Bowie Documentaries
I just watched Alan Yentob’s 1975 BBC documentary Cracked Actor, which is not only an interesting look at a pivotal point in David Bowie’s career but is also an incredibly well-made film about the human need to categorize others into neat little boxes, how threatened we are when we can’t, and how this jars with the multifaceted and contradictory nature of actual human personalities. It’s also about the masks we all wear, about how much of ourselves is “true” and how much is performance. Bowie provides a great avenue to exploring these questions because as rock star he’s played them out in such an exaggerated style on a huge stage.
The film also has wonderful footage of the Diamond Dogs tour, including Bowie singing “Space Oddity” in a chair that floats out over the audience and a fantastic “Cracked Actor” in which Bowie makes out with Yorick’s skull. This is not Bowie the brand-name superstar but a Bowie who is quite edgy, innovative, even disturbing–you can understand why the mainstream media considers him “shocking.” The behind-the-scenes footage of Bowie’s “cut up” lyric writing technique is also very cool to see.
In terms of Bowie himself it’s rather sad–he’s in the early stages of his fame and hasn’t got a handle on it at all. When he talks about Ziggy causing his own downfall by achieving fame too quickly and not knowing what to do with it, he’s obviously talking about himself. The footage of his scarily obsessed fans and of the exaggeratedly scandalized media emphasizes what an odd and stressful situation he’s in. (I know it’s usually considered absurd to sympathize with people who are rich, powerful, and successful, but I do anyway considering how often they end up insane, miserable, and dead–highlighted by the recent Michael Jackson WTFery. Bowie here is in the depths of it and I’m pleased that he managed to emerge as a sane and functional human being.)
Though Bowie’s charm shines through occasionally, for the most part he comes across as diffident, arrogant, paranoid, and obviously cocaine-addicted. He’s still caught up in his characters–he describes Ziggy as a monster and admits he’s unsure whether he controls them or they control him. Some of his prickliness can be explained by the rudeness of his interviewers, who often ask inane questions and grow increasingly confrontational at Bowie’s ambiguous answers. Maybe he’s not being purposely opaque so much as he really doesn’t have an answer for “What are you?” beyond “David Bowie.” No one else had gone from folk singer to glam rocker to soul man before–there’s not actually a one-word category for it.
It’s particularly fascinating in light of the other documentary I just watched, called Ricochet, about Bowie’s 1983 tour in Southeast Asia. Bowie comes across as an entirely different person, but how much of that is his simply having better learned how to manipulate his image? He’s replaced the awkwardness with full-on rock star charm, but it’s actually less revealing, more of an obvious mask. (On the plus side, he is clearly far healthier here both physically and mentally.) In everything I’ve watched I’ve found it fascinating to watch him change over time, to watch him either a) become a master at handling his interviewers and audiences, b) just actually become a more confident, charming, funny person, or c) a mix of the above. (I’m looking forward to the VH1 Storytellers DVD which is coming out next week.)
The fact that we’re seeing less of actual-Bowie is particularly apparent because so much of this “documentary” is staged and apparently scripted–the camera shows up inside places Bowie is “just entering” and alongside people he is “just meeting.” Actually the most interesting aspect of this is not so much Bowie at all as it is the look at the “cultural colonialism” of Western influence on early 80s Hong Kong, Singapore, and Bangkok. It’s specifically staged/edited/scripted(?) to explore that topic rather than any actual exploration of Bowie–you could’ve used any Western megastar in his place. (Although one thing I do love about Bowie is his intellectual curiosity and compulsion to explore new places and try new things, which comes across in his explorations here.) But the interesting parts of this documentary are the Asian kids with a Ziggy Stardust cover band trying to score tickets to the Bowie show, the juxtaposition of Bowie’s concert with a traditional theater performance, the images of Bowie wandering through these cities and meeting a diverse selection of people (some of whom apparently have no idea who he is), and particularly the image of Bowie, expressionless and without commentary, having a drink in a strip club and turning away a prostitute.
I have purposely avoided watching most Bowie documentaries and interviews, not because I’m uninterested but because I can easily type “David Bowie” into YouTube and not emerge until three days later, having forgotten to eat or sleep and with 300 must-watch tabs still open on my browser. I do love being a fan of something with so much source material–I just know I need to balance it with real life.
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