WARNING: PSEUDO-INTELLECUTALISM AHEAD
So, I’m sitting here in my office, minding my own business, when my precious little buddy and favorite drag king, Alana, drops me a line. It seems that some of her compatriots on a dragking listserv have “issues” with Hedwig. Apparently, they see it as anti-Semitic and offensive to transgendered folks and generally oppressive.
This makes me angry. Not angry that the play/movie has been misinterpreted; it’s kinda complex, and not everyone’s gonna get it. Nor am I angry that people have issues with the play; I mean, I think it’s freakin’ genius, but whatever, everyone’s entitled to an opinion.
No, I’m angered by the fact that middle-class white kids who’ve obviously got a liberal arts education under their belts could be so goddamn stupid and literal.
Here’s the deal: Hedwig is a story. A fantasy. Entertainment. At times, really good, engaging entertainment, but entertainment nonetheless. When we leave the theatre–“we” meaning “we, the people,” anyone in an audience–we understand it’s a story, it’s not a piece of propaganda, it’s not something we are supposed to intellectually internalize. When we walk out, we take away some good memories, but by and large, the world of the play gets left behind.
What I’m getting at is that after years and years of hashing these sorts of things out across conference tables from coast to coast, my personal take on all this PC “it’s-mysogynist-it’s-homophobic” rhetoric is that (a) phenomenologically speaking, we are programmed to understand the theatre as a place where fictions are told, fictions we can enjoy but soon forget; and (b) your average viewer is smarter than you give her/him credit for. I mean, Gone With the Wind is full of stereotypes and such, but you can’t honestly think that when Joe Blow watches it, he’s going to start thinking to himself, “Well, maybe slavery isn’t so morally reprehensible after all.” If Andrea Dworkin and Catherine McKinnon could learn this vis-a-vis porn, the world would be a better place.
More to the point, just because Hedwig invokes Hitler’s name and there’s a comic swastika used in a slide, that’s no reason to call the play anti-Semitic. It’s like Springtime for Hitler in The Producers. It’s camp, it’s funny. Laugh a little.
Nor do I think it’s offensive to the transgender community. Hedwig is not your typical transgender. Her operation’s botched. She would much prefer the clarity of being either a man or a woman, but she’s been denied that possibility. She is a fracture, like the song says, located in-between man and woman, German and American, aggressor and victim. She doesn’t stand in for anyone; you can’t take her story as commentary on the plight of anyone but herself.
To me, it sounds like the critics on the listserv are textbook, bourgeois white liberals–perennially bitter whiners who’d be perfectly happy if the movie hadn’t been so hyped, but because John Cameron Mitchell is suddenly the nation’s media darling, the crabs feel obligated to knock it. I say, if you’re going to knock a movie, knock something like Planet of the Apes that’s as big a piece of poorly written–and I use that term loosely–crap as I’ve ever seen, yet it’s funnelling truckloads of cash into the pockets of its already-wealthy producers. At least the money Christine Vachon and John Cameron Mitchell are making will go back into the production of good art. We hope.
Alana echoed my sentiments in more articulately than I could ever have done:
In terms of audience, I really think that anyone paying the ticket price to see Hedwig live or making the trip to their local art-movie house to see the film is probably gonna be savvy + aware enough to see the work for what it is (be that entertainment, queer fantasia, glam spectacle).
She did, however, bring up the question of Eminiem and where we draw the line–when we have to stop being flip with our “it’s only a movie” and get angry. It’s a complex issue, and like anything, it’s a matter of degree. But in the end, Hedwig clearly passes muster. If my hands weren’t cramped from a day’s worth of typing, I’d tell you why. Lucky you.
Okay, I feel vindicated. Who wants pizza?
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