Xena: Warrior Princess as Feminist Camp

Joanne Morreale
The fantasy-action adventure show Xena: Warrior Princess is now
the number one new syndicated program on American television, and
among the top ten syndicated series worldwide, regularly beating such
mainstays as Baywatch and Deep Space Nine in Nielsen ratings. It airs
on some 200 stations across the United States, with a wide demographic
appeal. According to the Star Tribune, Grandmas as well as fourth
graders, academics along with oafs, feminists and good 01 boys all love
this video comic-strip (Tillotson). Xena has become a popular culture
phenomenon, with star Lucy Lawless gracing the cover of both TV
Guide and Parade magazines, Xena fan conventions held at major
American cities, and numerous Internet web sites devoted to Xena.
Xena: Warrior Princess is notable as one of the first television series
to place a woman in the role of the archetypal hero on a quest. The Xena
character, created by veteran horror filmmakers Sam Raimi and Rob
Tapert, first appeared as a villain on the program Hercules, which they
also produce. Critical response to Xena was so great that they decided to
create a spinoff, but executives at MCA Universal, the studio that distributes both Hercules and Xena, demanded that they first get her
turned around so that shes good (Zurawik). Thus, Xena: Warrior
Princess describes the adventures of a mythological character who has
renounced her evil ways and pledged to avenge the innocent. Yet, like
many of the mythical male heroes after whom Xena is patterned, she
retains a dark side, and she constantly struggles with the evil within. Her
sidekick and confidante is Gabrielle, the rightful queen of the Amazons
who abdicated her throne in order to join Xena. Their close bonding
clearly supercedes their relationships with men (which never seem to last
more than one episode). Indeed, Xena and Gabrielles ambiguous sexuality is a constant subject of speculation both in the press and among
Xenites.
The ambiguity and contradictions that define both the Xena character and the show itself may account in part for the shows widespread
appeal. Her character is simultaneously masculine and feminine; the
show is both male-oriented action-adventure and female-oriented fan79

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tasy. Moreover, on the level of its story, or content, Xena: Warrior

Princess is overtly feminist, yet its discourse, the way the story is told,
remains traditionally patriarchal. These contradictions, along with the
shows postmodern format, enable viewers from different subject positions to read their own meanings into Xena. As one of these many possible readings, this essay discusses Xena as feminist camp which subverts
traditional female stereotypes despite its formal acquiescence to the discourse of patriarchy.
To begin, I will examine the contradictory representation of Xenas
character by placing her within the historical context of warrior queens.
According to Antonia Fraser, several themes recur throughout history
with regard to Warrior Queens. No doubt because of their masculine
characteristics, they are associated with sexual ambiguity. Xena is no
exception here. A second recurring theme is the Shame Syndrome,
whereby all of the surrounding male figures are described as failing in
courage compared to the Warrior Queen herself. The Shame Syndrome
is highlighted not only by Xenas ability to defeat the many male warlords who threaten the stability of the known world, but also in the programs only recurring male character, Joxer. His name is a play on Joker,
and he is presented as a buffoon, a warrior wanna-be who is clearly
inferior to both Xena and Gabrielle. Then there is the Appendage
Syndrome, where historical Warrior Queens typically are connected to
the nearest masculine figure, whether as a wife or daughter. The fact that
Xena does not illustrate the Appendage Syndrome is a testament to the
shows feminist slant. Xena has an absent father and no husband, and
although mention is occasionally made of her having a son, he does not
appear on-screen. She did learn some of her fighting skills from her
(deceased) brother, but her most advanced technique, the neck pinch,
was learned from another woman. Her sidekick is female. Unlike historical warrior queens, Xena is dependent on no man.
Fraser notes that Warrior Queens evoke a a specialfrisson-of fear
or admiration-primarily because they depart so radically from the
notion of the feminine with which women have been associated
throughout history (8). Yet, the term warrior princess illustrates the
contradictory nature of Xenas representation. Warrior suggests her
masculine side, but even though Xena is a mature woman, older and
wiser than her sidekick Gabrielle, she is referred to as a princess. This
diminution from queen to princess, an attempt to reducefrisson, defines
her as stereotypically, even excessively feminine.
Contradictions are also apparent in Xenas dress and appearance,
which are simultaneously masculine and feminine. Karen Pusateri
writes:

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Xenas outward appearance-leather mini-skirt and boots, bronze breast plates,

bare thighs, long straight dark hair, and piercing blue eyes-is part harem girl
(feminine) and one part warrior (masculine). Her clothing highlights her femininity while at the same time shielding it. Her sword, a masculine image of
strength and power which could be seen as a phallic symbol, is worn at her back
or her side. Her chakram, a circular metal disk with a razor sharp edge...is worn
on her hip. Its circular shape is symbolic of the female sex and is her ultimate
weapon and source of strength. This duality of feminine and masculine identities makes those around her uncertain. Men are both attracted to her and terrified by her. It is this confusion which serves as her ultimate weapon of control
and power. (3)
While Xenas appearance and character exhibit both masculine and
feminine traits, she most clearly fits into traditional female stereotypes
on the formal level of the text. USA Network CEO Kay Koplowitz notes
that forceful women characters must strike a balance between strength
and femininity. She says: I think when you develop this kind of role,
you risk having a strong action figure who is not sympathetic. It can be
intimidating, it can be off-putting. Women who are too strong can be
overbearing to both men and women (Flaherty 6).
This so-called problem is surmounted by the way that Xena is
feminized by the look of the camera. Her masculine leather suit is cut
to reveal her ample cleavage, and it is not unusual for the camera to
linger on her legs, or for the plot to find some excuse for Xena or other
women to appear scantily clad. In the Here Comes ...Miss Amphipolis
episode analyzed below, for example, the opening scene, shot in closeup and in slow motion, depicts several women being chased down a
beach, wearing very little other than skimpy white gauzy wraps. Later in
the same episode, we see Xena and the other women enjoying a sauna,
barely wrapped only in towels. This traditional shooting style, from the
point of view of the male voyeur, along with the programs generic
status as a fantasy, keeps Xena from being too threatening, from creating
too muchfrisson. She is still available for male pleasure, if not in terms
of the story, where she is often in control of the look and her point of
view carries the narrative, but in terms of discourse, where she is still
made into an object of desire for the male viewer.
What deserves investigation, however, are those moments in the
story where Xena does challenge traditional representations of women.
One way to read Xena as a feminist text is to examine it as an instance of
feminist camp that parodies gender roles through masquerade. Often the
plot calls for Xena to disguise herself as a traditional woman in order to
defeat the villain. In so doing, the masquerade allows Xena to subvert
female stereotypes by highlighting their constructed nature.

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First, I will briefly discuss the relationship between camp and feminism as articulated by Pamela Robertson, in Guilty Pleasures: Feminist
Camp from Mae West to Madonna. Susan Sontags famous essay, On
Camp, written in 1964, defined camp as:
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.
(277)

Robertson notes that camp has traditionally been associated with a

gay male subculture rather than feminism. Yet, while Sontag still associated camp with gay male practices, the resulting publicity from her
famous article disseminated camp into the mainstream. Camp became a
commercialized taste, as demonstrated in the works of Andy Warhol.
Pop camp later became associated with postmodernism, and equated
with what Fredric Jameson refers to as pastiche, or blank parody. Xena,
for example, may be regarded as a pastiche in the way it weaves a tapestry of images and themes from different cultures, mythological and
Biblical traditions, and historical time periods. We see characters that
range from Julius Caesar to Santa Claus, and plots that borrow from the
Biblical tale of Moses to Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol. Xena
receives advice from Hippocrates and fights in the Trojan War; one
episode, the Xena Scrolls, even takes place in 1940. As Mike Flaherty
observes:
Characters spout Shakespearean platitudes one minute, Brooklynese wisecracks
the next. Plotlines dont so much careen across eras as commingle them, creating a milieu thats primeval, classical, medieval, and surfer dude all at once. (4)

In this case, the result is pastiche rather than parody because these
images and themes are appropriated without comment, without a critical
point of view towards them.
Xenas production style, too, is consistent with postmodern camp.
Visuals predominate over the sparse dialogue. Producer Rob Tapert calls
Xena cotton candy for the eyes (Hercules and Xena). There are hyperbolic sound effects and visual techniques. For example, when Xena
throws her special weapon, the chakram, it is accompanied by a loud
whoosh, and often a small camera mounted behind it follows its trajectory with a close-up shot. There are also extraordinary displays of athleticism and prowess, such as Xena doing backwards jumps, flips, and
spirals vertically into the air, catching a flying arrow between her teeth,
or performing the infamous breast dagger launch where a dagger flies

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83

out of her bodice without her having to use her hands. Even the dialogue, laced with double entendres and intertextual references, moves
Xenu into the realm of excess that is characteristic of camp.
Recent feminist critics have begun to take note of camps potential
for modifying perceptions of the status quo, particularly with regard to
sex and gender stereotypes. According to Pamela Robertson:
Camps attention to the artifice of feminine images of excess helps undermine
and challenge the presumed naturalness of gender roles and to displace essentialist versions of an authentic female identity. (6)

And:
For feminists, camps appeal lies in its potential to serve as a form of gender
parody. Gender parody becomes a critical tool, a way of initiating change in sex
and gender roles. (10)

Here Comes ...Miss Amphipolis is perhaps the most determinedly

campy of any Xena episode produced to date. It is also the most explicitly concerned with gender. Its surface theme-a beauty pageant for the
title of Miss Known World, parodies the most sterotypical manner of
presenting women as objects for male desire, and in so doing, reveals the
performative aspect of female identity-in the classic words of Joan
Riviere, femininity as masquerade. The beauty pageant is the classic
female performance. In this case, a group of male sponsors, warlords
who had recently signed a peace treaty, have entered their women in the
contest, which is being held by a neutral king. Yet, someone is sabotaging the contest by injuring or even trying to kill the contestants, and the
fragile peace is being threatened. The emcee of the contest, Salmoneus,
calls upon Xena to enter under false pretenses-to masquerade as a
beauty contestant in order to prevent further violence from being perpetrated.
Xena, then, a woman who typically wears a male mask, must masquerade as a woman. It is what Mary Ann Doane refers to as double
mimesis, or parodic mimickry, that reveals the constructed nature of both
masculinity and femininity (176-83). In the opening scene, even
Salmoneus equates the wearing of costumes and femininity. A group of
screaming contestants wave their arms helplessly in the air as two men
wielding swords chase them along the beach. Xena and Gabrielle save
them by throwing clams-a sexual reference?-at the men. Salmoneus
yells back at the retreating men, Get away from those girls. Those costumes were not meant to take that kind of abuse. In one sense. he is

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referring to his concern only for what the women are wearing, but in
another sense, his comment is metonymic-the women are their costumes. In a somewhat ironic remark, Xena, then, reveals her scorn for
the traditional female, as she complains to Salmoneus, You sent word
for us to come see some underdressed, overdeveloped bimbos in a
beauty contest? Of course, from the (male) point of view of the camera,
Xena, too, can be seen as underdressed and overdeveloped, if not a
bimbo. Then the story takes on the rhetoric of modem day feminism, as
Gabrielle complains, Its just a feeble excuse for men to exploit and
degrade women, while Salmoneus replies, Since when do we need an
excuse?
When Xena agrees to enter the contest in order to prevent a war
from breaking out, her first words are, Find me a disguise. Salmoneus
comes up with a blonde wig, to which Xena adds a simpering voice and
hyper-feminine gestures. The elderly matron who helps the contestants
prepare for the contest sees the completed feminine Xena and
acknowledges her constructed nature, If I had your looks, Id fool the
world, she says.
The constructed nature of gender representations is also highlighted
when Xena crosses paths with another contestant, the appropriately
named Miss Artyphys, played by real life drag queen and gay rights
activist Karen Dior (aka Geoff Gann). Both stop and give one another a
long stare of what, in retrospect, was recognition. Later, Xena is locked
in the sauna. After she escapes, she immediately confronts Miss
Artyphys. Without hesitation, Xena rips off Miss Artyphyss wig to
reveal that she is a man in drag. When Xena asks why she locked her in
the sauna, she replies, I knew you knew about me. They both recognize the other as someone who is playing a woman. Xena ends the conversation by implicitly acknowledging that they are both in drag: May
the best person win.
When we see Xena dressed in her beauty pageant outfit, her parody
of traditional gender roles is most apparent. She dresses in a tight
waisted gold lam6 gown, fetishistically adorned with scarfs and fringes.
She shimmies down the runway, blowing kisses with exaggerated feminine gestures, but she cannot resist rolling her eyes upward as she turns
back. There is a dance number, with requisite numbers of feathers and
sequins, that mocks the spectacles seen in modem day contests. Instead
of smoothly choreographed moves executed in geometric precision,
these women bump into one another and bumble about onstage. As
Salmoneous sings a womans a natural thing, Xena trips over her
gown, ripping the fabric as she tries to hold it up. She sneers as she takes
her bow. The visual here contradicts the verbal message that is indicated

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85

by the song lyrics. The notion that a woman is a natural thing is what
the entire show deconstructs.
Xenas masquerade is also apparent when male characters try to
approach her. After her first appearance, Salmoneous says, Xena, is that
really YOU?and places his hand on her waist. Immediately she drops the
disguise and gives him the famous Xena touch, a neck pinch based on
Eastern acupuncture techniques that can cut off the flow of blood to the
brain. After the dance number, the sponsor of another contestant tells
Xena, You move very well, and kisses her hand repeatedly. Again, she
gives him the neck pinch, and warns him, You keep your greasy lips off
my arm. She switches genders effortlessly, almost despite herself.
Finally, when Xena finds the warlord responsible for sabotaging the
contest, they begin to fight. Xena clearly parodies gender here. Still
wearing her blonde wig, she smacks the warlord and asks, Are we
having fun yet? After a kick, she puts her hand to her face, eyes open
wide, and says, Oops. And in an intertextual reference to a classic ad
for blonde hair coloring, she pouts, Dont hate me because Im beautiful, and then delivers the final blow to her opponent.
As the plot resolves, it becomes clear that Xena is not the only
woman playing a role. None of the women want to win for the sake of
winning, but all have ulterior motives-one wants to secure food for her
village, another to escape, and a third to placate her sponsor/boyfriend.
After Xena finds the warlord responsible for sabotaging the contest, she
withdraws and resumes her masculine identity. Empowered by her
example, the other contestants also withdraw, leaving the contest to Miss
Artyphys. Appropriately, Miss Known World is the only contestant who
willingly accepts the way that femininity is socially constructed. The
other contestants, following Xenas example, break free of the patriarchal constraints that contain them, and redefine themselves independently from their male sponsors. And finally, in a gesture that demonstrates the programs willingness to transgress boundaries, Xena plants a
long lingering kiss on the lips of Miss Artyphys. Although Miss
Artyphys is a man in drag, the visual image presents two women locked
in an embrace. According to Xenas openly gay producer Liz Friedman:
Ive always been a big believer in the power of popular culture. The best way to
convey more challenging ideas is to make something that functions on a mainstream level but that has a subtext that people can pick up on-or not. (Flaherty
6)

Conclusion
Overall, the masquerades in Xena-the drag queen, the warrior
princess, and her doubling as a feminized warrior princess--convey a

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sense of ironic distance from gender stereotypes. Xena is not a feminist

text because it portrays a female character with traditionally masculine
characteristics. As Pamela Robertson notes in Guilty Pleasures, it is not
enough to simply reverse sexual roles or to produce positive, empowered
images of women. The credibility of traditional images has to be undermined. In the words of Mary Anne Doane, What is needed is a means
of making these gestures and poses fantastic, literally incredible (180).
Moments in the text where femininity is reenacted underscore femininity
as construction rather than essence. In the more specific case of the
beauty pageant parodied in Xena, we are shown the absurdity of
womens status as spectacle. Mimickry and parody become politicized
textual strategies. It is in this sense that we may regard Xena as a feminist text, one that enables viewers to perceive the artifice of both masculinity and femininity.

Works Cited
Doane, M.A. The Desire t o Desire: The Womans Film of the 1940s.
Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 1987.
Flaherty, M. Xenaphelia. Entertainment Weekly. Online Edition, 7 March
1997: 1-6.
Fraser, A. The Warrior Queens. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988.
Hercules and Xena. E! Entertainment Special. January 1997.
Pusateri, K. Xena: Warrior Princess: An Analytical Review. Whoosh. Online
Edition, Sept. 1996: 1-4.
Riviere, J. Womanliness as a Masquerade. The International Journal of
Psychoanalysis 10, 1929. Reprinted in Formations of Fantasy. Ed. V .
Burgin, J. Donald, and C. Kaplan. New York: Methuen, 1986: 35-24.
Robertson, P. Guilty Pleasures: Feminist Camp from Mae West to Madonna,
Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1996.
Sontag, S. Notes on Camp. Against Interpretation. New York: Famar and
Straus, 1966: 275-92.
Tillotson, K. Xena: Ode to a Grecian Warrior Princess with guts, wits, awesome moves, and a cult following. Star Tribune, Lexus 12 Jan. 1997.
Zurawik, D. A Cult Cries out for Xena. Baltimore Sun, Lexus 14 Jan. 1997.
Joanne Morreale is an Associate Professor of Communications at Northeastern
University.