R.I.P. Xena

Well, anyone reading this is probably thoroughly depressed by my recent lugubrious entries. The truth is that I do feel like crap in a paper bag right now, but that's not all that really matters. I'm still in relatively good health (I hope), have a job, a place to live, friends (although those who punked out on my Halloween party are on a "naughty corner" list), and a super awesome girlfriend who takes care of me and listens to me whine with the patience of Mother Theresa. It's just that having these unrelenting symptoms has broken almost every regular pattern I have in my life, which is almost as disorienting as the vertigo itself. Added to that is the dislocation I feel now that I've finally reached the end of my Xena marathon. As you know, dear Readers, I take my geekiness very seriously, and latched onto Xena once I had sucked the Buffyverse dry--including all five seasons of Angel. Now, Buffy is clearly a superior product, but I was in no way prepared for how attached I would become to Xena, who is much more my style of hero than Buffy Summers herself, who is still blonde and skinny and pretty in a Stepfordish kind of way. Buffy never looks like she's relishing a fight the way that Xena does. Buffy can't admit her bloodlust: Xena does. She actually ENJOYS killing people, which Buffy could never permit herself to do. There are very few television or film characters that embody the sort of bold, heroic, female masculinity that I find so intellectually and aesthetically appealling, and Xena probably tops the very short list (which would also include Ripley from Alien(s) and Roz from Chopper Chicks in Zombietown). It was painful to watch Xena die, because I've watched similar characters die over and over again in a lot of our mainstream media. These sorts of women just aren't permitted to survive, and their deaths are a message about the value we place on masculine women in our culture--they get to save prettier, more feminine women from harm, or sacrifice themselves for the lives of children. That's usually it. Anyone who doubts me should watch that recent embarassment of a movie, Silent Hill. So, having six seasons of Xena out there is incredible, but it makes it that much harder to come to the end of the fantasy world in which women like Xena roam the countryside, kicking ass, foiling evildoers, and seducing virginal blonde troubadours. Where do I go from here? My love for Buffy is unswayed, but it's a much more intellectual attraction than my love for Xena, which is rooted in my fantasies about what sort of world I would choose to live in. It would be a world with Amazons, definitely.

(Oh, by the way, anyone who doubts the cultural importance of Xena: Warrior Princess should know that scientists at NASA are considering naming the recently-discovered tenth planet Xena. And what is the proposed name of its moon? Gabrielle. I'm not making this up. Seriously.)