lexx

Ask a casual viewer the main theme of Lexx (1996-2002), and she’ll probably respond, “sex.” After all, the premise of the Canadian-German science fiction series is that “love slave” Zev (Eva Habermann, “Xev” after Season Two’s recast with Xenia Seeburg) rejects the sexually frustrated Stanley Tweedle (Brian Downey), falling in love, instead, with Kai (Michael McManus), who cannot reciprocate because he is “dead” (his “de-carbonized” body cannot “feel”). But there is more to Lexx than sexual cliché. The series is, indeed, about sex. It is also about death, specifically “dead” Kai’s quest to achieve his final, irrevocable death. Lexx exists at the crossroads between orgasmic intensity of feeling and feeling nothing at all. It proposes that dying and living are the same, two sides of one process that unites all life in webs of ecological relationality. This ecocentric philosophy is illustrated principally through Kai.