Conference Paper
For all those interested, I am posting a copy of my conference paper. Once again, any comments on how to make it better will be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much in advance!
Rape metaphors permeate Xena: Warrior Princess. Sexual violence and rape functions in the background of much of its narrative as a motivating and justifying force for the main character, Xena. Within the series, Xena operates as a violent female, a locus of contradiction that blurs the distinction between masculine and feminine identity. Xena, though, instead of causing the dissolution of this boundary, in fact polices it and prevents other women, with notable exceptions, from crossing it. She is able to do this because of her experiences of victimization and, metaphorically, sexual abuse since these experiences are specifically presented as the trigger for violence in women. Xena is initially motivated to do violence in order to protect her home village of Amphipolis, positioning her as a just revenger. Though this justifies her position as a violent female, the contradictions that this subject position creates in hegemonic patriarchal discourses does not go unpunished in the course of the narrative. Xena is weighed down, and eventually succumbs to, her guilt for her past crimes. This indicates that, despite the necessity of violent females to police the boundaries of gender by protecting other women from traumatic experiences, the violent female is ultimately a figure worthy of punishment. This ambivalent attitude towards the figure of the violent female can be seen within the text itself and within the reactions of the audience, particularly fans, toward the text, which oscillate between attraction to the figure of an empowered female character and repulsion from the violent excesses that signify that empowerment. This attitude is symptomatic of broader attitudes toward female victims of abuse and the representation of trauma, violence, and abuse in female superhero narratives.
Xena first premiered on television in 1995. The discourses circulating at this time around the issues of female violence and abuse have obviously informed its representation of these issues. As Linda Gordon argues, “violence has been historically and politically constructed” and historically specific anxieties about female violence in particular often “reveal the longing for peaceful family life, the strength of the cultural image of home life as a harmonious, loving, and supportive environment” (2-3). Within Xena’s narrative, the protection of the home and family relationships functions as a primary motivating force for Xena to participate in violent acts, which agrees with Gordon’s linkage of anxieties about violence and an idealized family life. Gordon further argues that concern with violence and feminist concerns are deeply related (4). As I will argue, the feminist discourses in circulation during the period of its initial airing on U.S. television (1995-2001), specifically the conflicts between feminist and post-feminist discourses, reflect a still extant anxiety about feminism within America through its ambivalent presentation of female violence and trauma.
Of course, before I can continue, it is necessary to fix my definitions of both violence and trauma. Within this paper, my usage of violence conforms to what Mimi Marinucci has termed the “standard usage” definition of violence: “the use of physical force as an intentional means of inflicting pain or causing bodily harm” (62). However, to this bodily account of violence, I would also like to add a psychological and emotional account of the effects of violence, since Xena often presents these effects as being worse than the actual bodily harm inflicted by violence. Moreover, much of the sexual violence within Xena functions on a symbolic level. Thus, it is important to acknowledge the non-bodily effects that violence can have on an individual. My usage of the word trauma is perhaps a bit more vague. Within the text of Xena, I argue that trauma functions along the lines of Wendy Hesford’s defintion of trauma: “a devastating and not-worked-through experience” (195). Its marking as a “not-worked-through experience” speaks to the representation of trauma as a “lack” or as something “unrepresentable.”
Within Xena, one particular experience is notable for its representation as a traumatic experience: the original attack upon Xena’s home village of Amphipolis by the warlord Cortese. This attack is repeatedly cited within the narrative as the point of origin for Xena’s decision to become a warlord/warrior. For example, in the episode “Death Mask,” Xena comments ruefully, “It was fighting [Cortese] that twisted me into what I became.” What marks this experience as traumatic, however, is in the peculiar way in which it is presented within the narrative. Xena, as a narrative, is obsessed with repetition, as can be seen in its extensive use of the flashback motif. No fewer than 8 episodes over the course of the series were almost entirely devoted to detailing Xena’s past as a warlord. However, despite this extensive use of the flashback motif to document Xena’s background, the initial attack by Cortese is never visually represented on screen. It is only referenced in discussions between characters, namely Xena and her partner, Gabrielle, and Xena and her older brother, Toris. It is this lack of representation, then, that marks the experience as traumatic, since it implies that Xena has not “worked through” the experience, symbolized by the narrative’s inability to represent it visually.
Within the narrative, however, the trauma of the experience is fixed as the loss of Xena’s younger brother, Lyceus, in the attack. This elides the experience of sexual violence, which is ubiquitously associated with attacks by warlords in Xena. The experience of sexual violence is further presented as the primary experience of women during attack such as this. In every scene depicting a warlord attacking a village (of which there are too many to count), the sound of women screaming is always juxtaposed with the sound of the villains grunting and laughing, implying the threat of sexual violence. The fact that the actual act of sexual violence is never presented during the show only speaks to its ubiquitous linking with warlord attacks. A further example of this can also be seen through the character of Salmoneus, who man who masquerades as a woman during the episode “The Gauntlet” to avoid being killed by the warlord Xena. While acting like a woman, the threat of rape is explicitly invoked when he says, “I’m a modest woman. Please don’t touch me there.” When he is exposed as a man, the threat of rape is immediately substituted with the threat of death. The equation presented by this is simple For men, the real threat of a warlord attack is death. For women, it is rape.
Thus, the narrative implies that Xena, as a young girl, was a victim of sexual violence during the attack by Cortese. However, by not figuring the sexual violence as the defining characteristic of this traumatic experience, Xena instead represents the trauma of sexual violence as a double-lack; it is not even capable of being represented as trauma. This marks the beginnings of a constant deferral of sexual violence and rape to the realm of the subtextual and metaphoric, a trend that continues throughout the entire series. This deferral highlights one of the major problems of rape and sexual violence in modern social and legal discourses, since they are intimately bound to processes of interpretability (namely, the differences in interpretation of the sexual act between the victim and the victimizer), which conflicts with “the legal presumption that a sexual encounter can be read objectively” (Rooney 89).
The experience of this trauma (or traumas) motivated Xena to take up the role of a violent female. Xena goes to great lengths to establish the differences between traditional femininity and the figure of the violent female. The most obvious example of this is the episode “Remember Nothing,” which presents an alternate reality in which Xena did not become a warrior as a result of Cortese’s attack. The alternate-Xena is coded as almost excessively feminine. Her clothing, far-removed from her traditional warrior costume, is traditionally feminine, with a lightly-colored blouse and a floor-length skirt that codes her as reserved and virginal. Violence, then, within the narrative, is associated with both masculinity and sexuality, for by refusing to participate in violence, Xena is coded as both traditionally feminine and virginal. This association between sexuality and violence is emblematic of a constant sliding between violence and sex within the text. For example, during the first episode of Xena, “Sins of the Past,” Xena’s encounter with the warlord Draco is coded as both sexual and violent. A bout of arm wrestling ends in a chivalric kiss on the hand while Xena notes that she scarred Draco because he “picked the wrong woman to get rough with.” This constant sliding between sex and violence is a natural progression from Xena’s primary emphasis upon rape, then, because it is the physical merging of the two. This complex relationship between sexuality, femininity, and violence/rape is evident in many film representations of rape. As Sarah Projansky notes, “While I argue that films often link rape to women’s vulnerability, the place of rape in a narrative may be a result or the cause of that vulnerability” (81).
As I have shown, rape functions on a subtextual and metaphoric level throughout the entire narrative of Xena. Because of this then, it is possible to read Xena as a rape-revenge narrative or, more accurately, it is possible to read Xena as an action-adventure narrative upon which a rape-revenge narrative has been superimposed. The rape-revenge narrative, as Jacinda Read argues, is “preoccupied with articulating and making sense of the transformations that have occurred in and around heterosexual femininity” (50). Thus, Xena, through its employment of the rape-revenge narrative, can be seen as representative of the historically specific ways in which gender and its relationship to violence is thought during the mid-to-late 1990s. One of the distinctions of Xena’s usage of the rape-revenge narrative, though, is that Xena is not eroticized as a rape-revenger, but is instead masculinized. In traditional rape-revenge narratives, the rape-revenger undergoes an eroticized transformation, which has usually been read as an occurrence necessary to counter-balance the masculine activities of violence that she is now engaged in (Read 50). Xena, though, as deviates from this structure, as can be seen in the contrast between the masculine Xena and the alternate-Xena of “Remember Nothing.” This seems to imply a more relaxed attitude towards gender boundary-crossing during the time period of Xena’s production, since the narrative does not feel the need to reinforce Xena’s gender-identity through the process of eroticization when she participates in masculine activites.
However, despite Xena’s participation in masculine acts of violence, her motivations and ethical modality remain distinctly feminine. Her initial motivation to “take up the sword” was to protect her homeland and, by extension, her family and friends. This motivation to protect her relationships undergirds much of her violent acts. For example, in the previously mentioned “Sins of the Past,” Xena buries her armor and weapons in an attempt to symbolically bury her violent past. This attempt, though, is frustrated when she sees a group of thugs attacking Gabrielle and the women of her village. Xena, then, is forced to assume a violent subject position during key points of the narrative in order to protect others. This parallels Carol Gilligan’s description of the distinctly feminine “ethics of care,” described as a perspective that centers on “relationships and psychological truths where an awareness of the connection between people gives rise to a recognition of responsibility for one another, a perception of the need for response” (30). Gilligan further contends that women and men associate violence differently, with women associating violence with “situations of achievement” and “competitive success” whereas men associate violence with “situations of personal affiliation” (41). This resembles the presentation of violence within Xena. For Xena, violence is only acceptable if it is used in the service of protecting others, as evidenced by her excessive guilt over her past use of violence in arenas of competitive success.
Thus, Xena oscillates between masculine acts of aggression and feminine ethical motivations, which figures Xena as a locus of contradiction that blurs the distinction between hegemonic patriarchal discourses on masculinity and femininity. Why, though, is Xena able to assume this subject position, rather than all women? The answer lies within Xena’s own personal experiences of violence and trauma. Threaded throughout the narrative is a constant linkage between violence committed against Xena and Xena’s own use of violence. This is best exemplified in “The Gauntlet.” In this episode, Xena is forced to walk a gauntlet, resulting in her brutal beating at the hands of her army, for her refusal to kill women and children. This event is positioned as Xena’s first step towards redemption. When Xena later kills the new leader of her army, the evil Darphus, the same music that played during the gauntlet scene can be heard once again, establishing a causal linkage between the two. Xena’s personal experiences of violence and trauma, then, functions to legitimate her current violent subject position. This legitimation is further fixed in the episode “Destiny,” when Xena’s friend/mentor M’Lila notes, “Since you know evil, were evil, you can fight evil.”
Xena, then, throughout the narrative, functions as a protector of women from violence, particularly sexual violence. Consequently, rather than blurring the distinctions between traditional conceptions of gender by functioning as a locus of masculine and feminine contradictions, Xena instead polices these boundaries by protecting women from the one event that is repeatedly figured as the catalyst for the formation of violent women: sexual violence and abuse. This positioning of Xena speaks to the necessity of violent women, like Xena, in society. However, this necessity is ultimately problematized within the narrative due to Xena’s inability to fully protect all women from this experience. In the episode “The Deliverer,” Xena’s partner Gabrielle is tricked into murdering someone which eventually results in her being impregnated against her will by the evil god Dahak.
However, this episode is a further example of Xena’s constant deferral of sexual violence to the realm of the subtextual and metaphorical. The rape narrative functions within the background of the primary narrative of the episode until well into the third act, when it is violently pulled to the foreground. It is even arguable that Gabrielle is even raped. Gabrielle’s impregnation against her will occurs when she is suspended above a pillar of fire as (notably phallic) tendrils of flame curl over her body. While there are definitely elements of this scene that specifically code this moment as a rape (Gabrielle screams and groans and the event does, after all, result in a pregnancy), it is ambiguous enough that the writer of the episode, Steven L. Sears, to deny that a rape even occurred. On the NetForum, Sears contends that “he could not equate the mystical impregnation by a godly being while being supported on a pillar of fire to the forceful, violent penetration and beating of another person at the hands of an all too mortal and real person” (qtd. In “The Deliverer,” Whoosh.org). Even though Sears never intended the scene to be read as a rape, I and many other fans argue that is impossible to not be read as a metaphor for rape. This metaphor is further solidified by Gabrielle’s traumatized final words in the episode, “Everything’s changed. Everything.” What is more, this event is positioned primarily as a failure on Xena’s part, since it is her duty, as a violent just warrior, to protect other women from events just like this.
Ultimately, however, the text is ambivalent about the figure of the violent female. Despite the text’s maintaining that this figure is necessary in society, it constantly punishes Xena for her violence. The most salient way that it does this is by presenting Xena as eternally guilty for her violent past. Moreover, Xena is also constantly portrayed as on the edge of reverting to her past violent persona, which may imply that women have specific difficulties successfully determining the proper amount of violence that a specific situation calls for since this difficulty is never hinted at in Xena’s parent show, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. Xena’s violence is also figured as potentially destructive to her relationships. One of the most controversial examples of this occurs during the episode “The Bitter Suite” when Xena, fueled by grief and the desire for revenge, attacks Gabrielle and drags her behind her horse for what seems like miles. However, this is not the only example of Xena attacking Gabrielle. It occurs with a disturbing frequency over the course of the series and ranges in severity from merely accidentally punching Gabrielle (as in “The Reckoning”) to splitting her head open with her chakram (as in “Motherhood”). These are always presented as excesses of Xena’s violent nature and are routinely punished.
Ultimately, Xena succumbs to her guilt and the economy of “vengeance” (ie. is punished for her violent past) by choosing to remain dead in the final episode, “A Friend in Need, II.” This scene was, and still is, extremely controversial and upsetting for many fans. Many were upset because it conflicted with one of the central themes of the show, that vengeance is not a valid form of justice. Many others, however, argued that it was misogynistic. While I do not agree that the ending is deliberately misogynistic, I do argue that it emblematic of the ambivalent attitude within society towards the figure of the violent female. Despite the necessity of her being punished for transgressing traditional gender boundaries and occupying a space traditionally reserved for men only, the text still states that such transgressions are necessary, as well. Within the final episode, Xena does die, but a new violent female warrior emerges to fill her empty place - Xena’s partner and protégée Gabrielle.
This ambivalence can also be seen in reactions towards the text as well. Helen Caudill, in her exploration of Xena online fan-fiction that deals specifically with sexual violence, notes that many fans are attracted to Xena’s violent excesses and the potential for sexual violence that this opens up (31). However, this violence is eventually contained within a romantic narrative as Xena “finds herself redeemed or transformed back into her better self by Gabrielle.” (Caudill 29). Many female victims of abuse have also experienced an attraction/repulsion towards the image of a violent warrior woman presented in Xena. As Rebecca Hall, a victim of sexual abuse and a fan of the show, notes, “There have been few images of women warriors to heal our psyches, and Xena gives us this. And it gives us tools to reach our wounds and soothe them at the soul-level.” Hall later criticizes the show, though, for depicting the relationship between Xena and Gabrielle as increasingly abusive, specifically citing the infamous “GabDrag” scene from “The Bitter Suite,” mentioned above, as an example of the producers tearing “the very fabric of the show.” However, early in the article, Hall cites a scene from the episode “The Reckoning” as being empowering: the image of Xena, who had been chained and beaten by a group of villagers after being mistakenly convicted of murder, breaking free and attacking her attackers. This scene, though, is presented within the narrative as a punishable event, since the villagers are acting out of grief and Xena is “giving into her dark side.” This latter point is made through Xena’s accidental attacking of Gabrielle, the first of the noted many times that Xena physically abuses Gabrielle, a development that Hall finds deeply disturbing. Within Hall’s own reaction towards the show, then, can be seen an extremely ambivalent attitude towards the linkage between feminine concerns with relationships and masculine acts of violence. Hall eventually concludes, like the narrative, that “we need more characters like this,” despite her reservations about the violent excesses that are a part of characters like this.
The show of Xena: Warrior Princess, then, speaks to a deep societal ambivalence towards the relationship between violence and women within our current society. Xena, like many other rape-revenge narratives, can be read as an attempt to negotiate and make sense of this relationship. Its ultimate solution, however, is disheartening at best. By routinely punishing Xena for her violent excesses while at the same time admitting the inevitability and necessity of such characters, the figure of the violent female is presented, at best, as a necessary evil. There is potential for empowerment, as can be seen in the many positive reactions toward the show by female fans, but this potential is limited by the series’ final assertion that this empowerment must ultimately be regulated and punished.
Rape metaphors permeate Xena: Warrior Princess. Sexual violence and rape functions in the background of much of its narrative as a motivating and justifying force for the main character, Xena. Within the series, Xena operates as a violent female, a locus of contradiction that blurs the distinction between masculine and feminine identity. Xena, though, instead of causing the dissolution of this boundary, in fact polices it and prevents other women, with notable exceptions, from crossing it. She is able to do this because of her experiences of victimization and, metaphorically, sexual abuse since these experiences are specifically presented as the trigger for violence in women. Xena is initially motivated to do violence in order to protect her home village of Amphipolis, positioning her as a just revenger. Though this justifies her position as a violent female, the contradictions that this subject position creates in hegemonic patriarchal discourses does not go unpunished in the course of the narrative. Xena is weighed down, and eventually succumbs to, her guilt for her past crimes. This indicates that, despite the necessity of violent females to police the boundaries of gender by protecting other women from traumatic experiences, the violent female is ultimately a figure worthy of punishment. This ambivalent attitude towards the figure of the violent female can be seen within the text itself and within the reactions of the audience, particularly fans, toward the text, which oscillate between attraction to the figure of an empowered female character and repulsion from the violent excesses that signify that empowerment. This attitude is symptomatic of broader attitudes toward female victims of abuse and the representation of trauma, violence, and abuse in female superhero narratives.
Xena first premiered on television in 1995. The discourses circulating at this time around the issues of female violence and abuse have obviously informed its representation of these issues. As Linda Gordon argues, “violence has been historically and politically constructed” and historically specific anxieties about female violence in particular often “reveal the longing for peaceful family life, the strength of the cultural image of home life as a harmonious, loving, and supportive environment” (2-3). Within Xena’s narrative, the protection of the home and family relationships functions as a primary motivating force for Xena to participate in violent acts, which agrees with Gordon’s linkage of anxieties about violence and an idealized family life. Gordon further argues that concern with violence and feminist concerns are deeply related (4). As I will argue, the feminist discourses in circulation during the period of its initial airing on U.S. television (1995-2001), specifically the conflicts between feminist and post-feminist discourses, reflect a still extant anxiety about feminism within America through its ambivalent presentation of female violence and trauma.
Of course, before I can continue, it is necessary to fix my definitions of both violence and trauma. Within this paper, my usage of violence conforms to what Mimi Marinucci has termed the “standard usage” definition of violence: “the use of physical force as an intentional means of inflicting pain or causing bodily harm” (62). However, to this bodily account of violence, I would also like to add a psychological and emotional account of the effects of violence, since Xena often presents these effects as being worse than the actual bodily harm inflicted by violence. Moreover, much of the sexual violence within Xena functions on a symbolic level. Thus, it is important to acknowledge the non-bodily effects that violence can have on an individual. My usage of the word trauma is perhaps a bit more vague. Within the text of Xena, I argue that trauma functions along the lines of Wendy Hesford’s defintion of trauma: “a devastating and not-worked-through experience” (195). Its marking as a “not-worked-through experience” speaks to the representation of trauma as a “lack” or as something “unrepresentable.”
Within Xena, one particular experience is notable for its representation as a traumatic experience: the original attack upon Xena’s home village of Amphipolis by the warlord Cortese. This attack is repeatedly cited within the narrative as the point of origin for Xena’s decision to become a warlord/warrior. For example, in the episode “Death Mask,” Xena comments ruefully, “It was fighting [Cortese] that twisted me into what I became.” What marks this experience as traumatic, however, is in the peculiar way in which it is presented within the narrative. Xena, as a narrative, is obsessed with repetition, as can be seen in its extensive use of the flashback motif. No fewer than 8 episodes over the course of the series were almost entirely devoted to detailing Xena’s past as a warlord. However, despite this extensive use of the flashback motif to document Xena’s background, the initial attack by Cortese is never visually represented on screen. It is only referenced in discussions between characters, namely Xena and her partner, Gabrielle, and Xena and her older brother, Toris. It is this lack of representation, then, that marks the experience as traumatic, since it implies that Xena has not “worked through” the experience, symbolized by the narrative’s inability to represent it visually.
Within the narrative, however, the trauma of the experience is fixed as the loss of Xena’s younger brother, Lyceus, in the attack. This elides the experience of sexual violence, which is ubiquitously associated with attacks by warlords in Xena. The experience of sexual violence is further presented as the primary experience of women during attack such as this. In every scene depicting a warlord attacking a village (of which there are too many to count), the sound of women screaming is always juxtaposed with the sound of the villains grunting and laughing, implying the threat of sexual violence. The fact that the actual act of sexual violence is never presented during the show only speaks to its ubiquitous linking with warlord attacks. A further example of this can also be seen through the character of Salmoneus, who man who masquerades as a woman during the episode “The Gauntlet” to avoid being killed by the warlord Xena. While acting like a woman, the threat of rape is explicitly invoked when he says, “I’m a modest woman. Please don’t touch me there.” When he is exposed as a man, the threat of rape is immediately substituted with the threat of death. The equation presented by this is simple For men, the real threat of a warlord attack is death. For women, it is rape.
Thus, the narrative implies that Xena, as a young girl, was a victim of sexual violence during the attack by Cortese. However, by not figuring the sexual violence as the defining characteristic of this traumatic experience, Xena instead represents the trauma of sexual violence as a double-lack; it is not even capable of being represented as trauma. This marks the beginnings of a constant deferral of sexual violence and rape to the realm of the subtextual and metaphoric, a trend that continues throughout the entire series. This deferral highlights one of the major problems of rape and sexual violence in modern social and legal discourses, since they are intimately bound to processes of interpretability (namely, the differences in interpretation of the sexual act between the victim and the victimizer), which conflicts with “the legal presumption that a sexual encounter can be read objectively” (Rooney 89).
The experience of this trauma (or traumas) motivated Xena to take up the role of a violent female. Xena goes to great lengths to establish the differences between traditional femininity and the figure of the violent female. The most obvious example of this is the episode “Remember Nothing,” which presents an alternate reality in which Xena did not become a warrior as a result of Cortese’s attack. The alternate-Xena is coded as almost excessively feminine. Her clothing, far-removed from her traditional warrior costume, is traditionally feminine, with a lightly-colored blouse and a floor-length skirt that codes her as reserved and virginal. Violence, then, within the narrative, is associated with both masculinity and sexuality, for by refusing to participate in violence, Xena is coded as both traditionally feminine and virginal. This association between sexuality and violence is emblematic of a constant sliding between violence and sex within the text. For example, during the first episode of Xena, “Sins of the Past,” Xena’s encounter with the warlord Draco is coded as both sexual and violent. A bout of arm wrestling ends in a chivalric kiss on the hand while Xena notes that she scarred Draco because he “picked the wrong woman to get rough with.” This constant sliding between sex and violence is a natural progression from Xena’s primary emphasis upon rape, then, because it is the physical merging of the two. This complex relationship between sexuality, femininity, and violence/rape is evident in many film representations of rape. As Sarah Projansky notes, “While I argue that films often link rape to women’s vulnerability, the place of rape in a narrative may be a result or the cause of that vulnerability” (81).
As I have shown, rape functions on a subtextual and metaphoric level throughout the entire narrative of Xena. Because of this then, it is possible to read Xena as a rape-revenge narrative or, more accurately, it is possible to read Xena as an action-adventure narrative upon which a rape-revenge narrative has been superimposed. The rape-revenge narrative, as Jacinda Read argues, is “preoccupied with articulating and making sense of the transformations that have occurred in and around heterosexual femininity” (50). Thus, Xena, through its employment of the rape-revenge narrative, can be seen as representative of the historically specific ways in which gender and its relationship to violence is thought during the mid-to-late 1990s. One of the distinctions of Xena’s usage of the rape-revenge narrative, though, is that Xena is not eroticized as a rape-revenger, but is instead masculinized. In traditional rape-revenge narratives, the rape-revenger undergoes an eroticized transformation, which has usually been read as an occurrence necessary to counter-balance the masculine activities of violence that she is now engaged in (Read 50). Xena, though, as deviates from this structure, as can be seen in the contrast between the masculine Xena and the alternate-Xena of “Remember Nothing.” This seems to imply a more relaxed attitude towards gender boundary-crossing during the time period of Xena’s production, since the narrative does not feel the need to reinforce Xena’s gender-identity through the process of eroticization when she participates in masculine activites.
However, despite Xena’s participation in masculine acts of violence, her motivations and ethical modality remain distinctly feminine. Her initial motivation to “take up the sword” was to protect her homeland and, by extension, her family and friends. This motivation to protect her relationships undergirds much of her violent acts. For example, in the previously mentioned “Sins of the Past,” Xena buries her armor and weapons in an attempt to symbolically bury her violent past. This attempt, though, is frustrated when she sees a group of thugs attacking Gabrielle and the women of her village. Xena, then, is forced to assume a violent subject position during key points of the narrative in order to protect others. This parallels Carol Gilligan’s description of the distinctly feminine “ethics of care,” described as a perspective that centers on “relationships and psychological truths where an awareness of the connection between people gives rise to a recognition of responsibility for one another, a perception of the need for response” (30). Gilligan further contends that women and men associate violence differently, with women associating violence with “situations of achievement” and “competitive success” whereas men associate violence with “situations of personal affiliation” (41). This resembles the presentation of violence within Xena. For Xena, violence is only acceptable if it is used in the service of protecting others, as evidenced by her excessive guilt over her past use of violence in arenas of competitive success.
Thus, Xena oscillates between masculine acts of aggression and feminine ethical motivations, which figures Xena as a locus of contradiction that blurs the distinction between hegemonic patriarchal discourses on masculinity and femininity. Why, though, is Xena able to assume this subject position, rather than all women? The answer lies within Xena’s own personal experiences of violence and trauma. Threaded throughout the narrative is a constant linkage between violence committed against Xena and Xena’s own use of violence. This is best exemplified in “The Gauntlet.” In this episode, Xena is forced to walk a gauntlet, resulting in her brutal beating at the hands of her army, for her refusal to kill women and children. This event is positioned as Xena’s first step towards redemption. When Xena later kills the new leader of her army, the evil Darphus, the same music that played during the gauntlet scene can be heard once again, establishing a causal linkage between the two. Xena’s personal experiences of violence and trauma, then, functions to legitimate her current violent subject position. This legitimation is further fixed in the episode “Destiny,” when Xena’s friend/mentor M’Lila notes, “Since you know evil, were evil, you can fight evil.”
Xena, then, throughout the narrative, functions as a protector of women from violence, particularly sexual violence. Consequently, rather than blurring the distinctions between traditional conceptions of gender by functioning as a locus of masculine and feminine contradictions, Xena instead polices these boundaries by protecting women from the one event that is repeatedly figured as the catalyst for the formation of violent women: sexual violence and abuse. This positioning of Xena speaks to the necessity of violent women, like Xena, in society. However, this necessity is ultimately problematized within the narrative due to Xena’s inability to fully protect all women from this experience. In the episode “The Deliverer,” Xena’s partner Gabrielle is tricked into murdering someone which eventually results in her being impregnated against her will by the evil god Dahak.
However, this episode is a further example of Xena’s constant deferral of sexual violence to the realm of the subtextual and metaphorical. The rape narrative functions within the background of the primary narrative of the episode until well into the third act, when it is violently pulled to the foreground. It is even arguable that Gabrielle is even raped. Gabrielle’s impregnation against her will occurs when she is suspended above a pillar of fire as (notably phallic) tendrils of flame curl over her body. While there are definitely elements of this scene that specifically code this moment as a rape (Gabrielle screams and groans and the event does, after all, result in a pregnancy), it is ambiguous enough that the writer of the episode, Steven L. Sears, to deny that a rape even occurred. On the NetForum, Sears contends that “he could not equate the mystical impregnation by a godly being while being supported on a pillar of fire to the forceful, violent penetration and beating of another person at the hands of an all too mortal and real person” (qtd. In “The Deliverer,” Whoosh.org). Even though Sears never intended the scene to be read as a rape, I and many other fans argue that is impossible to not be read as a metaphor for rape. This metaphor is further solidified by Gabrielle’s traumatized final words in the episode, “Everything’s changed. Everything.” What is more, this event is positioned primarily as a failure on Xena’s part, since it is her duty, as a violent just warrior, to protect other women from events just like this.
Ultimately, however, the text is ambivalent about the figure of the violent female. Despite the text’s maintaining that this figure is necessary in society, it constantly punishes Xena for her violence. The most salient way that it does this is by presenting Xena as eternally guilty for her violent past. Moreover, Xena is also constantly portrayed as on the edge of reverting to her past violent persona, which may imply that women have specific difficulties successfully determining the proper amount of violence that a specific situation calls for since this difficulty is never hinted at in Xena’s parent show, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. Xena’s violence is also figured as potentially destructive to her relationships. One of the most controversial examples of this occurs during the episode “The Bitter Suite” when Xena, fueled by grief and the desire for revenge, attacks Gabrielle and drags her behind her horse for what seems like miles. However, this is not the only example of Xena attacking Gabrielle. It occurs with a disturbing frequency over the course of the series and ranges in severity from merely accidentally punching Gabrielle (as in “The Reckoning”) to splitting her head open with her chakram (as in “Motherhood”). These are always presented as excesses of Xena’s violent nature and are routinely punished.
Ultimately, Xena succumbs to her guilt and the economy of “vengeance” (ie. is punished for her violent past) by choosing to remain dead in the final episode, “A Friend in Need, II.” This scene was, and still is, extremely controversial and upsetting for many fans. Many were upset because it conflicted with one of the central themes of the show, that vengeance is not a valid form of justice. Many others, however, argued that it was misogynistic. While I do not agree that the ending is deliberately misogynistic, I do argue that it emblematic of the ambivalent attitude within society towards the figure of the violent female. Despite the necessity of her being punished for transgressing traditional gender boundaries and occupying a space traditionally reserved for men only, the text still states that such transgressions are necessary, as well. Within the final episode, Xena does die, but a new violent female warrior emerges to fill her empty place - Xena’s partner and protégée Gabrielle.
This ambivalence can also be seen in reactions towards the text as well. Helen Caudill, in her exploration of Xena online fan-fiction that deals specifically with sexual violence, notes that many fans are attracted to Xena’s violent excesses and the potential for sexual violence that this opens up (31). However, this violence is eventually contained within a romantic narrative as Xena “finds herself redeemed or transformed back into her better self by Gabrielle.” (Caudill 29). Many female victims of abuse have also experienced an attraction/repulsion towards the image of a violent warrior woman presented in Xena. As Rebecca Hall, a victim of sexual abuse and a fan of the show, notes, “There have been few images of women warriors to heal our psyches, and Xena gives us this. And it gives us tools to reach our wounds and soothe them at the soul-level.” Hall later criticizes the show, though, for depicting the relationship between Xena and Gabrielle as increasingly abusive, specifically citing the infamous “GabDrag” scene from “The Bitter Suite,” mentioned above, as an example of the producers tearing “the very fabric of the show.” However, early in the article, Hall cites a scene from the episode “The Reckoning” as being empowering: the image of Xena, who had been chained and beaten by a group of villagers after being mistakenly convicted of murder, breaking free and attacking her attackers. This scene, though, is presented within the narrative as a punishable event, since the villagers are acting out of grief and Xena is “giving into her dark side.” This latter point is made through Xena’s accidental attacking of Gabrielle, the first of the noted many times that Xena physically abuses Gabrielle, a development that Hall finds deeply disturbing. Within Hall’s own reaction towards the show, then, can be seen an extremely ambivalent attitude towards the linkage between feminine concerns with relationships and masculine acts of violence. Hall eventually concludes, like the narrative, that “we need more characters like this,” despite her reservations about the violent excesses that are a part of characters like this.
The show of Xena: Warrior Princess, then, speaks to a deep societal ambivalence towards the relationship between violence and women within our current society. Xena, like many other rape-revenge narratives, can be read as an attempt to negotiate and make sense of this relationship. Its ultimate solution, however, is disheartening at best. By routinely punishing Xena for her violent excesses while at the same time admitting the inevitability and necessity of such characters, the figure of the violent female is presented, at best, as a necessary evil. There is potential for empowerment, as can be seen in the many positive reactions toward the show by female fans, but this potential is limited by the series’ final assertion that this empowerment must ultimately be regulated and punished.