Hot Take on Hedwig

Note: This article is a part of my ongoing series of content in celebration of Pride Month. Pride Month is celebrated each year during the month of June in honor of those who fought for LGBTQ+ rights beginning with the Stonewall Riots in 1969. Before I begin this commentary, let me just say that I am not an expert on the transsexual experience and that I am a product of my generation. It is not my intent to be offensive, however, as I relay Hedwig's story I will use both gender pronouns at different points in her life.

Synopsis - Hedwig and the Angry Inch 

Disfigured after a botched sex-reassignment surgery, East Berliner Hedwig Robinson, tours the United States with her band, The Angry Inch,  telling her story through song as she chases fame and he ex-lover Tommy Gnosis. 

Commentary 

*** THIS COMMENTARY CONTAINS SPOILERS  ***

I first saw Hedwig and The Angry Inch in late 2001 or early 2002. It was back in the day when Netflix was new and they still mailed you the DVDs. It was recommended to me by a friend who said that if you liked The Rocky Horror Picture Show, you'll love Hedwig and the Angry Inch. 

Although it is a rock-musical with comedic elements this is a powerful and touching film. Before she was Hedwig, he was Hansel. I personally don't see any indication that Hansel had any form of gender dysphoria. Hansel was an impressionable young man but I don't think he was transsexual. More than likely he was gay or bisexual.  Hansel felt repressed in an oppressive place and time on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall. He wanted freedom and love. I don't think he really wanted  to have sex-reassignment surgery but he made that sacrifice so he could marry his American GI lover, Luthor, and leave the country. 

After her husband left her for another young man (with all his equipment in tact), Hedwig was left alone and vulnerable in a foreign country - but she was a survivor. Hedwig picked herself up by her high heels, strapped on her lace front wig,  and got on with the business of living. She met the naïve Tommy Speck and entered into a vague sexual relationship with him. Hedwig transformed plain old Tommy Speck into the rock star Tommy Gnosis only to be abandoned by him once Tommy learned of Hedwig's true nature. 

Hedwig follows Tommy from city to city telling her story in song near anywhere Tommy is playing. In her song Origin of Love, Hedwig draws upon Plato's Symposium and describes three different types of genders comprised of two beings fused into one. They are Male/Male (Children of the Sun) , Female/Female (Children of the Earth), and Male/Female (Children of the Moon). The song goes on the explain how these humans were divided into the genders and scattered across the globe by jealous and angry gods.  This is a concept that was also explored in the 1991 film The Butcher's Wife. 

This story is said to explain the various sexualities and speculates that the act of sex is our way of trying to reunite with the missing parts of ourselves.  Hedwig speculates. "it is clear that I must find my other half, but is it a he or a she?" Hedwig may believe that Tommy is her other half and that in order to feel whole, she needs to reunite with him. When Tommy and Hedwig are caught in the act, the truth comes to light and Hedwig finally captures some of the fame, attention, and validation she has been craving for so long  and which she thought would make her whole, yet she still feels incomplete. 

In my opinion, Tommy was for Hedwig more than a ex lover who spurned and hurt her, but rather Tommy was the boy that Hansel (Hedwig) never got to be.  In the end Hedwig confronts the ghost of Tommy within her own psyche and learns that wholeness can only come from within. As she walks off stage stripped of her wig and makeup (the artificial persona she created for herself) she now bears the mark of Tommy Gnosis upon her head - the Solar Cross, hinting that she may now identify as male and can rediscover himself as the man he always was on the inside. 

This movie taught me the importance of loving and accepting myself. That when I love myself I won't change myself or make unnecessary sacrifices in order to be loved by someone else and finally that I do not need other people  to love me in order to have self-value and self-worth albeit these are lessons I have to re-visit from time to time. 

- Carolina Dean