overall stance towards the Other. Adopting a colorblind “politics of denial,”¹¹ (53) the heteronormative mainstream proceeded to provisionally condone homosexuality, as long as its presence was revealed on their terms. Often, as with the military, these terms required a tacit pact that conceded the right of homosexuality to exist without persecution, as long as its manifestations remained conveniently out of sight. However, in terms of television, the debates indicated a heightened potential for niche marketing, which targeted sexual difference as a site for lucrative exploitation. Beginning in the mid-1990′s, gay storylines were coded as “hip,” cutting edge, and even in-demand for their appeal to the young, liberal audience.¹² (5) Predictably finite and among minor characters, these storylines provided straight America with tangible evidence of its own self-assured political correctness without shaking the foundation of heteronormativity – a chance to “acknowledge homophobic presence but refuse to do anything about it.”¹³ (55)

1995 marked the watershed year for gay visibility on American TV,¹⁴ (158) as well as the first year that Xena went into production. The show, which proved an immediate success, resonated strongly with the same issues standardized by the suddenly pervasive presence of the trivial gay storyline,¹⁵ (statistic) but in a completely different manner. The show’s audience, especially (though not exclusively) the lesbian segment, were able to read the relationship between Xena and Gabrielle as one coded “homosexual,” albeit in a covert manner quite in keeping with the nation’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” atmosphere. The show’s inaugural episode, Sins of the Past, positions Gabrielle as a naïve village girl who identifies herself, somewhat vaguely, as “different” from those around her.¹⁶ She sees the entrance of Xena, a newly reformed warlord just beginning her career as a champion for the defenseless, as a chance to escape the mundane and explore her growing awareness of how to live life outside of prescribed roles and traditions. Joining together as a team, the two embark upon a six-year journey of self-discovery and heroism that leads them to an ultimate recognition of each other as inseparable “soulmates.”¹⁷

Despite the fairly frequent use of this loaded term as well as repeated vows of endless love and devotion, many viewers do not consider the characters to be engaged in a romantic and/or sexual relationship. Yet, at the same time, the deliberately cultivated “open secret” of the characters’ possible homosexual relation has been publicly acknowledged many times by the show’s producers and actors.¹⁸ The knowing presence of an identifiable yet unspectacularized lesbian element, one of the show’s main hallmarks, is considered to be the product of an oblique conversation that took place between Xena‘s lesbian fans and its producers.¹⁸ (#15) Recognizing quickly, via the burgeoning information outlets of the Internet, that the show had struck a chord with a niche it had not explicitly intended to reach, the producers hastened to capitalize upon fan desires by codifying the lesbian “subtext” as a consistent element of the show.

While maintaining an internal logic that can be accessed by a gay subjectivity, the universe remains simultaneously accessible to audiences who see the pair as nothing more than close friends. Hence, the Xenaverse carries on a carefully constructed dual existence as both a popular, influential heterosexual and homosexual phenomena. At times outwardly masquerading as solely one or the other, the Xenaverse is actually most usefully and accurately conceived of as both at once. However, the discourse surrounding its multiple texts of desire reveals a strong investment, by producers and viewers alike, in constructing heterosexual and lesbian elements as definitionally parallel – two trajectories that operate on separate planes of reality, never intending or even able to interact with or inform each other. One only has to peruse the show’s still-active on-line fandom to observe the stark lines drawn between the predominantly homosexual “subtexter/subber” and predominantly heterosexual “maintexter/shipper” camps.²⁰

Significantly, however, the process of self-identification within Xena fandom does not revolve around individual preference for a homosexual reading or heterosexual reading per se, but on preference for particular pairings. Those who identify as subbers consider Gabrielle to be the primary romantic/sexual relationship in Xena’s life, whereas those who identify as shippers generally consider Ares, the God of War and resident on-and-off bad-boy flame, to be Xena’s primary object of attraction and companionship. These standpoints, when articulated in discussions between members of differing camps, rely on a pointed avoidance of terms such as “gay,” “lesbian,” “bisexual,” or “straight” in describing the characters or their relationships, and imply that, rather than labels, their defining element is based upon which individuals constitute the “one true pairing”²¹ – with Xena functioning as the nodal point of reference. The rhetoric of the “soulmate” introduced by the show’s writers conveniently resonates with this fan discourse, implying that true love exists between Xena and one other person/deity, essentially decided on a genderless spiritual plane.²² (Fisher) The belief that Xena is “meant to be” with only one individual is undeterred by the fact that she, Gabrielle, and Ares all engage in limited trysts with other characters – an apparently unavoidable habit that only strengthens a conviction of monogamous love in its implicit emphasis on the inadequacy of other pairings. Lastly, a place within fandom has been set aside for those fans – sometimes identified as “bitexters” and/or “multitexters” – who do not necessarily identify one particular relationship as primary, who believe that Xena is equally meant to be with multiple people, or who consider other relationships that do not include Xena to be of primary interest.²³

In taking these aspects of Xena‘s production and reception into consideration, it is useful to consider how and why readings of the show have normalized the concept of a parallel, hierarchical non-interface between a dominant heterosexual reading and a subordinate homosexual reading, despite the subjective understanding that several meanings can inhabit the same moment, multiple readings can be recognized as significant to a viewer, and can solicit divergent or similar affects – all at the same time. The “maintext vs. subtext” rhetoric presumes that all viewers enter the Xenaverse locked into only one subject position and mode of desire, and therefore access the plot with a singular, unwavering gaze. A scene such as the one previously described from Sins of the Past would therefore require a reading that either viewed Gabrielle’s admission of “difference” as her desire for adventure over domesticity or her recognition of her non-normative sexual preference – but not both. The reality of reception, however, is far more complex than this. Depending on the viewer, this scene has the potential to register both truths at once, without detracting from the significance of either, and with both interpretations eliciting affect. In fact, the main pleasure to be derived from this scene, for some, may not even be these multiple understandings, but rather the space between them that crackles with an amusing/disturbing dissonance reflective of the unbounded messiness of emotion and desire experienced daily in the “real world.”

Within a discourse that insists upon a viewer identifying only one reading as right at any given moment, the queerness that suffuses the Xenaverse is undermined, overlooked, or even actively erased. While perhaps understandably a part of the common cultural practice of reducing the uncomfortable ambiguity queerness causes by delineating desire as either gay or straight, the unique way in which this is enacted through Xena highlights more than just an obvious language barrier. Queer operates whether or not it is clearly identified; in fact, it might be more fitting to say it operates despite or even because it goes unlabeled. The way in which the maintext/subtext hierarchy has been constructed offers useful insight into the receptive process concerning the show, which is anything but normative.

The use of the term “subtext” itself is, in fact, quite telling; it suggests a desire on the part of producers and viewers to define that which is recognizably homosexual as inherently sub – below, obscured, inferior. More than just an “alternate” reading, the subtextual reading might be assumed, considering the label alone, to be wholly misguided – an almost pathetic desire to see what is not the truth, a mapping on of personal agenda rather than a reading through to recognize a reality. However, within the context of Xena fandom, “subtext” has a ring of the superior about it; if not an outright battle-cry on the part of fans who tout Xena and Gabrielle as their lesbian heroes, the subtextual reading does lend its adherents the satisfying feeling of being “in the know.”²⁴ At the same time, the potential of a relationship between the pair is hardly “under the radar,” as a scene like the one that opened this paper suggest; it is actually so hyper-visible that it is possible to elicit humor at the mere fact that a reporter would bother to point it out. Overall, then, it is difficult to accurately define the phenomena as “sub,” as it lacks a quality of being consciously hidden or subtle.

Further, it is difficult to even conceive of Xena‘s lesbian text as somehow “equal” or exchangeable to a “main”text of heterosexuality. Fan discourse does, however, make attempts to do just this, especially through careful documentation of those moments when the “subtextual” (read: homosexual) becomes “maintextual” (read: impossible to ignore).²⁵ Examples of moments such as these might include the aforementioned reporter interview, various points when Xena and Gabrielle intimately touch/kiss each other or other women, extended proclamations of love, or comedic incidences when other characters appear to have caught the couple in a sexually-suggestive encounter.²⁶ Being able to pinpoint these moments offers a feeling of triumph, albeit a limited one, for a viewer who has internalized the belief that lesbian desire is definitionally unscreenable.

It also creates interference for the smooth integration of the aforementioned viewing mode, which is predicated upon the construct that every viewer enters the Xenaverse locked into either a “maintext/non-subtext” or “subtext” setting that defines limits for how they can interpret each scene. This conflict is largely created by a slippage in the definition of “maintext” and “subtext,” which have a secondary function as a sort of shorthand for “heterosexual and “homosexual.” “Maintext” is most commonly used to describe lesbian moments that are so brazen they cannot be considered sub – a definition which suggests it to be limited, only occasionally present, and of a homosexual nature. “Main” and “sub” are seen as merely different sides of the same coin, or even differing levels of volume for the same tune. Seen from this angle, subtext exists without maintext, despite the positional inference of the term (i.e. “sub” meaning “under”). At the same time, maintext also carries the connotation of being that which is the opposite of a sub-existence: normative, heterosexual, and constantly visible.²⁷

The assumption to take from this second definition, then, is that every moment of the show is a heterosexual “maintext,” thriving only at the expense of keeping a simultaneous, equally ever-present subtextual reading thwarted. However, the actual way in which heterosexual desire is deployed within Xena suggests that “maintext” cannot be defined in this way – a way which, comforting in its affinity with lived reality, mirrors how heteronormativity operates to thwart non-normativity in the “real world.” Misleadingly, this construct suggests that the “default” for maintext is heterosexual subjectivity, which carries on unwittingly until rudely disturbed by the intrusion of a scene that causes the viewer to momentarily become engaged in a gay subjectivity – an overriding, omnipresent process that affects every viewer alike, regardless of how they personally define their sexual orientation. In other words, every viewer is assumed to enter the show sutured to the track of a heterosexual gaze; suddenly highjacked by a homosexual gaze travelling in the opposite direction, the gaze must jump tracks and return to its original one to continue the inevitable journey towards a final heterosexual destination.²⁸ For that brief moment, heterosexual becomes a subtext and homosexuality the maintext, but the two never stop existing in tandem. (Halberstam) Whether these leaps are made consensually is beside the point, they just are. Or so the maintext/subtext paradigm would have one believe.²⁹ (Xenites)

However, “maintext” functions not so much as an ever-present and unavoidable reality, but actually as a construct built upon its own absence. The concept has forever been defined by its relation to subtext; it only exists if there is always a simultaneous subtext to reference, always an “alternate” reality that a viewer can point to and say “this moment is maintext because it isn’t this.” Subtext, then, though on the surface appearing to be a subordinate, is the actually main referent upon which a textual paradigm is based. Those moments pinpointed by fans as places where “subtext becomes maintext” – where the two concepts simultaneously inhabit the same reality – reveal the fallibility of the construct, for they remove the possibility of a stable referent. The secondary definition that assumes a heterosexual maintext to always be present and essential for understanding each character and circumstance is similarly problematic. It suggests a receptive process defined by an economy of exchange marked by a series of “switches” back and forth between tracks, between a 0 and a 1. However, the way in which Xena is crafted suggests a dynamic far more complex and interactive.

Analyzing this dynamic within one episode will help shed light on the erroneousness of textual hierarchy, as well as lead into a discussion of how queerness is produced. One episode in particular, Season Four finale Deja Vu All Over Again³⁰, is a particularly useful example for such an exercise. The episode is set in the modern moment (1999, to be exact), where we find the current spiritual reincarnations of Xena, Gabrielle, and Joxer, a wanna-be, bumbling male warrior who often follows the two main characters around and is generally considered the slap-stick “comic relief” of the show. The three modern characters are united in a historical moment embroiled in the havoc wrought by the impending doom of Y2K; together, they begin unexpectedly experiencing flashbacks of their previous lives as the ancient heroes – the only heroes capable, once they tap into their true identities, of defending the earth from 2000′s potential evil. This episode is intentionally decentering, as it is set in an atmosphere viewers are unused to (i.e. the present day), and each character’s gender is not necessarily congruent with the reincarnated spirit they possess in their body. While the modern character Mattie, who is portrayed by the same actress who usually plays Gabrielle, is truly the reincarnation of her ancient look-a-like, the major conflict of the episode is that modern-day Xena-look-a-like Annie finds that she is, much to her horror, not the reincarnation of the warrior princess but actually the embodiment of the laughable Joxer, while Joxer-look-a-like Harry finds that he is actually the modern reincarnation of Xena.

This episode playfully creates an incredible amount of sexual dissonance as the characters attempt to figure out how they should now express themselves and who they should be attracted to based upon the sudden awareness of their inherited identities; similarly, with the visual cues skewed, viewers are forced to go through a parallel questioning process as they adjust their desires to the new situation. While Harry’s body outwardly signifies the usual sexual unattractiveness of the child-like “fool” character Joxer, he now internally possesses and begins to perform the sexually seductive presence of Xena by shifting his mannerisms, voice, and ultimately his sexual object choice. At the same moment, Annie goes through a parallel transformation whereby she comes to “perform” the customary unattractive buffoonery of Joxer, even though her outward sex and appearance match that of Xena. To confuse matters more, Harry and Annie are initially attracted to each other at the beginning of the episode; however, once they discover the true nature of their identities, Harry/Xena begins to immediately desire Mattie/Gabrielle, while Annie/Joxer, quite unexpectedly, expresses a fleeting (homosexual) attraction to Xena’s former lover Ares, who appears briefly at the end of the episode. Interestingly, both “couples” outwardly signify as “socially acceptable” because of their sex, despite the ideological understanding that their internal gender identities mark them both as homosexual. Finally, the episode concludes with a passionate kiss between Harry/Xena and Mattie/Gabrielle – a physical expression of Xena and Gabrielle’s presumed eternal desire for each other that is never portrayed so graphically while they are in their usual bodies. A subsequent episode that reunites these same characters reveals that Harry/Xena and Mattie/Gabrielle promptly got married and entered into normative nuptial bliss.³³

Deja Vu All Over Again is a particularly striking example of a Xena episode rife with queer potential, despite the later half-hearted attempt to hetero-normalize it through marriage. It should be mentioned that the episode is generally considered non-canonical³⁴, as it diverges from the more traditional Xena style in several significant ways: it is non-plot driving, filled with campy satire, set in the present day, features non-recurring characters, is a low-budget “clip” episode, and was directed by director newcomer Renee O’Connor (who simultaneously portrayed main character Mattie/Gabrielle). In fact, the entire episode has a feeling of the experimental about it; with the plot remaining tiredly predictable (Xena saves the world from destruction…again), it provides a static backdrop for a fascinating array of gender play and parody. It is, overall, a product that has the potential to produce a great amount of destabilization and uncomfortability; it is perhaps not surprising, then, that it was placed, within the overall arc of the Xena canon, in a position where it was least likely to be integrated smoothly or perceived as essential to an understanding of the Xenaverse. While the episode stands as the finale to the show’s successful fourth season – a customary place of importance – the manner in which it was produced and presented thoroughly codes it as a “throw-away.” Following the deeply emotional Ides of March,³⁵ an episode in which Xena and Gabrielle are brutally crucified and share final vows of love before they ascend to Heaven, Deja Vu is comparatively and essentially marked as inadequate, unnecessary, even a harmful detraction from the show’s larger importance.

It is this process of decentering that makes the episode particularly significant for, rather than being irrelevant, it screens what is at the heart of the entire show – yet it, revealingly, remains cast aside, the object of averted eyes and derisive snorts. Even while it is permeated with an ethic of unpalitability³⁶ – graphically illustrated, among other means, by intentionally off-putting wardrobe selections and knowing references to its own awkwardness³⁷ – it also carries about it an air of half-horrifying, half-enthralling fascination (think “train wreck”) that can arrestingly capture viewer attention. The simultaneous attraction and repulsion generated by Deja Vu is more than a result of its campy, low-budget flair, but mainly a cultivated product of the disruptive viewing mode it ensnares a viewer in. Rather than being able to access an unwavering gaze or object of desire, the episode consistently throws up blocks and smokescreens, unpredictable dead-ends and intriguing new spaces of possibility³⁸ that can become quite dizzying.

As previously stated, understanding the dynamics of this episode as “heterosexual” barely begins to capture its nuances; at the same time, a “homosexual” or “bisexual” reading falls equally short. Any attempt to keep these two “texts” separate proves insubstantial, because it ultimately requires an understanding of both at once to fully appreciate this situation in the context of the development of both the characters and Xena as a real-world cultural product. A potential hierarchy between “maintext” and “subtext” is effectively destabilized in the face of the identity scramble; texts interweave as each actor plays multiple characters at once. For example, a reading of the character of Harry is impoverished by just understanding him as either himself, Joxer, or Xena. Rather, a viewer must understand him as all three people inhabiting the same time-space, and keep in mind the often contradictory gender and sexuality-based meanings attendant with this tripartite identity. The full significance of the episode’s comedic thrust is accomplished only through an understanding of the concurrent ironies of a Joxer-bodied person (Harry) being initially attractive to a Xena-bodied person (Annie), of a Joxer-bodied person becoming sexually attractive to a Gabrielle-bodied person (Mattie) through a shift to internal Xena-identification, through his embodiment of “Xena” via exaggeratedly campy performative cues (e.g. sensual voice, fighting prowess, etc.), of a Joxer-identified Xena-bodied person (Annie) being at once hetero/homosexually attracted to the male (Ares) whose desire for Xena is constantly thwarted by her own (homosexual) love for Gabrielle – and the list goes on.

The popular receptive process of streamlining desire by focusing on specific pairings (i.e. Xena/Gabrielle [subtext], Xena/Ares [maintext], Gabrielle/Joxer [bitext]) is gleefully satirized and disrupted, and the viewer, assumedly entrenched in a customary zone of desire, is pushed in multiple directions. It is this juncture which calls for greater scrutiny for the way in which it produces what cultural theorist Alexander Doty refers to as “theory-in-the-flesh.”³⁹ (4) Doty’s Making Things Perfectly Queer: Interpreting Mass Culture (1993) is a work absolutely critical to an exploration of queerness within a text like Xena, as it stands alone in the field as the first and best analysis of queer cultural production and reception on television. Produced in a historical moment when “queer” was just entering the cultural lexicon, Doty cogently articulated what was so unique about this concept in its relation to mass culture: that the queerness of mass culture develops through “(1) influences during the production of texts; (2) historically specific cultural readings and uses of texts by self-identified gays, lesbians, bisexuals, queers; and (3) adopting reception positions that can be considered “queer” in some way, regardless of a person’s declared sexual and gender allegiances.”⁴⁰ (xi) Therefore, “queer” is not a static quality, either present or not, simply waiting to be discovered (much how “gay” is in most popular culture), but a constantly shifting process that is developed through the dynamic interaction of several factors, and is experienced differently by each viewer.

In terms of Xena: Warrior Princess, Doty’s theory is particularly useful because he makes pointed efforts to reject the concept of “subtext” as a default position for queerness, yet at the same time highlights how its place in the shadows has allowed for an interesting productivity. His argumentis worth quoting at length:

“[T]he queerness I point out in mass culture representation and reading

[...] is only “connotative,” and therefore deniable or “insubstantial” as

long as we keep thinking within conventional heterocentrist paradigms,

which always already have decided that expressions of queerness are

sub-textual, sub-culture, alternative readings, or pathetic and delusional

attempts to see something that isn’t there[.]”⁴¹ (xii) (emphasis in original)

His polemical tone instates a call to action on the part of viewers who recognize and seek to alter the heterocentrist societal system, suggesting that “queer” is not just a process that happens to a viewer, but one that can be actively entered into and enhanced by conscious shifts in subject position. At the same time, he points out elsewhere that the “insubstantial” nature of queerness has given it the quality of a “ghost,” or, to quote Derrida, a “specter.”⁴² (xii) Queerness, as specter, haunts those cultural artifacts such as Xena that are not explicitly about GLBT characters, yet possess the connotation of such forever suspended in limbo around each interaction, perpetually lodged in that moment where it is just about to be actualized, somaticized – but never quite is. It becomes a quality that touches everything, including those situations that are not explicitly romantic/sexual, opening up multiple avenues of interpretation for every instance of body language, conversation, touch, and look. In this way, the specter is hyper-productive rather than merely shrouded, lending the entire text a feeling of charged anticipation.

Hence, according to Doty, queer potential is released whenever “someone moves away from using only one specific sexual identity category – gay, lesbian, bisexual, or straight – to understand and to describe mass culture, and recognizes that texts and people’s responses to them are more sexually transmutable than any one category could signify.”⁴³ (xix) While queer potential exists in every text, queer is only produced via a receptive process that opens a viewer, whether they are conscious of it or not, to an understanding and enjoyment based upon sexual transmutability, rather than sexual inflexibility. While attempts have been made to mark desire within Xena as inflexible (i.e. pressure to conform to either a “subtextual” or “maintextual” reading, but not both), an episode such as Deja Vu illustrates how the show resists such interpretation, and even makes this practice an object of humor. Further, the process is made particularly viable by Xena because of the show’s strikingly wide demographic appeal, which marks it definitively as part of mass culture. Rather than inhabiting an isolated position of the “avant-garde” – a place where one might expect something as confoundingly complex as queerness to reside – the show is able to act upon a range of viewers from a variety of subject positions.

Queer takes advantage of “mass” appeal, constructively utilizing those aspects that are considered by many cultural theorists to be most negative, unproductive, and even destructive (a connotation perhaps partly due to its affinity with queerness). Doty describes how the work of mass culture, especially that of a playful and/or fantastical nature, is commonly considered “regressive,” in that it offers a space for the viewer to experience a wider range of erotic desire “usually linked in Western cultures to nostalgic and romantic adult conceptions of childhood.” While this type of passive relaxation of boundaries is commonly considered immature and contemptible, Doty positions it as a positive process that can encourage “straight-identified audience members to express a less censored range of queer desire and pleasure than in everyday life.”⁴⁴ (4) It is also possible to consider that gay-identified audience members could be invited into a range of desire that includes heterosexual elements, even while feeling safely attached to their own sexual identity. What this argument suggests, in terms of Xena, is that audiences considered to be logically separate (e.g. heterosexual and GLBT) are actually able to near a common gray-area of desire. It is, then, a commonality of queer experience that invites a broad demographic range, rather than the creation of a number of limited experiences geared towards a distinct number of different audience groups.

This aspect of the show has been highlighted by at least one cultural critic in a particularly devastating review written right after Xena‘s final episode, which ended the series with the brutal and untimely killing of its much-celebrated titular character. Written for The Gay and Lesbian Review, Robin Silverman’s “What Xena Giveth, Xena Taketh Away” discusses her growing realization, as a lesbian mother watching with her eight-year-old son, that the “unlikely bedfellows” which comprise Xena‘s diverse audience are not, as she and many had originally assumed, an indicator that “each took our discrete pleasure from what we were viewing.” (emphasis added) Rather, she finds that “this heterogeneous audience shared a common pleasure in Xena” — a conclusion she comes to after observing both herself and her young son, though emerging from distinct subjectivities, become equally invested in the relationship between Xena and Gabrielle (on a romantic, rather than sexual, plane).⁴⁵ Ultimately, Silverman finds the inviting door that Xena‘s production of queerness opens to be “ruthlessly” deceptive in its lack of real-world queering potential that is, according to her, never accessed because of fear on the part of the show’s producers. Implicitly, then, she identifies coming out (in her words, “acknowledging that they are in love”) as a necessary next step for a show whose queerness set it up as a site of political potential.

Her arguments return focus to a question posed earlier: What is the relation of queer to GLB representation? To elaborate this question in light of both Silverman’s ire and Doty’s “call to action,” it could be useful to ask, further, whether or not those cultural artifacts that successfully elicit queer responses are obligated, in some way, to acknowledge their political significance to GLBT viewers and aim to agitate for social change? While these questions may never be conclusively answered, it is productive to speculate about how this potential has been used in the production of Xena. In terms of the show, Silverman and many others have adamantly posited that the single most important step that the show could have taken was to have its heroines “come out.”

To resituate this demand in its socio-political context, it would be perhaps most illustrative to juxtapose Xena (1995-2001) against another of the most controversial shows of the period: Ellen (1994-1998). The moderately popular sitcom made television history when its protagonist Ellen Morgan came out as prime-time television’s first explicitly lesbian lead — only to find her show abruptly canceled. There has been some scholarly and popular interest in reading Xena and Ellen’s developmental trajectories alongside each other, indicating that many consider a link between the two characters to be apt.⁴⁷ Silverman’s article represents a position held by the segment of critics and fans who consider Ellen’s revelation of homosexuality to be the most necessary and admirable act for a lesbian/queer character to make, especially in an era pervaded by “don’t ask, don’t tell” politics. Comparatively, the popular representation of the warrior woman who would never let her love dare speak its name hardly seems like a model for progress, and has even considered reactionary for lesbian visibility.

On the other hand, others have lauded Xena as creating a different kind of necessary social change, albeit difficult to “measure” because of its lack of readable spectacularization that has become so associated with gay-labeled characters such as Ellen (as well as her real-life counterpart, Ellen DeGeneres). The most cited example of this is the show’s inspiration of fan creativity, as exhibited by the ever-growing amounts of fanfiction, as well as other cultural products such as plays and music videos.⁴⁸ Further, at least one review, written for Girlfriends magazine, has labeled Xena the “Defender of the Dyke Underclass,”⁴⁹ and encourages viewers to celebrate the show’s distinctly non-assimilationist bent:

Ellen was a perfect rallying point for an assimilationist gay movement:

its heroine was a middle-class blond bookstore manager with a mortgage

and no sex life. In contrast, Xena is a leather-clad, raven-haired Myrmidon

with a trusty steed and a shapely girlfriend. As a result, you won’t see the

suits at GLAAD [Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders] giving awards

to XWP. [...] They may not be postergirls, but they’re true-blue and blue-collar.

This assessment alludes to the significance the show has held for those gay-identified viewers unwilling or unable to be part of a mainstream gay liberation movement that seeks “normality” in the form of equal rights. Strikingly, as each year passes since the show went off the air, the number of self-identified Xena fans, present both on-line and at conventions, continues to grow – suggesting an increasing, rather than diminishing, social relevance. At the same time, the proliferation of Xena-related scholarship has dwindled, despite a current fascination “queer,” while essays on Ellen are still being produced.⁵¹

Having identified Xena as a show that produces queerness, which is partially accomplished through its resistance to explicit naming of sexual identities, its relationship to GLB representation is not best understood as one of unidirectional obligation with the ultimate expectation that queerness will be pinned down to a label. This argument assumes, erroneously, that the cultural effects created by Xena are lesser-than and even wholly negative for their refusal to make themselves stably coherent. However, the proliferation of interest and creative expression engendered among Xena fans suggests that the hyper-productivity of the queer specter is not relegated to the internal universe of the show, but spills out into the real-world itself. Fans, both gay and straight, are inspired by the show to elaborate the potentials of sexuality endlessly through original works of fiction and art, as well as through personal reflection. The fantastical nature of the Xenaverse only encourages greater experimentation by creating a safe buffer zone where desires can be explored outside the realm of “reality.” Perhaps, then, the most significant implication to draw is that not only can a cultural artifact be productive of “queer,” in the interface between producer/product and product/viewer, but can also create a circuit in which queerness is elaborated by viewers outside of the show and reflected back read ever more meanings onto the product – and the layering continues endlessly, adjusting its relevance to shifts in socio-political context.

Discourses that privilege hierarchical textual readings or ignore sexual unreadability as potentially pertinent to scholarly inquiry work against the flexibility and adaptability that marks the queerness of a cultural product like Xena. These conversations represent two different manifestations – popular and academic – of the same crisis of instability that queerness creates. Both fan focus on “subtext” and scholar focus on “GLBT representation” outwardly present as progressive for queer sexuality, and may even appropriate the term for convenient usage, but ultimately distort the process of queer reception by pinning down its understanding as something dependent upon the presence of spectacularly “out” characters/pairings. While such characters do play their role in fostering gay visibility, the implication that all characters of questionable heterosexuality must be on an inevitable path towards a label unproductively limits the loosening of the boundaries between “hetero” and “homo” that queerness instates. Though a difficult topic to discuss because of the attendant language ambiguities, avoidance of it only perpetuates a rigid divide between heterosexuality (main) and homosexuality (sub) that does not realistically reflect the messy, uncontrollable nature of desire in individual lived experience. Xena: Warrior Princess provides a useful avenue towards a greater understanding of this by visually representing what is so difficult to verbally articulate. Perhaps because it is so much closer to the heart of that unspeakability, the show has fallen out of the sight of the scholarly eye. However, this dissonance and uncomfortability must be centered for a full and nuanced understanding of sexuality, as an entity that can never truly be static.

–

Note: This essay was originally produced for “Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality 1300: Approaches to Research and Writing in Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality,” Harvard University, Prof. Afsaneh Najmabadi. Fall 2008.

Endnotes

1. “You Are There.” Xena: Warrior Princess (Season 6), DVD, directed by John Laing.(2004, Anchor Bay Entertainment).

2. Peele, Thomas (ed.) Queer Popular Culture: Literature, Media, Film, and Television. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Pg. 2.

3. Ibid.

4. Jonet, Catherine M. and Laura Anh Williams. “’Everything Else Is the Same’: Configurations of The L Word.” Chapter in Televising Queer Women: A Reader . Rebecca Beirne, editor. Pg. 152.

5. Doty, Alexander. Making Things Perfectly Queer: Interpreting Mass Culture. University of Minnesota Press, 1993. Pg. xi.

6. Becker, Ron. Gay TV and Straight America. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006. Pg. 2.

7. Ibid., 4.

8. Ibid., 28.

9. Ibid., 53.

10. Ibid., 5.

11. Ibid., 55.

12. Ibid., 158.

13. “Sins of the Past.” Xena: Warrior Princess (Season 1), DVD, directed by Doug Lefler.(2004, Anchor Bay Entertainment).

14. From midway through Season 4 through to the end of the series, Xena and Gabrielle mutually refer to each other as their “soulmate.” Examples:

“Between the Lines.” Xena: Warrior Princess (Season 4), DVD, directed by Rick Jacobson. (2004, Anchor Bay Entertainment).

“The Ring.” Xena: Warrior Princess (Season 6), DVD, directed by Rick Jacobson. (2005, Anchor Bay Entertainment).

15. Silverman, Robin. “”What Xena Giveth, Xena Taketh Away.”” The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide. Boston: Oct. 31, 2001. Vol. 8, Iss. 5; pg. 32.

16. Russo, Julie Levin. “Indiscrete Media: Television/Digital Convergence and Economies of Online Lesbian Fan Communities.” Ph.D. Diss., Brown University, 2009 (expected). <http://j-l-r.org/diss> Retrieved 18 October 2008.

17. Please note that, alternately, the term “Xenaverse” refers to the constellation of fansites, forums, fan fiction, and Xena-related music video sites created by fans on-line.

18. “Subtexter/subber” and “shipper” terminology is derived from observation of popular Xena fan forums, “Talking Xena” and “Xena Online Community.”

“Talking Xena.” <http://talkingxena.yuku.com/>. Retrieved 5 January 2008.

“Xena Online Community.” <http://xena.yuku.com/>. Retrieved 5 January 2008.

19. For a useful analysis of how Xena’s producers utilized the concept of the “soulmate,” see:

Fisher, Judy. “ ‘The Quest’ Kiss and Its Aftermath: How Xena: Warrior Princess‘ Greatest Scene Damaged the Show.” Whoosh!. Iss. 87. March 2004. <http://www.whoosh.org>

20. The terms “bitexter” and “multitexter” are derived from observation of the Xena Online Community (see note 18). It is, however, useful to note that these terms are not nearly as codified within on-line fandom as “subtexter” and “shipper.” They were chosen, instead of other possible terms, for use in this paper for their semantic similarity to “subtext” and “maintext.” Another common term is “fence-sitter” (Talking Xena). A further inquiry into the diversity of “text” self-identification reveals a humorous, self-reflexive fan practice of labeling any sort of love in the show with a text-based moniker. For example, love between Xena and her horse is at times labeled as “horsetext.”

21. I would like to acknowledge Xena fans Silverlight1, SaraXenite, and Faith102 for their helpful conversation, which has enabled me to clarify my thoughts concerning the definitions of “subtext” and “maintext” in fan discourse.

22. My conceptions concerning the “gaze” were influenced by:

Halberstam, Judith. “The Transgender Look.” In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. NYC: New York University Press, 2005.

23. “Deja Vu All Over Again.” Xena: Warrior Princess (Season 4), DVD, directed by Renee O’Connor.(2004, Anchor Bay Entertainment).

24. This interpretation is derived from one line, difficult to catch without careful scrutiny, uttered by Annie/Joxer to the retreating figure of Ares: “Yeah, and you better disappear! [Softly] Great big hunk of god.” A transcript of the episode is available at:

“Whoosh Episode Guide.” <http://www.whoosh.org/epguide/trans/422trans.html>. Retrieved 5 January 2008.

25. While there are a number of kisses exchanged between Xena and Gabrielle, they are either exchanged while they are not in a real-world reality (“The Quest”), are not in their own bodies (“The Quest,” “Deja Vu”), are interrupted by the intrusion of other imagery (“The Quest,” “The Return of the Valkyrie”), or are arguably not even kisses (“A Friend in Need II,” the series finale which contains the infamous “mouth-to-mouth water transfer”scene). My assertion that “Deja Vu” constitutes the most passionate of these kisses is based on an assessment of Mattie/Gabrielle and Harry/Joxer’s body language, as well as consideration of the above factors.

“A Friend in Need II.” Xena: Warrior Princess (Season 6), DVD, directed by Rob Tapert. (2005, Anchor Bay Entertainment).

“The Quest.” Xena: Warrior Princess (Season 2), DVD, directed by Michael Levine. (2005, Anchor Bay Entertainment).

“The Return of the Valkyrie.” Xena: Warrior Princess (Season 6), DVD, directed by John Fawcett. (2005, Anchor Bay Entertainment).

26. “Soul Possession.” Xena: Warrior Princess (Season 6), DVD, directed by Josh Becker. (2005, Anchor Bay Entertainment).

27. “Ides of March.” Xena: Warrior Princess (Season 6), DVD, directed by Ken Girotti. (2005, Anchor Bay Entertainment).

28. The concept of an “ethic of unpalitability” is a concept derived from:

Gill, Lyndon Kamaal. “Chocolate Babies” Guest Lecture. Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality 1200qh: Transgender History and Urban Spaces. Harvard University. Fall 2008. 11 December 2008.

29. “Commentary on Deja Vu All Over Again.” Xena: Warrior Princess (Season 4), DVD, directed by Renee O’Connor.(2004, Anchor Bay Entertainment).

30. My understanding of “spaces of possibility” is developed from discussions held during “Transgender History in Urban Spaces”:

Stryker, Susan. Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality 1200qh: Transgender History and Urban Spaces. Harvard University. Fall 2008.

31. Doty, 4.

32. Ibid., xi.

33. Ibid., xii.

34. Ibid.

35. Ibid., xix.

36. Ibid., 4.

37. Silverman.

38. “8 Reasons to Canonize Xena: Warrior Princess.” Girlfriends. 1 Mary 2001.

39. Keith, Christie. “Live-blogging the Xena Convention.” <http://www.afterellen.com/blog/27331>. Retrieved 5 January 2008.

40. Examples from this year, including Beirne’s Televising Queer Women:

Moore, Candace, Resisting, Reiterating, and Dancing Through: The Swinging Closet Doors of Ellen DeGeneres’s Televised Personalities.” Chapter in Beirne. Pgs. 17-32.

Reed, Jennifer. “The Three Phases of Ellen: From Queer to Gay to Postgay.” Chapter in Peele. Pgs. 9-26.

(c) Michelle Kellaway, 2008

Xena And/Under the Transgender Gaze

Judith Halberstam’s “The Transgender Look” offers an important step towards the understanding of transgender subjectivity in the current moment by examining how transgender bodies and gazes have been utilized in contemporary cinema.¹ Since the early 1990′s when the word “transgender” first came into more popular usage as an umbrella term for various forms of gender non-conformity,² feminist/queer film theory has also undergone shifts in how it conceives of the “gaze.” No longer solely relegated to “male” and “female” gazes, film theorists such as Halberstam have begun to theorize about the possibility of “other” gazes, including a transgender one. While her essay “The Transgender Look” applied this new theory to 1990′s films with transgender characters, there have been few scholars who have attempted to apply a trans studies paradigm to the small screen.³ However, like film, television underwent shifts in the 1990′s that included, among other factors, the inclusion of transgender characters.⁴ While all standard filmic techniques do not necessarily translate smoothly to television, Halberstam’s concept of the “transgender gaze” has potential to be productively applied to analyze this closely related medium. One show in particular – Xena: Warrior Princess (1995-2001) – has been marked in both scholarly and popular discourse as a show representative, in many ways, of a uniquely ’90s queer aesthetic. Therefore, it stands as a cultural text worthy of consideration when considering the presence of the transgender gaze in American television.

Before directly analyzing the show’s portrayal of a transgender character, however, it is useful to briefly consider Xena‘s unique place in popular culture. From the outset, the show was an instant success, and by 1998 was the most watched show in American broadcasting.⁵ Originally conceived of as a spin-off of action-adventure series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (1995-1999), Xena quickly outstripped its predecessor, both in terms of popularity as well as innovation. While Hercules remained necessarily wedded to the standard “hero” narrative and remained true to the Ancient Greek mythology it was based on, Xena – a fabricated ancient hero – came to represent a flexibility of narrative and a decided rejection of mythological/historical accuracy. Xena, as a female hero who was both in touch with her masculinity (Warrior) yet unafraid to be feminine (Princess), became a symbol of a new kind of hero whose success was not only measured by how many foes she vanquished, but also by her tolerance for uncertainty, ambiguity, and flouting of societal norms. The most celebrated (and still heavily contested) manifestation of this new outlook could be found in the show’s deployment of sexuality – in particular its carefully maintained lesbian “subtext.”

From the first episode, queer viewers were able to read a lesbian inflection into the relationship between Xena and her spunky young sidekick/partner Gabrielle. With the timely advent of the Internet, the show’s producers were quickly able to take note of this fan interpretation, and came to incorporate more sexually-suggestive dialogue and interaction between the main characters, as well as intensified their fairly frequent vows and displays of love for each other.⁶ Ultimately, the incorporation of multiple “texts” of desire within the show marked it as a cultural product that appealed to a strikingly large demographic range, even among audiences previously considered irreconcilable⁷; each week, adults and children, the casual viewer and the more stereotypical sci-fi/fantasy fan, the “mainstream” and self-identified feminists, heterosexuals and queers alike eagerly tuned in over Xena‘s six-year run to watch a woman in a metal bra and leather mini-skirt lay waste to countless men, rewrite history, and emote with her female “soulmate.”⁸ By 1996, Xena‘s second year in production, the show had been lastingly marked as both an influential mainstream and a lesbian/queer phenomena.⁹ Already known for pushing boundaries, the show’s producers decided to incorporate, mid-season, a comedic episode that featured a transgender character to be portrayed by the controversial, openly HIV-positive gay porn star/drag queen Karen Dior.

This episode, “Here She Comes…Miss Amphipolis,”¹⁰ stands out among Xena episodes as one that received a comparatively large amount of attention, not only from the popular media and from scholars, but from transgender-related social justice organizations as well.¹¹ True to Xena‘s penchant for ambiguity and destabilization of norms, the episode does not monolithically signify one meaning to these various critics, but rather encompasses both the most positive and negative aspects of transgender representation producible in the visual medium. Not only is this a useful episode to consider in a study of television’s transgender gaze because of the show’s intentional crafting of a simultaneously “mainstream” and queer space, but also because, unlike most episodes, this one has already had a scholarly essay devoted to its analysis. In 1998, at the height of Xena‘s popularity, feminist critic Joanne Morreale produced an essay in the Journal of Popular Culture entitled “Xena: Warrior Princess as Feminist Camp,” which focused on “Miss Amphipolis” as the most viable production of “feminist camp” on television.¹² A review of this essay reveals a particular mode of feminist analysis that dominated during Xena‘s epoch (mid-late 1990′s) – one which Halberstam explicitly critiques in “The Transgender Look” (2005). Therefore, a reading of the “transgender gaze” within the episode represents, in many ways, an “update” on Morreale’s arguments, if not an outright critique of the dominant style of feminist analysis that fails to take into account transgender subjectivity.

In her essay, Morreale identifies Xena as a “postmodern” text open to many readings, including the then-new “feminist camp” approach explicated by Pamela Robinson in her groundbreaking Guilty Pleasures: Feminist Camp from Mae West to Madonna (1996).¹³ This approach, according to Morreale, is one that humorously “subverts traditional female stereotypes despite its formal acquiescence to the patriarchal discourse” – in other words, an approach that seeks to identify a critique of traditional femininity couched within an overriding milieu of gender rigidity. By marking Xena‘s universe as particularly feminist, Morreale enmeshes the text not within more “mainstream” conversations concerning gender roles, but within the particular conversations of scholarly feminist circles. The rhetoric she utilizes is reminiscent of heated arguments that have taken place within the feminist/women’s movement since the Second Wave – namely, one that reifies an essentialist concept of “woman” at the cost of scapegoating the transgender woman as a figure complicit in ramifying rigid patriarchal gender roles. In her close reading of “Miss Amphipolis,” she presents Dior’s Miss Artiphys – a transgender character who wins a beauty pageant by default when all the cisgendered women (Xena included) drop out – as the only person who willingly feeds into the patriarchal fantasy of womanhood. On the other hand, the other courageous contestants “following Xena’s example, break free from the patriarchal constraints that contain them, and redefine themselves independently of their male ‘sponsors.’”

Morreale is correct in identifying the episode as one of the most overtly feminist of the Xena canon, and one uniquely alive to the constructed nature of gender. The episode opens with Xena and Gabrielle summoned by a friend to go undercover in a beauty pageant he is running so that they can discover who is trying to sabotage it and possibly instigate a war. Immediately, Gabrielle takes on a tiredly sanctimonious feminist voice, refusing to take part in the “feeble excuse for men to degrade women.” Xena, on the other hand, scorns the women for being complicit in their own victimization, but contradicts Gabrielle by adopting a more liberal humanist argument, and quickly volunteers to go undercover as a contestant to spare everyone from a war that would ruin all their lives, irrespective of their gender. Abandoning her leather armor and stark black hair for a sparkling dress and blond wig, she transforms herself into the vapid and simpering Miss Amphipolis.

The main comedic thrust of the episode hinges on the campy use of masquerade; Xena’s over-exaggerated portrayal of the ultimate fantasy woman serves to destabilize the normativity of both femininity and masculinity by highlighting their ironic clash embodied within a single person. In most episodes, the character purposely wears a “male” mask, performing the duties and role most people around her consider to be manly; however, her low-cut armor and impractically short battle skirt keep her sensuous femininity firmly within view. “Miss Amphipolis” adds a new layer to Xena’s habit of gender parody; the episode’s use of “double mimesis” – presenting a female character who dons a male mask only to don another female mask on top of that¹⁴ – sets the viewer up for an even deeper exploration of the constructed nature of gender than the show usually engages in. The entrance of Miss Artiphys, a transgender contestant who only Xena is able to recognize as someone who is similarly “undercover,” makes hypervisible the gender excess that is written on the characters’ bodies throughout the series.

However, Morreale’s arguments do not take into account the individual subjectivity of Miss Artiphys, but strips her down to a symbol of the stereotypical male infiltrator. A deeper look reveals that Artiphys operates as more than an insertion of the male patriarchy into a “woman’s” space; in fact, she is presented, in some lights, as more courageous than them all. One marker of this is the fact that she is the only contestant who does not have a (male) “sponsor,” but has entered the pageant of her own free will (Xena herself is sponsored by a disguised Gabrielle posing as a rich “Marquesa”). She exists as a complex character within a universe of shifting gender significations; even while the people around her attempt to simplify or “box” her, Artiphys remains coyly resistant. One of the most interesting examples of this is found in the way she identifies herself – or rather, resists being definitively identified – in contrast with how others identify her. In their first confrontation in which Xena reveals that she, unlike everyone else, has figured out that Miss Artiphys (read: “artifice”) is not quite what she seems, the two engage in a telling dialogue:

Xena: [rips off A's wig] Now I want some straight answers.

Artiphys: [plaintively] Well, you got the wrong girl. [Pause. Voice drops an octave] [...]

I was just trying to scare you. [...]

Xena: Why’d you want to scare me?

Artiphys: Because I knew you knew about me, and I didn’t want you telling anyone.

But when I came back to unlock the door [of the streamroom], you were gone.

Xena: [smiling compassionately] What made you think I’d tell?

Artiphys: [sadly] You really don’t get it do you? [Xena shakes her head “no”]

I guess being born a woman, you wouldn’t. [Xena's face registers sympathetic concern]

This is a chance to use a part of me that people usually laugh at…or worse. A part

I usually have to hide. Only here, that part works for me. You see?

Xena: I think so.

Artiphys: Look, I don’t expect you to understand. And I’m sorry you got steamed.

I just hope you let me quit the pageant in private instead of going public with it.

Xena: No way! [A looks down, disappointed. Pause. Xena hands back her earring]

May the best person win.¹⁵ (emphasis added)

The conversation is worth quoting at length, for it illustrates a great deal of the identity politics behind these two characters, who are bonded together by their recognition of each other as gender outlaws, as well as their mutual need for secrecy.

Their dialogue is marked by an interplay between transgender and homosexual signifiers – a struggle that continues throughout the episode. When Xena rips off Miss Artiphys’ wig to reveal the “real” her – what Halberstam might identify as a symbolic castration¹⁶ – her use of the word “straight” implies that she is exposing their interaction as one that is heterosexual because it is truly between a man and a woman. However, Artiphys immediately refuses this interpretation, maintaining that she is a “girl”; even though she consciously drops her voice to a more “masculine” register, she never concedes that she identifies as anything but female. The juxtaposition is underpinned by the striking visual spectacle of Artiphys, who stands with her short (nearly bald) hair shockingly revealed, yet still in an ornate bra and miniskirt, with her midriff sensuously exposed. Later in the episode, Artiphys returns the “favor” of Xena keeping her secret by walking on-stage in the warrior’s armor just as several warlords have identified “Miss Amphipolis” as who she truly is; sashaying into the spotlight in the familiar leather and metal Xena gear, Artiphys steers the attention away from Amphipolis by pronouncing “I’m not a [Warrior] Princess! Honey, I’m a Queen!” The audience, who conceivably have not realized that Artiphys was not “born a woman,” are amused by the clever show; the viewer, on the other hand, is able to recognize the use of “queen” as Artiphys’ sly concession that she is, in fact, a gay male drag queen. During her subsequent walk-off, the pageant host cheerily reads aloud Artiphys’ hobbies for the audience – “archery, horse-breeding, and knowing the complete score to every musical ever written!” – a knowing, tongue-in-cheek reference to her being a mix of masculine and gay male stereotypes. Finally, the episode ends with an incredible spectacle: upon winning the pageant, Artiphys grabs Xena (who is now no longer undercover) and engages her in a passionate kiss – an image that registers not as heterosexual nor male homosexual, but as lesbian.

Within the universe of the show – one whose camp aesthetic necessitates “be[ing] alive to the double sense in which things can be taken”¹⁷ – Artiphys represents what Morreale identifies as a “pastiche” (or “blank parody”): an uncritical appropriation of several images/stereotypes into one. What marks this parody as “blank” rather than charged is that the appropriation is done without comment, or without anyone trying to push a politicized meaning onto any one of these identities. Artiphys exists as all at once, and is still able to “pass” as a readable image despite the excess of readings imposed upon her body. However, it is significant to note that Artiphys’ passing is contingent upon the gaze she comes under, as several interact constantly throughout the episode: the gaze of the viewer/Xena, the gaze of the pageant’s audience, and her own transgender gaze. As Halberstam explains in “The Transgender Look,” feminist film theory has generally conceived of the “gaze” within visual media as one that is “male” by default; a viewer, no matter whether they are male or female, experiences the show’s universe through the gaze of the male, and is only able to gain access to voyeuristic pleasure by looking upon female bodies with heterosexual desire. This necessitates that a female viewer’s subjectivity, suspended within the temporary reality of the show, be “sutured” to that of the male, allowing a “cross-dressed” gaze that momentarily accesses the power of the male viewer (and thereby precludes the gaze from being lesbian, despite its fetishization of the female body).¹⁷ However, as Halberstam points out, recent cinema (i.e. 1990′s forward) has problematized the canonical male/female binary by inserting multiple gazes that vie for dominance.¹⁸

Generally speaking, a viewer enters the universe of Xena: Warrior Princess sutured to the heroine’s gaze – a gaze that is not simply male or female. Xena, as “Here She Comes…Miss Amphipolis” graphically illustrates, exists as a complex layering of male and female subjectivities, which she can don and remove seemingly at will. This is not to say that hers is a “transgender gaze,” but it is one that a viewer may read multiple gendered meanings through, and which has the potential to privilege a transgender gaze depending upon its interpretation. What this particular episode accomplishes, diverging from the usual Xena set-up, is to force a “crisis” of gazes; while the viewer may be preconditioned, from previous episodes, to be solely sutured to Xena’s gaze, the presence of a voyeuristic audience within the episode causes a rupture. Locked into Xena’s logic, a viewer’s gaze travels through the episode’s world as one that is able to penetrate Artiphys’ mask; however, the moment Xena becomes the spectacle that is Miss Amphipolis, the viewer becomes one with the pageant audience. The viewer then must allow Artiphys to pass as female when seeing from the audience’s unsuspecting eyes, yet at the same time, from Xena’s gaze, is unable to recognize her as anything but the transgender individual she is. The dissonance between these two gazes is humorously highlighted by the fact that no one within the show notices Artiphys’ name is a pun that, if only they were able to sharpen their ears/eyes, they would be able to recognize.

Halberstam identifies the transgender gaze as one that is accessed by the mainstream viewer through the “successful solicitation of affect – whether it is revulsion, sympathy, or empathy”.²⁰ While the viewer is certainly able to access sympathy for Artiphys through identification with Xena’s gaze, perhaps the most powerful access is granted through the solicitation of desire. As Halberstam highlights, what distinctively marks the new cinematic representations of the trans body is that “the transgender character surprises audiences with his/her ability to remain attractive, appealing, and gendered,” despite their existence outside the confining gender/sex/sexuality matrix.²¹ Because, at its heart, cinema (and, similarly, television) are based upon a “fetishistic structure” fueled by a spectator’s desire to both see and see through to imagine what is not explicitly shown,²² a transgender gaze is made viable when a trans character becomes a part of that complex interplay between spectacle and fantasy. Halberstam alternately identifies this subtle shift to the transgender gaze as a “seduc[tion]”²³ and as a surreptitious “high-jacking,”²⁴ in which a viewer is seamlessly enmeshed within “queer forms of visual pleasure” without even making the conscious leap. This forces the viewer into specifically “transgender modes” of looking, at least temporarily.

“Here She Comes…Miss Amphipolis” engages the viewer in several of the trans modes that Halberstam describes, most importantly the “rewind” and “doubling.”²⁵ In the former, Halberstam describes a common construct in which a transgender character is first presented as passing and is subsequently revealed in a climactic moment, which then forces the reader to rewind in order to reorganize the linear narrative. The presence of this mode within the episode has already been described previously, in the dialogue that was quoted. The latter mode involves playing a trans character off another trans character, thereby “remov[ing] the nodal point of normativity.” This is quietly achieved within the episode by certain parallels between Artiphys and Xena. Besides the obvious fact that they are both “passing” in order to accomplish their goals, the end of the episode also includes a scene which appears to deliberately parallel Artiphys’ previous reveal scene. In the scene already described, a trapped and de-wigged Artiphys allows her voice to deepen and become intentionally masculine; similarly, once the pageant’s saboteur has been brought to justice, Xena reveals herself by removing her own wig and dropping her voice to its customary low octave. While the scenes are not exactly the same, the characters’ parallels – as well as the image of Artiphys dressed in Xena’s fetishistic leather outfit — do offset the “nodal point of normativity” by forging a visual and emotional link that opens a space of possibility for a viewer, sutured to the episode’s audience, to desire both Xena and Artiphys.

According to Halberstam, the presence of these stylistic practices draw a viewer in to become affectively entwined with a transgender gaze. While not the same as being “sutured” to a transgender look, these modes do render the trans person human and significant – a feeling, thinking subject – rather than a mere exoticized object or stylistic foil. Perhaps more importantly, however, Halberstam is careful to document those moments that the transgender gaze falters, which reveal the fragile and tragically expendable construct that trans subjectivity generally is within mass cultural production. While “Here She Comes…Miss Amphipolis” does engage the trans look, it would be difficult to argue that it is sustained throughout the entire episode. There are particular moments that actively “detour”²⁶ or even entirely erase Miss Artiphys’ unique subjectivity by disallowing the viewer to see her as she sees herself or eliminating the possibility of her being considered transgender entirely.

An example of such a “detour” is the first time the audience views Miss Artiphys, as seen through Xena’s eyes. Walking into a hallway, Xena stops and stares at one of her competitors, who fiercely returns her look. A shot/reverse shot firmly establishes the viewer’s suture to Xena as the camera lingers on the striking features of Artiphys’ face. Thrown into garish relief, the viewer is struck by the masculinity of her face – rather than the femininity she herself sees. Morreale, in a “rewind,” notes in her essay that this is a moment of “recognition” between the two imposters; considering Halberstam’s arguments, however, this is far more. It establishes the viewer as someone who is seeing through Artiphys, rather than seeing with her, marking her as an object of the gaze but rarely an agent. A second example, building off the first, has already been described: the involuntary removal of Artiphys’ wig by Xena. Serving as a simulated “castration,” the abrupt exposure and jarring visual could be interpreted as a move meant to protect the viewer from their own desire. Standing next to the more readable femininity of Xena, Artiphys must now rely on the “real” woman to restore her man-/woman-/gender-hood via the return of her earring. While this may reinstate a measure of humanity to her (via somewhat patronizing sympathy, rather than relatability), she is never quite the same in the viewer’s eye. In fact, the entire stylistic construct of “secrecy” that weaves throughout the episode implies a certain viewer the show’s producers constructed in the process of creating the episode – an audience unfamiliar with the particular emotions (joy, triumph, fear, humiliation) associated with the life of the trans individual fighting to pass in society. As Halberstam points out, “secrecy constructs a mainstream viewer,” and thereby implicitly “ignore[s] [a] more knowing audience” (emphasis added).²⁷ In other words, this construct establishes a distance between the assumed reality of the viewer vis-a-vis the reality of Artiphys, placing a barrier between a trans-identified spectator being able to see themselves in Artiphys or being able to smoothly suture to her trans gaze within the episode.

Then again, to return to an initial point made in relation to Xena: Warrior Princess: the construction of the show’s audience was a peculiarly fraught and contested ground throughout its production in a way unparalleled by any other show of its time. This fact is perhaps not better illustrated than by a moment such as the one at the end of “Miss Amphipolis,” in which an ecstatic Miss Artiphys leans Xena down in a surprise kiss. Continuing in a vein arguing for an unsustained transgender gaze, one could posit that this moment represents the ultimate erasure of Artiphys’ trans subjectivity. Compounded by previous moments alluding to Artiphys as gay, this image cements her character as one that is coded “homosexual” – whether that be as a male homosexual or as a lesbian. As “homosexual” generally exists as a polarized category to “transgender” in the American popular imagination, this coding eliminates the possibility of her being “trans” (read: in between, across, outside) gendered, but firmly establishes that she must have a solid gender identification in keeping with the normative binary in order to engage with her sexuality.

On the other hand, the universe of Xena had been established in previous episodes as one that could, arguably, be considered wholly “queer.” A veritable firestorm of speculation raged around the multiple texts of desire deployed within each episode, and queer-identified fans often eagerly viewed Xena and Gabrielle as the only characters on prime-time television engaged in a sustained lesbian relationship.²⁸ The fact that they themselves never discussed their sexuality or possible romantic/sexual relation to each other marked their world as one in which, opposite to the viewer’s world, lesbian/queer desire could be considered as normative as heterosexual desire. This is what Halberstam refers to as a “queer universe” – one in which “the heroes are utterly unremarkable for their queerness in the cinematic world the directors have created.”²⁹ It is possible to believe, considering the incredible demographic range the show attracted, that a segment of Xena‘s audience entered the show’s universe engaged in this particular subjectivity. Within “Here She Comes…Miss Amphipolis,” this view triggers a third “transgender mode” that Halberstam describes: the closed circuit.³⁰ Within this mode, if one considers Xena and Artiphys to be the “heroes” of the episode, “transgenderism is a complex dynamic between the two[.] [They] collude and collaborate in their gendering, and create a closed world of queerness that is locked in place by the circuit of a gaze that never references the male or the female gaze as such.”

An important element of the establishment of the queer universe within the episode is the role of Gabrielle. Within the purview of a queer subjectivity, Gabrielle is generally considered to be in a lesbian relationship with Xena. This connection is made subtlety explicit when she, posing as the “sponsor” of Xena’s “Miss Amphipolis” character, interacts with the male sponsors of the other contestants. As the rich Marquesa, she places herself in the same patriarchal, patronizing role of ownership of the other sponsors, and the men assume, without comment, that she has every right to inhabit this role, irrespective of her gender. Their sponsorship of the pageant is almost solely based upon an assumed sexual desire they have for the women’s bodies – a desire Gabrielle is thereby implicated in, by association. Midway through the episode, she has a particularly revealing conversation with one of the other sponsors, a man who has placed his girlfriend in the pageant against her will. After having suggested to the group that, instead of giving orders, they ask for their contestants’ input, the one sponsor/boyfriend stays behind to inquire personally about the Marquesa’s relationship with her sponsee, Miss Amphipolis. Engaging with her on a plane of equality – as if not only assuming that they both are worthy sponsors, but that both are also lovers of their contestants – the sponsor asks her for advice on his relationship with his girlfriend. Within the queer universe of the episode, this interaction ramifies the “closed circuit” of trans subjectivity that touches every aspect of each characters’ interactions. Both the gaze of the male sponsor and of Gabrielle/Marquesa do not reference a familiar male/female binary that delineates normative roles and desires, but rather transcend to see with a kind of gender flexibility that resonates with the trans-ing potential of both Xena and Artiphys’ gazes.

In this light, then, the final kiss between Xena and Artiphys exists as the most overt acknowledgment of this reality, removing all doubt that the show engenders anything but a “queer universe.” This is not the “humanistic” queerness that Halberstam disdains³¹ – one which presents the queer subject as an individual who is just as “normal” as everyone else – but, rather, a somewhat exclusionary queerness. This universe is one that not all viewers are able to recognize themselves a part of, despite being implicated in it as soon as they turn on their television. “Here She Comes…Miss Amphipolis” shows a self-reflexive awareness, enhanced by its consciously campy aesthetic, of this unique receptive process through its construct of a show-within-a-show. The pageant’s audience – which functions as a kind of shorthand for the “mainstream” audience of the series – does not, interestingly, react with disbelief or revulsion to the kiss between Artiphys (who they presumably read as a biological woman) and Xena. Rather, they do not react at all; as the camera cuts to the faceless masses complacently cheering, one receives the sense not that they are cheering such a display of “alternative” sexuality, but that they do not, in fact, see it at all. They are as unfazed by the act as by anything else they see – a blind gaze that highlights, somewhat surrealy, the disjuncture between a knowing (queer) universe and an unknowing (mainstream) one. The kiss itself seems only to be accessed visually by Gabrielle – who reacts with a strikingly jealous look of dismay. A shot-reverse-shot between her and Artiphys/Xena establish the fact that the three are a closed circuit unto themselves, privileged by a different kind of penetrative gaze that, rather than stripping away trans/queer subjectivity, gives agency to it.

What these opposite readings amount to is not only a critique of a feminist interpretation like Morreale’s, which fail to take into account the complexities of transgender existence, but also a problematization of Halberstam’s theory of the “transgender gaze/look.” Her essay begins the daunting and necessary task of documenting and exploring modes of looking in visual culture that resonate with trans subjectivity, but is not an end in itself. While her essay presents certain modes as distinct and even polarized (e.g. the rewind vs. the closed circuit), “Here She Comes…Miss Amphipolis” illustrates how these modes can be complexly interwoven within one visual product. Layering of texts, subjectivities, and gazes, while ideal for comedic effect, also perform the important function of destabilizing the process of audience reception by enmeshing the spectator in several modes of viewing, exposing multiple potential axes of pleasure, and ultimately reflecting the absurdity of a constructed “mainstream” audience.

Perhaps the episodic nature of Xena: Warrior Princess, whose particular gender dynamics were built upon the compounded readings viewers had placed on the characters week after week, opens itself wider to the possibility of the transgender gaze taking multiple forms – as opposed to the singular nature of film, which can only trigger and sustain a limited amount of modes within its narrow timeframe. This possibility suggests that television offers a significant site for further inquiry into the production (or lack thereof) of the transgender gaze. However, the decline of action/adventure fantasy series such as Xena (1995-2001) marks the closing of an important experimental space of possibility for the exploration of the postmodern “potentiality of the body to [...] become fluid”³² – a fascination that, according to Halberstam, continues to enthrall audiences into the current moment. However, the show does illustrate what has been done, and therefore what can potentially be created again. Most significant, then, is the ultimate implication that while this one space of possibility has closed, it has allowed for – perhaps even inspired – the opening of others. While transgender visibility on popular television continues to expand, a critical look at how gazes are utilized within the structure of emergent visual styles (e.g. “reality TV”) will become increasingly necessary to ensure an ongoing dialogue concerning the truth and appropriation of trans subjectivity.

–

Note: This essay was originally produced for “Studies of Women Gender and Sexuality 1200qh: Transgender History in Urban Spaces. Professor Susan Stryker. Harvard University. Fall 2008.

Endnotes

1. Halberstam, Judith. “The Transgender Look.” In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. NYC: New York University Press, 2005.

2. Stryker, Susan. “Queer Gender in the 1990′s.” Lecture. Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality 1200qh: Transgender History and Urban Spaces. Harvard University. Fall 2008. 2 December 2008.

3. Most analyses of transgender characterization have focused on film. For examples, see In A Queer Time and Place (endnote 1).

4. Jensen, Michael. “TV Landscape Changing for Transgender Characters.” 17 October 2007. <http://www.afterelton.com/TV/2007/10/transgendertvlandscape>

5. Morreale, Joanne. “Xena: Warrior Princess as Feminist Camp.” Journal of Popular Culture. Fall 98, Vol. 32 Issue 2, pgs. 79-87. Para. 1.

6. Findlay, Heather. “”Xena-Philia!: Girlfriends takes a peek into the epistemology of the warrior princess’s closet.”” Girlfriends. 4 April 1998. Pg. 29, 44.

7. Butt, Miriam, and Kyle Wholmut. “The Thousand Faces of Xena: Transculturality through Multi-Identity.” Globalization, Cultural Identities, and Media Representations. Natashca Gentz and Stefan Karmer, eds. NY: SUNY Press, 2006. Pg. 89.

8. From midway through Season 4 (Episode 15, “Between the Lines”) through to the end of the series, Xena and Gabrielle refer to each other as their “soulmate.” Examples:

“Between the Lines.” Xena: Warrior Princess (Season 4), DVD, directed by Rick Jacobson. (2004, Anchor Bay Entertainment).

“The Ring.” Xena: Warrior Princess (Season 6), DVD, directed by Rick Jacobson. (2005, Anchor Bay Entertainment).

For an analysis of the concept of “soulmate” in Xena, see:

Fisher, Judy. “ ‘The Quest’ Kiss and Its Aftermath: How Xena: Warrior Princess‘ Greatest Scene Damaged the Show.” Whoosh!. Iss. 87. March 2004. <http://www.whoosh.org>

9. Findlay.

10. “Here She Comes…Miss Amphipolis.” Xena: Warrior Princess (Season 2), DVD, directed by Marina Sargenti. (2005, Anchor Bay Entertainment).

11. Rudnick, Bret. “An Interview with Chris Manheim.” Whoosh! February 1999. Issue 29. <http://whoosh.org/issue29/imanheim1.html>.

12. Morreaele.

13. Robinson, Pamela, Guilty Pleasures: Feminist Camp from Mae West to Madonna. Duke University Press, 1996.

14. Morreale.

15. “Here She Comes…Miss Amphipolis.”

16. Halberstam.

17. Robertson, as quoted in Morreale.

18. Halberstam, 85-6.

19. Ibid., 76.

20. Ibid., 77.

21. Ibid., 76.

22. Ibid., 81.

23. Ibid., 83.

24. Ibid.

25. Ibid., 78-9.

26. Ibid., 82.

27. Ibid., 80.

28. Catherine M. and Laura Anh Williams. “’Everything Else Is the Same’: Configurations of The L Word.” Chapter in Televising Queer Women: A Reader . Rebecca Beirne, editor. Pg. 152.

29. Halberstam, 94.

30. Ibid., 79. Note that “closed circuit” is my own label.

31. Ibid., 94.

32. Ibid., 76.

(c) Michelle Kellaway, 2008

Xena: A Literature Review

From its beginning, the TV show Xena: Warrior Princess (1995-2001) was an instant success. Originally conceived as a spin-off of action-adventure series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (1995-1999), Xena quickly out-stripped its originator to become the most popular American show in syndication.¹ Set in a vaguely historical “ancient” past, the series follows evil-warlord-turned-just-hero Xena and her spunky, young sidekick/partner Gabrielle as they travel the world together righting wrongs, wrestling with the morality of the “warrior’s way,” and developing their deep emotional bond. The show immediately caught the attention of critics for its unique appeal to audience groups whose tastes were commonly considered irreconcilable.² Adults and children, the casual viewer and the more stereotypical sci-fi/fantasy fan, the “mainstream” and self-identified feminists, heterosexuals and queers alike eagerly tuned in over Xena‘s six-year run to watch a woman in a metal bra and leather mini-skirt lay waste to countless men, rewrite history, and emote with her “soulmate”³ – who, coincidentally or not, happened to be a woman.

The nature of Xena and Gabrielle’s relationship was – and continues to be – a site of fierce speculation among fans, critics, and scholars. In fact, a review of the outpouring of scholarship that has been produced about Xena reveals that the show’s lesbian innuendo, dubbed by fans as the “subtext,” is by far the most studied aspect of the series.⁴ The focus of this study may have begun as a simple are-the-or-aren’t-they debate largely among fans,⁵ but has since extended to critiques and appraisals of the role that identifiable, yet intentionally subsumed, lesbian elements in popular television plays in the feminist movement, the gay liberation movement, and society at large.⁶

Given its prominence in the world of Xena studies, it only seems appropriate to begin a literature review by examining the discourse surrounding lesbian “subtext,” focusing first upon its specific presence in Xena, then expanding to take in the critical conversation about subtext that occur at the intersection of cultural studies and queer studies. It is important to note that, at this point, the majority of documentation, analysis, and critique of Xena‘s subtext has come from fans and is largely available on-line. While a great deal of this material is avowedly un-scholarly and more intended as a testament to “prove” to the world that Xena and Gabrielle are, in fact, lesbians,⁷ the production of well-researched Xena-related scholarship was a significant component of the practice of Xena fandom during the show’s run.

The frequently-updated and carefully-maintained “International Association of Xena Studies” (more commonly known as Whoosh.org) established a unique role for Xena fans as semi-scholars.⁸ As a group who had a personal , rather than objectively “scholarly,” stake in interpreting the show’s meaning and the producer’s intentions (commonly, and often bitterly, referred to by fans as “The Powers That Be,” or “TPTB” for short)⁹, self-identified fan-scholars produced a strikingly vast body of critical essays on various aspects of Xena. A great deal of these concern Xena and Gabrielle’s relationship, and are overwhelmingly “pro”-subtext – in other words, they argue that a full understanding and appreciation of the show is not only impoverished, but genuinely misguided, without an acceptance of the fact that the main characters’ love for each other is romantic and monogamous.¹⁰

Juxtaposed against this fan scholarship is the work of feminist and cultural critics, who remain arguably un-“tainted” by the hint of personal agenda that clings to scholarly works by self-identified fans, whose analytical arguments are mostly precluded from more “legitimate” scholarly discourse except as an illustration of the breadth and diversity of Xena fandom. Critics of the show generally operate with the assumption that the subtext does exist (an assumption that many non-scholar fans continue to struggle with)¹¹, that its inclusion in the show was an intentional move on the part of the producers to expand Xena‘s fanbase, and that its presence had great potential, in the mid- to late 1990′s, to affect public perceptions of lesbian love. Taking these understandings as a starting point, critics have engaged in intense debate about whether relegating the show’s lesbian aspects to an undertone was reactive in that it perpetuated the dominant presumption that lesbian love should not be screened,¹² or whether the presence alone of a potentially lesbian couple in such a widely-viewed show was a progressive step for lesbian visibility.¹³ Further, critics have debated whether or not, despite the positive effects the show may have off-handedly produced, that the presence of the subtext should be considered wholly negative because of its main intent to titillate male heterosexual audiences, and its only secondary intent to maintain lesbian viewership.¹⁴

It is, therefore, significant to note that much thought has been given to the intentions of Xena‘s producers, and the cultivation of their relationship with their viewerships. The inclusion of subtext has been conceived of as the main product of a conversation that took place, albeit somewhat obliquely, between lesbian fans and Xena‘s producers.¹⁵ From the show’s first episode, lesbian fans were able to read lesbian codes enacted by Xena and Gabrielle¹⁶, and, with the timely advent of the internet, came to discuss these elements, agitate for their intensification¹⁷, and elaborate their potentials through the production of “fan fiction.”¹⁸ The on-line fandom (colloquially referred to as the “Xenaverse”), whose most vocal participators were lesbian, proved impossible for the show’s producers to ignore. In direct response to the desires of their lesbian fanbase, Xena‘s writers and actors began incorporating more sexually-suggestive dialogue and interaction between the main characters, as well as intensifying their fairly frequent vows and displays of love for each other.¹⁹ Scholarly works on the fan-producer interface have analyzed the exploitative aspects of this interaction,²⁰ its productive potential as located in its unique bestowal of lesbian agency,²¹ as well as its implications for the future integration of television and internet.²²

Through these discourses, the construction of Xena‘s lesbian element as inherently subtextual has been normalized. While fans have eagerly documented the exact points when the subtext becomes “main”text for brief, exhilarating moments,²³ the assumption that the lesbian element exists only as an undercurrent beneath the intended heteronormative reading has generally gone unchallenged. However, the concept that a lesbian text must always be inherently subordinate has been influentially disputed by at least one cultural theorist. In Making Things Perfectly Queer: Interpreting Mass Culture, Alexander Doty argues that television shows produce queer responses and pleasures in all kinds of audiences, regardless of sexual preference, therefore rendering the dominant reading of queer elements as “sub”textual erroneous.²⁴ While Doty wrote in a historical moment (early 1990s) before Xena and before the popular boom in explicitly gay/lesbian supporting characters and story-lines,²⁵ his work carves out an ideological space in cultural studies critique that has not yet been entered in regards to Xena-related scholarship.

Interestingly, while “queer” has generally not been a word associated with Xena (except as a stand-in for “lesbian”)²⁶ , the show’s penchant for ambiguity and destabilization of norms has been widely analyzed. The fact that it cannot be pinned down to any one stance on gender, sexuality, morality, or confined to one mythological tradition, chronology, or even a single understanding of what constitutes “reality” is most often the first assertion in essays concerning Xena.²⁷ While the show’s openness to multiple interpretations has been correlated with its wide marketability,²⁸ it has also led scholars to develop a more theoretical analysis of how this marks Xena as separate from the genealogical development of the “just hero”²⁹ and “warrior queen”³⁰ figures in the Western imagination. While the hero/warrior image has historically been quite one-dimensional, scholars point to Xena’s defining traits as a character – her versatility of skill, ability to adapt to new situations, comfort with moral vagueness, cultural fluency, and multidimensional capacity to take into consideration diverse viewpoints and solutions for problems – as the embodiment of hitherto unmarked “hero” territory.³² Accordingly, a number of scholars have constructed Xena as a useful “role model,” both literally and figuratively.

In a theoretical sense, Xena has been lauded as the originator of a new trajectory in the development of the hero or, at the very least, as a figure who has constructively and lastingly expanded the boundaries that a hero can inhabit. For varying reasons, scholars have highlighted Xena as the first of a new breed of heroine that has since been emulated – though, arguably, never quite paralleled — in other popular cultural figures (the most evident being Buffy of Buffy the Vampire Slayer [1997-2003]).³³ For example, media scholar Sharon Ross points to Xena’s willingness to develop a loving friendship and to genuinely rely on her partner as one significant departure from the traditional, “masculine” model of heroism.³⁴ Further, the fact that Xena‘s production coincided with the turn of the twentieth century led to a conception of Xena as a hopeful harbinger of change for the new century. In particular, literary scholar Sharon Innes, who has been a part of the larger project of documenting the boom of new “tough girl” images in popular culture, envisions Xena as the epitome of the kind of hero humanity needs to learn from as we enter the globalized, electronicized future. She especially foregrounds Xena’s tendency to reflect on the personal meaning of her actions, as well as their potential ripple-effects for the rest of the world, as a trait worth emulating.³⁵ Others have focused on Xena’s willingness to stay true to herself while still taking into consideration differing viewpoints and cultural norms as a necessary model for the “Electronic Present.”³⁶

When reading the literature concerning the show, one may be particularly struck by how much faith people placed in Xena as a catalyst for change, and how many cultural hopes and desires were projected onto this one character. Not only was she considered a refreshing blueprint for the construction of the hero in mass cultural output, but she was also considered by many as a potentially powerful role model for the developing youth of “Generation-X.”³⁷ As the pioneer of a new wave of “girl power” images on television, Xena was celebrated as an accessible representation of an independent woman who did not need to rely on men (Warrior), yet was not afraid of being feminine and emotional (Princess).³⁸ This particular ethic has come to be a hallmark of the current “third wave” of feminism, and therefore offers an implicit critique of the decidedly un-girlish, stodgy second wave feminists of the 1960s and 70s.³⁹

In fact, Xena‘s self-consciously tongue-in-cheek camp aesthetic creates a site of feminist potential that offers a contrast to the stereotypical seriousness that purportedly characterized the second wave.⁴⁰ While there has been much fanfare made in camp studies about the genre’s association with gay males,⁴¹ there has been less focus upon its association with women,⁴² and even less upon its association with lesbians.⁴³ However, In 1996 (the same historical moment of Xena‘s introduction to popular culture), cultural theorist Pamela Robertson expanded the concept in her groundbreaking analysis of camp as a style that had a history of unique interpretation by women.⁴⁴ Her particular conception of “feminist camp” – “a failed seriousness, a love of exaggeration and artifice, the privileging of style over content and a being alive to the double sense in which things can be taken”⁴⁵ – has been readily applied to Xena in two particular essays, one written at the peak of Xena‘s popularity (“Xena: Warrior Princess as Feminist Camp,” 1998)⁴⁶ and another written this year, exactly a decade later (“Xena, Camped Crusader,” 2008).⁴⁷ As Joanne Morreale points out in her 1998 essay, camp’s greatest appeal for feminists lies in its ability to to parody gender; Helene Shugart and Catherine Waggoner echo this argument in their new book, updating the argument by focusing, among other elements, on the show’s unique deployment of lesbian “sub”text.

Shugart and Waggoner bring Xena into the current moment, juxtaposing the show against the more contemporary popular culture icon of Karen Walker (supporting character in sitcom Will & Grace [1998-2006]), as well as female musicians Macy Gray and Gwen Stefani. The fact that these authors consider Xena to be a show that continues to resonate with audiences while still maintaining its intellectual viability indicates its continuing relevance to feminist and queer studies. However, there may be some doubt outside of camp studies as to the show’s relevance in the growing proliferation of texts concerned with gay/queer television studies.⁴⁸ Since 2006, the field of television studies has experienced a flourishing in interest concerning the representation of GLBT and queer characters on television, both in the form of essays and in the development of popular entertainment websites AfterEllen.com and AfterElton.com.⁴⁹ While this study was initially more focused on homosexual males,⁵⁰ this year saw the publication of a volume solely dedicated to the televisibility of queer women.⁵¹

Significantly, both the groundbreaking Gay TV and Straight America (Becker, 2006) and Televising Queer Women (Beirne, 2008) include barely any reference to Xena, despite its status in the minds of many as the first and only prime-time series to feature a sustained lesbian relationship between two main characters⁵² and its incredible influence on the practice of lesbian fandom, which continues to this day.⁵³ There are many possible reasons for Xena‘s striking absence from current queer television studies. The overwhelming focus of this field is on explicitly gay/lesbian/bisexual characters, whose popular presence in prime-time television began in the mid-1990s; though this was the same time period that Xena premiered, the featuring of obviously queer characters and the inclusion of finite gay-themed storylines (mostly among minor characters) has become a common practice,⁵⁴ whereas the cultivation of an ongoing are-the-or-aren’t-they ambiguity has been largely abandoned, and therefore may appear somewhat archaic. Secondly, queer programming, like other niche markets, has shifted mostly to cable networks, which are able to take much greater liberties than prime-time television in exploring the pleasures and ambiguities of queer existence.⁵⁵ The tame, delayed-gratification excitement of Xena and Gabrielle’s relationship, which barely ever experienced any form of overt physical expression, pales in comparison to much more sexually-explicit cable shows such as The L Word and Sex and the City. Overall, Xena‘s ambiguity and campiness hardly fit the prevailing trend in “gay chic” that characterizes the current era of “reality TV,” in shows such as Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Project Runway, America’s Next Top Model, and A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila.⁵⁶

Lack of scholarship, rather than proliferation, is what marks Xena in the current moment. While this may not be particularly surprising for a show that ended seven years ago, it is potentially surprising in a moment when “queer” is more a part of popular culture and intellectual inquiry than ever before. Xena was the predecessor to our current understandings of lesbian televisibility, lesbian audience studies, and on-line lesbian fandom. However, her image has been shrouded in so much controversy that it may be more simple to leave her as a 1990s icon.

Created in a time period when the gay liberation movement was most concerned with the implications of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” imperative that required (and still does) that gay/lesbian/bisexual members of the military remain closeted⁵⁷, the popular representation of the warrior woman who would never let her love dare speak its name hardly seems like a model for progress.⁵⁸ Scholars have juxtaposed the character of Xena with the character of Ellen Morgan (portrayed by Ellen DeGeneres) from the sitcom Ellen (1994-1998). At the same time that the “closeted” warrior’s popularity was soaring, Ellen Morgan came out of the closet to find her show abruptly canceled.⁵⁹ The scholarly and popular interest in reading the trajectories of these two characters side-by-side indicates the value placed on “coming out” as a means towards progress, and is still a valued trademark of GLB characters in the present, so that a clear evolution from Ellen to the current moment has been forged (again, the website AfterEllen.com serves as a prime example of this), while Xena has seemingly fallen out of the family tree. The fact that actress Ellen DeGeneres herself simultaneously came out of the closet in the “real world” and has since been able to become and remain an activist icon marks her (and her show) as still relevant. Significantly, essays on Ellen are still being produced.⁶⁰

Ultimately, the literature produced about Xena: Warrior Princess exhibits fairly stark binaries in interpretation of the characters, the lesbian “sub”text, and its feminist appeal. While many conceive of the show as progressive, positive for lesbian visibility, a feminist’s dream come true, and a valuable role model for the construction of future female heroes and even “real world” identity formation in the age of the internet, others believe it to be reactive, a negative perpetuation of “don’t ask, don’t tell” ethics, a deterrent of lesbian visibility, anti-feminist⁶¹, and therefore a poor model for Generation-X. All of these claims, divisive as they may be, point to Xena as a productive site of inquiry and social change. This productiveness has been documented mostly through the interface of the television and internet, which produced a line of communication between the fan desires and the show’s producers. Now off the air for seven years, it may seem that Xena has lost its relevance; however, in a time period that has just begun to see a growing interest in queer television studies, the show’s role in the development of queer representation and audience may make it a site of renewed inquiry.

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Note: This essay was originally produced for “Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality 1300: Approaches to Research and Writing in Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality,” Harvard University, Fall 2008.

Endnotes

1. Morreale, Joanne. “Xena: Warrior Princess as Feminist Camp.” Journal of Popular Culture. Fall 98, Vol. 32 Issue 2, pgs. 79-87. Para. 1.

2. Butt, Miriam, and Kyle Wholmut. “The Thousand Faces of Xena: Transculturality through Multi-Identity.” Globalization, Cultural Identities, and Media Representations. Natashca Gentz and Stefan Karmer, eds. NY: SUNY Press, 2006. Pg. 89.

3. From midway through Season 4 (Episode 15, “Between the Lines”) through to the end of the series, Xena and Gabrielle refer to each other as their “soulmate.” Examples:

“Between the Lines.” Xena: Warrior Princess (Season 4), DVD, directed by Rick Jacobson. (2004, Anchor Bay Entertainment).

“The Ring.” Xena: Warrior Princess (Season 6), DVD, directed by Rick Jacobson. (2005, Anchor Bay Entertainment).

For an analysis of the concept of “soulmate” in Xena, see:

Fisher, Judy. “ ‘The Quest’ Kiss and Its Aftermath: How Xena: Warrior Princess‘ Greatest Scene Damaged the Show.” Whoosh!. Iss. 87. March 2004. <http://www.whoosh.org>

4. Butt & Wholmut, pg. 84.

5. Flaherty, Mike. “Xenaphilia.” Entertainment Weekly. 7 March 1997. Pg. 41.

6. Hamming, Jeanne E. “”Whatever Turns You On: Becoming-Lesbian and the Production of Desire in the Xenaverse.”” Genders. 2001. Vol. 34. <http://www.genders.org/g34/g34_hamming.html>

O’Sullivan, Catherine. “Xenaphile, and Proud of It.” Fireweed. 31 Oct. 1998. Iss. 63; pg. 42

Silverman, Robin. “”What Xena Giveth, Xena Taketh Away.”” The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide. Boston: Oct. 31, 2001. Vol. 8, Iss. 5; pg. 32.

7. A well-maintained example such a site is: “Xena: Warrior Lesbian.” <http://www.geocities.com/televisioncity/4580/> Retrieved 2 November 2008.

8. “Whoosh!” <http://www.whoosh.org/> Retrieved 2 November 2008.

9. Fisher.

10. For example, see:

Whoosh: All-Subtext Issue. Iss. 37, 1999. <http://whoosh.org/> Retrieved 2 November 2008.

11. Xena fandom is still ongoing, especially through internet forums. Observation of these forums shows that many Xena fans who do not self-identify as “subtexters” are either unable to see the subtext or actively choose to disregard it. For example, a popular discussion at the TV.com Xena forum entitled “Xena a lesbian?” illustrates various fan opinions, many of them incredulous towards the concept of Xena as a lesbian. The forum discussion began in 2005 and has continued into 2008.

“Tv.com – Xena a lesbian?” <http://www.tv.com/xena-warrior-princess/show/698/xena-a- lesbian/topic/710-138318/msgs.html> Retrieved 2 November 2008.

12. Hamming; Silverman.

13. “8 Reasons to Canonize Xena: Warrior Princess.” Girlfriends. 1 May 2001. Pgs. 28-30.

14. Silverman.

15. Russo, Julie Levin. “Indiscrete Media: Television/Digital Convergence and Economies of Online Lesbian Fan Communities.” Ph.D. Diss., Brown University, 2009 (expected). <http://j-l-r.org/diss> Retrieved 18 October 2008.

16. Findlay, Heather. “”Xena-Philia!: Girlfriends takes a peek into the epistemology of the warrior princess’s closet.”” Girlfriends. 4 April 1998. Pg. 29, 44.

Hammer, Rosalind. “”Lesbian subtext talk: Experiences of the Internet chat.”” The International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy. Patrington: 2003. Vol. 23, Issue 1. Pgs. 80-107.

17. Silverman documents, for example, the on-line campaign that a segment of Xena conducted to urge the show’s producer’s to include a kiss in the final episode, “tongues and all.” It is still debatable whether this goal was achieved in the infamous “mouth-to-mouth water transfer” scene included in the final episode

“A Friend in Need, Part 2.” Xena: Warrior Princess (Season 6), DVD, directed by Rob Tapert. (2005, Anchor Bay Entertainment).

18. Caudill, Helen. “Tall, Dark, and Dangerous: Xena, the Quest, and the Wielding of Sexual Violence in Xena On-Line Fan Fiction.” Chapter in Athena’s Daughters: Television’s New Women Warriors. Frances Early & Kathleen Kennedy, editors. New York: Syracuse University Press, 2003.

19. Findlay.

20. Russo.

21. Hammer.

22. Hamming; Silverman.

23. Cooper, Cynthia Ward. “List ‘O the Month: What Are the Essential XWP Subtext Episodes?” Whoosh! Iss. 89, May 2004.

24. Doty, Alexander. Making Things Perfectly Queer: Interpreting Mass Culture. University of Minnesota Press, 1993. Pg. Xiii.

25. Becker, Ron. Gay TV and Straight America. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006. Pg. 158.

26. The noticeable exception to this would be:

Helford, Elyce Rae. “Feminism, Queer Studies, and the Sexual Politics of Xena: Warrior Princess.” Chapter in Fantasy Girls: Gender in the New Universe of Science Fiction and Fantasy Television. Elyce Rae Helford, editor. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2000.

27. Examples:

Early, Frances & Kathleen Kennedy. “Introduction: Athena’s Daughters.” Chapter in Athena’s Daughters: Television’s New Women Warriors. Frances Early & Kathleen Kennedy, editors. New York: Syracuse University Press, 2003. Pg. 1.

Gwenllian-Jones, Sarah. “Histories, Fictions, and Xena: Warrior Princess.”” The Audience Studies Reader. Will Brooker and Deborah Jermyn, eds. Routledge, 2003. Pg. 185.

28. Findlay.

29. Kennedy, Kathleen. “Love Is the Battlefield: The Making and the Unmaking of the Just Warrior in Xena, Warrior Princess.” Chapter in Athena’s Daughters: Television’s New Women Warriors. Frances Early & Kathleen Kennedy, editors. New York: Syracuse University Press, 2003. Pgs. 44-52.

30. Inness, Sharon. “”A Tough Girl for a New Century: Xena: Warrior Princess.”” Chapter in Tough Girls: Women Warriors and Wonder Women in Popular Culture. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999. Pgs. 161-176.

31. Butt & Wholmut.

32. Butt & Wholmut; Early; Inness;

33. Ross, Sharon. ““’Tough Enough’: Female Friendship and Heroism in Xena and Buffy.”” Chapter in Action Chicks: New Images of Tough Women in Popular Culture. Sharon Inness, ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Pgs. 231-55.

34. Ibid.

35. Innes.

36. Butt & Wholmut.

37. Early, 3.

38. Ibid.

39. Ibid.

40. Morreale.

41. Bergman, David. Camp Grounds: Style & Homosexuality. Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994.

Cleto, Fabio (ed.). Camp: Queer Aesthetics and the Performing Subject (A Reader). University of Michigan Press, 1999.

42. Robinson, Pamela. Guilty Pleasures: Feminist Camp from Mae West to Madonna. Duke University Press, 1996.

43. For an example of the discussion of lesbian camp, see:

Case, Sue-Ellen. “Toward a Butch-Femme Aesthetic.” Chapter in Cleto. Pgs. 185-199.

44. Robinson

45. As quoted in Morreale.

46. Ibid.

47. Shugart, Helen A. & Cathering E. Waggoner. “Xena: Camped Crusader.” Chapter in Making Camp: Rhetoric of Transgression in U.S. Popular Culture. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2008. Pgs. 63-79.

48. Beirne, Rebecca. Televising Queer Women (A Reader). New York: Palgrave, Macmillan, 2008.

Davis, Glyn & Gary Needham (eds). Queer TV: Theories, Histories, and Politics. Routledge, 2008 (expected).

Becker, Gay TV & Straight America (2006).

Peele, Thomas (ed.) Queer Popular Culture: Literature, Media, Film, and Television. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

49. “AfterEllen.com.” <http://www.afterellen.com>. Retrieved 2 November 2008.

“AfterElton.com.” <http://www.afterelton.com>. Retrieved 2 November 2008.

50. Becker.

51. Beirne.

52. Jonet, Catherine M. and Laura Anh Williams. “’Everything Else Is the Same’: Configurations of The L Word.” Chapter in Televising Queer Women: A Reader . Rebecca Beirne, editor. Pg. 152.

53. Russo.

54. Becker, 158.

55. Ibid, 95.

56. Ibid, 5.

57. Ibid., 37-59.

58. Silverman.

59. Findlay.

60. Moore, Candace, Resisting, Reiterating, and Dancing Through: The Swinging Closet Doors of Ellen DeGeneres’s Televised Personalities.” Chapter in Beirne. Pgs. 17-32.

Reed, Jennifer. “The Three Phases of Ellen: From Queer to Gay to Postgay.” Chapter in Peele. Pgs. 9-26.

61. Morreale and Shugart & Waggoner points out in their essays on Xena‘s camp aesthatic that though Xena is interpretably feminist, the visual representations of the scanitly-clad female lead (who may be considered reminiscent of “dominatrix”) could be considered “anti-feminist” in its intentional, voyeuristic appeal to male heterosexual sensibitilies.

(c) Michelle Kellaway, 2008