Description
Focusing on the music, performance, political actions, and legacy of David Bowie, this paper explores the ability of popular culture and celebrity to engage audiences on questions of international politics that transcend time and space. Especially since the advent of streaming, cultural outputs have a temporal elasticity that enables them to speak to political concerns in the time and space they were produced, but also whenever and wherever they are consumed by audiences in the past, present, and future. Bowie was an active artist from 1964 until his death in 2016. Most analyses focus on how his works can be read in the context of when they were made or released, with little emphasis on their politics. There is, however, a more temporally long-term aspect to the significance of Bowie’s contributions to culture, society, and politics that warrants exploration as an example of how popular culture can globally engage citizens politically. This paper will explore how Bowie’s work engages critically with existential (in)security through nightmarish dystopian visions, fear of and opposition to nuclear weapons, and demands for “a better future” which seek tolerance and understanding along lines of gender identity, sexuality, race, culture, and nation using newly available material in the David Bowie Archive at the V&A East.
