On David Bowie's Perfect Imperfection, Circa 1974

On David Bowie’s Perfect Imperfection, circa 1974 Daniel Laforest University of Alberta

ere i suggest defining imperfection as an event that takes place Hsolely in the public realm. There are no intimate imperfections. In intimacy there is only disappointment. And disappointment is relative to one’s self- perception. It takes numerous eyes—literally a public gaze—for the idea of imperfection to coalesce and rise above the shimmering and hardly measurable line of the personal. Such a definition has two consequences. First, to consider imperfection in the public sphere is to make it an irregularity that takes place inside the consensus on how things should unfold. It is a deviation. In critical terms one could say that imperfection only happens inside the spectacle, in the broader sense of the word. Second, public imperfection is expected to reveal the humanity, the unpredictability of everything that depends on flesh, blood, and doubts when it is cast in the spotlight and channeled through the media apparatus. It is a revelatory accident, and as such it can be conveniently put aside, pointed at, and examined. But what about imperfection when it is an integral part of the spectacle? I am not talking about staged accidents or rehearsed comedy routines aimed at creating shock value and uneasy reactions. I am not even talking

ESC 39.2–3 (June/September 2013): 6–8 about imperfect moments when they are recuperated and reproduced ad infinitum on online channels like YouTube, with the harsh buzzword “fail” having upstaged the neologism “blooper” that used to label them not long ago. Daniel Laforest is I am talking about imperfection as a medium in and of itself: as an Associate Professor at apparatus producing situations, articulations, and communicative stances the University of Alberta that would otherwise remain impossible in a performance. where he teaches Quebec Following the impressive normalization of the public figure of David and French literatures, Bowie accomplished by the David Bowie is traveling exhibition opened as well as cultural studies first at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, I started thinking and critical theory. His about the amount of risks involved in the career of such an artist whose current research interests every performance has not only been a reinvention of his aesthetic but also pertain to literatures and a liability. Sheer talent and artistic intuition do not even begin to explain cultural discourses in how such reinventions could be accepted by the public without a certain relation to the postwar amount of disasters or, at the very least, failures. But in the public eye, at transformations of the least in the eye of the public who rushed to see an exhibition devoted to his land (cities, suburbs, timeliness and timelessness as a performer, David Bowie has never failed. countryside). He has One thing leading to another, I came upon online footage of Bowie published several articles performing his song “Young Americans” on the Dick Cavett Show in 1974. on the city and the Right out of the gate, this is interesting. Because for anyone remotely suburbs in Quebec and interested in 1970s’ nostalgia, 1974 can come across as the imperfect year the North American par excellence. It always seems to me like nothing much happened in 1974 context and is associate pop culture. editor of Canadian Tellingly, the album Young Americans is arguably the weakest among Literature. Bowie’s otherwise impressive output during that decade. But it did pro- duce two hit songs: “Young Americans” and “Fame.” Both songs attempt to appropriate and channel the idioms of African-American soul and funk music through a barely noticeable, and yet ever-present, artificiality. Bowie himself spoke in interviews of wanting to do “plastic soul” music. In hindsight, Bowie’s endeavour on this mid-1970s American television appearance can strike us as extremely brash. Not only was he completely rebranding himself (before that, he was a bisexual alien), but he was doing so by highlighting, instead of attenuating, the original takeover of black music accomplished two decades earlier by Elvis Presley for the pleasure of the white middle-class masses and the profit of the white music industry. Looking at the footage, Bowie’s performance is “perfectly imperfect” in this regard. Everything about his physical persona is so evidently white. His face, his guitar (a model commonly associated with country music), his shoes, the awkwardness of his dance moves that are impaired by his over-the-top jacket, the cocaine infamously overtaking his system at the

Readers’ Forum | 7 time. The stiff awkwardness of his moves is especially striking. Here is a professional mime and dancer, a choreographer, a consummate stage artist who can barely break loose with what is traditionally regarded as the Imperfection in most danceable music in the world. And he is surrounded by professional black performers. this case was a But maybe this awkwardness stands as a greater statement of honesty. Perhaps is it also the only way in which Bowie could pull off such a spec- crucial tacle without seeing it devolve into pastiche, or racial outrage. I say “honesty” because in order to embody the rhythms of soul music mechanism in David Bowie overplayed his strangeness toward them. In this regard he remained an alien, or more specifically a dilettante, a tourist. One only the performance has to watch the little-known documentary Cracked Actor, filmed mostly during the same tour, in which Bowie casts himself as a fish-out-the-water itself. emaciated European dandy being driven through the desert of western America in his air-conditioned limousine. The contrast is striking. The performer and the environment are completely separated, and so are the corresponding cultural references. David Bowie, as a young American in 1974, presented himself as a body moving to a beat that his mind was unable to understand. But of course he was aware of all this. This is why imperfection in this case was not an accident. But this is also why it was not an alternately heartwarming or pathetic revelation of the humanity at the heart of the spectacle. Imperfection in this case was a crucial mechanism in the performance itself. And the performance was less an enjoyable hit song than a near-sui- cidal crossing of the divides between public visibility and cultural authen- ticity in a country where the racial divide has never ceased to inflame the public debate and the violent emotions therein.

8 | Laforest