I was thinking today about all the HoYay! in TV. HoYay! is homoerotic subtext in just about anything.
Example ala Everwood: Ephram and Bright were so cute, sharing their feelings! It was all HoYay!
Example ala Lord of the Rings: Everyone wanted to get in Frodo’s pants! Could they be more HoYay!?
You get the idea?
One of the paragons of HoYay! in the 1990s was the bizarrely cultish show, Xena, Warrior Princess. Xena was about, well, Xena. A warrior ‘princess’ who ran around the world of ancient Greece, trying to right the wrongs she’d done as a bad guy, with her sidekick Gabrielle.
Xena and Gabrielle and their relationship was, for me and many other people, the reason to watch the show. Season One (1995-1996) ended with an episode called “Is there a Doctor in the House?” wherein Xena and Gabby meet Hippocrates (go figure) and help teach him medicine while Xena saves the life of her Amazon friend who’s having a centaur’s baby (don’t think too much on that, please). In the middle of the fracas, Gabby gets hurt and almost dies, and there’s this great scene where Xena screams at her, “Don’t die on me!” Lucy Lawless acts the FUCK out of that scene.
And damn if I didn’t think ‘Woah, they’re totally girlfriends!’
I should have known right then and there that the show was doomed. I’m going to digress, hang on.
Lord of the Rings is about a group of humans, hobbits, an elf and a dwarf who band together to overcome insurmountable odds and save the world. They’re all men. The books, which I didn’t actually like, felt like an old boys story. And given Tolkien’s feelings on WWI, I’m not at all surprised. The movies, however, embraced the endless passion men have for each other, in a way that was sexual and entirely asexual at the same time. Oh, sure, they threw in Eowyn and Arwyn (hint: One was blonde) and upped their presence in the movie to ‘appease’ the female viewers but still, most of us spent the movie thinking ‘Damn, they’re all pervy hobbit fanciers!
Seriously. I watched the movie and thought that everyone had a crush on Frodo. And for that reason alone, the movie was a classic. It had fighting, it had special effects and it had the HoYay! Perfect!
Back to Xena, it had fighting, it had SFX, and it had … well, HoYay! The problem is that Xena catapulted past HoYay! and into ‘Woah, they’re gay!’ way too fast. They went from ‘Hey, we might be kinda gay’ and well into ‘Shh, this is the capital of Fruitopia.’ so fast that it burnt out by the middle of the third season.
How did that happen?
First, everyone admits that the stars (Xena: Lucy Lawless, Gabrielle: Renne O’Connor) had a chemistry that you just can’t beat. They had charisma, they had style, and they were fucking funny with each other. Look at the picture on the menu bar. Obviously I like them and I think they’re hysterical. But at the same time, the writers shied away from the HoYay! The gave Gabby a husband (and promptly killed him), the had Xena fall for men all over the damn place, and don’t get me started on Xena and Ares’ wacky and possible incestuous relationship. Ew.
At the same time they ran away from the HoYay!, they gave us the fishing scene in “Altared States”. It started with Xena and Gabby’s clothes strewn out in front of a lake, and the voice-over of Gabrielle nervously saying “I’ve never done this before.” “Don’t worry,” soothes Xena, “You’ll like it.” After a little more banter, we pan over the water where a (we assume) naked warrior princess and her amazon sidekick are treading water. Gabrielle at last acquiesces to whatever this idea is, and ducks down under the water. Slowly, the camera focuses on Xena’s face, where a huge, shit eating grin develops. Then, abruptly, Gabrielle bursts from the water holding … a fish!
This fish metaphor carries on and on throughout the seasons, and has actually become a running joke for me. Fish is now slang for lesbian sex. Usually people don’t get it, but it means if I’m asked ‘Why are you so tired today?’ I can reply ‘I had some fish last night.’ and they’ll be lost and I’ll be smirking.
The show moved on from there to an episode called “The Quest.” All true Xena fans are nodding and going ‘MmmHHHHhmmm.’ right now.
I’m going to digress and talk about “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” here, since it’s when Xena and Gabrielle face down the Bacchae (bloodthirsty minions of the wine god, Bacchus – Oh fuck it, people, VAMPIRES). Gabrielle ‘dances’ with the Bacchae and becomes one, and Xena has to let Gabrielle ’embrace’ her, so the two can defeat Bacchus and save Orpheus. Yeah, when I watch Xena, the Greek and Roman historian in me cries in a little corner. Just go with me here, we’re talking HoYay!, not history. Anyway, Xena bares her neck to Gabrielle to be bitten, and practically purrs “Mmm Gabrielle. Do it.” My college roommate and I squealed over that.
So “The Quest” had the plot of Xena is dead, Gabrielle is taking the body back home for interment. On the way, she runs into her Amazons, who suggest giving Xena the good ol’ Amazon pyre of fire send off. Gabrielle, having nowhere else to go after this, say why not? and garbs up as Amazon Princess Gabby, complete with outfit of hotness, and plans to move in with the Amazons post funeral. Since Queen Melosa is dead, Gabrielle will become the Queen of the Amazons (not bad!). Meanwhile … Autolycus, King of Thieves (Bruce Campbell), steals a knife and is possessed by Xena (if you’ve seen the Steve Martin/Lilly Tomlin All of Me, you get the point). Wackiness ensues.
The crux of “The Quest” is that Xena and Gabrielle meet up in ‘dream time’ or whatever the hell we called it, and Xena tells Gabrielle there’s not enough time to explain everything, but to trust her and then … Xena kisses Gabrielle. We pan back from the kiss (which is filmed so that the actresses lips don’t seem to touch) into ‘real life’ where Autolycus and Gabrielle get the smooch on. Bruce Campbell, bless him, is a good enough actor that we can all tell the moment when Xena is no longer ‘in control’ of his body.
And that was the downfall of Xena.
It was 1997, and from then on things went to hell. There was whatever the hell happened with Gabrielle to get her daughter, Hope, Xena’s son dying, and a bevy of other things we called ‘The Rift’. After the Rift was ‘healed’ with the musical episode, “Bitter Suite”, I started to fall away from the show. Really, it had built up, over two seasons, this bitching concept of girl-girl love, a wonderful mix of Female Empowerment and HoYay! and then *fffft*.
Like a moth farting, it flew straight and narrow and sucked.
In the end? The show ended with a whimper. Perhaps it was a fitting end to a show that started so quietly and then exploded into my life. I’d like to blame the writers and producers, to point at their fears and how it was their own demise. But then I wonder, how long could the show have lasted, being a Xena/Gabrielle adventure of the week? If they’d never offered us character development, would we have been as irritated? If they’d never given us these arcs, would we be so irate and feeling so betrayed?
Loud and proud I shout ‘I am not one of those obsessive fans, who quibbles over minute details, and takes it personally when a show begins to suck!’ And honestly, I’m not. But I do enjoy looking at the demise of a show I enjoyed, and try to understand what made it fail.
In the case of Xena, the weight of the homosexual tension forced the show to buckle it’s knees. It could not maintain the strain caused by our homophobic world. It was a mix of too little too late, and too much too soon. Like Mulder and Scully, we were left unfulfilled and feeling used. As if our passions were little more than a marketing ploy.
And that’s exactly what they were. Cheap tricks come with the price of admission.