NO -- not mine! But a fan named Star Juarez is looking for Xena fans to write about their experiences as a fan and their opinions about different aspects to the show. She has posted her questions over at Talking Xena as well as the Xena Online Community Bulletin Boards. I thought I would take her questions one at a time in a post to this blog.
Q: How/why did you start watching the show?
Intially, my 13 year-old niece was watching the show and kept bugging me to watch it with her, but I really wasn't interested. I think I had caught about 20 seconds of an episode and while I don't remember what it was, I rememeber thinking it was too "cheesy" to spend any time watching it. At some point, I finally sat down with her and watched an entire episode; it was Season 1 and the ep was "Hooves and Harlots". I was hooked when Xena says to Ephiny (who had been staring at Xena), "Do you see anything you like?" and it came across as aggressive bar-dyke dialogue from one of the old Beebo Brinker novels. My reaction was "Oh My Gawd!" From the first time I saw X:WP, I thought the show was subversive, though with continued watching I could see that this was uneven (not apparent in every episode). I started watching the show very closely (as other fans were by then) looking for any appearance of subversive or subtext material.
Having an entire show with two female lead characters doing what typically two male lead characters do: travel about encountering adventure, kicking butt, and having a good time -- was amazing. I had never seen anything like it. There was no obvious need to a male character -- these two, Xena and Gabrielle, were completely self-sufficient. When a male love interest was introduced in an episode, he was killed off, becoming what fans called a "red shirt" (old Star Trek fan slang for an away team member who gets killed).
MCA TV would run an ad at the end of the episode advertising the official web site and the web forum, so having a personal computer, I started venturing out to see what was on the web (this was in 1996 -- it was a little primitive). I found the MCA Xena and Hercules Net Forum but didn't post much. But it was fun to see what other people were writing and chatting about regarding the show.
When first official Xena Convention was advertised at the end of one of the Xena episodes I knew I had to go and see what other people would show up. In the beginning, it wasn't "cool" to like X:WP or H:TLJ, so for a lot of people, it was a guilty pleasure that they couldn't talk about at work. Up to the first X/H convention, I was pretty much like anyone else; I watched the show weekly and might check online for others' comments. After the first Xena convention everything changed mightily.
To Be Continued.
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