Plato’s lesson on gender: androgyny as a search for totality in Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001)

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DOI:

https://doi.org/10.34629/rcdmt.vol.1.n.1.pp103-120

Keywords:

Androgyne, Creation myths, Plato’s symposium, Rock music, Glam rock, Hedwig and the Angry Inch

Abstract

The myth of the Androgyne is appropriated in John Cameron Mitchell’s movie adaptation of his eponymous off-Broadway musical play Hedwig and the Angry Inch. This is a cinematic feat as the filmmaker foregrounds the main topic in the theme itself in a lowbrow approach clashing with its two main canonical sources: the Christian myth of Biblical creation and Plato’s mythological account in The Symposium. The transgender protagonist, Hedwig, is a human divide looking to be symbolically made whole, which she manages to as a rock musician. Thus, Plato’s myth of creation finds its natural artistic correlate in glam rock. Musical art is here equated with creation, and the androgynous artist Hedwig, endowed with both female and male psychic principles represents the core of the artistic duality. This film is not only an opus about creation in general, but a movie about the myth of the author and his/her intrinsic nature.

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Author Biography

  • Fátima Chinita, Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema, Instituto Politécnico de Lisboa

    Fátima Chinita, a PhD. in Artistic Studies, is the equivalent of an Associate Professor (Professora Adjunta) at the Film Department of Lisbon Polytechnic Institute’s Theatre and Film School, where she has been a faculty member since 1995, lecturing on Film Studies, Film Narrative and Film Production. She is the current director of the Masters’ Degree on Cinematic Project Development. She undertook post-doctoral research in intermediality, partly under the supervision of Professor Lars Elleström at Linnaeus University in Sweden, with a fellowship awarded by FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology, in Portugal. She publishes on intermediality and inter-arts, film narrative, metacinema and self-reflexivity, authorship and essay film. She was the recipient of the Excellency Award in IPL’s 2022 edition of the Scientific Awards for the category of Arts.

References

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Published

2022-07-25

Issue

Vol. 1 No. 1 (2022)

Section

Articles

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How to Cite

Plato’s lesson on gender: androgyny as a search for totality in Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001). (2022). RHINOCERVS: Cinema, Dança, Música, Teatro, 1(1), 103-120. https://doi.org/10.34629/rcdmt.vol.1.n.1.pp103-120