(no subject)

[sebastienne]

Pantomime dames (Oh yes, we are!) raises some very interesting points, many of which I agree with. However, I'd take issue with its central analogy. Women are not all pantomime dames. We are not consciously mocking a certain kind of middle-aged lower-class femininity, we are not trying to make people laugh at our ridiculousness, and we are not trying to elicit heckling, although we often get it.

If any transgender-umbrella icon stands for all women, it is not the pantomime dame, but Hedwig, of Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Certainly, she's a less well-known symbol than the panto dame, and so would have served less well for Penny Red's article, but just for you lovelies here (a significant number of whom, I hope, will have seen the film in question), I'll explain why I think she works so much better.

Women (and, just to be absolutely crystal clear, even though I should not have to state this, I mean anyone who considers herself a woman and/or experiences the world perceived as a woman) are constantly made to feel in need of fixing. This is how they sell us make-up, epilators, hair-straighteners, botox, diet food, feminine deodorants: through the feeling that we fail at being women if we do not conform. Just to clarify, any suggestion that hair or sweat emerges from our skin is enough for us to fail this test.

Hedwig is an extreme example of such "failure". She has "tits of clay" and an "angry inch". The song "Wig in a Box" goes through the list of things that she has to do before leaving the house trailer as a socially-acceptable woman. Tellingly, this socially-acceptable woman ("Miss Midwest midnight checkout queen" or "this punk-rock star of stage and screen") is not an identity in which Hedwig is particularly comfortable ("until I get home, and I turn back to myself"). Her tirade which finishes the song, an explosion of hate towards overly-complicated women's hairstyles, resonates very strongly with me, and with other women I know. This is the kind of woman that we all are - forced, by societal pressure, to be things that we are not.

The film ends with Hedwig walking, naked, out into the streets of New York. All her make-up and artifice stripped away, she is finally able to face the world as herself, angry inch and all. This is the kind of woman I aspire, one day, to be.

(I am eliding nuance somewhat, but my essays about Hedwig and duality, Hedwig and "I am large, I contain multitudes" will have to wait for another day as the bus will soon be coming into Oxford.)

I will be protesting Stonewall's continued refusal to accept that their remit to serve LGB people means not supporting transphobia, by handing out flyers outside the V&A from 6.30pm next Thursday. I will not evangelise, but thought that you should all be aware that it was taking place.

Comments

[deathbyshinies.livejournal.com]

Oh, go you! That's fantastic news :D

Good essay, too - I don't really have anything to add ATM except a 'right on!'.

[robot-mel.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure Hedwig works, it's nice allusion but the whole point is that "hedwig" is just the illusion created by the men who loved Hansel. And at the end he gives up attempting to be the female Hedwig and goes back to being his unique self. I don't think Hansel is transgendered (in that he was a man who felt or wanted to be a woman), I see him as a gay man who took the operation to get out of East Germany and stay with his sugar daddy. An operation which turned out to be almost castration rather than an actual sex change.

It's an amazing movie/play about trying to find yourself and love. If Nick Garrison ever returns to London to do Hedwig though you'll have to come, his performance is Amazing. (Even JCM agrees!)

[sebastienne.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure that I agree. Right up to the very end Hedwig is allying herself with female icons - "here's to Patti, and Tina, and Yoko, Aretha, and Nona, and Nico, and me". And if her only attachment to her female persona was as a tool to get out of East Berlin, why not go back to living as a man in the Kansas trailer park?

In one of my unwritten essays about Hedwig, I'll go on to talk about her as bigendered, about her being both Tommy Gnosis and Hedwig, about her Tommy-Gnosis identity being stolen first by Luther, then by Tommy Speck, before she is finally able to combine her two identities at the end (symbolised by the split-face tatoo becoming complete, when she realises that she herself is one complete "child of the sun".)

Of course, part of the joy of this film, to me, is its ambiguity, and how it is open to so many different readings. So I'm certainly very happy to agree-to-disagree on this!

[robot-mel.livejournal.com]

I think she stayed living as a woman, because she came over as Luther's wife, was still living in the same trailer park and working for the general who had known her as Luther's wife. There wasn't money or strength to change back, that strength only came at the end, when she stopped trying to be Hedwig, and was able to accept what she really was underneath all the glamour and the glitter. Enforced gender ceased to matter at that point which is why she let Yitzak finally be who she really was.

I can agree about the bi-gendered, but I don't see that there was any desire for being a woman till Luther mistook her for one. Growing up (and till her mid-20s) it was all the "crypto-homo-rocker" she was self identifying with, Iggy Pop, David Bowie, Lou Reed. The identification with women only came later after the men had forced her into accepting the "feminine" role.

I guess you can say that she represents the struggle for women in that her life and identity is entirely formed based on the men's views of what she is, though I'm not entirely comfortable with saying that underneath we're all gay men! (It is almost Fruedian in a way seeing the representative of women as a castrated man).

But I do like discussing these things. And don't think we need to agree at all, but seeing other interpretations is interesting. For me the film is all about finding yourself, and that true love doesn't always work out, and gender really doesn't matter at all.

[sebastienne.livejournal.com]

For me the film is all about finding yourself, and that true love doesn't always work out, and gender really doesn't matter at all.

You're not going to catch me arguing any of those points with you!

But what I'm guessing you see as "true love doesn't always work out", I see as "true love doesn't really exist". I'm pretty sure I'm not just being a cynical-single in this, because I've thought it both in and out of relationships. That we force other people into roles, into being our "other halves" and completing us; when really we have to realise that we complete ourselves ("like your blood knows the way / from your heart to your brain / knows that you're whole") before we can have fulfilling relationships. It casts "The Origin of Love" in an awfully sad light, to me; the same way that I react to love stories that end with "and then they died and were together in the afterlife" - lovely idea, but my tears are of sadness at others' disillusionment, not of joy for the happy ending.

But then I don't believe in monogamy or forever. I wonder how someone who did would interpret it?

[robot-mel.livejournal.com]

I definitely agree that there's no such thing as the "other half". Though I'm torn with whether or not they actually buy into the myth they've created about the origin of love. I mean when she meets Tommy for the first time, she recognises him, and for the love of god I can't think why else she'd want to be with him as he's really frightfully sad "eyes with such beautiful depth and emptiness". Though I guess perhaps she just recognises him because she's been brought up to believe the myth that what's going to complete her is someone else.

I really don't think I know anyone who likes hedwig who does believe in monogamy or forever... Perhaps they just wouldn't get it. My ex-girlfriend did have the Origin of Love sung at her wedding, and her and her husband got the tattoos, but even they're not monogamous.

In the play the obession with Tommy comes across much stronger I think. He really does seem like the "true love" that's been lost, and the evil manipulator that stole all of Hedwig's material. Though I think having him off stage the whole time makes him more powerful, having him show up as the little dorky boy makes it much easier to go, Hedwig WTF are you thinking? As he clearly doesn't deserve her.

[robot-mel.livejournal.com]

I guess also the "turn back to myself" part in wig-in-a-box could alternately be interpreted as taking off the women persona Luther has forced her into "It's all because of you" accusing him of forcing Hansel to live out the false persona of Hedwig. I also think that after the operation Hansel did feel like he'd become emasculated and had no choice but to continue to life as a woman right up to the end.

Ah, this discussion is really wanting to make me go back and watch it again... I know I should be starting to read articles for homework. But talking about Glam rock gender transformations is just so much more fun...

[sebastienne.livejournal.com]

How interesting - I'd always taken the "it's all because of you" to be directed to the hairstyles listed, rather than to Luther. But of course both interpretations hold, and make sense!

I've been troubled by how I've not had to re-watch it to have this discussion. I actually appear to have a frame-by-frame memory of what the film looks like, and to know the entire script by heart.

I suppose this is what happens when you watch something ten times in the first week that you own it...

[robot-mel.livejournal.com]

I'd not thought of it referring to the hairstyles, my first introduction to Hedwig was my friend "the fabulous miss sylvia o stayforemore" did the wig-in-a-box song. In the play I think it came across as more fun, but in the film it's very very angry. Also in person hedwig can be rather terrifying, whereas I think in the film she comes across as more sympathetic, there's much less heckling/intimidating of the audience.

I think I had the play memorised before the film even came out! They put on an AMAZING production of it in Seattle. It's not that I need to see it again to remember, but that I just want to. I'm such a geek about it, I have both the movie soundtrack, the orginal cast recording and the tribute album. I loved the story of JCM having to pound Yoko Ono on the back to get her to be able to hit the high-notes, and Frank Black singing Sugar Daddy Always makes me laugh...

RIght back to CItyspace....

want a hand?

[aliche.livejournal.com]

Hey, I may just come and join in the flyering so long as I am free (which I probably am and I am presuming you mean the V&A in London).

Re: want a hand?

[sebastienne.livejournal.com]

Woo! 6.30-8.30 is when it is - check out the facebook group linked from my profile.