Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Bowie does Bayreuth



He may have outgrown his Nazi obsession by the early 80's, but David Bowie still exhibited some pretty unsettling intimations of white supremacy, least subtly in the ultra-creepy "China Girl" video. Yet there's another Wagneresque streak in Bowie that is less discussed:

Wagner's theory of Gesamtkunstwerk, claiming that a person (read: a German) should be able to create and control every aspect of an artwork, seems alive and well in Bowie's approach to composing and performing, minus the Germanocentrism.

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