I just feel like we're not talking enough about the pro-labor, pro-union, themes in Hadestown. My boy Orpheus is literally wearing a red bandana. He said you simply have to stand up, together, even when it's terrifying and you have never done it before. There are more of us than them. Even if it seems impossible we have hope, because we are standing in solidarity. You can only make demands of gods if you have your union behind you. And then you realise they aren't gods, and you can bargain.
So I don't know if the significance of the red bandana is widely known. Here's the briefest of overviews, summarizing decades of union struggle and capitalist oppression:
In 1921, the coal miners in West Virginia took up arms and started a march to Williamson in Mingo County, with the intent to release miners and union sympathizers who had been unjustly incarcerated under martial law delcared by the governor - and to finally unionize the coal fields in the region.
They started in Kanawha county, and headed south toward Mingo. The informal army was stopped at the Logan county line, where they gave battle against the West Virginia State Police (created in part to suppress miners and union sympathizers) and volunteer fighters under Sheriff Don Chafin. The two sides fought for days at Blair Mountain, and the only reason fighting stopped was because the president of the United States sent in federal troops.
The way that the miners identified each other, since they had no standard uniform and were fighting a guerilla war, was to wear a red bandana around their necks. It was their symbol of solidarity. When you call someone a "redneck," you are using the same language as Sheriff Chafin and the West Virginia State Police used to refer to the miners who were willing to die so that their fellow workers could unionize and live with dignity.
So Orpheus showing up wearing a red bandana around his neck, telling the underworld to stand together, to be hopeful that a better existence is possible, if not to fight then at least bargain together, is directly pointing to the struggle of the West Virginia coal miners in their fight for their humanity, dignity, and union rights.
Whether Michael Krass put him in a red bandana knowing this history (or simply needing a pop of color on the costume to tie into the flower) doesn't matter. It is a powerful symbol of solidarity and struggle, and only further enhances the pro-labor, pro-union themes in the story.
