Xena: Some Reflections

[Guest RonPrice]

XENA

After I had finished teaching ancient Greek history in the early 1990s to matriculation students and just before retiring from full-time teaching in 1999, Xena: Warrior Princess appeared on the lighted-chirping box. The problem of religious plurality has been explored not only in philosophical and theological works, but also in popular culture. Xena: Warrior Princess explores this issue par excellence in her several mythological milieux of which ancient Greece is but one. The series ran for six seasons with the syndication beginning in 1995. By the time the series concluded in 2001 I had retired from full-time teaching in Western Australia, had taken a sea-change to Tasmania and was on a pension.

The beautiful and relatively unknown Lucy Lawless stars as Xena. She journeys through the ancient world and interacts with seminal figures, stories, and ideas from various religious and mythological traditions. The television series constructs the stories in a way that makes provocative suggestions about the truth and usefulness of religion in general, about the truth-claims of specific religious traditions, and about the ontological relationships among the metaphysical claims of various religions. The various answers to the problem of religious plurality suggested in Xena: Warrior Princess are compared to standard philosophical and theological approaches.

As globalization has brought religious communities into greater contact with one another and religious diversity to the forefront of public awareness, the problem of religious plurality is addressed not just in philosophical and theological treatises, but also in popular culture texts.. The Xena character was created as an evil warlord and temptress in the series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. The spin-off series involving Xena begins with Xena undergoing an unexplained conversion in which she renounces evil and resolves to spend the rest of her days doing good in order to atone for the misdeeds of her past. Over the course of six seasons of episodes, Xena interacts not only with the gods of classical Graeco-Roman mythology, but also with key figures from several of the world’s religious traditions, through storylines that construct complicated relationships among the religious and mythological systems involved.

Xena does not interact with Islam. This is quite understandable. Islam did not emerge until the sixth century C.E. Though Xena’s travels through the Xenaverse cover a span of roughly 1200 years of Earth history, they end long before the sixth century. So when Xena travels through what we now know as Islamic territories, she encounters either the pre-Islamic jinn or the kind of comic-book stereotypes of pre-Islamic Arabia that caused Arab activists to protest Disney’s Aladdin film.-Ron Price with thanks to David Fillingim, “By the Gods—or Not: Religious Plurality in Xena: Warrior Princess,†Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, Volume 21, No.3, Fall, 2009.

As I was finishing my career as a teacher

a Xenaverse appeared where all religions

and mythologies were true, but some were

truer than others in the lighted-chirping box.

Despite Xena’s preference to remain aloof

from spiritual concerns and promote a wide

pragmatic humanism, both Christianity and

Hinduism both turned out to be true in the

most ultimate of senses. It should not be a

surprise that Hinduism and Christianity both

received top billing in a TV series that capped

the 20th century. After all, in the 20th century,

it was through the influence of Tolstoy’s take on

Jesus’ teaching that the Hindu Gandhi awakened

to the way of satyagraha. And it was in the Hindu

practice of Gandhi that the Christian Martin Luther

King, Jr., saw the non-violent love of Jesus.....This

process was described as passing over and coming

back-the spiritual/ethical stance for a post-Auschwitz,

a post-Hiroshima, post-modern world, that is our own.

Xena’s pragmatic, humanistic commitment

to the good of others guides her interactions

with the spiritual traditions she encounters...

To blindly accept religious authority—or any

other authority for that matter—is dangerous—

so went the wisdom of this television oracle.

But a stance rooted in one tradition, open to the

collective wisdom of other spiritual and ethical

traditions & sources, and committed to the good

of all people promises the best possibility for us

to meet the ethical challenges in this very very

globalized techno-bureaucratic age: amen! Xena!

Ron Price

13 March 2010

PS This is the 2nd edition of this prose-poem. The author is a Canadian living in Australia and has been a Bahá'í for 50 years.

[Guest aphanth]

I watched it even if it was re-run 5 times, history has proven that there were warrior women, Amazons did exist and in some cultures women fought side by side with men. It was also a chance to see someone I thought was going to be a big star, Kevin Smith, sadly he met a very untimely death on a movie set. Just one more reason I wish this show was still shown in syndication.

Thanks

_________________

_Kaleo Handing

kaleohanding@katechengines.com

kaleohanding@yahoo.com