Hedwiggin’ for Good

This day (yesterday, actually) marks the official commencement of my thesis construction. I sat in front of Hedwig and the Angry Inch with a notebook and pen in hand and one of my remotes close within reach.

I analyzed the film, scene by scene, eventually ending up with 11 pages of worth of cinematic thoughts. I'm no expert in such things, having no background in film theory to speak of. But I set out on this experience despite my apprehension, endeavoring only to spark an enthusiasm for thought and writing that must accompany me during this process.

I am to begin with a question. What is this identity thing? Too broad. Gender? Still too broad. The gendered figure? Perhaps I'm getting closer.

And this is the question I had in my mind as I analyzed the film today. What is this gendered figure's path in the society depicted in the film? Never before have I watched Hedwig with such scrutiny. And never before have I come away from it with so much feeling as to its meaning as I did today.

I dissected the final scenes, understanding so much more the role that Tommy Gnosis plays in Hedwig's life. And in the end, it's not just gender that Hedwig wants to strip herself of. I think I may want to use this figure to address my previous goal of destroying identity altogether.

I gave up on this initially because I had a conversation with my advisor (then 60s Movement's prof) about the fact that identity cannot be destroyed because it exists and we need it. This was her point. I accepted it and decided to instead concentrate on ways unintelligible individuals exist within an identity structure. But I think I'm over that again.

There seems to be some missing logic to the belief that we can't destroy it because it's here to stay. It exists because we created it. We perform and re-perform the stuff identity is made of. We persist in its mixtures and blindly accept what it feeds us. We have no power in it, because, according to Foucault (and this is extremely paraphrased because I haven't read enough), we don't have power.

Instead, it exists outside of our control; it moves around in and out of the mechanisms that comprise an (in this case) identity structure. So wouldn't it stand that identity is not fixed and therefore can't be defined? Of course. It's been said before. But something's not taking in our little world of "can't we all just get along?"

At no time in the film, especially during her performances, was Hedwig comfortable with what she was presenting, performing (Butler), for the audience. That is until the end when she, having ripped off every piece of gender identifying clothing, performs "Midnight Radio." Is she Hedwig? Is he Hansel (the "boy" abandoned for the new Hedwig identity). Or does it even matter?

And if not, can we live with the fact that it doesn't matter? There is an idea of peace that resonates during this scene, which is complemented by a white set and the white costumes of the band. And the figure whose trials we have followed throughout the film now exists quite comfortably in the unintelligibility that has been accepted. (Yes this is a strange syntactical construction. This will be a problem for me. I refuse to do the "h/she" "s/he" bullshit that comes with any discussion of this topic. I don't want to use "it." My point is to break out of this binary and I don't want to be confined by language. I'll have to think about this one.)

Hedwig suffers the aforementioned trials because of the gender/sex binary that, first Hansel, then Hedwig does not fit into. So at the end of the film, as the new figure walks naked away from the audience down a dark alley, there is something new to discover.

The audience doesn't know what it will be; it can't see the sex-identifying organs, which, up to this point, have been in the form of an "angry inch." And the figure doesn't know; this is clear when, after having reached the end of the alley, the figure looks to the left and then to the right a few times, and then makes the decision to cross the street taking a journey outside of this final binary.

Other binaries that the figure has abandoned are: man/woman; male/female; tommy/hedwig; yitzak/hedwig; mother/hansel. Each of these binaries represents something significant to Hansel's and Hedwig's growth and then subsequent relinquishment of all things that have been defining.

So at the film's conclusion, we have an end, nudity, a choice, a decision, and a beginning. It's now 4:33 and I have no idea how any of this is coming out. These are all preliminary thoughts. I began this post planning to discuss how my new observations at the end of the film relate to me, but I'm too tired. There's something crazy going on with this identity stuff. And Butler, et al. aside, I think I'm going to attempt to eradicate its significance. Forget academia. Forget that it's been done. I want to do it differently. Hedwig will help. And so will Orlando. They are ultimately two figures, born and bred in a social system that, apparently, has very little control in containing them. The onus for their existence then does not rest on their shoulders, which is something we can see in the violence that erupts toward different-identitied individuals. Rather, it rests on the participation of everyone in a social system that has evolved out of itself and is thus losing its ability to contain the very thing it has created.

I meant to stop eight minutes ago. I will stop now.