Hedwig, Part 1

by Austin and Demy

Quoted below is Aristophanes’ speech in Plato’s Symposium, the source material for Hedwig’s song “The Origin of Love.”  (You can read the whole of his speech at http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/sym.htm .)

“[Hephaestus:] ‘Do you desire to be wholly one; always day and night in one another’s company? for if this is what you desire, I am ready to melt and fuse you together, so that being two you shall become one, and while you live a common life as if you were a single man, and after your death in the world below still be one departed soul, instead of two–I ask whether this is what you lovingly desire and whether you are satisfied to attain this?’–

“There is not a man of them who when he heard the proposal would deny or would not acknowledge that this meeting and melting into one another, this becoming one instead of two, was the very expression of his ancient need.”

The themes of separation, division and reunion in “The Origin of Love” pervade this musical. In the opening song, Yitzhak tells the audience, “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.”  In one of the closing numbers, “Exquisite Corpse,” Hedwig sings the chorus, “A collage, / I’m all sewn up. / A montage, / I’m all sewn up.” Hedwig’s tattoo, of two half-faces on her right leg, becomes a whole face in the closing shot.  How do these themes of finding one’s other half play out in the movie?  Is the reunion of the two halves of her tattoo emblematic of her discovering her other half, or learning to live as a whole person?  Is it possible to find another half if you yourself are divided? Does Hedwig learn to live with the rift in her identity, or does that rift close? Does Hedwig bridge dichotomies, or deconstruct them?

What about the methods of reunion?  Yitzhak seems to become whole once he has the wig.  In “Exquisite Corpse,” reunion is accomplished surgically.  Hedwig wonders if two people can become one during sex.  Tommy thinks that paradise will be regained if Eve again enters Adam.  (What is being done to gendered sex roles in that idea?)  The movie ends with Hedwig alone on screen; does this mean she hasn’t been reunited?