Cinema Journal 57 | No.

3 | Spring 2018

1 David Bowie: Critical Perspectives

2
3 edited by Eoin Devereux, Aileen Dillane, and Martin J. Power. Routledge.
4 2015. $104.83 hardcover; $42.91 paperback; $49.95 e-book. 324 pages.
5
6 reviewed by Ana Cristina Mendes

A
7
8 welcome addition to the growing
9 body of academic studies dedicated
10 to one of the most acclaimed artist
11 and performer of contemporaneity,
12 the edited volume David Bowie: Critical Per-
13 spectives collects seventeen essays, expertly
14 organized around what is described by
15 the editors in the half-title page as “key
16 themes” in Bowie’s work, namely “textual-
17 ities,” “psychologies,” “orientalisms,” “art
18 and agency,” and “performing and influ-
19 encing.” This editorial project originated
20 from a David Bowie conference in 2012—Strange Fascination? A Sympo-
21 sium on David Bowie at the University of Limerick, Ireland—that at the
22 time came out of Devereux, Dillane and Power’s endeavor to take a
23 retrospective look at Bowie’s career. Prospectively, there was no way for
24 the organizers to know that Bowie was about to “reemerge” in a few
25 months with The Next Day album, after a decadelong “absence.” The
26 fact is that in the two years leading up to the release of this album there
27 was renewed media interest in Bowie’s career, fostered by the fortieth
28 anniversary of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
29 (1972). In 2013, shortly after the Bowie conference at the University of
30 Limerick, and the airing of the BBC’s documentary David Bowie: Five
31 Years (Francis Whately, 2013), came the opening of London’s Victoria
32 and Albert Museum exhibition David Bowie Is (a watershed curatorial
33 project that drew fully on the collections of the David Bowie Archive
34 and went on to become the most visited show in the V&A’s history)
35 and Bowie’s nomination for the Mercury music prize. Bowie’s recent
36 hypervisibility became part of the backdrop to the structuring and pro-
37 duction of Devereux, Dillane, and Power’s edited volume, first when
38 the hardcover was released in 2015 and then paperback in the follow-
39 ing year.1 This was a particularly timely moment given the remarkable
40 speed at which book-length research and articles on Bowie were being

41 1 Eoin Devereux, Aileen Dillane, and Martin J. Power, eds., David Bowie: Critical Perspectives
42 (New York: Routledge, 2015).

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published. Although the publication rhythm has intensified following the artist’s death 1
in January 2016, groundbreaking and stellar works such as Toija Cinque, Christopher 2
Moore, and Sean Redmond’s edited volume Enchanting David Bowie had also been pub- 3
lished in mid-2015 by Bloomsbury.2 4
The organization of this volume reflects from the outset a curatorial engagement 5
with the broad conceptual frameworks through which the complex legacies of Bowie’s 6
work can be analyzed. Preceded by Gavin Friday’s foreword, a heartfelt, avant la lettre 7
eulogy, the editors’ preface—titled “Where Are We Now? Contemporary Scholarship 8
on David Bowie,” a play on the eponymous single from The Next Day album—lays the 9
groundwork for reassessing the relevance and implications of Bowie’s work and the 10
debates it had generated.3 The work of theorists and artists referenced in this foreword 11
further confront ideas of performativity, as well as issues of identity construction, 12
branding and marketing, otherness, transgression and strangeness, as well as the sites 13
of production and consumption and fandom that are implicated in the reception of 14
Bowie’s work. Overall, one of the strongest contributions of the volume is the refracting 15
of this immense oeuvre through the texts of key theorists in the arts, humanities, and 16
social sciences in particular, from Jean Baudrillard (chapters 10, by Tiffany Naiman, 17
and chapter 4, by Bethany Usher and Stephanie Fremaux, the latter of which offers 18
a table linking Bowie’s output between 1989 and 1999 and Baudrillard’s phases of 19
the image) to Gilles Deleuze (chapter 14, by Dene October); from Carl Jung (chapter 20
5, by Tanja Stark) to Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan (chapter 6, by Ana Leorne); 21
Edward Said (chapter 8, by Shelton Waldrep, and chapter 9, by Mehdi Derfoufi) to 22
Roland Barthes (chapter 15, by Barish Ali and Heidi Wallace).4 This theoretical web 23
woven around Bowie, using a comprehensive range of critical perspectives, from film 24
studies to art history, from philosophy and psychology to musicology, sets this volume 25
apart from other Bowie-centric works. 26
The volume coheres as a whole, as it is expertly cross-referenced, highlighting how 27
the chapters talk to one another (although the explicit effort at cross-referencing is 28
stronger in some chapters than in others). For example, the David Bowie Is exhibit, which 29
forms the basis of chapter 1, by Kathryn Johnson, a researcher and assistant curator 30
at London’s V&A, reappears in almost all subsequent chapters, each one providing an 31
additional angle.5 While Johnson writes from a curatorial perspective, Richard Fitch, 32

2 Toija Cinque, Christopher Moore, and Sean Redmond, eds., Enchanting David Bowie: Space/Time/Body/Memory 33
(New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015). 34
3 Gavin Friday, foreword to David Bowie, ed. Eoin Devereux, Aileen Dillane, and Martin J. Power (New York: Routledge, 35
2015), xi–xii; Eoin Devereux, Aileen Dillane, and Martin J. Power, “Introduction: Where Are We Now? Contemporary 36
Scholarship on David Bowie,” in David Bowie, xiii–xv. 37
4 Tiffany Naiman, “Art’s Filthy Lesson,” in David Bowie, 178–194; Bethany Usher and Stephanie Fremaux, “Turn 38
Myself to Face Me: David Bowie in the 1990s and the Discovery of the Authentic Self,” in David Bowie, 56–81; 39
Dene October, “The (Becoming-Wo)man Who Fell to Earth,” in David Bowie, 245–262; Tanja Stark, “‘Crashing 40
Out with Sylvian’: David Bowie, Carl Jung and the Unconscious,” in David Bowie, 82–110; Ana Leone, “Dear Dr. 41
Freud—David Bowie Hits the Couch: A Psychoanalytical Approach,” in David Bowie, 111–127; Shelton Waldrep, 42
“The ‘China Girl’ Problem: Reconsidering Bowie in the 1980s,” in David Bowie, 147–159; Mehdi Derfoufi, 43
“Embodying Stardom, Representing Otherness: David Bowie in ‘Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence,’” in David Bowie, 44
160–177; Barish Ali and Heidi Wallace, “Out of This World: Ziggy Stardust and the Spatial Interplay of Lyrics, 45
Vocals, and Performance,” in David Bowie, 263–279. 46
5 Kathryn Johnson, “David Bowie Is,” in David Bowie, 1–18. 47

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1 in chapter 2, uses the reading list released to accompany the opening of the Toronto
2 leg of the exhibition to source out clues to understand Bowie’s response to nihilism,
3 and Waldrep, in the conclusion of chapter 8, uses the event to justify a retrospective
4 look at Bowie: “Though Bowie’s career may be far from over, he has signaled that it
5 is time to begin to evaluate it in total as can be seen by his giving access to his archive
6 for a show of his costumes, props and videos at the Victoria and Albert Museum in
7 2013.”6 The generative space of the Bowie archive is continually queried and reflected
8 on as a contingent site where the past and the present conflate. Also relying on the
9 archive, Helene Marie Thian in chapter 7 explores Bowie’s fascination with Japanese
10 iconography in the 1970s, via, among other sources, a personal interview with Lindsay
11 Kemp.7 As the volume is structured through dialogue and confrontation, the archive is
12 set against surfaces. In the editors’ phrasing:
13 The perspectives here are multiple but they are also specific, partial, varied
14 and sometimes even contradictory. All are driven to a greater or lesser degree
15 with the deployment of theoretical scaffolding (some disciplinary specific,
16 others cross- and multidisciplinary) in order to critically explore ways to
17 think, talk about and analyse the extensive and always provocative artistic
18 output of David Bowie in its social, historical, political, and cultural context.8
19 “Surface” evokes superficiality, artifice, deceit, and appearance at the same time as
20 conjuring its opposites or complements, implying what is supposed to lie underneath:
21 depth, archive, history, meaning, essence, and authenticity. Usher and Fremaux
22 (chapter 4) scrutinize surface as opposed to authenticity in ways that are brilliantly
23 complemented by Vanessa Garcia in chapter 17.9 Likewise, in chapter 1, by Johnson,
24 we get the sense of how the surface of Bowie’s images acts as a medium for the V&A
25 exhibit visitor’s experience of seeing, and for the burden of meaning as well, given
26 the surface’s increasing importance in the postmodern world of late capitalism.
27 Ultimately, the arrangement of the chapters reflects an effort to present and examine
28 the many facets of Bowie as semipermeable; while the volume’s constituent parts
29 remain intelligible on their own, the purpose of the volume is clearly to frustrate the
30 urge to oversimplify Bowie’s public personas.
31 The chapters dedicated to Bowie and film, focusing on his acting roles, “excessive
32 stardom” and specific cinematic characters (chapters 9, 13, and 14, by Derfoufi,
33 Julie Lobalzo Wright, and October, respectively), are particularly insightful.10 The
34 book also makes a very significant contribution to the emerging field of Bowie
35 studies by investigating the artist’s enormous impact on twentieth-century avant-
36 garde music and art. Chapter 10, by Naima, detailing the ways Bowie’s feelings of

37 6 Richard Fitch, “In This Age of Grand Allusion: Bowie, Nihilism, and Meaning,” in David Bowie, 29; Waldrep,
38 “‘China Girl’ Problem,” 157.
39 7 Helene Marie Thian, “Moss Garden: David Bowie and Japonism in Fashion in the 1970s,” in David Bowie,
40 128–146.
41 8 Devereux, Dillane, and Power, “Introduction,” xiv.
42 9 Vanessa Garcia, “How Superficial! David Bowie and the Art of Surfacing in 21st Century Literature,” in David
43 Bowie, 295–309.
44 10 Julie Lobalzo Wright, “David Bowie: The Extraordinary Rock Star as Film Star,” in David Bowie, 230–244.

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anxiety surrounding art at the end of the millennium align with Jean Baudrillard’s 1
transaesthetics, is especially perceptive. In chapter 11, Ian Chapman’s opening 2
argument is that Bowie’s album covers are a valuable resource for cross-disciplinary 3
research; these visual art practices are treated as sources for understanding Bowie’s 4
artistic methodology, specifically a progressive diminishing “authorship” but in such a 5
way as not to limit them as objects of study.11 In Chapman’s words: “Some work has 6
been done in ‘reading’ specific covers in order to support deeper investigations into, 7
particularly, Bowie’s music and cultural impact. In this chapter, however, the album 8
covers themselves remain the sole investigative focus.”12 Chapman’s consideration of 9
album covers goes beyond an understanding of Bowie as creative originator, whose 10
work calls for textual interpretation. The visual, in other words, is considered a place 11
where theorization can take place. 12
Other chapters reflect on some of Bowie’s strategies that seem to have emerged 13
under the specific demands and pressures of the cultural industries in the 1980s. For 14
instance, Usher and Fremaux offer a textual analysis of all of Q Magazine’s original 15
interviews with Bowie from 1989 to 1999. This analysis serves as the backdrop for 16
examining the vexed issue of authenticity within the workings of the cultural industries, 17
including the “darker side of celebrity and the society the industry fostered.”13 Though 18
an important contribution in the context of the volume, Usher and Fremaux’s analysis 19
could have benefited from a more nuanced consideration of authenticity, in particular 20
of its unattainability in the context of the cultural industries. At some point, in fact, it 21
seems that the idea of authenticity is conflated with that of verisimilitude (and “reality” 22
as opposed to performance), and a critical understanding of Bowie’s “authentic self ” 23
does not go beyond the freedom from “both the dominance of his personae and the 24
dominance of the industry.”14 25
Only briefly touched on in chapter 10, by Naiman, the volume could have included 26
an angle on affect as a way of accounting for the practices that bind us to Bowie while 27
providing more nuanced models for understanding aesthetic mediation, as well as our 28
critical, collective, and not wholly conceptual attachment to Bowie’s work and public 29
personas. For instance, Johnson’s thought-provoking idea that “Bowie’s aspiration to 30
not only use rock as a medium of expression, but ‘to become a medium’ himself 31
demands further consideration” could have been further unpacked, beyond the 32
dismissive argument that “Bowie gives us a medium, rather than a message.”15 33
David Bowie: Critical Perspectives has an academic application first of all, but it 34
also has a much broader reach. Evidence that this is a book also aimed at the so- 35
called general reader or fan interested in (learning more about and understanding) 36
Bowie is the presence of detailed yet concise endnotes with suggestions for further 37
reading, explaining, for example, artistic movements key to Bowie’s oeuvre, such as 38

11 Ian Chapman, “Authorship, Agency, and Visual Analysis: Reading (Some) Bowie Album Covers,” in David Bowie, 39
196–214. 40
12 Ibid., 196. 41
13 Usher and Fremaux, “Turn Myself to Face Me,” 56. 42
14 Ibid., 60. 43
15 Johnson, “David Bowie Is,” 15. 44

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1 expressionism and surrealism.16 Brief presentations of Carl Jung’s work and pivotal
2 ideas in chapter 5, Freud’s theory of perversions on chapter 6, Baudrillard’s theory
3 of transaesthetics, as well as definitions of Japonism in chapter 7, provide a valuable
4 sociohistorical and conceptual contextualization.
5 Throughout the volume, there is a clear privileging of the dynamics of texts as
6 cultural practices, susceptible of interaction with other cultural materials. The tone is
7 set by the editors’ foreword: “As in any critical approach, our purpose here is to offer
8 new perspectives on Bowie texts (taking ‘text’ in the broadest sense as some aspect of
9 material culture having the ability to be ‘read’—from song texts to costumes, videos
10 to album art, characterisations in film to the man himself and his other selves).”17
11 In fact, the aims of this book are very much in line with the practice and theory
12 of cultural studies as a critical project. The task of editors is admittedly “to engage
13 with culture and cultural production as a real and lived experience whether in the
14 library, on the street, in the supermarket or in the moshpit.”18 Echoes of Raymond
15 Williams and Stuart Hall are fused with Bowie’s various soundscapes. Resonating with
16 a perspective that sees cultural practices and representations as a crucial part of the
17 meaning-making and meaning-exchange processes of a given community, Johnson
18 observes in chapter 1 a ‘“certain tension . . . when Bowie speaks from his position of
19 cultural authority, in order to wilfully abandon it.” She goes on to argue:
20 If “meaning” is not created by such a charismatic “author,” does that leave
21 his audience empowered or unsatisfied? By creating work of extraordinary
22 sophistication and originality, Bowie leaves us in no doubt of his own creative
23 powers. By ensuring that the same work demands and sustains “multiple
24 readings,” Bowie confers creative agency on us, his audience. . . . I suggest
25 that this creative tension, between power and empowerment, is central to
26 Bowie’s lasting cultural impact and enduring popularity.19
27 David Bowie: Critical Perspectives adds to the existing scholarship at a time when the
28 emerging field of Bowie studies is in need of tracking and wide-ranging discussion.
29 The interdisciplinary conceptual framework presented by this volume, moving from
30 curatorial practice to philosophical reflection, to music-video contextual analysis,
31 provides a powerful tool kit or reading, framing, making sense of, and enabling critique
32 of the cultural impact of Bowie’s oeuvre. Not only is the volume as a whole made
33 up of interdisciplinary critical perspectives; the chapters themselves draw on sources
34 from various disciplines. It extends the scholarship of Bowie studies, itself already an
35 extremely dynamic area of study that is growing exponentially. ✽

36 16 Eoin Devereux, Aileen Dillane, and Martin J. Power, “Culminating Sounds and (En)visions: A Critical Reading of
37 Bowie’s ‘Ashes to Ashes,’” in David Bowie, 50–51.
38 17 Devereux, Dillane, and Power, “Introduction,” xiv.
39 18 Ibid., xiv.
40 19 Stuart Hall, Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (London: Sage and Open Univer-
41 sity, 1997), 3; Johnson, “David Bowie Is,” 3.

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