Lexx: Xev and Kai
Feb. 18th, 2012 12:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
labingiI have been revisiting Lexx, and it occurs to me that the basic dynamic between Xev and Kai is one of the most poignantly realist doomed love stories I have seen in science fiction TV. To be sure, it's full of camp craziness on the surface: she's a half-lizard "love slave" with an "accelerated libido"; he's a dead guy with funny hair, etc. But if we read their various traits on an emotional (or metaphorical) level, the relationship that emerges is easily recognizable in the real world.
Spoilers Follow
When she meets Kai, Xev is, in essence, a young adolescent girl from a background that, while not "sheltered" (in fact, is was quite abusive), was very socially limited. Never having felt loved and with little experience of social relationships of any kind, she was raised on fantasies of romance and "living for her man." Then, in her first rush of freedom, unconstrained, reveling in unbridled energy and a burgeoning sense of sexual awareness, she falls madly in love with this sexy older guy with all the innocent enthusiasm of first love.
Meanwhile, Sexy Older Guy is, in essence, a traumatized war victim. He witnessed the destruction of his home and everyone he loved, including the woman was functionally (if not literally) his "wife." He was unable to prevent this, was subsequently somewhat suborned by the enemy, and is a quasi-suicidal person, who believes his proper lifetime is over and who only persists in the name of following his personal values to help those around him and try, in some sense, to atone for his years in the service of the enemy.
In other words, Xev and Kai meet at radically different life stages. She is a highly inexperienced, very young woman just beginning the adventure of adult life. He is a jaded, grieving man, well advanced in his adult life, whose principal wish is to die. She has no context for understanding his position. He, however, understands perfectly (if across a certain decarbonized distance) how she feels about him. He knows with absolute certainty that he is never going to reciprocate. Though he does care about her and has no wish to hurt her, he (legitimately) chooses to prioritize his life (death) goals over her needs. When Xev comes on to him, he repeatedly tries to let her down easy.
But this somewhat backfires. To be kind to her, he deflects fundamental rejection of the idea of a romantic relationship onto superficial excuses (he's not capable of sexual arousal, being "dead," etc.). Xev, of course, wants to believe in her fantasy of their love, and is, thus, strongly primed to take him literally at his word and look no deeper into his underlying meaning. For a long while, she entertains the fantasy that if they could just figure out how to make him live again, he would be hers. This is understandable: he's told her can't be hers because he's dead. As the last episode, however, clearly (and beautifully) illustrates, his "deadness" is not the fundamental issue. When Kai does come back to life, he tells her, with more emotional directness than his dead self could muster, "I'm sorry I wasn't able to love you the way you wanted me to." This is the truth. He doesn't love her that way. His heart's already been used up.
Like most young folk, Xev needs her heart broken several times over to begin to amass the life experience to hear what Kai telling her. Over the course of four seasons of persistent, if evasive, rejection, she (mostly) learns it. She stops coming on to Kai; she starts seriously looking elsewhere to find love (though, this being Lexx, without much success). She refines her instincts for people and relationships. She grows up--while Kai simply gets a little deader. And still she is never very far from turning back to her dream of his love. Even in season 4, the slightest hint of a chance of a future with Kai enthralls her. He is her first love, and a piece of him will be stuck her heart forever. But he reaches his end, and she has to live. And so, like all of us, at the end she'll set him in her past and, sadder and wiser, go on with her life.
Spoilers Follow
When she meets Kai, Xev is, in essence, a young adolescent girl from a background that, while not "sheltered" (in fact, is was quite abusive), was very socially limited. Never having felt loved and with little experience of social relationships of any kind, she was raised on fantasies of romance and "living for her man." Then, in her first rush of freedom, unconstrained, reveling in unbridled energy and a burgeoning sense of sexual awareness, she falls madly in love with this sexy older guy with all the innocent enthusiasm of first love.
Meanwhile, Sexy Older Guy is, in essence, a traumatized war victim. He witnessed the destruction of his home and everyone he loved, including the woman was functionally (if not literally) his "wife." He was unable to prevent this, was subsequently somewhat suborned by the enemy, and is a quasi-suicidal person, who believes his proper lifetime is over and who only persists in the name of following his personal values to help those around him and try, in some sense, to atone for his years in the service of the enemy.
In other words, Xev and Kai meet at radically different life stages. She is a highly inexperienced, very young woman just beginning the adventure of adult life. He is a jaded, grieving man, well advanced in his adult life, whose principal wish is to die. She has no context for understanding his position. He, however, understands perfectly (if across a certain decarbonized distance) how she feels about him. He knows with absolute certainty that he is never going to reciprocate. Though he does care about her and has no wish to hurt her, he (legitimately) chooses to prioritize his life (death) goals over her needs. When Xev comes on to him, he repeatedly tries to let her down easy.
But this somewhat backfires. To be kind to her, he deflects fundamental rejection of the idea of a romantic relationship onto superficial excuses (he's not capable of sexual arousal, being "dead," etc.). Xev, of course, wants to believe in her fantasy of their love, and is, thus, strongly primed to take him literally at his word and look no deeper into his underlying meaning. For a long while, she entertains the fantasy that if they could just figure out how to make him live again, he would be hers. This is understandable: he's told her can't be hers because he's dead. As the last episode, however, clearly (and beautifully) illustrates, his "deadness" is not the fundamental issue. When Kai does come back to life, he tells her, with more emotional directness than his dead self could muster, "I'm sorry I wasn't able to love you the way you wanted me to." This is the truth. He doesn't love her that way. His heart's already been used up.
Like most young folk, Xev needs her heart broken several times over to begin to amass the life experience to hear what Kai telling her. Over the course of four seasons of persistent, if evasive, rejection, she (mostly) learns it. She stops coming on to Kai; she starts seriously looking elsewhere to find love (though, this being Lexx, without much success). She refines her instincts for people and relationships. She grows up--while Kai simply gets a little deader. And still she is never very far from turning back to her dream of his love. Even in season 4, the slightest hint of a chance of a future with Kai enthralls her. He is her first love, and a piece of him will be stuck her heart forever. But he reaches his end, and she has to live. And so, like all of us, at the end she'll set him in her past and, sadder and wiser, go on with her life.
