Xena: Warrior Princess, Desire Between Women, and Interpretive Response

Academic Commentary
Title:	Xena: Warrior Princess, Desire Between Women, and Interpretive Response
Commentator:	Kathleen E. Bennett
Date(s):	1998?
Medium:	online
Fandom:	Xena: Warrior Princess
External Links:	Xena: Warrior Princess, Desire Between Women, and Interpretive Response, Archived version
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

Xena: Warrior Princess, Desire Between Women, and Interpretive Response is an academic paper by Kathleen E. Bennett.

Chapters

• Introduction
• Subtext: What's All the Fuss About?
• Reader Response Theory
• An Audience-Response Theory of Television
• Lesbian/Gay Studies, Queer Theories
• Conclusion

Excerpts

Introduction:

Xena: Warrior Princess (XWP) is a television show which has become an intense focus of interpretive activity among fans, especially (but not exclusively) lesbians and bisexual women, due to its portrayal of a relationship between women in such a way that has not been seen before on a mainstream television program. It is my intention in this writing first to view this audience phenomenon through the lens of reader response theory (as explicated by critics Stanley Fish and Norman Holland), and then to expand on the possibilities provided by reader response theory by introducing other critical perspectives, including postmodernist cultural studies and queer theory. Many of the show's viewers who have articulated their support for Xena's "lesbian subtext" in the Internet forums examined here are, I argue, aware (whether consciously or unconsciously) of the fact understood by reader response theorists, that there is no "true" meaning inherent in a text but, rather, that meaning comes from the interaction between text and audience. I argue that XWP is ground-breaking, but not merely for the extremely valid reasons cited by parents of daughters and mainstream feminist magazines like Ms., that the show provides a strong female role model and a positive illustration of a close friendship between women. [Ms. Magazine article.] It is also ground-breaking in that it provides an example to creators of television programs of a way to make use of open spaces inherent in television texts to present issues of sexual and gender diversity, and it provides audiences with the possibility (or the validation) of thinking about sexual orientation in a more fluid way that transcends rigid identity categories.

Conclusion:

Those who seek female-female erotics in Xena are well able to find it, both in the spaces of what is not said and in the suggestive hints that they call "subtext." They can affirm their interpretations through intertextual reference to the stated intentions and opinions of people involved in the production of the show, and discuss and support these interpretations through the medium of Internet-based interpretive communities. That the text itself neither confirms nor denies their interpretation is irrelevant, because they know that what matters is not the literal content of a text but how it is read. This interpretive interaction between text and audience is part of a long tradition of authorial connotation and reader subversion in matters of queer sexualities. The show plays with the underground discourses of queerness in such a way that brings it so close to the surface that it is practically bursting out — like Xena's Gabrielle-loving bosom from her bodice.