How David Bowie Used a Non-Binary Alien from Mars to Deconstruct Gender and Self

Example of "gendered movement" onstage, Source: Wenner Media

            David Bowie is often remembered not only for his songwriting and various musical abilities, but for his frequently shifting alter egos and his androgynous, otherworldly stage performances. Using characters such as “Ziggy Stardust” and “The Thin White Duke”, he was able to completely subvert and blur the lines that make up the performative acts of gender and self.

As discussed by Judith Butler in Performative Acts and Gender Constitution, gender is an inherently performative act put on equally for one’s self and for those around them. In 2019, it’s not uncommon for people to intentionally subvert and play with ideas of gender with the intent of undermining traditional gender roles, but in the early 1970s when Bowie started experimenting with these ideas onstage it was groundbreaking. Androgyny in the world of rock had been pioneered by his contemporaries such as Marc Bolan of the band T. Rex, but Bowie took this to a level that had previously not been explored by creating a character he would perform as every single time he went onstage between 1971 and 1973. This character was named “Ziggy Stardust”, and in short it was a non-binary space alien from Mars that traveled to Earth to spread messages of love and rock and roll.

It wasn’t that Bowie was completely disregarding the idea of “doing gender”, it was that he was taking it to such an extreme level as to completely change what it meant to do so. When performing as Ziggy Stardust, Bowie would dress in elaborate, flashy costumes that didn’t quite fit into traditionally “male” or “female” categories of clothing. These varied quite a bit, from strange kimono/short skirt mixtures, to elaborately colored jumpsuits, to garments that don’t even have names in the English language to describe them. Another integral part of his visual breakdown of gender consisted of the makeup he would wear. When performing, he would paint his face in white, pink, and gold in order to give himself an otherworldly appearance, but it also played a part in contributing to his breakdown of gender. By applying it in a way that wasn’t traditionally male or female, but something else entirely, it subverts expectations in a way that “does gender” without signaling male or female.

Source: The Japan Times

Source: Mick Rock 

His onstage appearance played a very significant role in this breakdown of “doing gender” but what played an equally important role was the performances themselves. When watching videos of Bowie performing as Ziggy Stardust, something is immediately apparent about the way he moves onstage. It’s common knowledge that there are subtle differences in the way that men and women move and walk, but Bowie takes this "gendered movement" to an entirely new level. A majority of the time, there’s something unnameable yet undoubtedly feminine about the way he moves, but this becomes especially apparent when he switches between moving in traditionally masculine and feminine ways. It’s difficult to describe in words, but it’s immediately apparent when viewing it.

In addition to subverting and muddling traditional ideas of doing gender, the alter-ego of Ziggy Stardust was also used by Bowie to subvert the idea of doing self. As Bowie’s popularity grew in the early 70s, the Ziggy character started to become more than an onstage persona. It started to become the way that he lived. Wherever he went he would dress extravagantly like Ziggy did, he would wear more subdued versions of the stage makeup, he would interview not just as British rock star David Bowie, but as a mixture of Bowie and the new character he invented. His alter-ego simply became another aspect of his personality that he could switch back and forth between, almost eliminating the standard view of “doing self” and replacing it with distorted, more extreme version of it. He wasn’t just “doing self” to show the world the version of David Bowie that he wanted them to see, he was doing self to manufacture an entirely new person that he could turn into. This culminated on July 3, 1973 when Bowie killed Ziggy onstage by announcing that the character that brought him to fame was no more. Bowie unlocked a new aspect of his psyche by taking “doing self” to an extreme, before committing a sort of public ego-murder, eliminating part of himself in ritual fashion.

Bowie as Ziggy while not performing, Source:Mick Rock

Ziggy Stardust was originally intended as just a vehicle to get to the type of immersive onstage experience that Bowie envisioned, but it quickly became more than that. Ziggy became a way to break down the gender binary 40 years before it was a mainstream idea and to change the concept of self into something else entirely. By using this character, Bowie was able to take ideas of self and gender to the extreme, and in the process, completely subvert them.

Bibliography

Butler, Judith. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.” Theatre Journal, vol. 40, no. 4, Dec. 1988, p. 519., doi:10.2307/3207893.

Hill, Marian. “David Bowie and His Alter Egos.” The Connector, The Connector, 6 Oct. 2018, scadconnector.com/2018/10/07/david-bowie-and-his-alter-egos/.

Thian, Helene M. “For David Bowie, Japanese Style Was More than Just Fashion.” The Japan Times, The Japan Times Ltd., 11 June 2013, www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2013/06/11/style/for-david-bowie-japanese-style-was-more-than-just-fashion/#.XMYdguhKhPY.