The story centres on Hedwig, a singer in a punk-rock band from East Berlin now living in Kansas following botched gender reassignment surgery that left them with an "angry inch".
Perhaps the message is that the other half isn't out in the world; it's in each of us. That the script refers to her after this as "Hedwig/Tommy" suggests that Hedwig's two halves have at last made peace with each other in the same body, that she is now a whole person with her male and female sides finally in balance.
The character of Hedwig was inspired by a German divorced U.S. Army wife who was Mitchell's family babysitter and moonlighted as a prostitute at her trailer park home in Junction City, Kansas.
The film uses the destruction of the Berlin Wall as a metaphor to represent the struggle for identity faced by the LGBT+ community. Hedwig is more than a traditional woman or man, and this film deconstructs and reconstructs philosophies and religious attitudes towards love and identity.
After a botched sex change (done so that Hansel/Hedwig could leave communist East Germany for the West), he/she is left with an “angry inch” for genitals.
She is able to move beyond her anger and bitterness towards Tommy for breaking her heart and stealing her music, she is able to discern that while she will never get the credit (or fame or fortune) for her own creations, she doesn't have to mortgage the rest of her life to that idea.
Now a "she", Hedwig comes to America, is abandoned by Luther, forms a rock band and falls for her 17-year old lover/protégé, Tommy, only to be rejected by him later, too.
Because of its psychological, as well as its physical, significance, the fall of the Berlin Wall quickly became the symbol of the collapse of the communist ideology it had shielded.
On a global level, the fall of the Berlin Wall marked the symbolic end of the Cold War, famously prompting the political scientist Francis Fukuyama to declare it the “end of history.” On Oct. 3, 1990, 11 months after the fall of the Berlin Wall, East and West Germany became one state again.
It symbolized the Cold War and divide between the communist Soviet bloc and the western democratic, capitalist bloc.
Symbolism of the name Hedwig:
Because of its meaning, new parents may see Hedwig as a symbol of bravery and strength. However, its association with a Roman Catholic saint and the owl in the Harry Potter series of books and movies could also have some meaning.
J.K. Rowling has stated before that she killed off Hedwig because her death was meant to represent the loss of innocence as Harry grew up and into adulthood (and stared down some Death Eaters). Her death happens during the Battle of Seven Potters in Deathly Hallows as the group is leaving Privet Drive.
In the film, the scene was made even more heartbreaking, as Hedwig was killed while attempting to protect Harry from Death Eaters. J.K. Rowling has said previously: 'The loss of Hedwig represented a loss of innocence and security. She has been almost like a cuddly toy to Harry at times.
A frenetic gig fragments into fractured flashbacks, Hedwig sheds her wig and dress and, in a space outside story, faces Tommy, makes amends with the band and finally drifts out alone into the night, letting go of the driving hunger for external validation and vengeance to find a kind of peace.
In the film, Harry let her fly free, believing she would fly to safety but instead, she came to his rescue and was sadly killed.
Between 1961 and 1989, at least 140 people were killed or died at the Wall in connection with the GDR border regime: 101 people who tried to flee through the border fortifications were shot, died by accident, or committed suicide.
In 1961, the SED began adding additional obstacles to the border, expanding the Wall into a complex multi-layered system of barriers. In the West, the border strip was referred to as the “death strip” because so many people were killed there while trying to escape.
By October 1990, Germany was reunified, triggering the swift collapse of the other East European regimes. People celebrating the fall of the Berlin Wall. Thirteen months later, on December 25, 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics dissolved.
Why was the Berlin Wall built? The Berlin Wall was built by the German Democratic Republic during the Cold War to prevent its population from escaping Soviet-controlled East Berlin to West Berlin, which was controlled by the major Western Allies.
The East German government claimed the wall was an 'anti-fascist protection barrier' (antifaschistischer Schutzwall) intended to dissuade aggression from the West, despite the fact that all the wall's defences pointed inward to East German territory. This view was viewed with scepticism even in East Germany.
What was life like on either side of the Wall? Enclosed West Berlin became something of a mad, bad playground, attracting drop-outs and avant-gardists, who could enjoy a frisson of Cold War danger (but with little actual danger).
Harry's owl Hedwig is a Snowy Owl. She's a female but, in the movie, the actors playing her are males.
According to legend, she went barefoot even in winter, and when she was urged by the Bishop of Wrocław to wear shoes, she carried them in her hands. On 15 October 1243, Hedwig died and was buried in Trzebnica Abbey with her husband, while relics of her are preserved at Andechs Abbey and St.
Hedwig and Tommy fall violently in love and begin creating music together; she expands his creative horizons and even gives him his stage name: Tommy Gnosis.
Biography. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 Harry yelling. This Death Eater shot out a Killing Curse that killed Harry Potter's pet owl, Hedwig. It is likely the curse that killed Hedwig was intended for Rubeus Hagrid.