I wanted to focus this blog on two topics. First, I wanted to focus on the drawings Jody made on the chalkboard. I had not made the connection between Diotima’s speech and the Enlightenment framework. I found that connection particularly powerful since a lot of people live their lives thinking they cannot make a difference. No matter what they do, as long as they don’t hurt the people in their lives, they don’t feel like they have a legacy. Furthermore, people believe this idea that it’s impossible to predict the future, since it will be so vastly different from our world today. How could people in England in the 1700s predict the United States in the 21st century? And yet, somehow the Enlightenment ideals persist, something that had existed in their time. Thus, I found it quite compelling to examine how Enlightenment ideals began with Plato, came to fruition in England in the 18th century, and still act as an axiom for 21st century academic thinking (“God-trick”). While it may be hard to predict the future and feel as though us, as individuals, have an impact, it is important to acknowledge that society is always constructed of humans. As a consequence, it’s quite interesting to see what ideas remain consistent and how they are perpetuated. It made me wonder about where our current frameworks, that feel like they’ve been here forever (and I may not even question), originated. How much of society has not changed since Ancient Greece? Does the Ancient origin of ideas impact my view of the modern world? These are very vague ideas since I’m still grappling with them. I suppose I’m mostly curious with the history of ideas, where we can trace the origin of our society’s key characteristics, expectations, axioms, and frameworks, and how these origins inform our understandings of society today.
Secondly, I wanted to discuss “Hedwig and the Angry Inch.” Although we talked a lot in class about the abuse present throughout Hedwig’s life, I immediately connected it to the Greek Societies, and questions about abuse that we investigated in discussion last week. Hedwig’s abuse closely mirrors the homosexual abuse in Greek culture. Older men are expected to make advances towards young boys, courting them, and once accepted for their “virtue,” their relationship becomes a mentor/mentee dynamic. The younger is supposed to absorb wisdom from the older partner and mature throughout the relationship. Furthermore, we do not have evidence describing the young boy’s impressions of the abuse, and whether he considered it abuse at all as opposed to a valuable (yet traumatizing) mentorship, since it was considered so normal in society. As a result, it is understood that as adults, those abused/mentees in Greek society became the abusers/mentors. I found that Hedwig mirrored this structure almost exactly. Hedwig presumably had been abused throughout childhood, and perhaps thought that was normal and expected for a long period of her life. She also depicts her abusers like David Bowie and Zeus among others, powerful influences in Hedwig’s music. So, we see her abusers assume the role of a mentor. Similarly, as an adult, Hedwig abuses her husband Yitzhak and Tommy Gnosis, and assumes mentor roles for both of them, expecting them to live in her shadow throughout their musical education and experiences. These abuser/abusee, mentor/mentee relationships are not portrayed in a particularly negative light, and instead shown as just another part of life. Although this struck me as odd, I wasn’t completely sure what message the directors of the film or story intended to send. Perhaps there is a clear message such as demonstrating how today’s society doesn’t stray too far from the problematic aspects of ancient societies we’ve seen in the past, or perhaps it was simply a part of Hedwig’s drag story, with no intentional commentary. Overall, I think Hedwig’s story (to some extent) was intended to demonstrate how so much of our society today mirrors ancient Greece and encourage us to question the origin of ideas. In the cyclic abuse, the idea of soul mates, and the Enlightenment framework, we see reflections in Plato’s symposium and Ancient Greece culture, “Hedwig and the Angry Inch” as well as modern society. Ultimately, Hedwig and the Angry Inch make me consider where our current culture originated and encourages me to be critical of certain expectations in relationships and independence.
Sofia Devin 