David
Fillingim, Shorter College, Rome, GA
Abstract
The problem of religious plurality has been explored not only in philosophical
and theological works, but also in popular culture. As Xena: Warrior
Princess journeys through the ancient world, she 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.
Introduction
[1] The protagonist of Yann
Martel’s 2001 novel, Life of Pi, is a young Indian boy who
attempts to be Hindu, Christian and Muslim at the same time. When the
leaders of his three congregations discover his duplicity, they protest
that simultaneously practicing multiple religions is not possible1—an
opinion that would be shared by most real-life practitioners of the
three religions. Religious plurality has been an increasingly vexing
philosophical and theological problem since the rise of the social sciences
in the nineteenth century. How is one to explain the apparent efficacy
of the various religions in facilitating meaningful and ethical living
in light of their ostensibly contradictory truth claims? Can a person
legitimately practice more than one religion?
[2] 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. One such text that explores the problem
of religious plurality with skill and nuance is the television series
Xena: Warrior Princess, which ran for six seasons in syndication
beginning in 1995. The Xena character was created as an evil warlord
and temptress in the series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys.
The spin-off series 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.
[3] In this article, I will
follow Xena as she interacts with key figures and journeys through formative
stories of various religious and mythological traditions. After a brief
survey of the standard philosophical approaches to the problem of religious
plurality, I will examine Xena’s pilgrimage through classical mythology,
Taoism, indigenous religion, Judaism, Christianity and Hinduism (Xena
does not interact directly with either Buddhism or Islam). How does
this television series suggest that we negotiate our way among the various
religious systems with their competing truth-claims? Along the way,
I will evaluate Xena: Warrior Princess’s approaches to religion
in terms of the standard philosophical approaches.
Typical Approaches
to Religious Plurality
[4] In his book Global Philosophy
of Religion, Joseph Runzo identifies six possible responses to religious
plurality.2 Perhaps the most widely held view of religious
plurality is what Runzo calls exclusivism, the view that there is one
and only one true religion, and that all other religions are false—and
possibly evil! Fundamentalist Christian advocates of exclusivism often
view other religions (and sometimes even other branches of Christianity)
as the work of the devil. At the opposite end of the cultural spectrum
from Christian exclusivism is Runzo’s second possible response to
religious plurality, antipathy, or the view that all religious beliefs
are simply false. Freud and Marx are perhaps the first champions of
this form of strict materialism, which assumes that physical processes
and social forces offer a complete explanation of reality. Positing
the existence of a transcendent realm, in this view, is at best wishful
thinking and at worst an impediment to human well-being.
[5] A third possible response
to religious plurality, according to Runzo, is simple subjectivism,
the view that whatever you believe is true for you. Simple subjectivism
is often held uncritically, and is obviously philosophically untenable,
as it drains any possible meaning from the designation, “true.”
Runzo’s fourth possible response to religious plurality, pluralism,
shares subjectivism’s impulse toward tolerance but is more defensible
philosophically. Pluralism is the view that all religious traditions
are equally true. The Hindu philosopher Sri Ramakrishna expressed the
essence of pluralism by comparing the various world religions to separate
paths up the same mountain—every path has the same destination, and
circling the mountain to bring others around to one’s own path is
not climbing.3 Implied in pluralism is also that the various
religious traditions are equally false. Transcendent reality, whether
we call it God or Brahman, or the Unseen, or the Ultimate, or any host
of other names, is infinite. Human minds are finite. Therefore, no system
of human thought, or no system expressed in human language, can capture
the full meaning of transcendent reality.
[6] Runzo’s fifth possible
response to religious plurality is inclusivism, the view that one’s
own religious tradition is the true religion, but that other religions
also contain seeds of truth. For example post-Vatican II theologians
such as Hans Kung and Karl Rahner have argued that the grace of Christ
may be ontologically present and active in the lives of faithful adherents
to religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism, even though the adherents
themselves are unaware that it is the cosmic Christ who is at work in
them.
Similarly, Buddhist writers
such as the Dalai Lama and Thich Nat Hahn have suggested that Christians
can more effectively gain good karma and progress toward salvation by
following the Christian path than by converting to Buddhism.4
[7] The sixth possible response
to religious plurality is henofideism, which is a commitment to one’s
own religion while withholding judgment on the validity of other religions.
Henofideism sees the ultimate question of the referential truth of religious
beliefs as unanswerable, and chooses to define truth on grounds of pragmatics
or coherence. To Runzo’s six options, I would add a seventh—the
ancient idea of localism, which associates the various gods with particular
peoples or geographic locations and tends to limit the power of the
gods or other supernatural forces to their home regions or native peoples.
Xena and
Classical Mythology
[8] Xena interacts frequently
with the gods of classical Greco-Roman mythology. Her attitude toward
these gods can be summarized in two quotes. In Episode 43, “Ulysses,”
Xena helps the epic hero return home to Ithaca. When warned by Poseidon
not to get involved in Ulysses’ quest, Xena replies, “Poseidon,
if you’ve heard about my dealings with Ares, you’ll know that I’m
not afraid of the gods.” Later in the same episode, when Ulysses is
greeted by friends in Ithaca who exclaim, “Thank the gods you’re
here!” Xena replies, “The gods have nothing to do with it.”5
[9] Xena’s relation to classical
mythology suggests a posture similar to religious antipathy. Xena’s
contention, however, is not that the gods do not exist, but that they
are simply no use to humans. People are better off on their own. The
gods are petty and self-serving, and the time and resources people devote
to honouring the gods could be better spent on more practical means
of self-improvement. Indeed, with gods like these, who needs enemies?
[10] The gods of classical
mythology, in Xena’s view, are like religion in general in the thought
of Marx or Freud—something that humans should have outgrown by now,
an obstacle to human betterment, a crutch or opiate that produces more
oppression and repression when what is needed is to enhance human freedom.
These gods serve as foils to
Xena’s humanism. In episodes in which the Greek gods play a prominent
role, the plot generally shows Xena’s moral, tactical, and intellectual
superiority to the gods. Either Xena outwits the gods, spoiling their
plans to cause harm to someone for whom Xena has become an advocate,
or Xena fixes some problem the gods have inadvertently caused through
their carelessness.
[11] Xena’s relationship
to the Olympian deities is complicated by her past as consort and champion
of Ares, god of war. Ares is a regular character throughout the series,
constantly trying to woo Xena back to his side, but her relationship
with Ares is part and parcel of the evil from which she is seeking redemption.
In season six, in a three-episode retelling of the legend of Beowulf
(episodes 119-121) and in the mockumentary episode “You Are There”
(episode 125), Xena has similar interactions with the gods of Norse
mythology. As with Ares, Xena has a past as consort to Odin, but more
sinister in that Xena is credited with having seduced Odin to the path
of violence and bloodshed. Once Xena redeems herself by transforming
the monster Grendel (whom Xena had created) back into Grinhilda and
restoring her to her place as queen of Valhalla, Odin becomes a minor
obstacle whom Xena must outwit in order to restore the immortality of
Ares and Aphrodite.
[12] Xena’s relationship
to the Olympian deities represents her relationship to religion in general
as a form of antipathy. But it is not the antipathy of modern scientific
materialism, which denies the existence of gods or other immaterial
beings. Instead, it is a pragmatic antipathy. In other words, Xena re-frames
the question of religious belief much the same way Pascal did at the
dawn of modernity. Pascal had changed the question from “Does God
exist?” or “Are there rational/evidential grounds for theism?”
to “Is it prudent to believe in God?” Similarly, Xena does not question
the existence of the gods, but asks instead if it is prudent to serve
them—and if so, which ones? Unlike Pascal, Xena tends to give a negative
answer to the question of whether it is prudent to serve the gods—though,
as we will see, in the Xenaverse not all gods are created equal.
Xena and
Indigenous Religion
[13] Xena interacts with indigenous
or aboriginal religion primarily through her dealings with a group known
derogatively as the Horde, but properly named Pomira. The Horde first
appear in season two in episode 44, “The Price,” in which they are
portrayed as bloodthirsty savages whose relentlessness in battle makes
them a force for which for any civilized army who ventures into their
territory is no match. Later, in season four in episode 79, “Daugther
of Pomira,” the Horde are revealed to be more complicated.
[14] It seems obvious that
the Horde are constructed to represent Native Americans during the period
of the settling of the American frontier. The civilized settlement in
“Daughter of Pomira” resembles the log forts of Daniel Boone
episodes, western movies, and “Fort Apache” playsets. The plot—a
settler’s young daughter is kidnapped by the Horde chief to replace
his own daughter who had been killed—is plucked straight from the
archives of American Westerns. And Milo, the Horde-hater, even uses
the slogan, “The only good horde is a dead horde,” again evoking
the lexicon of Westerns.6
[15] The action in “Daughter
of Pomira” begins when Xena and Gabrielle, having learned that their
settler friends’ daughter Vanessa was kidnapped long ago, happen upon
a group of Horde teenagers hunting. Gabrielle observes, “Xena, look.
Have you ever seen a blond Horde-girl?” Xena replies, “She looks
familiar ...” In this exchange, two mutually exclusive categories,
the alien other and the familiar, are brought strangely together. Xena
and Gabrielle kidnap Vanessa from the Horde to return her to her parents.
After kidnapping Vanessa, they learn that she was not being held as
a slave as they had presumed, but was perfectly happy being P’lee,
chosen daughter of Cirvik, chief of the Pomira.
[16] From P’lee, Xena learns
that the Horde call themselves Pomira. P’Lee informs Xena and Gabrielle
of the Pomira worldview: “The sky—the—Earth—kaltaka—all—know—Pomira,
s-s-serve Pomira. And—Pomira give—honor … Pomira honor—life.”
Xena responds by questioning the Horde’s relentless way of waging
war, to which P’lee replies, “You killers. You—you kill—trees—Earth—all—
and—when—we say, ‘No’—go from here—you kill Pomira.” Thus,
the Pomira appear to practice the romanticized New Age version of Native
American spirituality: they are peaceful nature lovers living in harmony
with their environment until invaded by colonizers who provoke them
to defend their way of life.7 Vanessa/P’lee becomes an
unwitting emissary between the two cultures, eventually choosing to
return to her place among the Pomira, but also forging a truce between
them and the settlers.
[17] Yet the Pomira way of
life remains alien and other to Xena and the settlers. Virginia Carper
summarizes the encounter: “for the ordinary Greek, religion lies outside
of their daily lives. The worldly Greeks found the deep religious feelings
of the Pomira a cipher.”8 While this statement does not
accurately describe the Ancient Graeco-Roman worldview, it does describe
the modern Western colonialist ideology represented by the “Greeks”
in the two episodes. The “worldly” citizens of modern, industrialized
democracies find indigenous spirituality just as perplexing as Xena
finds the Pomira worldview. Thus Xena encounters the non-dualistic,
panentheistic worldview of indigenous religious traditions, but is ultimately
unaffected by it.
[18] Some viewers may see the
traditions and ceremonies of the Amazons in XWP as another analog
to indigenous or aboriginal religion. Amazon rituals on XWP serve
to underscore the idea of preserving sacred traditions handed down from
ancestors via oral tradition—certainly a feature of indigenous religious
traditions—and feature much drumming and dancing around a fire, not
unlike stereotypical depictions of indigenous ceremony. However, it
seems that the main point of most of the scenes of Amazon dancing is
to display the gyrations of scantily-clad female bodies. Though Xena
is consistently a friend of the Amazons, and visits them frequently,
she herself generally remains aloof from Amazon rites unless she can
use them for her own purposes. Episode 105, “Lifeblood,” hints that
many Amazon traditions result from a misinterpretation of a visit by
a time traveler from the late twentieth century,9 and is
one of a sequence of episodes in seasons five and six in which Xena
tries to convince the Amazons that they are taking their traditions
too seriously and seeks to convince them to follow the spirit of their
law rather than the letter (episodes 106 and 126, “Kindred Spirits”
and “The Path of Vengeance,” are the others).
Xena and
Taoism
[19] In the two-part episode,
“The Debt” (episodes 52 and 53, in season three), Xena is present
during the composition of the Tao Te Ching, which in the Xenaverse
was written not by Lao Tzu, but by his wife Lao Ma. Lao Tzu is a king
in the land of Chin who is kept alive in a semi-conscious, semi-comatose
state by his wife Lao Ma’s mystical powers. She rules in his place,
saying “It’s my gift to him. He was a vicious tyrant. I’m going
to make him the most loved of rulers.” Xena wonders how it is that
Lao Ma is not bothered by her husband receiving credit for the good
that she does—including the writing of “all that wisdom stuff”
into Lao Tzu’s book. Lao Ma replies: “This wisdom comes from Heaven.
What difference does it make who gets credit for it—Lao Ma or Lao
Tzu?”
[20] Xena had first come to
the land of Chin (viewers learn through flashback scenes in the two-part
episode) during her unrepentant warlord years after a near fatal encounter
with Julius Caesar. After wreaking havoc for some time and getting into
a threatening situation, she is taken in by Lao Ma, who has seen into
her soul and seeks to mentor her to achieve the greatness that is her
destiny. Lao Ma shares with Xena her mystical powers and tries to teach
Xena the way of wisdom. Lao Ma demonstrates her powers by shattering
a bottle telepathically. When Xena tries to accomplish the same feat,
the following exchange occurs:
LM: “Well—try
it. [Laughs] I’m sorry, Xena—but you’re trying to
attack the bottle with your will.”
LM: “The entire
world is driven by a will—blind and ruthless. In order to transcend
the limitations of that world—you need to stop willing. Stop desiring.
Stop hating. To conquer others is to have power; to conquer yourself
is to know the way.”
The powers Lao Ma possesses
also include the ability to levitate, as in Crouching Tiger Hidden
Dragon and other martial arts films (a genre that stands as a major
inspiration for the series).
[21] In season five, in episode
97, “Back in the Bottle,” Xena returns to China after Lao Ma’s
evil son Ming Tien, whom Xena had killed, returns from the grave and
leads an army on a rampage of destruction with the explosive “black
powder.” Here the power Lao Ma has taught Xena turns out to be the
power of love. This power of love is expressed in the ability to form
an invisible shield which protects Xena and her companions from the
weapons of Ming Tien’s forces, and then emanates a green light that
turns the hate-filled soldiers of Ming Tien’s army into China’s
famed terra cotta warriors (making this one of several XWP episodes
offering an etiology of an ancient landmark).
[22] The great thing about
XWP’s account of Taoist origins is that it is just as plausible
as anyone else’s reconstruction, given that historians of religion
are divided on the issue of whether Lao Tzu even lived at all. However,
a couple of things are troubling about Xena’s journey into and out
of Taoist tradition. First, the wisdom of the Tao is reduced to a martial
arts strategy—though XWP is not alone in making this kind of
appropriation of Taoist practices. Second, redefining the essence of
the Tao as love is problematic. The love envisioned here is not the
universal love taught by the Christ-figure Eli, which the show takes
great pains to construct as the real meaning of love, but instead the
particular love Xena feels for her companion Gabrielle. Xena’s love
for Gabrielle is a possessive love that seems out of touch with Taoist
notions of non-attachment.
[23] Third, and perhaps most
strangely, the powers of the Tao apparently work only in China. The
ability to form an invisible force field and turn enemies into terra
cotta, as well as the other powers of Lao Ma, would certainly come in
handy in other battles. But Xena apparently has access to these powers
only in the land of Chin, for she doesn’t use them anywhere else.
So in relation to Taoism at least, Xena’s posture toward religious
plurality is that of localism.
Xena and
Judaism
[24] In several episodes, Xena
exhibits a respect for and deference to “the one God of the Israelites”
that she has never shown for her own native gods. This deference may
be as much to Christianity as to Judaism. But a couple of episodes deal
specifically with formative stories in Jewish tradition.
[25] The first of these episodes
is a re-telling of the story of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac in season
one, in episode 19, “Altared States.” In the XWP episode
the names of the characters are changed to Anteus and Ikus, with an
older brother given the thinly veiled name Mael. But in the XWP
version of the story, it isn’t really God who commands Anteus to sacrifice
his son. It is the older brother, Mael, who drugs his father by baking
hallucinogenic henbane into his nutbread and speaking through a homemade
megaphone (aptly named “that loud-talking thing” by Xena) when Anteus
ascends to his altar to pray, causing Anteus to believe that God has
commanded him to sacrifice Ikus.
[26] Along the way, some interesting
dialogue illuminates key aspects of the biblical version of the story.
First, when Xena and Gabrielle learn that Ikus is running away from
home because his father intends to sacrifice him, Gabrielle responds
with the incredulity that Kierkegaard suggests Abraham (or anyone else,
for that matter) should feel: “Sacrificed? You mean like on
an altar, with a knife?” In case there is any doubt about the identity
of this deity, when Xena asks which God would command such a sacrifice,
the conniving Mael responds: “There is only one true Supreme Deity—The
Almighty God of my father—The one whose voice speaks only to
him.” And in another parallel to the biblical story, Ikus’s mother
explains to Xena that the deity had just previously instructed Anteus
to “break with tradition” and name the younger son as the next leader
of the clan rather than the older son.
[27] Anteus himself does exhibit
the agony and conviction of Kierkegaard’s knight of faith:
Anteus: “Every
waking moment of every day since it happened. I keep wondering, Is it
me? Have I done something—wrong, and he’s punishing me?
Or is this some kind of a—a test, to see how far I’ll go to prove
my faith. Or, is He angry with me because He knows how much I love you.
Or does His love demand the best, the brightest—You see—it—it
never stops.”
Anteus: “And teach
him what?! That faith is just for those times when it’s convenient
to believe? That, that when it gets hard, and, and, and,
it hurts to keep faith, y-y-you let go—until it gets easy again?
What’s the good in sparing his life if I rob him of the very thing
that makes it worth living?”
[28] In the end, Xena succeeds
in defeating Mael but fails in her attempt to rescue Ikus, as her chakram
misses its target and Gabrielle is unable to retrieve the “loud-talking
thing” in order to impersonate the deity in Mael’s stead. But the
voice of God intervenes at the last moment and stops Anteus from performing
the sacrifice. This episode offers a more palatable portrait of God
than the biblical story: in the XWP version, God is absolved
of the cruelty inherent in the command to sacrifice Isaac, but still
gets credit for the rescue. And this time, the disclaimer reassures
viewers that “No Unabating or Severely Punishing Deities were harmed
during the production of this motion picture.” Humour aside, that
the biblical God saves the day in the one episode in the series in which
Xena fails to accomplish her mission does seem to make a significant
statement.
[29] The second episode dealing
with the formative stories of Judaism, “Giant Killer” (episode 27,
in season two), places Xena in the midst of the battle between David
and Goliath. While the biblical Goliath is between 6 ½ and 9 ½ feet
tall, depending on which manuscript tradition one accepts, Xena’s
Goliath is a mythological giant of Jack and the Beanstalk proportions.
Goliath is an old friend of Xena’s who happens to have hired himself
out as a mercenary to the Philistines. Xena tries to convince him that
he is on the wrong side in this battle—that the Israelites and their
one God are the good guys and the Philistines are the bad guys—but
he will not go back on his agreement with his Philistine employers.
In the decisive battle scene, David is able to slay the giant because
the sun flashing off of Xena’s shield temporarily blinds Goliath.
And just in case any of the faithful are offended by the writers’
toying with the biblical story, the episode credits include the disclaimer,
“No Bible myths or icons were irreparably mangled during the production
of this motion picture.”
Xena and
Christianity
[30] Xena’s journey through
the biblical stories is relevant to her relationship with Christianity
also. The “one God of the Israelites” is also the God of Christians.
But Xena also journeys directly through Christian mythology in a profoundly
moving way. The cycle of episodes bridging seasons four and five, in
which the Christ-figure Xena encounters the Christ-figure Eli, are among
the most profound religious texts of the electronic era. In the episodes
Xena is crucified, fights (on both sides) in the Miltonian battle for
paradise, is raised from the dead, and immaculately conceives a child
who is prophesied to be destined to eclipse the Olympian deities. Along
the way, these episodes overtly and symbolically convey the core message
of Christianity (at least as taught by Jesus of Nazareth).
[31] In episode 82, “Devi,”
two-thirds of the way through season four, Xena and Gabrielle are traveling
in India when they meet a magician named Eli who turns out to be a “devi”—someone
who has a divine gift of healing. Eli is obviously intended to represent
Jesus of Nazareth. He has a Hebraic name which translated means “my
God.” His physical appearance and demeanor resemble every Sunday School
portrait of Jesus—made especially obvious by his presence in a sea
of dark brown, Indian faces. He performs miracles of healing. And he
preaches a message of non-violent, universal love. The episode reaches
its climax when Eli performs a very Jesus-like exorcism on Gabrielle
by uttering the very Jesus-like prayer, “Abba, help me.” At the
end of the episode, Eli is unsure of the meaning of his newfound power.
[32] We meet Eli again two
episodes later in “The Way” and learn that he is now not merely
a devi, but an avatar. As Gabrielle explains, “An avatar—is a deity
in human form. They’re usually destined to save humanity from a great
evil.” Eli is traveling, healing, and teaching his message of
love. “And so, you must cast all hate and violence—from your heart,”
he is telling a gathering of followers when Xena and Gabrielle chance
upon him.
[33] The burden of being God-incarnate
weighs heavily on Eli. “It’s not as wonderful as you might think.
People suffer so,” he tells Gabrielle, “it breaks my heart. And
they look to—me—for salvation.” The “scariest part,” Eli confides,
is “that I know the truth.” The truth—the capital T, long
e truth—that Eli has come to know turns out to be the Matthean Jesus’
doctrine of non-violence: “It’s life—that we must revere it—wherever
we find it—to bring peace to this world. I have to teach mankind a
reverence for life.” Gabrielle questions Eli, and he responds with
some Jesus-like “turn the other cheek” rhetoric:
of violence that has ravaged
the Earth for centuries. That cycle has to be broken, Gabrielle.
And the truth—is that that can only be done through nonviolence.”
[34] Xena’s task in this
episode—and here is where the inter-religious journey gets complicated—is
to protect Eli from Indrujid, the king of the demons, a character based
on the Hindu Ramayana epic. So formative Christianity gets intertwined
with Hindu mythology. You’ve certainly noted by now that placing “Jesus”
in India and calling him an avatar signals an effort by the Xena writers
to blend Christian and Hindu mythologies as well as show deference to
the esoteric theory that Jesus spent some of his “missing years”
in India. I will say more about this episode and how XWP constructs
Hinduism and its relation to Christianity below. For now, to continue
examining the series’ presentation of Christian origins, I will note
simply that the episode concludes with Eli embarking on a ship to go
“home … to take the message to my own people.”
[36] Eli resurfaces later
in the season in episode 89, “Ides of March.” As this episode begins,
we discover that Christian mythology trumps Greek mythology when it
comes to the afterlife. Xena’s alter ego and nemesis Callisto has
made a deal with the dark god Dahak (probably based on the Persian/Zoroastrian
demon Dahaka) to experience oblivion at death rather than Tartarus or
the Elysian Fields. But when she dies, she finds herself in the Christian
Hell instead. Satan releases Callisto from Hell on a mission: she is
to guard Julius Caesar from Xena and ensure his successful rise to power.
This is the drama of the New Testament in a small capsule: Caesar represents
the forces of evil; Jesus seeks to liberate people from these forces.
[37] Xena is indeed plotting
against Caesar, so Caesar finds Gabrielle (who is traveling with Eli
and Amarice, an Amazon companion in several episodes) and has them imprisoned
in a remote location to distract Xena. Despite the fact that the location
of the prison corresponds to a premonition of her own death that has
troubled Xena for most of the season, Xena leaves Rome to rescue her
friends. Callisto, whose perpetual anger at Xena is greater than her
sense of her present mission to protect Caesar, intervenes in the prison
battle to ensure that Xena is defeated. Xena and Gabrielle are crucified
as a light snow begins to fall. The episode ends with Xena and Gabrielle’s
spirits, or ghosts, or vapors, departing from their crucified bodies
and floating heavenward. In the meantime, while Callisto has enjoyed
watching Xena’s demise, her charge Caesar is assassinated in Rome
by Brutus and the others.
[38] Here, the symbolism of
Xena as Christ figure is significant—part of the Christian message
is that the crucifixion subverts the kind of pretension to power that
Caesar represents. Although Julius Caesar himself was dead before the
Christian era, he serves here as a symbolic representation of all the
Caesars and of the imperial pretension to ultimate power. Xena’s crucifixion
contributing to Caesar’s death signals the Christian rejection of
the pagan, imperial, militaristic, hierarchical ideology of dominance
and submission. And, in case incredulous viewers are asking themselves,
“Are they really dead?” the disclaimer answers, “Xena and Gabrielle
were killed during the production of this motion picture.”
[39] “Ides of March” is the cliffhanger episode of season four,
so viewers have to wait until the start of season five to see if Xena
and Gabrielle will remain dead. Since we are expecting an entire season
of new episodes featuring our fallen heroes, we suspect that their deaths
are somehow temporary. Season five begins with the episode “Fallen
Angel,” which takes up where “Ides of March” left off. As Xena
and Gabrielle’s spirits are floating heavenward, they pass above a
deep chasm. Up from the chasm speed flying demons, while Michael and
the angels are descending full-speed from heaven. The demons, led by
Callisto, arrive first, grabbing Xena and Gabrielle. The angels manage
to free Xena and usher her up to heaven, but Gabrielle is taken captive
into hell.
[40] Xena, Michael, and the
angels begin planning a rescue operation. Michael warns Xena that it
may be too late to rescue Gabrielle—she may have already eaten the
food of hell and become one of them. He warns her further that “now
you’re an angel—purified and full of compassion. The suffering you
see in Hell will break your heart … You might be tempted to save Gabrielle
from her pain.” This she can do by taking on Gabrielle’s guilt and
giving Gabrielle her light (in other words, trading places). Xena and
the rescue squadron storm the gates of hell. During the fighting, Xena
does give up her light and trade places with one of the demons—not
Gabrielle, whom Michael has succeeded in rescuing, but Callisto. If
“Greater love hath no man than… [to] lay down his life for his friends”
(John 15:13, KJV), then surely greater love hath no woman than to sacrifice
her eternal life for her enemy. The atonement for which Xena had longed
since her conversion to the good at the start of the series is now accomplished:
a fire started by Xena’s army (during Xena’s ruthless warlord years)
had killed Callisto’s parents when Callisto was a child, initiating
Callisto’s becoming evil in the first place. Now Xena offers redemption
to Callisto in eternity.
[41] Of course, Xena’s joining
the minions of hell causes its own problems. Xena’s superior battle
skills shift the balance of power in the spiritual realm. It’s only
a matter of time before she has whipped the other demons into a fighting
force capable of taking over heaven. Michael decides that he and the
angels must launch a preemptive attack before Xena’s forces of evil
become invincible. And so the Miltonian battle between good and evil
ensues.
[42] Meanwhile, back on earth,
Joxer, Amarice, and Eli have removed the bodies of Xena and Gabrielle
from their crosses. Eli agonizes over his inability to help his friends
despite his gifts. After a Gethsemane-like prayer, he enters the room
where the bodies of Xena and Gabrielle lie. The angel Callisto appears
behind him, guiding his motions with her unseen arms as he lays his
hands on the lifeless bodies and prays. At just the moment when demon
Xena in the netherworld has clipped Gabrielle’s wings to send her
plummeting forever into the abyss of hell, Eli’s prayer is answered
and Xena and Gabrielle are raised from the dead.
[43] A few episodes later,
in episode 99, “Seeds of Faith,” Eli is murdered by Ares, the God
of war—symbolically linking war and Ares with Caesar and Satan as
forces opposed to Christianity, and evoking the historical reality that
it was the brutal “Pax Romana” that killed Jesus. Eli refuses to
resist, as resisting violence with violence would only be a victory
for the forces of violence. His faithfulness to his own teaching enhances
his influence, evoking the Christian truism that martyrdom fueled the
growth of the Christian movement.
[44] Immediately after her
resurrection in “Fallen Angel,” Xena is made pregnant—immaculately,
by the touch of the angel Callisto. In “Seeds of Faith,” Xena plans
to kill Ares with the dagger of Helios to avenge the death of Eli, but
Eli’s reflection appears in the shiny metal of the dagger and Xena
holds back from completing the deed. Afterwards, Eli and Callisto appear.
Callisto touches Xena again, and her unborn child is ensouled with Callisto’s
spirit. Later, in episode 102, “God Fearing Child” the Fates decree
that the birth of Xena’s child—“a child not begotten by man”—heralds
the demise of the Olympian deities. Zeus plans to kill Xena and her
child, but fails when Hercules sides with Xena and kills Zeus. A daughter
is born, whom Xena names Eve. Athena takes on the leadership of the
Olympian pantheon, who for several episodes try to kill Xena’s child.
A plan to fake the deaths of Xena, Gabrielle, and the infant Eve goes
awry when Ares, thinking Xena and Gabrielle are really dead, buries
them in an ice cave. When they awake twenty-five years later, they learn
that Eve has become Livia, a ruthless warrior and consort of Ares (who
does not know her true identity) seeking to eliminate the cult of Eli
from imperial Rome. Eventually, she has a Saul-of-Tarsus-like conversion
experience and accepts her true calling as the messenger of Eli. At
Eve’s baptism, a pillar of fire appears and grants to Xena the power
to slay gods. The battle with Athena and her kin is renewed. Ares, who
has played both sides seeking his own advantage all along, finally sacrifices
his own immortality to help Xena defeat his sister Athena. The displacement
of the Olympian deities by the Xenaverse’s version of incipient Christianity
alludes to the historical reality that Christianity (in form not very
redolent of Eli’s nonviolent compassion) eventually came to dominate
the Roman Empire and displace the Greco-Roman pantheon. In XWP,
love proves to be such a powerful force that even the Satan-figure Ares
is moved to extraordinary self-sacrifice by it.
[45] Despite the elaborate
symbolic and narrative cues denoting the superiority of Eli’s proto-Christian
message, the religion of Eli is ultimately trivialized and dropped altogether.
Halfway through season six, in episode 125, “You Are There,” Xena
steals Odin’s Golden Apples, which have the power to give immortality,
to give to Ares and Aphrodite to restore their godhood, because without
a sitting god of war and goddess of love, the world is out of balance
and people lose control of the emotions of love and aggression. Thus
the Christian love taught by Eli is diminished to an abstract principle
with no power to motivate actual behaviour, and the displacement of
the Olympian gods is reversed. Many devoted fans of XWP despised
the Eli storyline, as its Christian moralizing seemed to cut against
the grain of the series’ general campiness and noted lesbian subtext.
Apparently the writers, with their advocacy of Christianity, wrote themselves
into a corner from which they could not write an entertaining exit,
so they just jumped ship (just like I jumped metaphors in mid-sentence
just now). But given that many of the strange turns of season six do
not mesh well with the storylines of the first five seasons, the series’
strong presentation of Eli’s proto-Christian teaching stands out more
powerfully than the ultimate unraveling of the Eli storyline.
[46] Other episodes interact
with Christian tradition is less prominent ways. Episode 33, “A Solstice
Carol,” in season two, alludes to the birth of Christianity. At the
conclusion of that episode, Gabrielle and Xena happen upon a young couple
resembling the customary portrayals of Joseph and his pregnant betrothed
Mary. Gabrielle gives the young couple a donkey she has acquired during
the episode to make their journey easier. When Xena compliments Gabrielle
for her generosity, she replies, “They needed him more than me. Besides,
they seem pretty nice.” The comic suggestion that Mary and Joseph
are deserving of special favour because “they seem pretty nice,”
followed by their disappearance from the Xenaverse, may be seen as a
message about the irrelevance of Christianity that undermines the later
valorization of Eli’s simulacra of Christian teaching.
[47] The various Satan-figures
who appear at various points in the series may also be relevant to the
show’s portrayal of Christianity. The first significant Satan-figure10
in the series is Dahak, who is prominent in a cycle of episodes in season
three, beginning with episode 50, “The Deliverer.” Dahak never actually
appears as a character, but is described by followers as “the one
god,” and his cult is viewed by some of the Olympian deities as a
threat, suggesting comparisons to the one God of the Israelites and
the cult of early Christianity. Dahak is revealed to be evil when his
followers seduce Gabrielle into performing a human sacrifice, at which
point she is impregnated with Dahak’s daughter, whom she will name
Hope. As a child, Hope is pure evil, and eventually murders Xena’s
son Zolan (in episode 57, “Maternal Instincts”). The season ends
with a two-part episode, “The Sacrifice” (episodes 67 and 68), in
which Hope is reborn and gives birth to a child—a monstrous creature
called the Destroyer. One of the followers seeking Hope’s rebirth
says, “The goddess, Hope, is the savior of this world,” and the
followers of Hope and Dahak are called “Disciples.” The linguistic
parallel with the Zoroastrian demon Dahaka evokes the historical reality
the doctrine of Satan probably entered biblical tradition through Zoroastrian
influence during or after the Persian period. The portrayal of the followers
of Dahak as resembling Christians, and the suggestion that religiously-inclined
humans are so dumb that they cannot tell an evil god from a good one,
generalizes the antipathy Xena shows toward the Olympian gods to all
religions, including Christianity, again undermining the later valorization
of the quasi-Christian cult of Eli.
[48] I have already discussed
how Satan himself forms part of the background of the story of Xena’s
crucifixion and her participation in the Miltonian battle between good
and evil in the episodes that span the transition from season four to
season five, and how, during these same episodes, Ares becomes a Satan-figure
through his co-sponsorship with Satan of the rise of Julius Caesar and
his murder of Eli. In season six, in episode 115, “Heart of Darkness,”
Xena is involved in the fall of Lucifer. In the previous episode, “The
Haunting of Amphibolous,” Xena had killed Mephistopheles to
end the haunting of her hometown. Mephistopheles had wanted to destroy
Eve, the messenger of Eli. As the killer of Mephistopheles, she had
incurred the right/obligation to take his place as the ruler of hell.
“Heart of Darkness” begins with the archangels Michael, Raphael
and Lucifer coming to Amphibolous to do something about the portal to
hell that’s been left open, pouring evil out into the earth, until
the new ruler of Hell descends to the throne and the portal closes behind
him/her. Xena notices Lucifer’s excessive pride and seduces him into
taking her place as the new ruler of Hell. This Satan-figure narrative
adds nothing new to the series’ portrayal of Christianity, other than
to reinforce the ongoing enmity between Satan and the followers of Eli.
Xena and
Hinduism
[49] We have already seen that,
in the episodes “Devi” and “The Way,” the creators of the Xenaverse
have blended Hindu and Christian mythologies by placing the “Jesus”
character Eli in India. Now I will consider how Xena’s travels with
Eli relate to Hinduism. Several plot elements in the Eli cycle are drawn
the from the Hindu Ramayana epic.
[50] As mentioned above, Xena’s
task in the episode “The Way” is to protect Eli from Indrujid, king
of the demons. As they travel, while Eli is instructing Gabrielle on
the Christian way of love, another character from the Ramayana appears—Hanouman.
In the Ramayana, Hanuman is the monkey God, the Son of the Wind who
leads an army of monkeys in helping prince Rama rescue his beautiful
wife Sita from Ravana, the king of the demons who has kidnapped her.11
XWP’s portrayal of Hanouman combines traces of Hindu iconography
with echoes of Chewbakka from Star Wars and even the Abominable
Snowman from the classic Burl Ives Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
movie. No explanation of Hanouman’s identity is given in the XWP
episode other than that he is immortal and that he is on a mission to
protect the avatar Eli.
[51] Indrujit is the son of
the demon-king Ravana in the Ramayana, but has apparently ascended to
his father’s throne in the XWP episode. Indrujit kidnaps Eli
along with Gabrielle and carries them away to his demon lair. Hanouman
advises Xena to go to the great temple and seek Krishna’s help. Xena
prays to Krishna, then in Krishna’s form does battle with the demon
and defeats him. That the Hindu love-epic of a young prince doing battle
with demonic forces to rescue his beautiful bride is transformed in
XWP to a story of the warrior-princess battling demons to rescue
her beloved female companion is not without implication for the series’
celebrated lesbian subtext. More important for my purposes is what the
Eli-Krishna-Hanouman storyline implies about the status of Hindu and
Christian metaphysics and their relationship to one another and to other
religious teachings.
[52] In a conversation with
Gabrielle in the Temple, just before she is seized by Indrajid, Hanouman
explains that the way of Eli is “the ultimate way. Few can follow
it. Those that do— truly walk with the spirit.” Later, after Xena
follows Hanouman’s advice and prays to Krishna., Krishna questions
her: “How do you expect to defeat Indrujid?” When Xena replies that
she need’s Krishna’s help in order to defeat the demon, Krishna
responds, “I can’t help you—unless you let me ... You must open
up your heart to me … You have to embrace the way.” Xena has been
pondering this idea of “the way” for some time—wondering if the
way of Eli is the same as the way of Lao Ma. She has had a vision of
a future life in which she is a saint, but wonders how this could be
possible, since she accumulated so much bad karma in her life as a warlord
and continues to accrue bad karma by committing acts of violence, even
if they are now for a good cause. “The way is not for people like
me,” she replies.
[53] Krishna challenges her
to accept the path she is on—her way in this life is the way of the
warrior: “Yes— you—must—not be hesitant to fight in a just cause.
It is better to die following your own way, than to live following someone
else’s. When you ride into combat—act without attachment—and
carry with you the confidence that you are fulfilling your calling in
this life. Then you will know the way.” If she follows the way of
the warrior faithfully, he reassures her, she will be reincarnated in
her next life as a saint.
[54] These exchanges on the
nature of “the way” are rich with implications regarding the relationships
among the various spiritual traditions. First, Hanouman’s description
of the way of Eli as “the ultimate way,” Krishna’s promise that
Xena will be reincarnated as a saint, and Xena’s apparent understanding
that her future sainthood will resemble the way of Eli all conspire
to give both Hinduism and Christianity (at least in an idealized form)
an ultimacy that other spiritual traditions lack. On the one hand, two
Hinu deities agree that the way of nonviolent love as taught by Eli/Jesus
is the highest and most noble of all spiritual paths. On the other hand,
Krishna’s acknowledgement that the way of Eli is not Xena’s way
and the reaffirmation of the doctrines of reincarnation and karma give
Hindu metaphysics an ultimacy over the simpler Christian of one life/one
afterlife. The implied melding of traditions goes something like this:
all of us will continue in the perpetual cycle of samasara and karma
until a lifetime in which we are finally reborn as pilgrims on the way
of Eli/Jesus, and then we will gain salvation.
[55] Other elements of the
dialogue complicate the issue. Xena’s comparison of the way of Eli
with the way of Lao Ma reopens the question of whether the love taught
by Lao La and the love taught by Eli are the same—whether Christianity
and Taosim are functionally identical and equally valid spiritual paths.
Similarly, the resemblance of Krishna’s advice to Xena (“When you
ride into combat—act without attachment”) to the Buddhist doctrine
of non-attachment brings yet another form of Eastern mysticism into
the viewer’s consideration. Perhaps all spiritual paths are, if not
equally noble, at least equally valid in a given lifetime.
[56] Even so, the superiority
within the Xenaverse of the Hindu-Christian amalgam seems unassailable.
First, the fact that Xena prays to Krishna for help is of utmost significance.
Xena has rarely if ever sought the help of any god, and in the rare
instances where she does seek a god’s help, it almost always in the
form of tit-for-tat bargaining that exploits the gods’ petty desires.
By contrast, her prayer to Krishna is in the form of humble supplication
associated with sincere religious devotion and spiritual seeking. In
the episode, Hanouman describes Krishna as “the ultimate manifestation
of the supreme deity,” nothing the show’s presentation diminishes
this description. The fact that Xena explicitly seeks the help of Krishna
gives the Hindu god a very special status in the Xenaverse.
[57] Second, although the way
of love as taught by Eli/Jesus is described by a Hindu deity as the
best way, it is not presented as the way for everyone. Most importantly,
it is not the way for Xena. In fact, Krishna himself tells Xena that
her way for this lifetime is the way of the warrior—it is by fighting
for just causes that she will attain good karma. But it is strongly
implied that she is to walk in the way of love in a future incarnation.
It is worth remembering that, earlier in the series, the biblical God
of Judaism and Christianity had also been accorded a place of respect.
In the episode “Altared States,” the God of Anteus/Abraham intervenes
to save the day when Xena fails to stop the sacrifice of Ikus/Isaac—the
only instance in the series of a god working for good independently
of Xena and without Xena’s help.
What About
the Other World Religions?
[58] Xena does not interact
with Islam. This is quite understandable. Islam does 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.12
[59] Nor does Xena interact
directly with Buddhism. Granted, the contents of other spiritual paths
are sometimes presented in the series in ways that call to mind Buddhist
teachings. Eli’s exposition of the ostensibly Christian way of love
is couched in “reverence for life” rhetoric that bears resemblance
to the Buddhist doctrine of compassion. Krishna advises Xena to go into
battle with a Buddhist-sounding attitude of non-attachment. And Lao
Ma’s Taoist precepts are generic enough that they could pass for Zen
sayings; “New Age” spirituality tends to lump Buddhist, Taoist,
and Hindu metaphysics together into the broad category of “Eastern”
mysticism. The cumulative effect of the reduction of Taoist precepts
to the notion of love and the conflation of Christian and Buddhist concepts
of non-violence into a path commended by a Hindu deity is to construct
a generic love mysticism as the essence of all true religion.
[60] In the series’ final
episode, Xena travels to Japan, revealing another hitherto unknown part
of her past and encountering a new (to viewers), vaguely Shinto, mythology.
This mythology is given an ultimacy that the others lack, for Xena dies
in Japan for the final time. After having spent time in the Greek, Amazon,
and Christian underworlds and paradises, Xena finally dies to spend
eternity (we presume) in a Shinto afterlife.
Conclusion
[61] Xena: Warrior Princess
negotiates the territory of religious plurality in a variety of ways.
First, she shows antipathy toward her native Olympian deities, and to
the similar pantheon of deities from Norse mythology. She experiences
Taoism and probably Shintoism as transcendent realities at work in particular
geographic locales. A broader localism also seems to apply to the doctrine
of an afterlife: Xena and others journey to whatever afterlife or underworld
is professed in the geographic locale from which they pass through the
veil of death. There is also an undercurrent of subjectivism at times
in the series. Xena often acknowledges that various religio-spiritual
paths may be true for other characters, including Gabrielle, but almost
never considers whether any of these paths might be true for her.
[62] Hindu and Christian mythologies,
on the other hand, are portrayed as more universally applicable. We
might say that, in the Xenaverse, all religions and mythologies are
true, but some are truer than others. Despite Xena’s preference to
remain aloof from spiritual concerns and promote a pragmatic humanism,
Christianity and Hinduism both turn out to be true in a most ultimate
sense. Affirming the ultimate truth of both Hinduism and Christianity
requires some work. On the one hand, the Hindu doctrine of karma trumps
the Christian claim to universal applicability: only a few are called
to the way of love. On the other hand, the Christian way (at least as
embodied in the teaching of Jesus if not in historical/institutional
expressions of Christianity), trumps Hinduism. If the way of love taught
by Eli/Jesus is the best—the capital T-true—way, then everyone will
be incarnated as a Christian before experiencing moksha/salvation.
[63] It should not surprise
us that Hinduism and Christianity should both receive top billing in
a television series that capped the 20th century. After all,
in the 20th century, it was through the influence of Tolstoy’s
exposition of the teaching of Jesus that the Hindu Gandhi was awakened
to the way of satyagraha. And it was in the Hindu practice of
Gandhi that the Christian Martin Luther King, Jr., discerned the non-violent
love of Jesus. This process, described by Darrel Fasching and Dell DeChant
in their book Comparative Religious Ethics: A Narrative Approach
as “passing over and coming back,” is the spiritual/ethical stance
needed in a post-Auschwitz, post-Hiroshima, post-modern world.13
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. But a stance rooted in one tradition, open to the collective
wisdom of other spiritual and ethical traditions and sources, and committed
to the good of all people promises the best possibility for meeting
the ethical challenges of a globalized techno-bureaucratic age.
Notes
- Yann Martel, Life of Pi (New York: Harcourt, 2001).
- Joseph Runzo, Global Philosophy of Religion:
A Short Introduction (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2001), 29-43.
- See Huston Smith, The World’s Religions (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991), 72-73.
- See Kristin Beise Kiblinger, Buddhist Inclusivism:
Attitudes Towards Religious Others (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2005),
1-11, and “Identifying Inclusivism in Buddhist Contexts ,” Contemporary
Buddhism 4/1 (May 2003): 79-97; Lucas Lamadrid, “Anonymous or
Analogous Christians? Rahner and von Balthasar on
Naming the Non-Christian,” Modern
Theology 11/3 (July 1995): 363-384; Gavin D’Costa, “Karl Rahner’s
Anonymous Christian: A Reappraisal,” Modern Theology 1/2 (January 1985),:131-148;
Hans Kung, Christianity
and World Religions: Paths of Dialogue with Islam,
Hinduism, and Buddhism (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1993).
- All dialogue quoted from XWP episodes is taken from the transcripts embedded in the “Episode Guide” at whoosh.org.
- Virginia Carper, however, sees the Greek-Horde relationship as paralleling the relationship between colonizer and colonized in Southern Africa in “Disparate Cultures: Shock of the Other; Collision, Apartness, and Resolution,” Whoosh! 35 (1999), http://whoosh.org. Whoosh! is the online journal of the International Association of Xena Studies.
- For an discussion and critique of the romanticization of Native American spirituality see Daniel Deffenbaugh, Learning
the Language of the Fields: Tilling & Keeping as Christian Vocation (Cambridge, MA: Cowley, 2006), 39-68; and Jesse Nash, “‘No More War Parties’: The Pacification and Transformation of Plains Indian Religion,” in Critical
Moments in Religious History, ed. Kenneth Keulman (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1993), 95-118.
- Carper, “Disparate Cultures: Shock of the Other.”
- The time traveler is played by Selma Blair, exuding the cluelessness that has become her oeuvre—here a hybrid of the cluelessness she portrays in Cruel
Intentions and the cluelessness she portrays in Kath & Kim.
- Hades, who appears intermittently throughout the series in his role as ruler of Greek underworld, does not really function as a Satan-figure in XWP. Bacchus is a Satan-figure in the vampire-themed episode “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” (episode 28) in season two, but no implications from this episode are carried forward into other Satan-figure portrayals.
- An accessible version is William Buck, Ramayana (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976).
- For a more thorough analysis, see William Klossner, “Middle Easterners in Xena: Warrior Princess and Other Renaissance Pictures Series,” Whoosh! 90 (2004), http://whoosh.org.
- Darrell J. Fasching & Dell deChant, Comparative
Religious Ethics: A Narrative Approach (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 2001), 7, 68-70, 297-313.
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