After a disappointing live experience, I decided to watch the movie of Hedwig and the Angry Inch again. And just as I remembered, it has so much more heart and depth than the production I saw.
The meaning of Hedwig hinges on the song Origin of Love. As the young slip of a girly-boy Hansel, Hedwig was a philosophy student who developed his world view according to a speech from Plato’s Symposium by Aristophanes. The lyrics of the Origin of Love describe how, in the beginning we were all part of a two person being joined at the backs. The Gods became angry and split us in two, leaving us mourning for our literal ‘other half’. Our life is a quest to find our missing half- our soul mate- and become complete again. And this is how love came to be.
After I saw the play I had the nagging feeling that Hedwig, as both man and woman, was her own soul mate. But I couldn’t develop the idea further until I rewatched the film.
Throughout the film it’s suggested that Hedwig and Tommy Gnosis are in some way the same person and therefore each others’ soul mates. If all pairs of soul mates started out as one person it’s the same thing. For example, when Hedwig is stripped of drag at the end of the film he looks very similar to Tommy. There are other clues earlier in the film such as a mirror making their faces look like one.
It’s not just Plato’s creation myth which features in the film, the story of Adam and Eve is mused on by Tommy. In this story, one lover is created from the other as Hedwig makes Tommy Gnosis out of Tommy Speck. Tommy praises Eve for taking the apple, discovering knowledge and sharing it with the one she loves. He asks Hedwig to do the same for him and she does, she teaches him to be a rock star.
Hedwig believes that Tommy is his missing half, even after Tommy betrays her. At the end, Tommy sings to Hedwig, admitting that he has done her wrong and cares for her but also that we are alone in this world and there is no ‘missing half’ we are destined to be with.
Hedwig was torn apart not at the dawn of time but when she underwent her brutal ‘sex change operation’ maiming. This caused a split in her personality. Hansel Schmidt was naive and bookish. Hedwig Robinson is fierce, campy and over-confident. The song ‘Wig in a Box’ describes how we can manipulate our appearance to become someone else, literally making a mask out of make-up. Hedwig did not choose to live as a woman and keeping up the artifice clearly puts a strain on her sense of self.
In the finale Hedwig finally breaks down. He strips himself of his clothes, wipes off his make-up and accepts himself as himself, no longer pretending to be a woman. But because he has no phallus he is symbolically not a man either. He is part man, part woman, and he is whole. His tattoo of two ying-yanged faces morphs into one face, representing the resolution of his gender identity and the simultaneous realisation that there is no soul mate out there who can complete him. Plato’s creation myth is just a myth.
Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Just a camp, trashy musical? No way.
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