The Mary Sue
By Andrea Thompson
Note: Some spoilers ahead.
I’m cheating a bit for this week’s column, since I’m writing about a TV episode rather than a film. But hell, it’s Pride Month, “Pose” has recently ended, and the episode I’m focusing on was not only directed and written by women, it has a fantastic origin story.
But, as is habitual with me, I’m getting ahead of myself. Like many, I’ve turned to fun, light-hearted content during the pandemic, some new, some rediscovered. One example of the latter has been “Xena: Warrior Princess,” a show which I enjoyed whenever I could catch it (ah, life before streaming) and have likewise enjoyed revisiting. If you’re somehow unfamiliar with the premise, it was set in a fantasy version of ancient Greece and followed the titular character Xena, (Lucy Lawless) a former warlord who chose to fight for good in an effort to atone for her past. On her journey to redemption, she was aided by a farm girl named Gabrielle (Renée O'Connor), who became her conscience, friend, fellow warrior, and eventually, far more, even if it couldn’t become official canon at the time, although it was clear enough to the ardent fan base it garnered during its six season run from 1995 to 2001.
One episode in particular was one of those completely random watches I enjoyed as a teenager, and ended up being one of those childhood gems that’s even better once you can really appreciate what it was doing. Granted, there are many episodes of “Xena” that fit this description (and to be fair, some that don’t), but the one I’m singling out is the season two episode “Here She Comes...Miss Amphipolis,” which aired in 1997.
As the title suggests, it revolves around a beauty pageant, but in typical Xena fashion, there are higher stakes than just determining a winner. A fragile peace has been in place in the unnamed setting for about a year, but that peace may soon be shattered. All three of the warlords who previously waged war on the battlefield are now basically fighting by proxy, with each having entered their respective girlfriends as contestants. Now someone has been attempting to not only sabotage each contestant’s chances of winning but do away with them completely, which would kick off another war.
Xena and Gabrielle aren’t shy about sharing their thoughts on beauty pageants and how degrading they can be, but as Xena points out, “War makes everyone a victim.” So she decides to pose as a contestant for the title of...Miss Known World (not making that up), with Gabrielle adopting another kind of disguise, complete with a hilarious accent, as her sponsor.
And what happens next is surprisingly complicated, far ahead of its time, and in many ways, our current time. But perhaps the biggest relief is how this episode avoids the most tired cliche of all - the “tough girl” struggling to perform traditional femininity. Xena sees no conflict between her warrior skills and the demands of a contestant, gamely donning a blonde wig and various costumes. She not only performs her part to perfection, she WORKS IT as a blonde bombshell. To her, it’s just another adventure, and this one happens to demand this particular set of skills, some no doubt inspired by Lawless, a former beauty queen herself. It’s what I refer to as the “Clueless” brand of satire, which maintains a respect for the characters they’re portraying even as they’re poking fun at them.
So it makes sense that the other contestants are far different from the “underdressed, over-developed bimbos” Xena was expecting. As the episode reminds us, all of them have seen the horrors of war up close, and it’s given them the kind of perspective that makes it impossible for them to take such frivolities seriously. As one contestant puts it, “You can’t know how stupid something like this seems when you’ve been through a war where it was a fight just to survive.” It’s what they stand to gain that get them invested in winning rather than the pageant itself, with one contestant being promised food for her village, another hoping to find another life far away from the trauma she’s endured, and one believing she has so little right to her own feelings she’s chosen to go along with her sponsor/boyfriend’s decision to enter her in the pageant.
Only one contestant is actually invested in the pageant itself, and that is Miss Artiphys, which is when the episode really gets interesting. Yes the name is pronounced artifice, and Xena quickly discovers they weren’t born a woman. In fact, Miss Artiphys was played by Karen Dior, a bisexual adult film star who was a female impersonator, then moved into more mainstream roles in the 90’s, and from what I could discover, apparently identified as a man rather than a trans woman. Given that information, I will use he pronouns when referring to Dior, and they when referring to the character of Miss Artiphys.
The character of Miss Artiphys not only isn’t a joke, but is treated with dignity. When they lock Xena in a steam room, it’s not out of a sense of competition, but out of fear that Xena will reveal their secret. As Miss Artiphys struggles to explain their reasons for joining the competition to Xena, they point out that Xena was born a woman and can take her identity for granted, while for them, “This is a chance to use a part of me most people usually laugh at or worse. The part I usually have to hide. Only here that part works for me.” Xena doesn’t pretend to fully understand, but she not only listens to Miss Artiphys, she refuses to out them and says, “May the best person win.”
How was such respect possible at a time when trans (or in this case, trans implied) characters were nonexistent, or when they were acknowledged, were generally treated as jokes at best, or violent killers at worst? That’s probably due to writer Chris Manheim, who was inspired to create the character of Miss Artiphys by her brother Keith Walsh, who apparently died of AIDS in 1992, and was also a regular drag performer.
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For Miss Artiphys, the pageant is genuinely empowering, and it’s easy to see their arc as Manheim’s wish fulfillment for her brother. Miss Artiphys not only steals the show (no small achievement when you’re standing next to Lawless), they get the best moments. They not only appear onstage in Xena’s signature costume and proclaim, “Honey, I’m no princess. I’m a queen,” they also get to (spoiler!) win the pageant. All the other finalists proudly declare their agency and decide to drop out of a competition that’s based on their objectification, leaving Miss Artiphys as the winner to raucous applause and tears that were probably genuine on their part.
Such dreams were rarely fulfilled in real life at the time. Karen Dior never found mainstream stardom and died of AIDS-related complications in 2004. Manheim had long been a prolific TV writer and continued to not only write but produce several “Xena” episodes, but her last IMDB credits is as a writer of an episode of “Monk” in 2004. This was also the last director credit for Marina Sargenti, who also directed the underrated 1990 horror film “Mirror Mirror.”
No, pop culture as a whole wasn’t prepared to follow the example set by “Xena” at the time, even if Lucy Lawless and Renée O'Connor embraced their status as queer icons long before it became trendy or just good PR. Nevertheless, “Here She Comes... Miss Amphipolis” sums up the show’s legacy nicely, and in a fashion that much of the mainstream is still struggling to catch up to. Or as Xena herself quite simply puts it, “Beauty is beauty.” Indeed it is.
