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calliopes muse wrote:

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If you speak of Western society as "American" society, I think we Americans sometimes have skewed ideas about relationships anyway. As a very prudish people, all relationships become suspect of being something "more" if any two people get too close. I think someone else mentioned something similar to this. I've known a few Europeans and traveled to that part of the world so my ability to speak on that part of Western society and its views on relationships is limited. What little I know, it seems that Europeans in a general sense have a much more fluid concept of friendship, where it can be sexual or not. I guess in that light it's easy to see X & G as having a deeply romantic friendship that doesn't involve sex.

Hmm, but if Europeans have a more fluid concept of sex and friendship where friendship can be either sexual or not, wouldn't such an outlook be more likely to treat X & G's relationship as sexual? I think that actually, Europeans are more likely to see nonsexual physical intimacy and physical expressions of affection (hugs, kisses, touching) as a "normal" part of friendship, whereas Americans are more likely to sexualize physical contact particularly between males. When I was growing up in Russia it was quite common for male friends to hug and to kiss on the cheeck or even on the lips (despite the culture being quite homophobic). Here's an amusing article about male kissing as a custom in Russian and Soviet politics (the US media were quite scandalized in 1979 when, after Jimmy Carter and then-Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev signed an arms reduction treaty, Brezhnev gave Carter a full smack on the lips ).

Sex eventually becomes unimportant in all intimate relationships over time. I heard a saying once that basically said that you better make sure your lover is also your friend because when your old you won't have passion so you better have something else.

Not sure I agree with that. Actually I remember seeing the opinion that it's best not to settle into too much of a "best friends" relationship with your spouse/partner/significant other, because then your sex life will fizzle out and the marriage/relationship will suffer from lack of excitement. (Of course others think that the problem is that our culture gives people unrealistic expectations of sustaining romantic/sexual excitement over years of an intimate relationship, so that "I no longer feel passion for my wife/husband/partner of 20 years" is seen as a cause for divorce rather than a normal part of married life.) It's really hard to make judgments about these things, because different people attach very different importance to sex. A woman I know married a man whom she loved as a friend but to whom she wasn't strongly attracted -- she didn't find him repulsive or anything, just "no schwing," as Lucy put it at the con -- because she was in her 30s and was concerned that if she kept waiting to fall in love, she'd miss her chance at motherhood. That's her choice of course, and if she's happy then good for her. For me, personally, a relationship like that would be unthinkable. (Which is why I'm ... *mumbles something that sounds like "forty-five"*... and single. )

In a less philosophical light, I simply think we can't pin down their relationship as just friends or definitely lovers because the writers weren't free until near the series end to even explore that possibility. They had to play with the "are they, aren't they" issue so that the series could go on. Even by the end, they were so used to playing the delicate balance that they just went with it.

I really disagree with the idea that the ambiguity was due solely or mainly to censorship -- in fact, both Rob Tapert and RJ Stewart have firmly denied that in their recent Q & A's with fans (Rob on the Talking Xena board, RJ here on XOC). I think that, first of all, the writers and actors saw the value of the "friendship" interpretation and knew that a lot of fans identified with it. They probably also felt that the ambiguity made the relationship more interesting (just as it's commonly believed that unresolved sexual/romantic tension is more interesting than a consummated relationship -- it's kind of conventional wisdom on television that consummation equals the series going downhill). Look at Scully and Mulder on The X-Files -- they played the are they/aren't they game right up to the end (and I know many fans who were disappointed when the relationship was confirmed as romantic in the finale).

Of course it's impossible to deny the plain fact that Xena: Warrior Princess was made in the cultural context of widespread anti-gay attitudes. I recall reading as recently as 2-3 years ago (a vastly more tolerant time than the late 1990s) that over half of all Americans polled felt that same-sex romantic relationships should not be openly shown on prime-time television. Sad but true. Of course those attitudes had an impact. But I would suggest that this factor actually cuts both ways. If X:WP had first appeared in a society in which same-sex relationships on TV and in the movies were treated the same as heterosexual ones -- or even just a society in which gay relationships had more visibility on TV than they did in the mid-1990s -- would the show still have developed a lesbian following, at least one strong enough for TPTB to respond to? It's probably true that TPTB couldn't end the ambiguity by "outing" Xena and Gabrielle as a couple, but it's also likely that after a certain point in the show they felt they that if they ended the ambiguity by definitively showing them to be "just friends," they would not only lose a large portion of the fan base but also, in some sense, betray the gay community. So I think it's really hard to tell how the series would have played out in a different and more inclusive culture. Maybe Xena and Gabrielle would have been a couple by the end of the show. Maybe they would have had an on-and-off relationship. Maybe they would have flirted with acknowledging an attraction to each other but never quite crossed the line, perhaps for fear that sex might ruin their friendship (like Quinn and Wade -- opposite-sex friends -- on Sliders). Maybe there never would have been any suggestion that they were anything more than friends. Or maybe there would have been an ambiguous relationship much like the one we got.

Of course, we'll never know. So I think the only thing we can do is take the show for what it is, and allow our varying interpretations to coexist.

Fixed my typo. (Will reply later.)