Hi dear tutor, I got 57/100 in this paper so I really need help. I have so much work going on so I can’t spend too much time on this. It’s a film analysis and the film is Hedwig and the angry Inch, please be SPECIFIC about scenes you pick. I think I n

20180321034035key_concepts x20180321033959draft
 

Hi dear tutor,

I got 57/100 in this paper so I really need help.

I have so much work going on so I can’t spend too much time on this.

It’s a film analysis and the film is Hedwig and the angry Inch, please be SPECIFIC about scenes you pick.

I think I need a new, clear, logical thesis statement and supporting details of it.

I have 3500 words already but since they are not good please feel free to rewrite or delete the part you don’t like.

I’ve attached our course readings but they are a lot so I’d like to have a tutor who is already familiar with the musical genre.

I’ll also attach the key concepts in our course and please use them in the essay as many as you can.

You also need to compare the movie with another movie in class – I will provide the list.

The most important thing in this assignment:

A clear, logical, narrow thesis statement.

Analyze scenes in DETAIL with key concepts and close readings.

The prompt:

This should be a full-length (min 3,500 words) draft of your final paper — as complete as you can manage, including:

1. Close readings of your primary film as the basis of your analysis

2. Close reading of film(s) that you consider the “intertext” of your film analysis — this is where you compare relevant intertextual moments/characters/elements

3. Accurate use of written sources such as theory/history to support your approach

4. A clear, narrow focus.

It is preferable to include extra close reading/analysis than to submit a draft with generalizations in place of evidence. Remember, you will only have one week to revise the paper for a final grade after you receive it back with comments. Take advantage of the revision process to get feedback on your best possible work.

The feedback:

Evelyn, Your paper lacks a clear thesis or idea. It rambles a fair bit, often repeating ideas from earlier on, and there is a lot of plot summary. I’m also not sure that your intertexts are helping you at all. They are more like digressions that don’t tie into any clear logic. Why don’t you compare Hedwig to one of the other films we saw – a film that uses popular music, for example, or that explores gender norms. You could also analyze the style of the musical, using some of the readings from Altman? From that comparison you can make an argument that goes beyond the moral or message of the film itself.

In Class reading：

Guy Debord, “Society of the Spectacle” (excerpts)

Siegfried Kracauer, “The Mass Ornament”

Susan Sontag, “Notes on Camp”

Roland Barthes, “The Grain of the Voice”

Michel Chion, “The Three Listening Modes”

Kriss Ravetto-Biagioli, “Feminizing Fascism” from Unmaking Fascist Aesthetics

Carol Vernalis, excerpts from Experiencing Music Video: Aesthetics and Cultural Context

Tell me if you can’t find the movie resources, I will help you with that.

 

MovieList

The Band Wagon (1953), dir. Stanley Donen

The Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933), dir. Mervyn LeRoy

Top Hat (1935), dir. Mark Sandrich

Cabaret (1972), dir. Bob Fosse

The Wizard of Oz (1939), dir. Victor Fleming, King Vidor, George Cukor, Norman Taurog

My Fair Lady (1964), dir. George Cukor

Cabin in the Sky (1943), dir. Vincente Minelli

Nashville (1975), dir. Robert Altman

Dancer in the Dark (2000), dir. Lars von Trier

Moulin Rouge! (2001) dir. Baz Luhrman

Presence:

The argument about “flesh n’ blood” spectacle: seeing live performers VS THEMATIC presence: where everything is repeatable, people can do more than in real life, you can use angle/perspective and the manipulation of the camera.

ex: the hand dance

Spectacle

I think it’s got to do with how the spectacle is not just the film, but also includes the audience as well.

Or, Spectacle is a event or a scene that is memorable to the audience. Some film scenes show things that people would rarely see on the daily basis (ex. train coming directly to the viewers) that is considered as a spectacle.

Also, spectacle is is not just about the individual, but the group as well

Camp

According to Sontag, “the essence of Camp is its love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration. And Camp is esoteric – something of a private code, a badge of identity even, among small urban cliques”.

[2]

The essay moves between examples and comparisons to reflect on the changes in camp over time, from a phenomenon of which no one speaks, otherwise it would be betrayed, and of which little is said “apart from a lazy two-page sketch in Christopher Isherwood’s novel the World in the Evening (1954)”

[3]

; to a shared mode paraded in art and cultural artifacts produced by Western post-human society. In order to define camp in 1964, Sontag had to make 57 points. In summary, camp sensitivity “is a certain mode of aestheticism. It is one way of seeing the world as an aesthetic phenomenon. (It is) not in terms of beauty, but in terms of the degree of artifice, of stylization.” It is decorative art, which favors “style at the expense of content

[5]

“, a concept emphasized several times to conclude that “Camp is the consistently aesthetic experience of the world. It incarnates a victory of “style” over “content,” “aesthetics” over “morality,” of irony over tragedy

[6]

.” In fact, “The whole point of Camp is to dethrone the serious. Camp is playful, anti-serious. More PRECISELY, Camp involves a new, more complex relation to “the serious.” One can be serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious”

[11]

.

The Mass

Mass society as its own ornament was how the German social critic Siegfried Kracauer understood the street life of the dying years of the Weimar Republic. Kracauer began his essay by observing that you can understand an era better by looking at its superficial ways of self-expression than by examining its considered judgements upon itself (which have a tendency to elevate and justify). ‘The mass is forced to contemplate itself (mass meetings, mass demonstrations). The mass is always present to itself and often in the aesthetically seductive form of an ornament or an emotionally moving image.’ The structure of the mass ornament reflects that of the entire contemporary situation. Since the principle of the capitalist production process does not arise purely out of nature, it must destroy the natural organisms that it regards either as means or as resistance. Community and personality perish when what is demanded is calculability; it is only as a tiny piece of the mass that the individual can clamber up charts and can service machines without any friction. A system oblivious to differences in form leads on its own to the blurring of national characteristics and to the production of worker masses that can be employed equally well at any point on the globe…The mass ornament is the aesthetic reflex of the rationality to which the prevailing economic system aspires. ..No matter how low one gauges the value of the mass ornament, its degree of reality is still higher than that of artistic productions which cultivate outdated noble sentiments in obsolete forms—even if it means nothing more than that.

The Tiller girls are indissoluble girl clusters whose movements are demonstrations of mathematics. One need only glance at the screen to learn that the ornaments are composed of thousands of bodies, sexless bodies in bathing suits. The regularity of their patterns is cheered by the masses, themselves arranged by the stands in tier upon ordered tier. These extravagant spectacles, which are staged by many sorts of people and not just girls and stadium crowds, have long since become an established form. Although the masses give rise to the ornament, they are not involved in thinking it through. As linear as it may be, there is no line that extends from the small sections of the mass to the entire figure. But despite what they think, the aesthetic pleasure gained from ornamental mass movements is legitimate.

The “Dissolve” (Altman)

My notes on this aren’t great but I’ll post em here so we have a starting point.

The dissolve

Somewhat seamless from real to Performance

Dissolve: the transition in the dance part. for example: where they start walking in sync to the beat …etc

Audio : Music and dance, diegetic sound, diegetic music → music track, everyday movement or rhythmic movement or dance

Audio Dissolve:

Till The Clouds Roll By (1946), dir. Vincente Minelli, et al

Singin’ in the Rain (1952), dir. Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly

Video: thematic, ideal, visual bridge blur “reality” and dream. (Relationship between YOU and the main characters and the entertainment and film frames. How we should respond to entertainment. -> ideology of the musical: it’s fine to just have fun and enjoy and like it. )

Video Dissolve:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWVd_nko9Jw&ab_channel=TheManThatGetsAway

Personality: Paired characters represent each others’ repressed selvesSurface component-“Make Believe”-Submerged component. The two main characters are foils and in the fantasy space, we can be who we really are. Common ground is Music and Dance.

Personality:

“Everyday movement”

Marilyn Monroe’s distinctive walk is an example of “movement beyond utility.

Fosse & “Vertical Film Format”

Watch for examples of “dancerly excess” throughout Minelli’s performance in

Cabaret.

“The dissolve” Excessive movement –? The duration is increasing more and more. -> The transition becomes the entire film?

Cabaret – Bob Fosse -> CHICAGO

Some characters live in the musical world in the entire film – always extra. Dance and film narrative structure parallel each other and reflect each other.

Spectatorship: “Transferred into the film itself, the opposition between the audience and the projected image sets up a fundamental tension between a world given as real and another realm portrayed as ideal.” (60)

___

____ _________________________

Chion’s Three Modes of Listening

Causal: What it comes from Where is the “laughter” coming from? Why is sound happening?

Listening to a sound in order to gather information about its cause(or source).

Causal listening, the most common, consists of listening to a sound in order to gather information about its cause (or source). When the cause is visible, sound can provide supplementary information about it

Reduced: Focuses on the traits of the sound itself, independent of its cause and of its meaning.

Pierre Schaeffer gave the name reduced listening to the listening mode that focuses on the traits of the sound itself, independent of its cause and of its meaning. However, reduced listening has the enormous advantage of opening up our ears and sharpening our power of listening. Film and video makers, scholars, and technicians can get to know their medium better as a result of this experience and gain mastery over it. The emotional, physical, and aesthetic value of a sound is linked not only to the causal explanation we attribute to it but also to its own qualities of timbre and texture, to its own personal vibration.

Semantic: A code. For example language: the meaning in the words. Defined by culture codes and assumptions.

Refers to a code or a language to interpret a message: spoken language, morse code, etc.

This mode of listening, which functions in an extremely complex way, has been the object of linguistic research and has been the most widely studied. One crucial finding is that it is purely differential. A phoneme is listened to not strictly for its acoustical properties but as part of an entire system of oppositions and differences. In a sense, causal listening to a voice is to listening to it semantically as perception of the handwriting of a written text is to reading it.

Tools for causal listening and diegetic versus non- diegetic sounds

Reduced listening

Texture:

– Monophony – are melody

-Polyphony -multiple melodies.

They can create HARMONY (Multiple melodies harmonize or NOT).

Tonality, Texture, Meter, & Timbre
(in music, be prepared to link to examples)

Tonality:
the relationship of a melody and its harmony to a central tone (DO) as in DO-RE-ME-FA-SOL-LA-TI-DO./
Tonality
is the arrangement of pitches and/or chords of a musical work in a hierarchy of perceived relations, stabilities, attractions and directionality. In this hierarchy, the individual pitch or triadic chord with the greatest stability is called the tonic.

Texture:
the way sound is layered together in music. (Example: monophony: melody and polyphony: multiple melodies, Little Fugue in G Minor – Bach is polyphonic)

Meter: the grouping of beats into units of twos, threes, fours or more by accenting the first beat of each unit, creating a repetitive pattern of strong (accented) and weak beats. (Example: Duple or Triple).

Timbre:
the tone quality of the sound being produced

Examples that can be used with these terms: Opera-Summertime , Jazz (Ella-Summertime), Leona Lewis- popular music (these different styles have different textures, tonality, etc.)

Vertical Film Format

Screen taller than wide – shown in cabaret, bib black bars.

Short Answer Questions:

What are the typical features of the film musical genre? What are some of the problems in defining the genre of the musical?

Film musical genre: Film in which songs sung by the characters are interwoven into the narrative, sometimes accompanied by dancing. The songs usually advance the plot or develop the film’s characters, though in some cases they serve merely as breaks in the storyline, often as elaborate “production numbers”. There is a lot more associated with genre in terms of tropes and expectations.

However, It is hard to sum up information on genre because it is nearly impossible to separate intertext from genre discourse. When we are discussing genre we are discussing the expectation brought forth by a milieu of many other films. In this class, we are not interested in using genre solely as a form of classification. Rather, we use genre as an interpretive framework. “So, we want to watch for and analyze the ways that a film marks itself as belonging to the genre, the musical. And yet…borders are never pure, if only because the generic mark is itself outside genre. Furthermore the genre of “Film Musical,” is nearly always full of meta-referentiality.”

What is the “dual focus narrative”? Be prepared to provide film examples and use Altman’s theory in your analysis.

Altman: The musical doesn’t care about the story or story structure. It has a DUAL-FOCUS NARRATIVE:

-2 characters (male and female) are opposing in parallel arcs, often have to resolve conflict by end of film. In actuality the musical is the opportunity to showcase the STARS and their talents.

No longer can we point to the musical’s conventional plot and call it gauche and episodic and walk away satisfied. Once we have understood the dual focus approach we can easily grasp the importance of the many set pieces of production numbers which some see as cluttering the musical’s program and interrupting the plot. The plot, we now recognize has little importance to begin with. The oppositions developed in the seemingly gratuitous song-and-dance number, however, are instrumental in establishing the structure and meaning of the film. Only when we identify the film’s constructive dualities can we discover the film’s function. Seen as a cultural problem-solving device, the musical takes on a new and fascinating identity.

Society

is defined by a fundamental paradox, both terms of the oppositions on which it is built (order/liberty, progress/stability, work/entertainment, and so forth) are seen as desirable, yet the terms are perceived as mutually exclusive. Every society possesses texts which obscure this paradox, prevent it from appearing threatening and thus assure the society’s stability. The musical is one of the most important types of text to serve this function in Amercan life. By reconciling terms previously seen as mutually exclusive, the musical succeeds in reducing an unsatisfactory paradox to the more workable configuration, a concordance of opposites. Traditionally, this is the function which society assigns the myth. Indeed we will not be far off the mark if we consider that the musical fashions a myth out of the American courtship ritual.

EXAMPLE. The story concerns Gigi, a free-spirited teenaged girl living in Paris at the turn of the 20th century. She is being groomed as a

courtesan

in her family’s tradition. Before she is deemed ready for her social debut, she encounters the bon vivant

bachelor

Gaston Lachaille, whom she captivates as she is transformed into a charmingly poised young lady.

The musical is about marrying opposition. Beauty/riches and child/adult both have problematic dichotomies. The same individual gets to enjoy both riches and beauty is to marry. The only way to save both the childlike and adult qualities is through a merger, thus blurring the barrier between the generations and removing the specter of incest.

*How do modernist aesthetics express themselves in early modern dance and film? Im unsure what this is referring to? I have a portion in my notes of: Modernism and Poetics of Movement. But its almost all movement based

From my notes: in modernism , it is believed that you cannot record your exact thoughts, since they are constantly flowing, and can’t be fully represented with words. Basically, constant motion, more flowing. This is different than say, ballet, where poses were held. Modernism is more about the movement and transitioning than posing.

Beyond Cartesian Dualism: body as expression

Beyond mimesis and representation: an alternative to realism, excess of the everyday

Movement/change as modernity: evolution, psychology, urban life

Drift: the subjective loss of presence, the experience of vacancy

___

FROM THE BOOK:

The odd snippet of silent film evokes a time when it was possible for choreographers working with the new technology of the cinematopgraph to cross-over with ease in collaborations and experiments.

Loie Fuller or La Loie showcases the changing perception of the body in motion and its function regarding the production of meaning. She began her career as an actress and received acclaim for her serpentine dances- went on to direct her own screen work. Le Lys de La Vie showcases her narrative/dancing film.

She showcases the reclaiming of the body as a major and radical site for producing and expressing meaning and the body’s engagement with the new technologies of twentieth century modernity.

The new poetics of the French Symbolists corporeality affords a model of dance that connects with modern movement and the dissolution of the pose more generally. Dance as an activity of transformation and fluidity that eludes definition and exemplifies the notion of movement-as-flux.

Delsartism represents a moment of conversion within fin de circle body practices from the order of the pose to the principle of uninterrupted flow. From this point, the central figures of Isadora Duncan and Loie Fuller, traditionally set in opposition to each other in the history of Western theater dance can be brought together via Bergson’s model of modern movement.
It will be shown that early modern dance did not simps anticipate cinema in terms of how dance was realizing the dissolution of the pose. Fuellers combination of continuous movement with popular entertainment technologies produced a “moving image” that calls for rechoreographing of the history of the moving image.

*How can “micro-choreography” change the way we understand a dance?

is it the minute movements that we require a close up camera to notice?

(I was thinking about the violin choreography they did in Gold Diggers) ex. https://youtu.be/iN_JXwNudh8?t=5m1s

How did studio system films present utopia? What kind of utopia is it?

DYER – Studio system presents a feeling of utopia.

Take the depression in 1929, a lot of musicals inspired by this, for example Gold Diggers of 1933, who’s your audience? The means of production is the ability to make products and commodify. The women don’t have access to the means of production, to be the laborers so the solution to these gender problems is to become family.

Online discussion of Dyer reading:

In Richard Dyer’s seminal article

‘Entertainment and Utopia’

he argues that audiences consume media products with a clear set of pleasures to draw from that experience.

The notion of entertainment as in some sense utopian – expressing ideals about how human life could be organized and lived – is implicit in what the most widespread assumption about entertainment, namely, that it provides ‘escape.’ Entertainment offers the image of ‘something better’ to set against the realities of day-to-day existence.

The musical is a focal point of his essay that explores this theory. This is a genre that blossomed during the Great Depression due to it’s appealing simplification the complex problems of the time and offers of utopian solutions for the audience. Dyer makes the point that that entertainment does not present “models of utopian worlds” but rather how utopia feels. The musical is a genre based on feeling as the primary convention of the genre is the inclusion of performance (song and dance). This form allows space for the intensification of feeling: songs and musical numbers heighten the sense of emotion felt during that scene and thus intensify the feeling of the moment.

Two of the taken for granted descriptions of entertainment, as ‘escape’ and as ‘wish-fulfillment’, point to its central thrust, namely, utopia. Entertainment offers the image of ‘something better’ to escape into, or something we want deeply that our day-to-day lives don’t provide. Alternatives, hopes wishes – these are the stuff of utopia, the sense that things could be better, that something other than what is can be imagined and may be realised.

Dyer suggests three reasons that reality generates for audiences to consume media:

1. Social tension

2. Inadequacy

3. Absence

The consumption of media provides audiences with utopian solutions. These utopian sensibilities are expressed through a number of means – but it is usually the world of singing and dancing, distinct from the ‘real world’ which presents the social tensions, inadequacies and absences of the time. For backstage musicals like Golddiggers of 1933 or 42nd Street, the song and dance come through rehearsals or performances within the film’s narrative. The ‘real world’ contexts of the films regularly acknowledge the impact of the Great Depression and locate the films clearly within the tensions of the time. The performances are contradictory and express spectacular wealth, excitement and notions of community. The lyrics are representative of utopian sensibilities as well

*How does the backstage musical address the audience of the film itself? Provide multiple examples using close reading. Cant find in my notes. I’m guessing a sense of fourth wall break or something. Take: The Bandwagon and how it is set “backstage.”

How might Gold Diggers of 1933 be interpreted as either feminist or unfeminist? Use close reading and class readings to construct an argument for each side.

Nobody let women be in the position of having the power to sell anything that they are capable of making.

But, they found true love at the end.

The solution to gender problems supplied by the film The gold diggers is the family.

How do Debord and Kracauer each define and use the idea of spectacle? What film examples could you give to explain each?

Speculation -DEBORD

Society

Social relationships mediated by mass media new line spectacle becomes a fundamental part of understanding ourselves and we can’t separate reality from spectacle. They’re Inseparable as we create our mass media and spectacle

When Debord says that “All that was once directly lived has become mere representation,” he is referring to the central importance of the image in contemporary society. Images, Debord says, have supplanted genuine human interaction.
Thus, Debord’s fourth thesis is: “The spectacle is not a collection of images; rather, it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images

.”

“Against Debord’s negativity, however, Kracauer’s more redemptive vision of mass culture suggests that the spectacle, like the mass ornament, is a multivalent medium with changing social meanings and functions.”

Debord uses spectacles to refer to mass media of all kinds, as well as the way that the media creates mediated relations in society.

According to Ravetto-Biagioli, how did fascist aesthetics construct women, homosexuals, and Jews as “others”? Support your answer with film examples.

A little confused about the overall points Professor Ravetto made and how we can use them to answer this. Here are some notes:

Use realistic and hyper-masculine bodies as symbols of people and nations. Fascism as this Monumental privileged image thats symbolic of a whole. Taking the concept of classism and struggle and making it a national struggle. This unified image of a particular Nation. Sculptured faces and inhuman faces.

The Aesthetics of fascism new line copy from Mussolini and imagery of Roman Empire

Monumental Images

Fascist and communist use same type of aesthetic so there is a recycling of images

Mussolini fashion himself from a cinematic machismo figure

Hitler fashioned himself into film and voice as the speaker of the nation

This lends itself to the question of authenticity and what is real

The swastika itself was an appropriation

Monumental and pure patriotic values scene and Cabaret versus the decadent and subversive values of Liza Minnelli’s character.

Nazis determined what good art was and they wanted it to glorify the human body. Mothers were gender roles, neoclassical, athletic male bodies like the Greek and Romans.

There is a fetish of the SS uniform.

Nazi art becomes camp in the late 50s and 70s as the image of the repressed society becomes erotic and there is nazi porn.

Fascism has this connotation of sadomasochistic sexuality

What Nazi saw as degenerate: Female sexuality, queer, cross-dressing became attributed to Nazis and to that degenerate role.

Evelyn Xu

912243285

FMS125

06 March 2018

Film Analysis of Hedwig and the Angry Inch

The first aim of any producer is to entertain their audience. Watching Hedwig and the angry inch and you realise the producer did not disappoint. Every scene from the beginning you will realise he carries his audience first through a selection of characters. Hedwig`s actions and moves throughout the movie brings the utopia on the heads of the audience on how the situation was at that particular moment. Richard Dyer explains how musicals bring out entertainment based on the society in the equation. The Hedwig and the angry inch piece first incorporates the rock musical. The type of music genre chosen can be the point of focus if making a musical piece as it will determine the acceptability by the audience because different cultures are identified with a different genre of music. In Gold diggers of 1993, the producer segments the musical plot which brings out tension the piece, and that is what the audience will enjoy.

The dual focus by Rick Altman is also apparent in this piece. Though Hedwig is the focus and the music career, the producer adds a top that at that time and even currently is a controversial topic, gay marriage and the whole issue of transgender debates presently around the world. The shift of male to the female character in the movie is also one parallelism that the producer uses well. Watching the first few minutes and you will be like, is Hedwig a male or female? This question is still being asked today if one visits the different review pages available online. When there are two protagonists in a film, it brings out the thrill even more. The gold digger series identifies man and woman differently based on their wealth and beauty respectively.

The musical series is known for how it creates asymmetry representing different sexes and sometimes supporting male dominance. The society identifies males to be a superior gender based on past behaviours from previous civilisations. Just like the gold digger of 1993, Hedwig and the angry inch producer focus on the gender politics. The gender-based violence is apparent in the piece. Yitzhak and Hedwig`s relationship is not that healthy. She constantly abuses him. She is threatened by the talent he has that shadows her own. Looking at gold diggers of 1993 where the producer brings out the notion that woman becomes rich only if she marries for money. Hedwig is forced into operation so that she can marry the general her only escape.

The gender spectacle in Hedwig and the inch is represented very well when Hedwig decides to go to Kansas to marry Luther. Surprisingly, on the first anniversary, Luther leaves her and goes for a man. The same day Berlin wall falls resulting in the reuniting of Germany hence the sacrifice Hedwig made was not worth. Despite all these, she comes out strong creating a great identity as feminine and forms her rock band, The Angry Inch.

The application of spectacle in any film makes the different film to have some glamour. The scenes are usually remembered by the audience and become the talking point once they leave the cinema hall. In Hedwig and the inch scenes like the moment Hedwig is kissing with Tommy which leads to him realising the defect between Hedwig`s legs. Spectacles bring out the anticipation thus delays narrative`s resolution. The same is evident in Gold Diggers which employs coitus interrupts.

The radical displacement is another feature as shown in the Hollywood musicals. The significance of sexuality is brought out. The Hedwig and the inch must have been groundbreaking especially a time when gay people had not understood the aspects of transgender. Many questions would have been raised if the movie was written today. Looking deep into the film you realise that the transgender issue was not the centre of focus as such. In the end, both Trans-characters are made whole again and goes back to their cis-gender selves.

This film also elucidated on the three different kinds of listening; causal, semantic and reduced listening. The manner Hedwig shared his past was through songs and narrations in between while performing at the local bars in the USA. People hear and adhere to his story through these different modes of listening.

Causal listening must not be overestimated since it has the most significant potential to give the listeners the information they would love to hear. Mostly, it is based on analysing sounds. Such as in this film, the voice of Hedwig evidences a male though he is high pitched in most of his singing, the male deeper sound coming from his mouth and throat naturally exposes him to be a man despite the physical and outward appearance. People listening to him will have second thoughts as to the gender of the singer. The movie shows that the painful experiences that the lead actor went through are expressed through his type of music in collaboration with a band of instrumentalists who brought to life his story and the lessons that he would love to share to people. There is power in music. Sometimes speech and language are communicated through the melody of the sounds. The film showed the audience of the difficulties of a transgender and how they are persecuted, left behind and considered as freaks in the society. The more that Hedwig wanted to please the men in his life, he ended up alone and deceived. However, he showed that nobody could see still his dreams. Indeed someone might steal his songs and words, but he could always make new things and fight for his goals in life. While Semantic listening focuses on a particular language that gives the meaning of the message being relayed to the audience. This kind of listening is complicated and has been a part of linguistic research used for studies in the area of communication. Thus, in this movie, semantic listening was also used to understand better the message being sung and performed by Hedwig. As stated by Chion M. that a “phoneme is listened to as inclusive of the whole system of variation and differences”. The pronunciation of words and the use of language or how it is spoken plays a significant role in the mode of semantic listening. There is no hard and fast rule in this case except that semantic listening does not focus too much on the variations in language pronunciation but takes the language system as a whole.

Moreover, the sound could employ both casual and semantic types of listening at the same time. Hence, in Hedwig’s performances, the listening audience relies on both the words and sounds to understand the message of the songs. The manner that the performer expresses himself affects the depth of understanding of the individual. As Chion M. explained that there is the need for a voice for causal listening to be perceived in the same way that handwriting is an essential part to the written message as to the one reading the same! Lastly, Reduced listening is another mode or style for listening which could be used in this film such as it focuses on the sound itself regardless of the meaning and causal interpretation. It faces head-on the music itself being played by the instruments. In this area, the listener is not burdened to interpret of finding the meaning behind the sound but just to listen and appreciate the music. This film could also be understood through the form of reduced listening whereby all the listener has to do to focus on the sounds and not be pressured to analyse or interpret the same. Thus, in this story, Hedwig who came all the way from Berlin, a communist country and after having experienced the brutality and violence by war used sound, music and instruments to express the pain he went through.

Even the part where he got married to an American Military Sergeant and how this man left and abandoned Hedwig all became a part of his musical act. Such story was something that common and ordinary people could relate. Music was used to generate and tell the story of loss and grief of being deceived and left without anything in life, stripped off from even the most critical thing he treasures, his music. Such was a devastating and tragic circumstance in the lead role’s life which further strengthened his resolve to live life continuously and show his detractors that he will never quit, back down nor give up in his fight to take back what belongs to him.

The film involved a very taboo storyline, one that was hard to accept in the past years where people have such high regard for the morality and integrity of the principles. Sex change of transgender and homosexuality was not yet fully accepted in the society. It is noted that in this movie, Hedwig had to undergo sex change on the ground that he could go to America and live the life of dreams. He had no idea that the one who pushed him to change his identity and the one who helped him achieve his goals would, later on, leave him like he was not a human being.

Ultimately, reduced listening is the perfect mode of listening that the audience could use in this film about Hedwig. Base on the explanation of Chion M. that this is the most basic strategy used regarding looking at films, videos or movies on that ground that cinema is figurative and semantic. Thus, reduced listening has the compelling advantage of widening the ears and increasing the power to listen. Also, Chion relayed that the movie or video makers, artists, and technicians can develop and improve on their mediums through reduced listening and even accomplish mastery in the whole process. The emotional and aesthetic elements of a sound are connected to the causal definitions we provide, as well as the possession of qualities regarding the timbre and melodic quality. Thus, the cinematographers could acquire more knowledge through the form of listening. Visual materials and textures could be refined and made to be more accurate. Amazingly, as opposed to any other Broadway musical, Hedwig’s movie was able to stretch for only 95 minutes and be able to tell or narrate the whole complicated story of the life of the character and his past. According to Scott M. (2003) that this movie was created in the exact time that Rent, the stage play was also made. The film was theatrical with a touch of comedy. Hedwig’s life was a mixture of his mother’s love, Luther’s (the military) abandonment and the botched surgery. The story also focused the different personalities and wigs he had to wear in the years that came, of how she survived the second abandonment by Tommy. He showed courage and survivor’s instincts being a Frankenstein monster who just wanted companionship. He interpreted that his life separated him from his other half and finding that other half will make him happy. Hedwig believes in destiny and that the future could only be lived fully if he saw the one who could make him happy. This view and perception led Hedwig into a dangerous and risky position.

If the lead character only had discernment knowing how cruel the world could be most of the time because of people who take advantage of other’s kindness. Such people who would take advantage of your generosity just to get what they want at the expense of losing their integrity, dignity and morality, do not deserve one’s time, efforts and trust. The manner of how Hedwig handled himself in the midst of uncertainties and hopelessness was featured in this movie. It shows the strength of character and the ability to turn the tide around and to rise despite the obstacles, challenges, failures and defeats. Music was used as a form of attraction that appeals to the audience, and it is also Hedwig’s strategy of getting his story across, earning profits and at the same time doing the thing that he loves the most. This movie was a mixture of many elements such as music, acting, drama and comedy. The audience had seen everything in just one film. Aside from Hedwig’s talent as a singer, his stage productions have drawn more crowds than before.

However, there were instances in this movie that left the story inconsistent and incomplete such as Hedwig’’s relationship with Sgt Luther up until the divorce. Likewise, there also wasn’t much attention as to the Yitzhak story and how they came to know each other and how they both ended their relationship. At the end of the story, it was said that Hedwig and Tommy reconciled, some scripts were left to the imagination of the readers and watchers. The narrative was at one point, or another had inconsistencies. Such story was something that the people love could relate. Music was used to generate and tell the story of loss and grief of being deceived and left without anything in life, stripped off from even the most important thing he treasures, his music. Such was a devastating and tragic circumstance in the lead role’s life which further strengthened his resolve to live life continuously and show his detractors that he will never quit, back down nor give up in his fight to take back what belongs to him.

Also, the author Kracauer S. states that “Those who have backed out and isolated themselves from the community and consider themselves to be different regarding their personalities having in possession their souls fail when it comes to building new patterns of creativity. If these people are to take part in such a performance, the ornament will not transcend them” (pp 67-76). An analysis of the movie shows that the audience has no idea as to how Hedwig’s relationship with Luther eroded and the details of Hedwig’s life afterwards was only narrated generally. It was not mentioned if Luther had his reasons for leaving the former, the story was usually in favour of Hedwig without any fairness as to the cause why Luther left. The latter was not given a graceful exit in the movie; the audience believes him to be the ungrateful and infidel husband who went looking for greener pastures. Hedwig, in some way, portrays the iconic rock star Pink Floyd: The Wall who was known to be the protagonist with almost a similarity with Hedwig’s story. Hedwig uses songs to capture the hearts of thousands of his audience and gain their favour and belief that he is right and that he must be praised and worshipped. Nevertheless, the legal battle which ensued between Tommy and Hedwig was not given in detail, and the decision of the court was not justified nor even mentioned as to who won the case.

However, the desire of Hedwig to be loved and chosen, to be domesticated, brought him into an openness that led him to harm. He should have focused on his career; he could have sung and made his music known at Berlin or looked for a way to go to the USA without the need to have a sex change. Then he could have saved himself from all these sorrow. The movie was brilliant in showing the different scenes that elaborate on the emotional suffering of Hedwig and brought the audience to the inner core of his life. The audience became immersed in the story being told. They felt pity and pain; it made them love Hedwig, the victim, the persecuted. This movie was shown to use music to go beyond logic and touch the deepest parts of the raw emotions alive within everyone who has suffered some form of injustice during their lifetime. One never goes unscathed from rejection, deception and pain. There are two kinds of people in the world, the victim and the oppressor; we choose to become one of these. Moreover, Tommy, the man who stole everything from Hedwig was not correctly shown in the film except in the last parts. Nobody knew what exactly brought the man to take the songs of Hedwig and claim ownership over each one. Was it greed, pride or a sense of wickedness in his heart or has Hedwig in some way pushed him to become the person who goes against all forms of morality? Has Hedwig hurt him in any way that the audience or even Hedwig himself knows nothing about.

Tommy was not given a chance in the film to show himself innocent of all of Hedwig’s charges against him. He was the nemesis in the film, and Hedwig was the protagonist victim who uses his story to win the hearts of fans and audiences all over the world and even earn profit from all of it. The film was a mixture of rock and punk music which envelopes the cultural practices of the present society at such time. The story moves on with Hedwig narrating on stage or videos clips of the past in the form of flashbacks were shown.

The movie enables Hedwig to walk back in his past and reminisce the parts of his life. One of his songs “Wig in a box” allows Hedwig to go back in time and shovel up all the memories that led him to where he is at present. Hedwig was hooked in storytelling, and the movie shows the many areas of his life with the use of music to introduce every moment in the past to the audience. As a summary, the three forms and modes of listening could be efficiently used in this movie so that the viewer would be able to have a deeper understanding of the story being told by Hedwig. Furthermore, this film also introduced the different styles of listening; causal, semantic and reduced listening. The manner Hedwig shared his past was through drama, songs and narrations in between while performing at the local dining areas in the USA. People are persuaded by his story through these different modes of listening. Hence, this paper critically evaluates and have given a precise analysis of the film with the very element of the message that the writer and film director is relaying. Supporting literature review have been enumerated to appreciate the lessons in the movie. Hedwig who became known for his originality in going from one bar to another narrating her life story and exposing Tommy for being a cheater and liar has become a globally recognized rock singer who has suffered loss and rejection while on his way to fame as a music lover and advocate. It could be seen that the movie is in some way showing the people that when a person abandons you, a friend or a family member, it is not the end of the world and does not become the finality of all things in life. Instead, the failures and disappointing memories should only be used to push forward to success and victory as what Hedwig did in this movie and his life. People believed in him and listened to the story that he has to tell and were mesmerised with Hedwig’s creativity and his ability to say the bitter-sweet memories of his life through a very unusual and creative style of singing, acting and communicating to the audience.

Works Cited

IMDB. “Hedwig and the Angry Inch”. 2001 Retrieved from

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0248845/plotsummary

Heath S. Roland Barthes: Image Music Text Essays, Selected and Translated. Fontana Press,

pp 179-190

Chion M. “The Three Listening Modes”.

Scott M. “Inside Hedwig and the Angry Inch”. 2003 Retrieved from

http://www.newlinetheatre.com/hedwigchapter.html

Kracauer S. “Mass Ornament”. New German Critique, 1975. Pp 67-76 Retrieved from

Kracauer-Barbara-Correll-Jack-Zipes