Due Feb 23
Hedwig and the Angry Inch: Rage and Redemption
Hedwig originated as an off-Broadway musical not many years after gay rights organizations like Act Up had shown the value of confrontational, in-your-face protests in bringing public attention to the AIDS crisis: “We’re here. We’re queer. Get used to it,” Queer Nation activists chanted at protests throughout the Nineties. Their righteous anger reverberates in Hedwig’s opening line, “Ladies and gentlemen, whether you like it or not . . . Hedwig!” As conceived by creators John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask, Hedwig’s a heat-seeking missile targeted on the squeamish sensibilities of Middle America, anatomically neither male nor female, born a boy but very much a woman.
This may seem like an odd choice of movie to pair with our unit on Ancient Athenian culture and society. But Hedwig has a lot in common with Euripides’ Medea: not merely her rage but her marginalized status and her witchy power to work wonders. And what’s more the transformative capacity of love in Hedwig’s story neatly anticipates the ideas in Plato’s Symposium.
Viewing: John Cameron Mitchell’s 2001 movie, Hedwig and the Angry Inch available via the BU Library: link.
Writing: Respond to ONE of the following prompts. Keep your response short, posting as a reply under the appropriate heading in the comments section:
- Point out a moment where the movie calls attention to marginalization. In doing so, take note of what we see/hear, and how those details influence the audience’s emotional response.
- The movie’s soundtrack offers a wide range of styles, from glam-rock to punk. Focusing on one song in particular, give a brief account of the song(s) it draws from—and what the movie is saying by means of that cultural reference.
- Is Hedwig a love story? Answer with a tight focus on a particular scene or song.
The Theme of Marginalization in Hedwig
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A scene where Hedwig and Angry Inch clearly calls attention to marginalization is when Hedwig’s monologue about the Origin of Love. As she talks about the fragmented story of humans being split apart by the gods and the music swells with a mix of sadness and longing, while the visual change between intimate closeups. Hedwig;s vulnerability as she sings about not being whole, and we can see and hear her voice crach with both power but also pain. This mixture engage the audience into a hole of deep emotional space. And that we dont simply only understand her marginalization theoretically, but we also feel the loneliness and isolation of not be able to blend in into a singular and an identity that is accepted. Hedwig’s performance make her personal pain into a collective experience, this makes the audeine empathize with the way the society separates and stigmatizes people who are differetn;
One moment that really stands out is when Hedwig casually describes her botched surgery like it’s just part of her act. She wraps this genuinely brutal story in jokes and performance, and at first you laugh, but then it kind of hits you. The surgery wasn’t done for her; it was done so she could be legally useful to someone else, to cross a border, to serve a marriage. The film uses her humor against you a little, making you realize you just laughed at a system that treated her body like a paperwork problem.
Musical Styles in Hedwig
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Is Hedwig a Love Story?
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I don’t think that Hedwig is necessarily a love story; it’s more a story about identity and discovering who you are. Throughout the movie, Hedwig struggles with finding her counterpart who will make her whole. Whenever she thinks she has found someone who would complete her, they always end up not being the right fit. This is because Hedwig needs to find herself first and come to terms with her identity before finding her true counterpart. In the song “Wig in a Box”, Hedwig sings about how putting on a wig allows her to become the person she wants to be and escape her real life, yet when she takes it off, she is lost again. This is the central theme of the movie: Hedwig figuring out who she is as a person. Her relationship with gender identity is complex, she has dealt with a lot of abandonment, she uses performing as a front to hide her true feelings, and she feels incomplete. The movie takes us through the path of Hedwig’s journey to self-acceptance. So, in a way, it is actually a love story about Hedwig learning to love herself.
I think Hedwig and the angry inch is a love story. But its not a traditional one where its too people learning to love one another. I think it’s about Hedwig learning to love her/himself as they realize that they are their own soulmate. They need to learn to accept both the male and female versions of themselves. They can’t look outwards for love if it does not come from within first. A moment in the film that shows this is the final animation which shows the two halves becoming whole. They struggle to fit as Hedwig has for all these years but eventually learn to be comfortable in together. This is reflected Hedwig finishing the film without their drag as they are living in their own skin.