My gripe with Xena/Hercules
- Thread starter EJA
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I still miss the Amazon Nation as it was portrayed on X:WP and H:TLJ. Heh. I might have to break out those old taped episodes.
Yep. I remember loathing it and Hercules as a child, being the geeky sort who busied himself with the Iliad and such.Whoa, hang on, Xena met GENGHIS KHAN?!!!!
Now I don't despise the series anymore, but I'd still never watch it. Kevin Sorbo is the sort of fellow who really never should have been a lead and yet there he was.
Yep. I remember loathing it and Hercules as a child, being the geeky sort who busied himself with the Iliad and such.Whoa, hang on, Xena met GENGHIS KHAN?!!!!
Now I don't despise the series anymore, but I'd still never watch it. Kevin Sorbo is the sort of fellow who really never should have been a lead and yet there he was.
That reminds me of Xena helping Odyseus bend the bow in the banquet hall. That one bugged me.
Great example! That was a classic, cheeky XENA moment.
And of course Xena helped Ulysses pull his bow. She also taught Hippocrates everything he knew about medicine! And had Caesar assassinated. And was responsible for Lucifer's fall from Heaven . . . .
She got around.
I agree with those who complained about the shifts in tone from episode to episode, making it seem like two different shows. The Xena show that was a dark drama I quite enjoyed. The show that was a wacky slapstick I found wanting. The problem was, each week, I didn't know which show I would get.
I did like the musical episode. Whether the plotline in that episode or arc was good is something else. The singing was fine and the songs wove into the storyline instead of "stop the storytelling, we're going to sing a song and get back to the storytelling afterward." It seemed similiar to Buffy's in that it was a part of the story, not a break from it.
Yeah the singing episode was so different it was awesome. The Buffy one came later but was slightly better. Musical lesbian oral sex while dressed as Snow White - you don't see that on TV very often... or maybe I dreamed it?
The whole Hope plot was pretty damn good. Some of the flashback stuff was great too. Here she comes, Miss Amphipolis was an example of cheesy comedy done well - it's dire but is so much fun and good natured that you have to forgive it... unlike Widow Twanky in Hercules...
The whole Hope plot was pretty damn good. Some of the flashback stuff was great too. Here she comes, Miss Amphipolis was an example of cheesy comedy done well - it's dire but is so much fun and good natured that you have to forgive it... unlike Widow Twanky in Hercules...
Being wacky and over the top is not quite the same thing as misusing real historical figures. Using real historical figures implicitly asks to take it seriously, then to make a farce does not have a compelling logic.
Initially suspending disbelief for absurd premises is one thing. To accept self-contradictory premises is something else.
Being a farce one week and a supposedly serious character study the next asks a lot of viewer tolerance. It's why the DVDs for serious theatrical dramas never have a blooper real.
Personally, I could never get past pants on Hercules. Somethings you just can't suspend disbelief for.
Initially suspending disbelief for absurd premises is one thing. To accept self-contradictory premises is something else.
Being a farce one week and a supposedly serious character study the next asks a lot of viewer tolerance. It's why the DVDs for serious theatrical dramas never have a blooper real.
Personally, I could never get past pants on Hercules. Somethings you just can't suspend disbelief for.
I have to admit their wonky concept of history turned me off the show, but I don't think there needs to be rules about how to use historical figures in fiction. And the one rule that is most assuredly not needed is "Any show using historical figures must be serious."
So "Spock's Brain" and "City On the Edge of Forever" should never be presented back to back?
"Spock's Brain" should never be presented to anyone at any time or any place. 
Gotta disagree with the very premise there. What about "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" or "Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter" or "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure"? Or "Time Bandits"?
Historical figures always have to be treated seriously and with great concern for accuracy? Please!
XENA (and HERCULES) never pretended to be PBS documentaries on the ancient world. And anyone who tries to crib from them on a history exams deserve to flunk out.
They were deliberately campy fantasy adventures show. Throwing in Hippocrates, Cleopatra, and Genghis Khan into the mixmaster was all part of the fun.
Think of it as a running gag.
Since when? Lots of comedies have used real historical figures. When you saw Bugs Bunny taking on Christopher Columbus or Napoleon, did you feel you were expected to take it seriously? What about Jesus and Pontius Pilate appearing in Life of Brian, or Moses, Nero, Torquemada, and King Louis XVI appearing in Mel Brooks' History of the World: Part I, or Queen Elizabeth I and George IV being regular characters in Blackadder?
Besides, this isn't about farce, it's about fantasy. I mean, come on, it's a universe where gods and magic and monsters exist. Like all myths, it treats the entire past as fair game for story material. It's not as if the Greeks themselves respected a realistic chronology in their myths. The show never claimed these were the actual figures from history; rather, they were fictional/mythic figures inspired by archetypal individuals we know from history.
Actually there are quite a lot of shows that blend comedy and drama quite freely. It happens all the time in British television and film. Look at Doctor Who or Being Human and you'll see a blend of intense drama and farcical humor that rivals Herc/Xena. Heck, look at Shakespeare. In Hamlet, he goes from the wacky lowbrow comedy of the gravediggers to the intense bitterness and rage of Laertes challenging Hamlet within a single scene!
Heck, most shows vary their tone occasionally. Look at STAR TREK. Sometimes you got "City on the Edge of Forever," sometimes you got "A Piece of the Action." Even DS9--the dark, gritty Trek show-- produced both "In the Pale Moonlight" and "Little Green Men."
CSI does grim, realistic episodes about child abuse and bizarre black comedies about Furries or cannibals.
How monotonous would it be if a long-running series had to strike the same tone week after week?
CSI does grim, realistic episodes about child abuse and bizarre black comedies about Furries or cannibals.
How monotonous would it be if a long-running series had to strike the same tone week after week?
Trotting on historical figures, then turning them into farce indeed does not have "a compelling logic." That is not the same as saying "Any show using historical figures must be serious," or "Historical figures always have to be treated seriously and with great concern for accuracy?"
Most of the examples offered rather confirm what I actually said. The Napoleon segment of Time Bandits was tiresome, in an unpopular movie; Mel Brooks' History of the World Part I was not a success; the historical figures are not the best part of Bill & Ted; Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter is unreadable. Monty Python's Holy Grail and Life of Brian are not even about historical figures. Little Big Man was much more successful but it wasn't a farce, but a satire. The Flashman novels are also fairly successful, but they are also not farces. Fantasy novels like Melissa Scott's A Choice of Destinies may be fairly good, but they are not farces either. And I was talking about farce.
Heedlessly shoving historical figures into campy stories always threatens to lapse into farce. It is very difficult to make it work properly because the only point to using the real names is to make a claim about reality. Then to turn them into fantasy figures strikes a cognitive dissonance that can be unpleasant. The only reliable solution to the contradiction is not to think. Stories that require not thinking just don't seem to be as good as others, but maybe that's just personal prejudice.
This is the same argument that antiscience people make about flagrantly bad science. They can point to scant handful of successes, ignoring the prevailing badness and miss the point about how good historical fiction works by paying attention to the history, just like good science fiction works by paying attention to the science. In neither case is that the same as reading a textbook. In both cases narrow views of what qualifies as serious literature rules them out. It wasn't too long ago that James Wood aptly called historical fiction "science fiction looking backward." He's right. Those who dislike the one will dislike the other.
I actually have a fairly high tolerance for the comedy episodes in otherwise fairly successful dramas, like Voyager or CSI. But lots of people specifically dislike this. And I have a fairly high tolerance of serious episodes in comedy series like SG1, but lots of people don't.
There is indeed a reason why serious dramas don't have a blooper real in the special features.
Most of the examples offered rather confirm what I actually said. The Napoleon segment of Time Bandits was tiresome, in an unpopular movie; Mel Brooks' History of the World Part I was not a success; the historical figures are not the best part of Bill & Ted; Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter is unreadable. Monty Python's Holy Grail and Life of Brian are not even about historical figures. Little Big Man was much more successful but it wasn't a farce, but a satire. The Flashman novels are also fairly successful, but they are also not farces. Fantasy novels like Melissa Scott's A Choice of Destinies may be fairly good, but they are not farces either. And I was talking about farce.
Heedlessly shoving historical figures into campy stories always threatens to lapse into farce. It is very difficult to make it work properly because the only point to using the real names is to make a claim about reality. Then to turn them into fantasy figures strikes a cognitive dissonance that can be unpleasant. The only reliable solution to the contradiction is not to think. Stories that require not thinking just don't seem to be as good as others, but maybe that's just personal prejudice.
This is the same argument that antiscience people make about flagrantly bad science. They can point to scant handful of successes, ignoring the prevailing badness and miss the point about how good historical fiction works by paying attention to the history, just like good science fiction works by paying attention to the science. In neither case is that the same as reading a textbook. In both cases narrow views of what qualifies as serious literature rules them out. It wasn't too long ago that James Wood aptly called historical fiction "science fiction looking backward." He's right. Those who dislike the one will dislike the other.
I actually have a fairly high tolerance for the comedy episodes in otherwise fairly successful dramas, like Voyager or CSI. But lots of people specifically dislike this. And I have a fairly high tolerance of serious episodes in comedy series like SG1, but lots of people don't.
There is indeed a reason why serious dramas don't have a blooper real in the special features.
Honestly, I suspect you're overthinking this, but I have to question your premise that "the only point to using the real names is to make a claim about reality."
Not at all. You use characters like George Washington or Lizzie Borden because everybody knows who they are and they carry all sort of evocative symbolic weight and associations. If I write a book in which Harry Houdini teams up with H. P. Lovecraft to fight Rasputin, who is actually an evil android from another dimension, I'm not making any claims about reality. I'm just having outrageous fun with famous, archetypal figures. It's all about imagination and fantasy . . . and, yes, silliness.
Which can be a blast, if you're not hung up on what is "serious" and "real" and constitutes "good" science fiction.
Now, if you excuse me, I'm going to go watch WAREHOUSE 13 . . .
Not at all. You use characters like George Washington or Lizzie Borden because everybody knows who they are and they carry all sort of evocative symbolic weight and associations. If I write a book in which Harry Houdini teams up with H. P. Lovecraft to fight Rasputin, who is actually an evil android from another dimension, I'm not making any claims about reality. I'm just having outrageous fun with famous, archetypal figures. It's all about imagination and fantasy . . . and, yes, silliness.
Which can be a blast, if you're not hung up on what is "serious" and "real" and constitutes "good" science fiction.
Now, if you excuse me, I'm going to go watch WAREHOUSE 13 . . .
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