LIFE IN MARS
(DAVID BOWIE)
It's a god-awful small affair
To the girl with the mousy hair
But her mummy is yelling "No"
And her daddy has told her to go
But her friend is nowhere to be seen
Now she walks through her sunken dream
To the seat with the clearest view
And she's hooked to the silver screen
But the film is a saddening bore
'Cause she's lived it ten times or more
She could spit in the eyes of fools
As they ask her to focus on
Sailors fighting in the dance hall
Oh man! Look at those cavemen go
It's the freakiest show
Take a look at the Lawman
Beating up the wrong guy
Oh man! Wonder if he'll ever know
He's in the best selling show
Is there life on Mars?
It's on Amerika's tortured brow
That Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow
Now the workers have struck for fame
'Cause Lennon's on sale again
See the mice in their million hordes
From Ibiza to the Norfolk Broads
Rule Britannia is out of bounds
To my mother, my dog, and clowns
But the film is a saddening bore
'Cause I wrote it ten times or more
It's about to be writ again
As I ask you to focus on
Sailors fighting in the dance hall
Oh man! Look at those cavemen go
It's the freakiest show
Take a look at the Lawman
Beating up the wrong guy
Oh man! Wonder if he'll ever know
He's in the best selling show
Is there life on Mars?
"Life On Mars?" was released in 1971 on David Bowie's album Hunky Dory, and later
became a single in 1973. It has often been considered Bowie's best song. While it
never hit #1 on the charts like "Let's Dance" ("Life On Mars?" peaked at #3), it
features prominently in the "Best Song Ever" lists that critics make every now and
then. Artists ranging from Barbara Streisand to The Flaming Lips to The Ukulele
Orchestra of Great Britain have covered it. Recently, the BBC called it "one of the
oddest hit singles ever," and it's hard to argue with that. In fact, it could be argued
that "Life On Mars?" epitomizes what David Bowie was in the 1970s: weird.
The question you might be asking as you listen to the song (or to David Bowie in
general) is: why is this so great—but so weird? What sets Bowie apart in such a way
that his music has this label of weirdness that other equally innovative artists' music
doesn't have? Within the song, the most obvious bit of strangeness is how Bowie's
sharp—yet surreal—lyrical critique of uninteresting, bloated pop culture plays
ironically against the song's own sonic extravagance, featuring chords lifted directly
from Frank Sinatra's "My Way." In the history embedded in the lyrics and in the
history of the song itself is evidence that little or none of what Bowie does in "Life On
Mars?" is new. His originality and his strangeness, then, can only come from playing
familiar elements against each other. Bowie's using the very culture he's parodying
in ironic celebration of itself, transcending it in the process.
This is something that Bowie has done consistently throughout his career. He
constantly straddles cultural boundaries, transcending categories to become
something else altogether: Man or woman, human or alien, pop shlop or intellectual
gruel, 1970 Bowie or 1980 Bowie. It works well for Bowie, but we have to keep in
mind that the androgynous, post-Ziggy Stardust David Bowie of the 1973
promotional video for "Life On Mars?" is not who Bowie is as a person. A small hop
back in time to the original "Space Oddity" video reveals a more conventional
character. And looking ahead even just a few years we find experiments in soul and
Philly Jazz. Beginning with The Man Who Sold The World in 1970, Bowie began
creating these identities and has always been a sort of embodiment of the sheer
creative energy that being unconventional and without category can produce.
If Bowie is remixing older concepts in "Life On Mars?" then we should first identify
his source material. His vague dissatisfaction with "lawmen" (read "The Man") and
the anti-patriotism of "Rule Britannia" (a British nationalist anthem) positions Bowie
squarely within the countercultural movement of the '60s and '70s. His usage of
Mickey Mouse (in "Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow") as an emblem of capitalist
sprawl is particularly helpful in identifying Bowie as a member of the intellectual left.
The line, "Now the workers have struck for fame," could be a reference to the Disney
animators' strike of 1941. While the strike didn't affect the public's relationship with
Disney very much, it earned Disney the cold shoulder of leftist critics who would
thereafter call Disney the "mouse factory." That criticism contains two crucial
perspectives: a Marxist point of view, and an anti-consumerist point of view. Given
the proletarian aesthetic created by Bowie's invocation of workers striking for fame,
John Lennon (or V.I. Lenin), and "the mice in their million hordes," it may sound easy
to call "Life On Mars?" a Marxist, anti-capitalist song—but it's not that simple.
Bowie definitely sounds like a Marxist when he sings about striking workers, "lawmen
beating up the wrong guy," and the "mice in their million hordes" sweeping over
Western Europe ("from Ibiza to the Norfolk Broads"). But the song also contains
criticism of the most basic idea of worker revolution. Whether or not you hear
Bowie's lyric as "Lenin" (the Russian communist leader) or "Lennon" (the British
singer of "Working Class Hero"), the line "Now the workers have struck for fame /
'Cause Lennon's on sale again" takes a dig at the quasi-revolutionary pretensions of
other '60s leftists. Lives and ideas have become so commoditized that revolution,
like everything else, has even become just another brand. It's clear that social action
here is a response to a market condition—"on sale"—and not a response to real
convictions. Put simply, Bowie is saying that the notion that John Lennon—or V.I.
Lenin, for that matter—could spur the masses to revolution in 1971 is completely
dependent upon Lennon's/Lenin's ability to sell himself. In that sense, the very idea
of socialism in the West has become a commodity. Therefore, nothing will happen—
it's all been done before.
There aren't any original ideas in mainstream culture, to the point where the people's
hope for change is at best a response to being sold a song that's been sung time
and again. That sentiment is in the Disney reference, too; the animators' strike in
1941 was a huge turning point in the company's history. It marked, more or less, the
ultimate transformation of Disney's animation from art into product. The familiar
Disney color palette of the '40s and '50s films Alice and Wonderland, Peter Pan, and
others is, to some critics, a symbol of the lack of willpower within the Disney empire
to push animation boundaries because it's cheaper and safer to put out more of the
same.
But Bowie doesn't just aim his barbs at Walt Disney. Looking at the origins of the
song, it would seem that Bowie himself is of these "fools" who keeps writing a song
that's been sung. "Life On Mars?" has its origins in "Comme d'habitude," a crooner
song written by Claude François and Jacques Revaux in 1967. Written first in
English, and then in French, "Comme d'habitude" was released in 1968 and found its
way into the English-speaking ears of David Bowie and Paul Anka. Bowie was asked
to write another set of English lyrics to the song, and he came up with "Even a Fool
Learns to Love." To Bowie's dismay, however, the song's rights were bought by
Anka, who wrote yet another set of English lyrics to the tune, calling it "My Way." "My
Way" then became a famous Frank Sinatra anthem. According to the BBC, "Life On
Mars?" was an inspired parody of "My Way," written in frustration at losing out on the
rights to such a well-received song. The evidence is there in the music; "Life On
Mars?" has the same descending chord structure as "My Way"—it has just been
lifted up a few keys (a minor third) and many of the melody lines are similar.
The narrative of the song describes the same thing. The song begins with "the girl
with the mousy hair" at some "God-awful small affair," when she then imagines her
way (in "her sunken dream") into—where else—a movie theater. As she sits in "the
seats with the clearest view" and we move into the chorus of the song, she
frustratingly sits through scenes she's "lived ten times before"—"Sailors / Fighting in
a dance hall," "cavemen," etc. Ironically, those boring images give David Bowie
his chorus. Those images compromise the melodic hook of the song, and the lyrics
are sung with what Bowie would later describe as "middle class ecstasy."
So what's going on?
Bowie isn't quite boring and anti-pop enough to agree with the "girl with the mousy
hair"—whom he later called an "anomic heroine"—but he obviously sympathizes with
her boredom. This ironic disparity between the obvious possibilities/realities of
cultural boredom and the manner with which Bowie seemingly endorses the dribble
and cliché of Western culture is important—it means that you can't really say Bowie
is either a leftist critic or a dime-a-dozen pop artist. You can call Bowie a
postmodernist in the way that his reaction against pop culture is to use it against
itself, but it's important to also say that Bowie is a popular artist too. While David
Bowie has always publicly said that he's strictly about art, his art is one that requires
being accessible and engaging;. Bowie is simultaneously a critic and a creator of pop
culture.
Unlike the little girl, Bowie can see the banalities of our culture and still have fun with
them. He toys with our notions of acceptable and unacceptable and takes them to
extremes—he identifies cultural boundaries with the intention of crossing and
confusing them. The way these elements synthesize has made Bowie a very popular
and influential shock artist and ironist. But unlike other subversive rock icons of the
Bowie-led "glam-rock" era such as Alice Cooper, Bowie was always rebellious and
campy in a non-violent, even fun way. While Bowie was often more intellectual and
artistic than his fellow glam-rockers, he was—in this single frame of his career—just
as much about being a hyper-affected, theatric, and sexual being.
