Being a technological hermit, I normally try not to jump on mourning bandwagons when a celebrity passes away. Don’t get me wrong; I definitely think you can be genuinely sad about the death of a person you haven’t met, especially musicians who have such strong emotional influences on us. But I also think that we have a tendency in the age of social media to become a part of what I think I’ll call ‘herd grief’: finding ourselves caught up in a public outpouring of emotion without realising that it’s not actually an emotion we share ourselves.
So normally, the death of David Bowie would not draw a response from me. I was not a particular fan, so while I obviously see that a man’s untimely death from illness is a tragedy, I wouldn’t say that I am exactly grieving. Again, I do believe that some people expressing their grief are truly sad; there’s no doubting the influence of Bowie’s music and artistry and I’m sure people did genuinely feel he made a significant impact on their lives. So they are rightfully grieving. I am not, and I think that to pretend that I am – to jump on the Bowie bandwagon only now that he’s dead – would be an insult to the memory of a man who had a real effect on the music industry and to his audience.
However, now that I’m in a music video course, I feel that I couldn’t let the passing of a man who was a real pioneer in the area of music video go unacknowledged. As I have said, while I’m not particularly a Bowie fan myself, as a student of media but also just a music listener like everyone else I can see the importance of what he did as an artist and the effect it had on both the music and music video industries.
For example, the NGV recently held an exhibition that showcased some of Bowie’s most famous and experimental outifts, and it’s not just your Average Joe who gets his cossies in the NGV. Costumes were just one element that Bowie used to create a brand new aesthetic that extend to his music videos, and that didn’t just look trendy but really pushed boundaries, particularly in his exploration of the ‘androgynous look’ that I think is still relevant today.
He released his last album on his 69th birthday – just three days ago, and considering his 18-month battle with cancer, there’s little doubt he would have seen it himself as a final farewell. Today in class we watched his last music video, Lazarus. It’s a rich music video in any sense, but knowing what we know now it’s particularly moving and insightful.