THIS WEEK IN XENA  NEWS...  
TWXN 99
08/15/97
Friday

The advance sheet of XENA MEDIA REVIEW (XMR):
http://xenafan.com/xmr

Excerpts from the following cites will appear in future
issues of XMR.


From the editor:

Silly me! I am going to be at the Jay Leno Show taping
on Monday so the historic 100th issue of TWXN will have
to wait until next Wednesday. We must have our
priorities. That also means, for those who care, I will
hold off releasing XMR #25 as well. 


Here's the stories:

[    ] 04-02-97
   LOS ANGELES TIMES. Wednesday. Page E1. 850 words.
"Guest Workout. A Regimen Fit for a Hercules" by
Candace a. Wedlan, (Times Staff Writer)
   COMMENTARY: Okay this is all HERCULES but we try to
be liberal every now and then and throw the HTLJ kids a
bone. 
   REPRINT:
   For once, we never tire of seeing a guy in the same
old shirt. That would be the chamois shirt covering
(but not covering up) Kevin Sorbo's 43-inch chest. That
would also be the shirt that commanded $ 1,000 at a
charity auction in January during the first Official
"Xena" and 'Hercules" Convention.
   The shirt's a lightweight compared to the rest of
the outfit worn by Sorbo, 38, who stars on "Hercules:
The Legendary Journeys." 
    "The leather woven pants and boots weigh 12 pounds,
and that's a lot to lug around in those fight scenes,"
he said during a recent phone interview from New
Zealand, where the syndicated TV show is filmed. "But
that's the most fun part of the show. I love doing my
own stunts."
   Question: What's the most memorable stunt so
far--with the worst monster?
   Answer: The toughest monster--probably the episode
where my mother gets married. "The Wedding of Alcmene,"
it was called, with Jason of the Argonaut.
   Q: Oh, your mother got married?
   A: She got married. Yeah. Did you miss that episode?
   Q: I saw the one where Alcmene was engaged to a
traitor. Remember Hercules never trusted him?
   A: Yeah, that was when we introduced Echidna, the
mother of all monsters, and I almost get killed and all
that kind of stuff.
   Q: Right, and Echidna had you by the throat but
Alcmene's fiance died.
   A: Well, in "The Wedding of Alcmene," Jason of the
Argonaut ends up marrying my mother. It was a huge
wedding. We shot that over Valentine's Day a year ago.
I remember because my parents were in town.
   Q: So what happened at the wedding?
   A: During the wedding, Hera sends this huge monster,
this sea serpent that swallows up Jason, and I go
leaping into the mouth just before it closes to follow
Jason down into the stomach. We get down there and, I
mean, we had to shoot inside the slimiest, grossest
looking bowels of a stomach you've ever seen in your
life.
   Q: Yuck.
   A: Yeah, we had to crawl around and slip and slide
in this bubbly, gross stuff for two or three days. I
was constantly taped from head to toe in this slimy
kind of crap that would get rock hard on my body and
they'd have to keep hosing me down and slapping more of
the crap on me....


[   b] 04-03-97
   DAILY VARIETY. Thursday. Page 3. 680 words. "'U
Muscle Pushes 'Trek' from Top" By Jenny Hontz
   COMMENTARY: Historic announcement heralding the end
of Trek's hitherto unchallenged rule of syndicated tv.
   EXCERPT:
   Trekkies take note: For the first time in 10 years,
Paramount Domestic TV's "Star Trek" franchise has
fallen out of the top season-to-date spot for weekly
syndie hours. Moving into first place are Universal
Domestic TV's action series "Xena" and "Hercules."
   In the latest national Nielsen chart, for the week
ending March 23, "Xena: Warrior Princess" and
"Hercules: The Legendary Journeys" tied at 5.8
season-to-date, edging out Par's "Star Trek: Deep Space
Nine" (5.7). "Deep Space Nine" or its predecessor,
"Star Trek: The Next Generation," has held the top
household slot for the past decade.  
   Both "Hercules" and "Xena" actually fell in the
ratings from the prior week, as did "Star Trek."
"Hercules" dropped 2% to 6.1, which was still 11% ahead
of last year's pace. "Xena" dipped 3% to 5.6, but grew
4% from the same week a year ago. "Star Trek" tumbled
11% to 4.8, off 20% from last year.
   But strong performances in the February sweeps for
the action pack coupled with steep declines for "Star
Trek" finally forced the sci-fi series to take a back
seat for the season to Universal's two ancient Greek
action heroes. "Hercules" and "Xena" also get ratings
boosts from airing on the WGN Superstation as well as
in syndication.
   In other weekly action, All American' s "Baywatch"
was flat at 4.1, and MGM's "The Outer Limits" rose 3%
to 3.4. Par's "Viper" led the frosh weeklies, gaining
7% to 2.9. All American's "Sinbad" faded 14% to 2.5 and
tied with Rysher's "FX The Series," which dipped 4%.
Eyemark Entertainment's "Psi Factor" plummeted 17% to
2.4 and tied with Twentieth TV's "Two," which was
flat...


[    ] 04-05-97
   THE TORONTO STAR. Saturday. Page M1. 1458 words.
"How Xena's getting it right" By William A. Hynes
   COMMENTARY: Strangely enough, out of my 10 megs of
XWP news database, I rarely see this issue discussed.
In my humble opinion, perhaps after presenting a female
hero in a non-traditional manner, the show also offers
an approach to multiculturalism which is not duplicated
by its peers. 
   REPRINT:
   At least one black good guy, bad guy, victim,
bystander, lover, sage or fool has appeared in almost
every episode of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and
Xena: Warrior Princess, two popular TV shows set in and
around ancient Greece. 
   Blacks have appeared in every role with Xena (played
by Lucy Lawless) - including swashbuckling boyfriend
Marcus (Bobby Hosea) and mentor Mellila (Ebonie Smith)
- for three seasons of Hercules and two of Xena before
scholarly fans began praising the writers and casting
crew for "getting it right for a change."
   This isn't just 1990s "political correctness."
Contrary to what you'd suppose from most school history
books and the average "sword and sandal" movie or TV
show, black performers don't do anything on the two
shows that black people didn't actually do in ancient
Europe.
   Blacks from the Nile area entered the European story
on the Greek island of Crete about 4,000 years ago. By
2000 B.C., they'd integrated into every niche of
Mediterranean Egyptian life Ancient Europeans who
encountered Coptic Egyptian Africa automatically
encountered black Africa. In the Greek and Roman
worlds, blacks played every role, from ruler and
scholar to soldier and slave....
   ...Blacks first appear in mainland Greek art around
1250 B.C., about the time of the "real" Hercules and
some 65 years before the Trojan War.
   (Television's Hercules and Xena have most of their
adventures around the time of that war, though there
are occasional anachronistic encounters with King
David, Socrates, Julius Caesar and Jesus and even a
magic-powered visit by Xena to World War II.).
   In Homer's Odyssey, Trojan War survivor Odysseus
(Ulysses, to the Romans) describes his late buddy,
Eurybates, as melanochroos (black-skinned) and
oulocharinos (woolly haired).
   Myth, legend and history show that interracial
marriages and romances, like Xena's hot affair with
Marcus, raised no ancient Greek or Roman eyebrows.
   Hercules' great-grandmother was the black princess
Andromeda, wife of monster-killing Greek hero Perseus.
Perseus and Andromeda ruled the two most important
mainland cities of the Greek Bronze Age, Tiryns and
Mycenae....
   ...American historian Frank Martin Snowden Jr. has
resurrected and documented part of this record in his
books, Blacks In Antiquity and Before Color Prejudice.
   Of course, more people form their picture of ancient
mythology and history from "sword and sandal" movies
and TV shows than from scholarly books such as
Snowden's.
   Fortunately, however, the Xena and Hercules series -
besides being great fun to watch - are popularizing a
less distorted picture of ancient times than commercial
entertainment has shown us for five centuries.
   ---
   William A. Hynes is a translator, teacher,
journalist and author of the French-language reading
series, "Alternatives."
   He began researching ancient myths and realities
behind TV's Xena and Hercules at the request of
students in East York. 
   GRAPHIC: COLORBLIND WARRIORS: Blacks have appeared
in every role in adventures of Xena (Lucy Lawless),
including that of swashbuckling boyfriend Marcus (Bobby
Hosea).


Notices:

All back issues of XMR and TWXN are available at
(http://xenafan.com/xmr). We herein give praise and
thanks to Tom Simpson for the space he has graciously
donated from his spectacular, TOM'S XENA PAGE
(http://xenafan.com). If you have never been there, you
are **not** a xenafan!

TWXN is the advance sheet for XMR, an annotated world
press review of reports regarding the internationally
syndicated television show XENA: WARRIOR PRINCESS (1995
- 2000+?) and the castmembers, Lucy Lawless and Renee
O'Connor. TWXN is not available for subscription,
however it is posted Monday, Wednesday, and Friday on
the XenaVerse, Hercules-Xena, and Chakram Mailing Lists
(thank you Lucia! I am greatly indebt to you), the MCA
NetForum, the Xenite Message Center, and alt.tv.xena. I
also would like to thank sirvin@law.wfu.edu for
assitance in collecting the newstories. For a free
e-mail subscription to XMR subscribe by e-mail to
ktaborn@lightspeed.net by stating somewhere in the
subject or text "sub xmr". 


