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Girls Just Wanna Have Fun (Xena episode)
Encyclopedia
"Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" is the fourth episode
of the second season
of the syndicated television series Xena: Warrior Princess
. It was written by Adam Armus and Nora Kay Foster, directed by T.J. Scott, and first aired on October 21, 1996. Girls Just Wanna Have Fun is also the title of a multipath adventure
game by Slingshot Entertainment which is based upon this episode.
In the episode, Xena
and Gabrielle
join forces with Joxer
and Orpheus
to defeat Bacchus
, who is transforming innocent girls into bloodsucking bacchae. Gabrielle is turned into a temporary bacchae, and Xena kills Bacchus before he can make the transformation permanent.
"Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" is a comical Halloween episode. It pushes the limits for sexuality on Xena, features disco music, and its artistic style is stylised rock video horror. It episode also contains a lesbian subtext stronger than the average episode of Xena. Andrew Leonard of Salon said it gives "tacit consent to a lesbian reading of the Xena-Gabrielle relationship." The episode received positive reviews. Critics have commented on its music and special effects, and the supervising sound producer won an award at the Motion Picture Sound Editors' Golden Reel Awards.
and Gabrielle
running into Joxer
, who has a package for Xena. It contains the talking head of Orpheus
. Orpheus's head informs Xena that Bacchus
has decapitated him, and that he must be stopped. They arrive at a nearby town, and Gabrielle goes to a party and dances with a group of Bacchus's bacchae: female vampires created by Bacchus. Meanwhile, Xena defeats two bacchae. Elsewhere, Bacchus plots to turn Xena into an "eternal bacchae".
The next day the protagonists go to the cemetery next to Bacchus's catacombs
to collect dryad
bones. These bones are the only thing capable of piercing a bacchae's heart and killing them. Xena kills one of the skeletal, winged dryads and procures a sharp bone. Gabrielle then turns into a bacchae; she had been bitten the previous day at the party. Gabrielle escapes into the catacombs and the group gives chase.
They find Gabrielle, Bacchus, and a large group of bacchae in the middle of a ceremony. Gabrielle is about to drink Bacchus's blood from a cup and become a permanent bacchae, but Xena knocks the cup to the ground with her chakram
. A fight ensues and Xena attempts to kill Bacchus, but he informs her that only a bacchae can kill him. Xena lets Gabrielle bite her, becoming a bacchae, and then kills Bacchus, after which all of Bacchus' bacchae servants, as well as Xena and Gabrielle regain their humanity.
episode which was filmed in Auckland
, New Zealand
. After shooting for two days, director T.J. Scott went to producer Robert Tapert
and asked permission to alter the episode's artistic style to stylised rock video horror. Scott said, "I got the crew together and said, 'Okay guys, here we go. This is going to be a lot more vampy and fun,' and cranked up the ghetto blaster with rock music and away we went." Because of the subject, Scott was able to increase the episode's level of sexual content. Scott said, "we did two takes that were on the edge of tasteful vampire sexuality, and we did a third take where Lucy really let loose. Of course, we all died laughing and said, 'Okay, that one is never going to make it to the screen'; we definitely pushed it too far!" Ultimately, Scott felt that "if you pull it too far out of context and try to take it seriously, it's a bit too rock video at times."
In one scene, Orpheus's head is attached to a scarecrow body. According to Matthew Chamberlain
, the actor who portrayed Orpheus, he was told to jump on a horse while wearing the scarecrow costume. Chamberlain said he "just gave the horse a quick pat before hopping on" but found himself "getting tugged the other way as the horse was munching away on the straw poking out of the end of my sleeve!" An animatronic
version of Chamberlain's head which operated by remote control was used in some scenes. Some of the actors had to only pretend to look at the animatronic head during their scenes, because if they looked at it while it responded, they would laugh and break character.
subtext
. According to The Audience Studies Reader by Will Brooker and Deborah Jermyn, while in some episodes a lesbian subtext is implied, in "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" the lesbianism is so strongly suggested that it could be considered "maintext". Andrew Leonard of Salon described the episode as the "disco lesbian vampire" episode and stated that it provided "tacit consent to a lesbian reading of the Xena-Gabrielle relationship." A DVD Town reviewer felt that the general lesbian eroticism in Xena: Warrior Princess was "amped up" in this episode, noting Gabrielle's "sexy clothes" and her looking at Xena with "hungry eyes". Heather Findlay of Girlfriends magazine itemized several scenes with a lesbian subtext. Gabrielle wandering into an all-female bar ("wink-wink"), becoming a vampire ("apparently Friedman studied that topos
in her women's studies classes"), and "kissing" Xena ("oh, wait, that was a bite"). The book Queer by Simon Gage, et al. stated that although the series is now canceled, the "lesbian vampire
disco" episode lives on in "lesbian video players everywhere."
body; the use of a techno
soundtrack; and Gabrielle being seduced by the Bacchae. Ilya of DVDFuture.com gave the episode a grade of B. A Play.com review deemed it a "classic" Xena episode.
Two technical aspects of the episode were singled out for praise. First, a Hollywood Reporter
article cited the winged skeletons as one of the television show's special effects highlights. Second, the supervising sound editor Jason Schmid won the one-hour series sound editing award at the Motion Picture Sound Editors' Golden Reel Awards for his work on this episode.
Episode
An episode is a part of a dramatic work such as a serial television or radio program. An episode is a part of a sequence of a body of work, akin to a chapter of a book. The term sometimes applies to works based on other forms of mass media as well, as in Star Wars...
of the second season
Xena: Warrior Princess (season 2)
Xena: Warrior Princess second season originally aired between September 30, 1996 and May 12, 1997, beginning with episode "Orphan of War".-Reception:...
of the syndicated television series Xena: Warrior Princess
Xena: Warrior Princess
Xena: Warrior Princess is an American–New Zealand supernatural fantasy adventure series that aired in syndication from September 4, 1995 until June 18, 2001....
. It was written by Adam Armus and Nora Kay Foster, directed by T.J. Scott, and first aired on October 21, 1996. Girls Just Wanna Have Fun is also the title of a multipath adventure
Interactive fiction
Interactive fiction, often abbreviated IF, describes software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives and as video games. In common usage, the term refers to text...
game by Slingshot Entertainment which is based upon this episode.
In the episode, Xena
Xena
Xena is a fictional character from Robert Tapert's Xena: Warrior Princess franchise. She first appeared in the 1995–1999 television series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, before going on to appear in Xena: Warrior Princess TV show and subsequent comic book of the same name...
and Gabrielle
Gabrielle (Xena)
Gabrielle is a fictional character played by Renée O'Connor in Xena: Warrior Princess. She is referred to by fans as the Battling Bard of Potidaea. Her trademark weapons are the Amazon fighting staff and later, the sais...
join forces with Joxer
Joxer
Joxer is a fictional character in the syndicated television series Xena: Warrior Princess, played by American actor Ted Raimi. He is a comical wanna-be warrior who styles himself "Joxer the Mighty", and later "Joxer the Magnificent"....
and Orpheus
Orpheus
Orpheus was a legendary musician, poet, and prophet in ancient Greek religion and myth. The major stories about him are centered on his ability to charm all living things and even stones with his music; his attempt to retrieve his wife from the underworld; and his death at the hands of those who...
to defeat Bacchus
Dionysus
Dionysus was the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness and ecstasy in Greek mythology. His name in Linear B tablets shows he was worshipped from c. 1500—1100 BC by Mycenean Greeks: other traces of Dionysian-type cult have been found in ancient Minoan Crete...
, who is transforming innocent girls into bloodsucking bacchae. Gabrielle is turned into a temporary bacchae, and Xena kills Bacchus before he can make the transformation permanent.
"Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" is a comical Halloween episode. It pushes the limits for sexuality on Xena, features disco music, and its artistic style is stylised rock video horror. It episode also contains a lesbian subtext stronger than the average episode of Xena. Andrew Leonard of Salon said it gives "tacit consent to a lesbian reading of the Xena-Gabrielle relationship." The episode received positive reviews. Critics have commented on its music and special effects, and the supervising sound producer won an award at the Motion Picture Sound Editors' Golden Reel Awards.
Plot
"Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" opens with XenaXena
Xena is a fictional character from Robert Tapert's Xena: Warrior Princess franchise. She first appeared in the 1995–1999 television series Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, before going on to appear in Xena: Warrior Princess TV show and subsequent comic book of the same name...
and Gabrielle
Gabrielle (Xena)
Gabrielle is a fictional character played by Renée O'Connor in Xena: Warrior Princess. She is referred to by fans as the Battling Bard of Potidaea. Her trademark weapons are the Amazon fighting staff and later, the sais...
running into Joxer
Joxer
Joxer is a fictional character in the syndicated television series Xena: Warrior Princess, played by American actor Ted Raimi. He is a comical wanna-be warrior who styles himself "Joxer the Mighty", and later "Joxer the Magnificent"....
, who has a package for Xena. It contains the talking head of Orpheus
Orpheus
Orpheus was a legendary musician, poet, and prophet in ancient Greek religion and myth. The major stories about him are centered on his ability to charm all living things and even stones with his music; his attempt to retrieve his wife from the underworld; and his death at the hands of those who...
. Orpheus's head informs Xena that Bacchus
Dionysus
Dionysus was the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness and ecstasy in Greek mythology. His name in Linear B tablets shows he was worshipped from c. 1500—1100 BC by Mycenean Greeks: other traces of Dionysian-type cult have been found in ancient Minoan Crete...
has decapitated him, and that he must be stopped. They arrive at a nearby town, and Gabrielle goes to a party and dances with a group of Bacchus's bacchae: female vampires created by Bacchus. Meanwhile, Xena defeats two bacchae. Elsewhere, Bacchus plots to turn Xena into an "eternal bacchae".
The next day the protagonists go to the cemetery next to Bacchus's catacombs
Catacombs
Catacombs, human-made subterranean passageways for religious practice. Any chamber used as a burial place can be described as a catacomb, although the word is most commonly associated with the Roman empire...
to collect dryad
Dryad
Dryads are tree nymphs in Greek mythology. In Greek drys signifies 'oak,' from an Indo-European root *derew- 'tree' or 'wood'. Thus Dryads are specifically the nymphs of oak trees, though the term has come to be used for all tree nymphs in general...
bones. These bones are the only thing capable of piercing a bacchae's heart and killing them. Xena kills one of the skeletal, winged dryads and procures a sharp bone. Gabrielle then turns into a bacchae; she had been bitten the previous day at the party. Gabrielle escapes into the catacombs and the group gives chase.
They find Gabrielle, Bacchus, and a large group of bacchae in the middle of a ceremony. Gabrielle is about to drink Bacchus's blood from a cup and become a permanent bacchae, but Xena knocks the cup to the ground with her chakram
Chakram
The chakram , sometimes called a war quoit, is a throwing weapon from India. Its shape is of a flat metal hoop with a sharp outer edge from in diameter...
. A fight ensues and Xena attempts to kill Bacchus, but he informs her that only a bacchae can kill him. Xena lets Gabrielle bite her, becoming a bacchae, and then kills Bacchus, after which all of Bacchus' bacchae servants, as well as Xena and Gabrielle regain their humanity.
Production
"Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" is a comical HalloweenHalloween
Hallowe'en , also known as Halloween or All Hallows' Eve, is a yearly holiday observed around the world on October 31, the night before All Saints' Day...
episode which was filmed in Auckland
Auckland Region
The Auckland Region was one of the sixteen regions of New Zealand, named for the city of Auckland, the country's largest urban area. With one third of the nation's residents, it was by far the biggest population and economy of any region of New Zealand, but the second-smallest land area.On 1...
, New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
. After shooting for two days, director T.J. Scott went to producer Robert Tapert
Robert Tapert
Robert Gerard Tapert , sometimes credited as Rob Tapert, Robert G. Tapert, or Rip Tapert, is an American film producer, best known for his co-founding of, and his subsequent work with, the Renaissance Pictures company....
and asked permission to alter the episode's artistic style to stylised rock video horror. Scott said, "I got the crew together and said, 'Okay guys, here we go. This is going to be a lot more vampy and fun,' and cranked up the ghetto blaster with rock music and away we went." Because of the subject, Scott was able to increase the episode's level of sexual content. Scott said, "we did two takes that were on the edge of tasteful vampire sexuality, and we did a third take where Lucy really let loose. Of course, we all died laughing and said, 'Okay, that one is never going to make it to the screen'; we definitely pushed it too far!" Ultimately, Scott felt that "if you pull it too far out of context and try to take it seriously, it's a bit too rock video at times."
In one scene, Orpheus's head is attached to a scarecrow body. According to Matthew Chamberlain
Matthew Chamberlain
Matthew Chamberlain is a New Zealand actor, who starred in the New Zealand film Black Sheep as Oliver Oldfield. Chamberlain previously co-starred in children's TV program Johnson and Friends as Diesel. Chamberlain is currently starring in the high profile role of Murray Cooper in the TVNZ Soap...
, the actor who portrayed Orpheus, he was told to jump on a horse while wearing the scarecrow costume. Chamberlain said he "just gave the horse a quick pat before hopping on" but found himself "getting tugged the other way as the horse was munching away on the straw poking out of the end of my sleeve!" An animatronic
Animatronics
Animatronics is the use of mechatronics to create machines which seem animate rather than robotic. Animatronic creations include animals , plants and even mythical creatures...
version of Chamberlain's head which operated by remote control was used in some scenes. Some of the actors had to only pretend to look at the animatronic head during their scenes, because if they looked at it while it responded, they would laugh and break character.
Theme
"Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" has a lesbianLesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
subtext
Subtext
Subtext or undertone is content of a book, play, musical work, film, video game, or television series which is not announced explicitly by the characters but is implicit or becomes something understood by the observer of the work as the production unfolds. Subtext can also refer to the thoughts...
. According to The Audience Studies Reader by Will Brooker and Deborah Jermyn, while in some episodes a lesbian subtext is implied, in "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" the lesbianism is so strongly suggested that it could be considered "maintext". Andrew Leonard of Salon described the episode as the "disco lesbian vampire" episode and stated that it provided "tacit consent to a lesbian reading of the Xena-Gabrielle relationship." A DVD Town reviewer felt that the general lesbian eroticism in Xena: Warrior Princess was "amped up" in this episode, noting Gabrielle's "sexy clothes" and her looking at Xena with "hungry eyes". Heather Findlay of Girlfriends magazine itemized several scenes with a lesbian subtext. Gabrielle wandering into an all-female bar ("wink-wink"), becoming a vampire ("apparently Friedman studied that topos
Literary topos
Topos , in Latin locus , referred in the context of classical Greek rhetoric to a standardised method of constructing or treating an argument. See topos in classical rhetoric...
in her women's studies classes"), and "kissing" Xena ("oh, wait, that was a bite"). The book Queer by Simon Gage, et al. stated that although the series is now canceled, the "lesbian vampire
Lesbian vampire
Lesbian vampirism is a trope in 20th century exploitation film that has its roots in Joseph Sheridan le Fanu's novella Carmilla about the predatory love of a female vampire for a young woman :...
disco" episode lives on in "lesbian video players everywhere."
Reception
Reviews for Editing Girls Just Wanna Have Fun were generally positive. Rob Lineberger of DVD Verdict felt that the episode was innovative and strange and that several aspects were notable including: Orpheus's head being paraded around on a scarecrowScarecrow
A scarecrow is, essentially, a decoy, though traditionally, a human figure dressed in old clothes and placed in fields by farmers to discourage birds such as crows or sparrows from disturbing and feeding on recently cast seed and growing crops.-History:In Kojiki, the oldest surviving book in Japan...
body; the use of a techno
Techno
Techno is a form of electronic dance music that emerged in Detroit, Michigan in the United States during the mid to late 1980s. The first recorded use of the word techno, in reference to a genre of music, was in 1988...
soundtrack; and Gabrielle being seduced by the Bacchae. Ilya of DVDFuture.com gave the episode a grade of B. A Play.com review deemed it a "classic" Xena episode.
Two technical aspects of the episode were singled out for praise. First, a Hollywood Reporter
The Hollywood Reporter
Formerly a daily trade magazine, The Hollywood Reporter re-launched in late 2010 as a unique hybrid publication serving the entertainment industry and a consumer audience...
article cited the winged skeletons as one of the television show's special effects highlights. Second, the supervising sound editor Jason Schmid won the one-hour series sound editing award at the Motion Picture Sound Editors' Golden Reel Awards for his work on this episode.
External links
- Girls Just Wanna Have Fun at imdb.com
- Girls Just Wanna Have Fun at TV.comTV.comTV.com is a website owned by CBS Interactive. The site covers television and focuses on English-language shows made or broadcast in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and Japan...
- Girls Just Wanna Have Fun at Whoosh.org