Future Nostalgia: Performing David Bowie by Shelton Waldrep (review)

On my way to Melbourne to give a presentation at the symposium The Stardom and Celebrity of David Bowie, the airport customs official smirked and shook her head in disbelief—“Really? Your university is sending you to a David Bowie conference? Well, I’ve heard it all now!”¹ Interpreted as frivolous fandom, many New Zealanders were dubious about the prospect that a figure like Bowie might generate serious scholarly attention. Despite such antipodean bemusement, the year of 2015 was strangely fascinating for the emerging field of Bowie studies. It was a year marked by a hive of activity devoted to studying, celebrating, and performing David Bowie. This was the year when news presenters donned tailored ice-blue suits reminiscent of the Freddie Burretti–designed outfit depicted in the music video for Life on Mars, when fashion photographers focused their lenses on androgynous models adopting Bowieesque poses, glammed up in Ziggy Stardust garb or Thin White Duke suits. There were musical tributes, academic conferences, and exhibitions devoted to Bowie. In 2015 the critically acclaimed David Bowie Is exhibition made its presence felt in Chicago, Paris, Melbourne, and Groningen, achieving record-breaking attendance.² I gorged on the feast of the Melbourne David Bowie Is exhibition and the conjoined Bowie conference. Staged at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, these events energized the heart of Melbourne, drawing in stylish fans, pundits, and the performative presence of serious Bowie doppelgängers.³ The intensity of examination, dissection, and celebration—verging on worship of Bowie—felt preemptive, like the sort of laudatory activity triggered by the death of a great thinker or artist.

There seemed to be a prescience to the collective unconscious in this year leading up to Bowie’s death. Academics, fans, and “aca-fans” indulged in critical and creative events and publications, which examined Bowie as a serious cultural phenomenon. Future Nostalgia: Performing David Bowie took its place within the pantheon of these critical Bowie books of 2015, which included Enchanting David Bowie: Space/Time/Body/Memory, David Bowie: Critical Perspectives, and Experiencing David Bowie.⁴ Authored and edited by an articulate collection of scholars representing diverse disciplines, identities, and locales, these books have helped establish Bowie studies as a serious scholarly field.

To this pantheon Future Nostalgia contributes an expansive interdisciplinary examination of the cultural and aesthetic influence of Bowie as he engaged in various performative practices. Examining several different approaches to the study of performance, Waldrep aims to stay close to his original thesis—“that Bowie gives us a way to understand the vicissitudes of performance, aestheticizing the link between rock music and everyday life by calling attention to the artificiality of both.”⁵ Such a thesis can be likened to woven silk—when cut it opens up a frayed edge, with numerous threads unraveling in multiple directions. Although remaining proximal to his thesis, Waldrep invites his readers to pick up and follow many tangential threads.

Future Nostalgia’s most significant contribution is Waldrep’s probing examination of Bowie as a performer—one whose performativity across music, stage, visual media, and everyday life incites further performativity. Rather than relying on a conventional or singular understanding of performance, Waldrep critically surveys a number of differing approaches, all of which are important for understanding the sheer complexity of Bowie as a performer, his impact on mass culture and subcultures, and his role in liberating identity.

The first chapter provides an extensive discussion of performance art, which includes stage and theatrical performance, Brechtian minimalism, mime, Asian theater gesture, the performativity of the bunraku puppet theater, performative body art, and the performance of self in relation to personae. In other sections, Waldrep discusses musical and vocal performance as well as the notion of performativity as a banal aspect of everyday social interactions. Chapter 1 includes a useful examination of Bowie’s engagement with the pastiche of gender. While noting that Judith Butler’s theories of gender and sexuality are helpful...