The show was well worth seeing, with excellent performances from the two gifted actors playing Hedwig and her lover Yitzak, and a tight and kickin' backup band playing the Angry Inch.
Hedwig's tale is a rough one.
Her character is...complex. She's fierce and fabulous and talented, of course. But there are strong intimations of sexual abuse in Hedwig's nascent queer boyhood, coupled with a relationship with an American G.I. that's blatantly predatory. Her transition is botched by an East German back-alley doctor, leaving her with a residual male stump...the eponymous "angry inch." Her one great love...a geeky army brat who's into D&D...abandons her upon being forced to confront the fact that she's not biologically female.
Darkly funny, relentlessly profane, and unquestionably fabulous, Hedwig is also kind of a horrible person. She's carrying so many scars, both figurative and literal, that she spreads her damage around. In particular, she's gleefully abusive to her lover Yitzak, a beaten-down drag queen who she berates, belittles, and oppresses with a performative and casual cruelty. It's a show with emotional depth, and for all of the rock-and-roll sturm und drang, remarkable subtlety.
Which made this a pungent show to begin a Pride month.
"Pride," glower Christians who have beef with Queer folk, "is a sin. Pride goes before the destruction, and a haughty spirit before the fall, Proverbs 16:18, right there in the Bible." Which, on one level, is true.
But on another level, it's completely and willfully missing the point. Being Queer isn't itself evil, brothers and sisters. It's a person's nature. It's morally neutral, and has no bearing on a human being's decency, compassion, or capacity to live according to the teachings of Jesus.
"Only if you're in power," comes the progressive reply, "because the First law of Intersectionality is that those without power cannot sin." Which, on one level, is true. If you are utterly powerless and have no agency, you cannot sin, because you can neither intend nor act.
But all human persons have agency. We are gifted at finding those weaker than themselves, and as hurt people, we hurt people. Queer folk are persons, not flawless magical fairyland creatures. All of us are beautifully gifted and a hot mess, all at the same time. And Lord have mercy, do we hunger hunger hunger for power.
Hedwig, as a character, is just such a soul. She finds power in her performances, power in creating desire in others, power in the attention her musical giftness creates, power in her charismatic forwardness. She's filled with pride, and it is from that pride...her sense of her own dominance, her power of role and place...that she dehumanizes and demeans Yitzak. Pride as sin needs inferiors, needs dominance, needs to belittle and oppress.
Like Mister sins against Celie in THE COLOR PURPLE, so does Hedwig misuse her place of agency. It's only when the hold of power is broken that Hedwig's tale takes a turn towards healing and a willingness to let go of her hunger for dominance and let others thrive. Humbled, Hedwig makes space for her lover to express their gifts...which only pride imagines diminish her own.
Better to be lowly in spirit along with the oppressed than to share plunder with the proud, and that we Christians so easily forget.
Proverbs 16:19, eh?
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