Hedwig at Fifteen

This Friday night, Halloween-een, I got to be on a panel discussion after a screening of Hedwig and the Angry Inch.  My university showed the movie to celebrate the 25th anniversary of German reunification, because Hedwig uses divided Berlin as a metaphor for divided identity:

On August 13th, 1961
A wall was erected
Down the middle of the city of Berlin
The world was divided by a cold war
And the Berlin wall
Was the most hated symbol of that divide
Reviled, graffitied, spit upon
We thought the wall would stand forever

And now that it’s gone
We don’t know who we are anymore
Ladies and gentlemen
Hedwig is like that wall
Standing before you in the divide
Between east and west
Slavery and freedom
Man and woman, top and bottom…

 – Hedwig and the Angry Inch, “Tear Me Down,” lyrics and music by Stephen Trask, 1998.

We talked about David Bowie in Berlin, David Bowie in outer space, East Berlin in cinema, Todd Haynes, Hollywood endings, Hedwig’s glorious eyeshadow.  One of the other people on the panel praised the movie for really blurring the lines of gender, really going beyond the gender binary, to the point where gender explodes.

I pointed out that this was actually a big problem with Hedwig.  The story isn’t about transition or trans people, not in real-life terms. It depicts transition as mutilation.  It turns trans people and trans bodies into symbols.  And this is a big problem with depictions of LGBTQ people in general – we’re not people, we’re figments made inspiring flesh.

I also said, because it was true and because I didn’t want to seem unkind, that I love Hedwig.  It’s catchy!  It makes me tear up!  All my friends love it!  We went and saw the onstage production!  We cried!  We laughed!  Problematic though it may be, it is still one of my faves.

Afterwards, one of the women in the audience asked me why I like Hedwig so much, if it has so many problems, if it turns trans identity into a gender bomb.

And I said, “Well, we always die at the end.”

This is true: we always die at the end.  For decades, this was mandatory.  Hollywood wasn’t allowed to show LGBTQ people unless their stories were sad.  Any other finale would have violated the Motion Picture Production Code, under which any positive depiction of “homosexuality” was literally a don’t.  If we ever did appear onscreen, we had to be punished.

Even when LGBTQ characters gradually started to have happy endings, we were still peripheral, beside the point of the love story.  There’s a running joke in the Hedwig movie about the Rent juggernaut.  (Rent was made into a movie in 2005; when Hedwig was adapted into a movie, it was an acclaimed Broadway musical.)  Rent contains a tragic gay relationship that is secondary if not peripheral – a character named Tom Collins falls in love with a drag queen named Angel; Angel dies of AIDS in Tom’s arms.  At the end of the movie, the protagonist’s true love, Mimi, miraculously survives an overdose, saying that Angel told her to “go back.”

To paraphrase the immortal Ryka Aoki, the trans character dies beautifully while the straight guy goes out for ICE CREAM with his GIRLFRIEND.

Hedwig is not a story about queer tragedy.  Hedwig is a story about tragedy turning to comedy and then to triumph.  Hedwig is a story about queer survival.  Hedwig lives.

It’s more than that, though.  The key to Hedwig’s gut-level appeal is in the last song:

Forgive me,
For I did not know.
‘Cause I was just a boy
And you were so much more

Than any god could ever plan,
More than a woman or a man.
And now I understand how much I took from you:
That, when everything starts breaking down,
You take the pieces off the ground
And show this wicked town
something beautiful and new.

- Hedwig and the Angry Inch, “Wicked Little Town (Tommy Gnosis version),” lyrics and music by Stephen Trask, 1998.

The protagonist of Hedwig and the Angry Inch doesn’t just get a happy(ish) ending.  Hedwig gets an apology.  Tommy Gnosis, the lover who abandoned Hedwig out of fear and self-absorption, stands up on stage and says, “I’m sorry I didn’t love you enough.  I’m sorry I stole all your joy.  I’m sorry I was ashamed of you.  I’m sorry I treated you like dirt.  On behalf of everyone who ever tore you down and did you wrong, I am so, so, so sorry.  Now, go forth and have a fantastic life, because you deserve it, you brilliant and unique star.”

Guess how often we get to hear that?

Homophobia and transphobia create shame.  LGBTQ kids grow up in a climate of imposed self-loathing; we’re constantly told, tacitly and out loud, that we are fake, disgusting, worthless, ugly, doomed, sick, other.  Part of coming out is casting off that hatred, coming into the realization that we deserve to be happy and safe.  For a lot of us, that’s a lifelong process.

And in real life, nobody sends you flowers and a “Sorry for Rick Santorum and middle school” card.

LGBTQ Americans are living through a transformative era, in the imperfect way of transformation.  Marriage equality just went federal.  Republican candidates are trying to draw some very delicate compromises between gay-marriage advocates and homophobes.  Transphobia is still constant and pervasive, but some people are starting to become slightly more aware that it’s, you know, hurtful.  Trans people now have legal protection against discrimination in the state of New York.  The LGBTQ community might have national anti-discrimination laws soon.  We’re having a moment, singing a happy song.

And it can feel a little bit ungrateful, maybe, to keep your heart in its overcast state, when good things are suddenly offered to you.  It can be lonely to feel this much anger and resentment for stuff that happened months ago – years ago!  It can be isolating to feel outraged about everything happening now.  Sort of like being the only person on the panel who wants to nitpick the use of a trans woman’s body to script a fairytale.  Or mention that Luther, the shitheel sugar daddy who abandons Hedwig in Junction City, Kansas, is a black man who doesn’t get anywhere near as much screentime or depth as limp, tormented, whitebread cornball Tommy.  Or those “Korean base wives” who stand in the background like literal props, like, what the hell was that about?  And why did every single person in the audience who asked a question refer to Hedwig as he when every single person in the audience who asked a question also described Hedwig as a trans character?

Things get awkward fast, is what I’m saying.  Lots of people really enjoyed Rent.

But in this glam-rock high-camp musical fantasy, just for a few minutes, a queer character is allowed to feel grief and anger and resentment.  Even when we don’t die at the end.  Hedwig doesn’t even have to bring it up!  Tommy Gnosis takes full responsibility for homophobic, transphobic people everywhere.

In Hedwig’s song cycle, that mournful, devastated remembrance is necessary for reconciliation, part of survival.  I think it’s necessary to us, too, down here offstage, but it’s hardly ever allowed to walk into the spotlight and give voice.