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Images from photobucket.com/lexxpix. Thumbnails click to original size.
While Stanley Tweedle is going through a nasty Cluster parody of Theatre of the Absurd, his female counterpart in this story is about to be, well, let’s find out. We rejoin her in the judicial chamber, where she’s just witnessed Argon Protopi being gutted and brained for useful components and the protein bank. Argon’s screams are barely over when her slab moves forward into position and her hologram advocate begins. “My client- (inserted voice here) Zev Bellringer of B3K- is innocent of the charge of- (pause for glitch)- failing to perform her wifely duties and humiliating her husband in the temple, and throws herself on the mercy of this court, secure in the knowledge that His Shadow’s wisdom will prevail upon these proceedings.”
I can’t keep from wondering how many hours now she’s been bolted to this slab. I try to imagine having to stand like that on those tiny footholds and never getting to put your arms down or go to the bathroom, and how terribly hungry you’d get. But we also don’t know other stuff, like the smells around her- old metal and electronics, stale air perhaps, lots and lots of death… I can imagine this part of the building smelling like a slaughter house. I encourage Lexx fans to visit slaughter houses to really get that sensation of how awful being a prisoner is on the Cluster, and to realize that these experiences are at the heart of any kind of meaning behind the rest of the movies and series. For fans who don’t ‘get’ the different seasons, you have to remember THIS is what shapes the minds and actions of our core four. What is the meaning of existence, where do you find it, and how do you know?
Like Argon before her, an assembly clamps to Zev’s head while a robot activates the automated memory software. “Memory search commencing.” You may notice this is 790′s voice now if you’ve seen any of the Lexx movies or series before.
I don’t know about you guys, but the idea of having my head clamped into place just sux, and I bet having the holojudge staring at her like this sucked for Zev, too.
Imagine this thing jabbing into your head for a memory search.
Like Argon, it looks like it about made her sick, but it starts working instantly, and the screen shows the search flitting through several memories. There were more, but dang hard to get on screen grabs.
Kinda curious about those bars… We find out what that’s all about in season 2.
The screen settles on a memory, focuses a little, we see a boy and people in the background, and apparently Zev is the one saying, “You are my every dream come true” in a pretty, cultured voice.
The boy steps forward with a you’ve gotta be kidding me look, then turns and angrily screams, “There must be a mistake! There’s no way I can marry that COW!”
As we hear a shocked, possibly terrified, and definitely confused “Husband! I shall serve… I shall love…”, we see Zev rolling her eyes at the memory, obviously well aware of how screwing up this badly canceled out how demeaning the whole experience was. Ridiculous is a word that hardly begins to describe it. She’s on trial, and death can be its only outcome…
I can’t help interjecting here that the boy’s parents, as I assume them to be, are so intriguing that I had to go back and really look at them frame by frame as this all went down in the temple. We’re already getting the strong hint that women are about as 3rd class as it gets in this societal structure, and the boy’s mother is as passive as a cow in a sunny pasture herself, evidently so brainwashed into the expected behaviors of the system that she barely reacts at all to Zev’s appearance or her son’s anger. I mean, I almost feel like she is on a crapload of xanax or something. Likewise, the boy’s father doesn’t seem very perturbed beyond mild surprise, either, and as I watch the background behind them, I see another robot as part of the ‘wedding party’, as it were. This temple they’re in leaves a LOT of questions open and hanging.
Ok, here comes the good part. Watch the parents’ faces as the boy turns and screams again, “She makes me want to throw up! Get her out of here!”
Go Zev!!! ~Poor~ Zev, omg, she’s about to be executed just for having a perfectly normal healthy reaction to being treated badly. “Memory search complete.” The clamp lets go of her head. She knows what’s coming next.
“You- Zev Bellringer of B3K- have been found guilty of failing to perform your wifely duties and humiliating your husband in the temple.” I feel awful for her, I imagine the pain in her head from being jabbed with that probe must really suck on top of hearing this.
“You are hereby sentenced to be transformed into a love slave and to be given to Seminary 166145 to be used for their pleasure, may His Shadow fall upon you.” Whaaaa???
How old is this hologram program, anyway? I’m asking because I am noticing the lines across the judge’s image, like something in the electronics or software is worn out. Kinda creepy thinking that the guy used as the model for this program might be long since dead himself. The rail clangs over to a different track than the one Argon’s slab followed, and Zev’s slab moves forward toward another room as her defense advocate stands there smiling at her, frozen in place.
A robot walks along with the slab as she cries out, “Oh, please! Put me out of my misery! I volunteer for the protein bank!”
“I don’t want to live this terrible life anymore!”
And her slab follows the robot into the next room.
So, there is punishment worse than death, such as being reprogrammed to serve those who would continue to mistreat you, or even to live on in pieces and parts in things like robotic drones. I wonder how many of these ‘trials’ this robot has assisted with. Would you care if your body was forced to live on without your head? I think it would be creepy to have other people’s bodies walking around without their original heads, but I think everyone in the League of 20,000 is so used to it they don’t even think about it any more.
Zev’s trial makes me think a *lot* about not only the penal system on the Cluster, but the rigid societal control His Shadow must have throughout the League of 20,000 Planets. You slip up even just a little bit, that’s all the excuse they need to whisk you away and repurpose you. I think the whole gender class structure is just a cover for something far more menacing. If you can brainwash people to follow preset ruts without allowing them to think outside the lines, and then reinforce it with instant retribution in the form of immediate and absolute removal from society, never to be seen or heard from again, you wind up with a lot of people toeing the line and living in denial just to survive. Thinking about it only makes you miserable, saying something about it probably gets you killed sooner or later.
Trapped by high tech in low culture. His Shadow is a genius. Humans are so easy…
Original Zev Bellringer is played by Lisa Hynes – IMDb, but is credited in I Worship His Shadow as Lisa Hines.
This is part 8.
Go back to part 7.
Go on to part 9. (Continue to part 9 on this blog.)
Return to The Lexx.
Go to main blog.
Go back to part 7.
Go on to part 9. (Continue to part 9 on this blog.)
Return to The Lexx.
Go to main blog.
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