Satellite TV Europe
January 1999

Female Fantasy

Book your seats lads & lassies, there’s a new series of Xena: Warrior Princess coming up and you should watch each episode very carefully because there’s probably a lot more going on than you think ....

It’s lightweight sword and sorcery trash isn’t it? Some daft actress dresses up like the bass player in a trashy metal band and charges around looking mean, occasionally chucking a metal frisbee at giants, ghouls, gods and gangs of men who all hit the deck faster than a Chelsea player in the penalty area.

Xena: Warrior Princess is now in its fourth series. It is one of Sky One’s highest rating shows. So what on earth could be the attraction for this twaddle?

Sex - S-E-X that’s what. the warrior woman, the dangerous dominatrix, the leather, those metal breast plates, that great two handed sword. Then there's the way she rolls and tumbles about, often dirty and sweaty, the way she rides her horse and cracks the whip and the lesbian overtones of her relationship with her delicate little redhead sidekick Gabrielle. It’s the way she smoulders, those eyes like a psychopathic Cleopatra, her short Roman centurion style skirt, very adequate thighs, her kinky boots. She could strangle you, kick you to death or she could ...well... you’d just have to grab hold of her and try and hold on while she... Good God, what am I saying? Phew!!

I really lost it there for a minute! I’ll have to calm down, take it easy with this Xena thing - make some tea, have a lie down.

Male fantasies are suppose to be about ultra thin lovelies - we apparently drive women into anorexic hell just to satisfy our lascivious desires. But it’s pretty obvious that the well rounded Xena has a vast male fan base - millions of grubby, spotty adolescent boys pretending they are watching Xena: Warrior Princess post ironically or because they like the stunts, or because they are studying Greek mythology at school. But the real reason they are double dosing on Xena every Saturday (by making an appointment with Sky One at 18.00 and then turning over for the Channel 5 episode at 20.05) is the obvious one. they all fantasise about having the wild woman with the black hair and blue eyes ride up, truss them up and carry them off to some fur-lined cave for about two weeks of myth making all of their own.

And it’s not just the lads getting steamed up on the sofa - a lot of the girls have a thing for the princess too. The show has a huge lesbian following and as if in testament to that, guest starring in the new series will be country singer k.d. lang - although she won’t be playing Sappho, the Ancient Greek writer known for love poems to women.

“She gets a hankering for Gabrielle and Gabrielle doesn’t know how to handle it.” says Lucy Lawless.

One wonders how Xena will handle it - k.d. better watch herself or she might find those famous vocal chords don’t function any more because they’ve been dragged out of her by a jealous warrior princess reaching down her throat. by Steve Overbury

The Subtext

there is much speculation on the Internet as to the nature of the relationship between Xena and Gabrielle. When Xena gave Gabrielle a simple kiss, the whole system nearly crashed. If Gabrielle takes off Xena’s warrior boots then its the big topic for days. And there are many, many sites offering alternative episode endings, written by fans, depicting red hot sex scenes between the two. there is much analysis of the subtext of the episodes with long debate about little looks and touches exchanged between the show’s stars.

Liz Friedman, the show’s producer, throws petrol on the flames. “They’re such a perfect little butch-femme couple,” she says. “What they do between episodes, I don’t know.”

It seems that the show’s creators are more than aware of the fuss they are causing and are blatantly playing up to it. In one episode Gabrielle almost dies and Xena has to give her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

another episode starts with the camera focused on some bushes. we hear Gabrielle asking, “How was that?” Xena answers “Very nice!” Gabrielle says, “Really? I wasn’t sure,” and Xena replies “No, no you are doing great.” Then we see them fishing - naked.

“all I can say about that (the subtext),” says co-producer Rob Tapert (now married to Lucy Lawless) “is that Gabrielle satisfies her every whim.”

Lucy Lawless

Kiwi actress Lucy Lawless has just married Xena and Hercules executive producer Rob Tapert. We hope he’s in good shape because his wife tops six feet and works out every day with her trainer in Auckland, where she lives and where Xena: Warrior Princess is shot.

Born on March 29th, 1968, until the age of eight Lucy was very much a tomboy, following in the footsteps of four older brothers. After a convent education she went grape picking in Germany, then to Australia to work in a gold mine outside Kalgoorlie, a small town in the outback 500 miles from Perth. One of very few women miners, Lucy did the same work as the men - digging, driving trucks, and pushing huge core samples of earth through a diamond saw. She then married and has a eight year old daughter, Daisy, from that marriage.

Lucy came to our screens when she was aptly cast as an Amazon woman in “Hercules and the Amazon Women”. She speaks German, French and some Italian, and despite having studied opera for several years Lucy’s passion is for jazz.


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