Upstream - S2E8.5: Hedwig and the Angry Inch

Episode Date: September 21, 2022

Find the full episode at our reasonably-priced patreon! https://www.patreon.com/killjamesbond ------ Lets not beat around the bush here: Alice did not participate in bringing a movie that means a lot to her, instead opting to show us Winter Kills. After an internal disciplinary process, she performed malicious compliance and dropped a transgender emotional nuke on us. So, we watched Hedwig. And we had a lot of thoughts. ------ *WEB DESIGN ALERT* Tom Allen is a friend of the show (and the designer behind our website). If you need web design help, reach out to him here:  https://www.tomallen.media/   Kill James Bond is hosted by Alice Caldwell-Kelly, Abigail Thorn, and Devon. You can find us at https://killjamesbond.com and https://twitter.com/killjamesbond

This is gonna hurt, you can leave that in. How did some slip of a girly boy from communist dis Berlin become the internationally ignored song stylist barely standing before you? It's a bonus episode, so I don't need to introduce it, do I? Nope, no, no, who we are. You know who we are? You know who we are. We watched Hedwig and the Angry Edge because we've been going around in a circle where we watch a movie that's been very meaningful to us. And last time, I dodged that. I got out of it. And so, you know, in recompense,

what I decided to do was perfectly psychologically obliterate not only myself, but also my two brothers. Alessas has been charging her fucking attack. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. a fucking attack. So cards on the table listeners, I had a big and the angry inch is like a cult trans classic. And despite that, I had never seen it before. I'll just recommend it. And I said this in a group chat, and I don't think I've ever been so moved by a piece of film in all my life. This was so fucking incredible. And there are probably gonna be parts of this episode that get quite emotional.

There might be, because like there's certain bits of this film that I don't think I can talk about without either revealing a lot of personal shit about my life or just like crying. So there's like genuine alert to you listeners. This episode will be like a fun and entertaining episode of Gilgames One. But it is also likely that you will have to hear us be very sad.

And I know that you don't want that because we're friends in real life. That's why you're here on the Patreon. I know that you're a real friend and you really care about us for real and we know you and we're not just strangers to you. That's why you give us your money. So it might be a little bit heavy going. It might be. This might be the co-James Bond therapy hour.

Oh, two or three hours, because there's a lot to say. Yes, yes, there is. I think it's as best if we just die straight into it. We get our opening shot, in fact, is a woman in a huge blonde wig throwing a parasol behind her over her shoulder without looking and entering into the service door of a chain seafood restaurant called bilge waters. Which already tells you a lot of what you need to know. And then we get the first song, because this is a musical. It's based on stage musicals and adaptation.

song because this is a musical. It's based on stage musicals and adaptation. And so this woman opens a pair of big sort of like wings that look like the Berlin Wall, which have refeeded on them, Yankee Go Home with me, which is one of my favorite jokes in, I would say, any musical. And as an incidental thing, this is now sometimes staged differently. I've seen a production of this where instead of Yankee going home with me, they have gender as a construct in big pink letters. And I'm like, it's not funny. Okay, what you've done there, what you've done there is you've taken away a perfectly good and like character developing joke and replaced it with I know writers who use subtext

and all kind of. This is the theme of the movie. Check this out. There you go. So this is a, this is not protagonist, headvig, who, um, I guess, so immediately we have to add a bunch of asterisks here because yes, yes, it describes headvig as a woman, which I think is, I think is accurate. I, my interpretation of this film is that headvig is a trans woman. accurate. My interpretation of this film is that Headrig is a trans woman. That is kind of slightly complicated because... Let's at the moment say drag queen, right? Another very loaded, very emotional term. I don't know. And it's also... I don't think she is.

This is the way that a lot of the actors and the producers describe Headfick and the thing is, we're going to get into this, I'm glad that I have one mind on this. I believe that that's wrong. And I think that they, in large part, made a better movie than they meant to. But so Headfick is a singer, right? He's definitely a singer. Yes, that unquestionable. She, she has a band, the angry inch,

who are a collection of miscellaneous Eastern Europeans and her husband Yutshak, who talk about later. Hard, I have some thoughts. Yeah, yeah. Oh, me too, me too. Oh, yeah. And that they are playing in this shitty, sort of like, chain seafood restaurant, build waters. The reaction shots of like the baffled, disgusted crowd, some of my favorite

parts of this movie. It's just people who are in there to like eat their lunch or eat their dinner and a confront. It's like very gender-per-for-words, because she sings the first song of film, she's called Temy Down, in which she, yeah, they're all bangers, in which she sort of adopts the persona of the Berlin wall as kind of a dividing line between gender and invites the audience to try and tear her down. Yes, and it's something that I enjoy about this movie and about a lot of musicals in general,

is that, you know, notwithstanding, gender as a construct wings, they do have a way of getting out front with this is what the movie's dealers. And so this is what the movie's dealers is. Hedwig is from communist East Berlin. And she is like the Berlin wall in that she is a, you know, a divide between East and West freedom and slavery.

Male and female. Man and woman. And it's also a target for destruction. Yes, incidentally, and this is going to get into what I think the viewpoint of this movie is, the joke line after male and female is top and bottom. But yes, so hevig has come to the United States to perform, to find a new life, but she is this, well, she says this is not much difference between a bridge and a wall, right?

She's something in between genders. The song rocks, the crowd are not old as they should be. And there's this first little moment when Yichark is like singing, he gets a bit too into it and Hedwig pulls his mic cable. Yes, yes. He gets a bit too into it and Hadwig pulls his mic cable. Yes. Yes. And this, Hadwig is not a good person.

This is an interesting movie about a person who is like... It's really, very interesting that they make that choice. That she is not a kind of pure victim. She is a little bit monstrous on occasion. Yes, yes. And so we cut to after the show, Itchark and Hadwig are in the room headwickers has come back drunk. The room is like comically full of blonde wigs.

And we see we see a joke kind of like look at some of the characters this way. Interestingly, yeah. She like, you know what? This is a difficult thing. I'm going to use he and the entire way through for you. So I just make things easier. I think that is what the car. I think the character is meant to be a cis man.

The character is a cis man, right? That's my understanding as a character is a cis man. He is played by a woman in this, and he has some backstory that is in the stage show but isn't in this movie. Yes, there it comes up. But he, in fact, is a drag queen. But that on our big, he was the drag queen, as we would understand a drag queen today. That's

right. I think the backstory in the musical is that Headvig has forbidden him from performing in drag again. That's right, because Headvig being headvig has no interest in someone else doing drag right next to doesn't want to like get up staged. As we see, she's like quite controlling. Again, like if we interpret headbangers being a trans woman, then it would make sense that she would not want to be seen next to drag queen. She wouldn't want people to think that she's one. But I, you know, we'll get into this. We get another great bit of the trans experience here, which is she comes and she's had this this moment, a moment which I think will be doubly familiar

to any trans woman who has ever performed anything ever, where she's like this sort of mean looking older woman. She came up to me after the show, I didn't have anything in my hands, I was going to go for the eyes. And then she comes at me from both sides and she gives me a fucking hug. And it like, headwigs, sort of like bafflement and also sort of exhaustion there. That nails two things that cis people in general are not really supposed to know about, which is both the sort of hyper vigilance and also this sort of crossing the street to avoid overly supportive liberals kind of thing. And where Hedva comes down on this is why I got some drinks out of it. So it's all good. And yeah, maybe that it's the best you can do

sometimes. It just rings very true. This movie has a lot of insights into the trans feminine soul at least I would say. And then they they have a moment who are in her husband where they kiss a little bit. They are interrupted by something on the TV, which is somebody else performing the song that we have just heard Hadwicks sing. Yes, and it's a boy Michael Pitt. Look at it. It's more to character in the movie Had headwink. So yes, not that fucking easy. But the egg, but relative relative to headvig this character is simply

portrayed ostensibly as a boy, which we I believe there may be some debate about that that will occur later on. Now it's imperative that you use the audience know that this character is presented as a boy. A boy, this is like a big singer, superstar called Tommy Noces. Noces. All right, that's enough of that. The rest of this episode will remain on the Patreon.

And we won't be unlocking it because it's too real. So there is only one way to listen to the rest of this. And that is to get a patreon.com such killjins want to sign up for just 5 pounds a month, the entire backlog.