Senior Seminar : David Bowie and the Phenomenology of PerformanceShelton Waldreprmccoy202003-09-03T03:08:00Z2006-08-31T15:02:00Z2006-08-31T15:02:00Z1301617195 143402017111.8026Course: Senior Seminar: David Bowie and the Phenomenology of Performance, English 445, M 4.10-6.40 pm, G38 Masterton HallInstructor: Dr. Shelton WaldrepOffice: 321 Luther Bonney HallHours: Wed. 4-5 pm, when available, and at other times on Mon. and Wed. by contacting waldrep@maine.eduDescription:“I consider myself responsible for a whole new school of pretensions.” David Bowie, February, 1976.Although David Bowie has famously characterized himself as a “leper messiah,” a more appropriate moniker might now be “rock god”: someone whose influence has crossed numerous sub-genres of popular and classical music and can at times seem ubiquitous. Bowie’s career is emblematic of the ‘art school’ approach to rock and roll stardom—a studied attempt to bring ‘high’ and ‘low’ cultural production together by borrowing from the former to alter the latter. This class will look at selected aspects of Bowie’s career—musical recordings, live concerts, music videos, film performances, and television appearances—in an attempt to trace Bowie’s contribution to the performative paradigms that constitute contemporary rock music. A few of the many questions that we will ask include: to what extent can Bowie be considered emblematic of the seventies (a decade and label he claims is his “albatross”)? what might his work mean to gay and lesbian rock stars who have attempted to model their career on his? does Bowie’s outsider approach to rock music (an artist who happens to sing) deconstruct the usual assumptions about rock fame? In addition to musical and visual performances, we will examine fan letters, poetry, musical analysis, and cultural critiques written by and about Bowie and his oeuvre. We will also consider various theoretical models, where appropriate, in such areas as gender studies, performance theory, and rock criticism. Overall, we will pay particular attention to the idea that Bowie is not merely a rock musician, but an artist whose work spans a variety of media over a period of 40 years.Texts:1. The following books have been ordered for the class and are available at the Woodbury Center bookstore:Pegg, Nicholas. The Complete David Bowie. Richmond, Surrey: Reynolds and Hearn, 2002. Thomson, Elizabeth, and David Gutman, eds. The Bowie Companion. New York: Da Capo, 1996. 2. Photocopies of the following are either on reserve at the Glickman Library or will be passed out in class:Adorno, Theodor. "On Popular Music." Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader. Ed. and Intrd. John Storey. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994. 202-214.Barthes, Roland. "The Grain of the Voice." Music/Image/Text. Trans. Stephen Heath. New York: Hill and Wang, 1977. 179-89.Bjornberg, Alf. “Structural Relationship of Music and Images in Music Video.” Reading Pop: Approaches to Textual Analysis in Popular Music. Ed. Richard Middleton. New York: Oxford UP, 2000. 347-382.Burden, Chris. “Untitled Statement.” Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art. Ed. Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz. Berkeley: U of California P, 1996. 768-772.Carr, C. “This Is Only a Test.” On Edge: Performance at the End of the Twentieth Century. Hanover: Wesleyan UP, 1993. 16-24.Clarke, John, and Tony Jefferson. “Working Class Youth Cultures.” Presented to Conference on “Working Class Culture and Social Change,” Nov. 1973, Cardiff. Birmingham: Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, 1973.Frith, Simon. "Confessions of a Rock Critic." Music for Pleasure: Essays in the Sociology of Pop. New York: Routledge, 1988.163-168.Frith, Simon. "Making Sense of Video: Pop into the Nineties." Music for Pleasure: Essays in the Sociology of Pop. New York: Routledge, 1988. 205-225.Frith, Simon. “Performance.” Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1996. 158-182.Frith, Simon. “Songs as Texts.” Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1996. 203-225.Frith, Simon, and Howard Horne. "The Rock Bohemians." Art into Pop. New York: Methuen, 1987. 71-122.Gill, John. "Dire Straights: Ziggy, Iggy, Marc, Lou." Queer Noises: Male and Female Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century Music. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1995. 106-113.Gracyk, Theodore. “Adorno, Jazz, and the Reception of Popular Music.” Rhythm and Noise: An Aesthetics of Rock. Durham: Duke UP, 1996. 149-173.Grossberg, Lawrence. “The Media Economy of Rock Culture: Cinema, Post-Modernity and Authenticity.” Sound and Vision: The Music Video Reader. Ed. Simon Frith, Andrew Goodwin, and Lawrence Grossberg. New York: Routledge, 1993. 185-209.Hisama, Ellie M. “Postcolonialism on the Make: The Music of John Mellencamp, David Bowie, and John Zorn.” Reading Pop: Approaches to Textual Analysis in Popular Music. Ed. Richard Middleton. New York: Oxford UP, 2000. 229-346.Hebdige, Dick. “Subculture: The Meaning of Style.” Ed. Ken Gelder and Sarah Thornton. The Subcultures Reader (London and New York: Routledge, 1997). 130-42.Hoberman, J. "What's Art Got to Do with It?" Vulgar Modernism: Writing on Movies and Other Media. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1991. 149-157.Kaprow, Allan. “Untitled Guidelines for Happenings.” Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art. Ed. Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz. Berkeley: U of California P, 1996. 709-714.McRobbie, Angela. “Settling Accounts with Subculture: A Feminist Critique.” Feminism and Youth Culture From ‘Jackie’ to ‘Just Seventeen.’ Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1991. 16-34.Mitchell, Tony. “Performance and the Postmodern in Pop Music.” Theatre Journal 41 (October 1989): 273-293.Murray, Charles Shaar. “Glam Rock Remembered.” Shots from the Hip. New York: Penguin, 1991. 222-238.Ratcliff, Carter. "David Bowie's Survival." Artforum 21.5 (January 1983): 39-45.Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. "Axiomatic." The Cultural Studies Reader. Ed. Simon During. New York: Routledge, 1993. 243-68.Silverman, Kaja. “Fragments of a Fashionable Discourse.” Studies in Entertainment: Critical Approaches to Mass Culture. Ed. Tania Modleski. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1986. 139-152.Stiles, Kristine. “Performance Art.” Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art. Ed. Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz. Berkeley: U of California P, 1996. 79-94.3. We will view excerpts of the following performances, either in class or outside of class. Whenever possible, tapes of this material will be available for you to borrow:Laurie Anderson, Home of the Brave (1986)Michael Armstrong, The Image (1967)Salvador Dali, Un Chien Andulou (1928)Todd Haynes, Velvet Goldmine (1999)Lindsay Kemp, Pierrot in Turquoise (1967)David Mallet, Glass Spider (1988)David Mallet, Serious Moonlight (1984)Nagisa Oshima, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983)DA Pennebaker, Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1973)Nicolas Roeg, The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976)Julian Schnable, Basquiat (1996)Tony Scott, The Hunger (1983)Julien Temple, Jazzin’ for Blue Jean (1984) Malcolm J. Thomson, Love You Till Tuesday (1969)Alan Yentob, Cracked Actor (1974)Misc. television appearances from The Midnight Special, Saturday Night Live, and elsewhere.Bowie’s collected music videos.4. CDs of the following titles by David Bowie:Hunky DoryZiggy Stardust and the Spiders from MarsLow“Heroes”LodgerScary Monsters (and Super Creeps)Let’s DanceOutsideas well as a CD of misc. other tracks by Bowie.For general information on Bowie, please access his Web site: www.davidbowie.comRequirements and Grading: 1) A presentation and a workshop. The presentation, which will be scheduled sometime prior to Thanksgiving Break, will be an overview of one of the critical essays that we read for class. Your job will be to critically analyze the essay under discussion and to present it to the class. The workshop, which will be scheduled for December, will require you to bring a rough draft of your paper to class to be critiqued by your peers. 2) A senior paper of no fewer than 15 pages on a topic related to the seminar. 3) Active class participation. Breakdown: presentation: 25%; senior paper: 50%; attendance and participation (including workshop): 25%.Policies (all classes):All major assignments will receive a letter grade. Letter grades will be computed as follows: A = 95; A- = 92; B+ = 88; B = 85; B- = 82; C+ = 78; C = 75; C- = 72, etc. Late papers will be accepted by permission only. If accepted, one-half of a letter grade will be subtracted per day for each day of the week that the paper is late. Attendance in class is expected. If you miss more than the equivalent of one week’s worth of classes—for whatever reason—your final course grade will suffer. If you miss more than one-third of the scheduled classes for this course, you will receive a grade of “F” for the final course grade.Please do not be excessively tardy; do not eat in class; do not leave and enter the room during class except during scheduled breaks.Schedule:(NB: Please consult Pegg’s The Complete David Bowie for further information about individual songs, albums, videos, films, or concerts.)September 12: Introduction to the course; information cards filled out; syllabi distributed and discussed; screening: excerpts from Yentob, Changes: Bowie at 50.19: Theorizing Subculture: Overviews. Murray, “Glam Rock Remembered” (photocopy on reserve); Frith and Horne, “The Rock Bohemians” (photocopy on reserve); Ratcliff, “David Bowie’s Survival” (photocopy on reserve); Iain Chambers, “Among the Fragments” (Bowie Companion); Hebdige, “Subculture” (photocopy on reserve); Clarke and Jefferson, “Working Class Youth Cultures” (photocopy on reserve); McRobbie, “Girls and Subculture” (photocopy on reserve); Frith, “The Art of Posing” (Bowie Companion).26: Cont.Ocboter 3: Theorizing Sexuality: Ziggy Stardust Bowie, Ziggy Stardust; Craig Copetas, “Beat Godfather Meets Glitter Mainman” (Bowie Companion); Rice, “David Bowie and the End of Gender” (Bowie Companion); Sedgwick, “Axiomatic” (photocopy on reserve); Gill, “Dire Straights” (photocopy on reserve); Michael Watts, “Oh You Pretty Things” (Bowie Companion); Jon Savage, “The Gender Bender” (Bowie Companion); screening: excerpts from Pennebaker, Ziggy Stardust and Bowie, The 1980 Floor Show (1973).10: Autumn Break.17: Cont. 24: Theorizing Sound: Berlin Trilogy (Low, “Heroes”, Lodger). Bowie, Low; Bowie, ”Heroes”; Bowie, Lodger; Eric Tann, “Soul Robots: Eno and Fripp with Bowie” (Bowie Companion); Jon Savage, “Avant-AOR” (Bowie Companion); Kael, “Notes on Evolving Heroes, Morals, and Audiences” (Bowie Companion); Frith, “Confessions of a Rock Critic” (photocopy on reserve); Adorno, “On Popular Music” (photocopy on reserve); Gracyk, “Adorno, Jazz, and the Reception of Popular Music” (photocopy on reserve); Barthes, “The Grain of the Voice” (photocopy on reserve); Frith, “Songs as Texts” (photocopy on reserve); Mellers, “Still Hunky Dory, After All These Years (Bowie Companion); screening: Bowie, Saturday Night Live performance (1980); excerpts from Roeg, The Man Who Fell to Earth.31: Cont.November 7: Theorizing Fashion: Scary Monsters and Let’s Dance. Bowie, Scary Monsters; Bowie, Let’s Dance; Silverman, “Fragments of a Fashionable Discourse” (photocopy on reserve); Grossberg, “The Media Economy of Rock Culture: Cinema, Post-Modernity and Authenticity; Deborah Elizabeth Finn, “Moon and Gloom: David Bowie’s Frustrated Messianism” (Bowie Companion); Hoberman, "What's Art Got to Do with It?"; Deborah H. Holdstein, “Put on Your Red Shoes and Dance the Blues” (Bowie Companion); Ellie M. Hisama, “Postcolonialism on the Make: The Music of John Mellencamp, David Bowie, and John Zorn” (photocopy on reserve); Patricia Mackay, “Serious—and Stunning—Moonlight” (Bowie Companion); screening: excerpt from Mallet, Serious Moonlight and from Oshima, Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence; Bowie videos, 1979-1983.14: Cont.21: Theorizing Performance: Outside. Bowie, Outside; Bowie, “The Diary of Nathan Adler or The Art-Ritual Murder of Baby Grace Blue: A Non-Linear Gothic Drama Hyper-Cycle” (photocopy); Mitchell, “Performance and the Postmodern in Pop Music” (photocopy on reserve); Carr, “This Is Only a Test” (photocopy on reserve); Burden, “Untitled Statement” (photocopy on reserve); Stiles, “Performance Art” (photocopy on reserve); Frith, "Making Sense of Video: Pop into the Nineties" (photocopy on reserve); Frith, “Performance” (photocopy on reserve); screening: Bowie videos from the 1990s.28: Cont.December 5: Bowie’s Influence. Screening: excerpts from Schnable, Basquiat, Anderson, Home of the Brave, Haynes, Velvet Goldmine, etc.12: Student workshop on the final paper.FINAL EXAM DAY: final papers due by 4 PM in 311 Luther Bonney Hall.+++Resources for Further Reading:Battcock, Gregory, and Robert Nickas, eds. The Art of Performance: A Critical Anthology. New York: Dutton, 1984.Bergman, David, ed. Camp Grounds: Style and Homosexuality. Ed. David Bergman. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1993.Booth, Mark. Camp. New York: Quartet Books, 1983.Bowie, David. “Basquiat’s Wave.” Modern Painters 9 (Spring 1996): 46-47.Bowie, David. “(S)now: David Bowie Interviews Damien Hirst.” Modern Painters 9 (Summer 1996): 36.Buerger, Peter. Theory of the Avant-Garde. Trans. Michael Shaw. Foreword Jochen Schulte-Sasse. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1984.Butler, Judith. Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex." New York: Routledge, 1993. 223-42.---. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990.Cage, John. “Composition as Process Part II: Indeterminacy.” Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art. Ed. Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz. Berkeley: U of California P, 1996. 707-709.Calinescu, Matel. Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism. Durham: Duke UP, 1987.Cann, Kevin. David Bowie: A Chronology. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983.Carr, Roy, and Charles Shaar Murray. David Bowie: The Illustrated Record. New York: Avon, 1981.Case, Sue-Ellen, ed. Cruising the Performative: Interventions Into the Representation of Ethnicity, Nationality, and Sexuality. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1995.Chambers, Iain. Urban Rhythms: Pop Music and Popular Culture. London: Macmillan, 1985.Collins, Richard, et al. Media, Culture and Society: A Critical Reader. Beverly Hills: SAGE Publications, 1986.Core, Philip. Camp: The Lie that Tells the Truth. New York: Deliah Books, 1984.Curtis, Jim. Rock Eras: Interpretations of Music and Society, 1954-1984. Bowling Green: Bowling Green State U Popular P, 1987.Davy, Kate. "Fe/Male Impersonation: The Discourse of Camp." Critical Theory and Performance. Ed. Janelle G. Reinelt and Joseph R. Roach. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1992. 231-47.Debord, Guy. Society of the Spectacle. Detroit: Black and Rose, 1983 (1967).DeCurtis, Anthony, ed. Rock & Roll and Culture. Special issue of The South Atlantic Quarterly 90.4 (1991).Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books, 1979 (1975).Frith, Simon. Music for Pleasure: Essays in the Sociology of Pop. New York: Routledge, 1988.---. "Only Dancing." Mother Jones 8.7 (August 1983): 16-22.---. Sound Effects: Youth, Leisure, and the Politics of Rock'n'Roll. New York: Pantheon, 1981.Frith, Simon, and Andrew Goodwin, eds. On Record: Rock, Pop, and the Written Word. New York: Pantheon, 1990. Gillman, Peter. Alias David Bowie: A Biography. New York: H. Holt, 1986.Goddard, Peter. David Bowie: Out of the Cool. New York: Beaufort Books, 1983.Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday, 1959.Goldberg, RoseLee. Performance Art. Rev. ed. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1988.Goodwin, Andrew. Dancing in the Distraction Factory: Music, Television, and Popular Culture. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1992.Gore, Joe. “David Bowie and Reeves Gabrels.” Guitar Player 31.6 (June 1997): 55.Greenberg, Clement. "Avant-Garde and Kitsch." Partisan Review 1 (1939): 34-49.Hoberman, J., and Jonathan Rosenbaum. Midnight Movies. New York: Harper, 1983. Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W. Adorno. "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception." Dialectic of Enlightenment. Trans. John Cumming. New York: Continuum, 1972 (1944). 120-67.Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke UP, 1991.Kaprow, Allan. Essays on the Blurring of Art and Life. Berkeley: U of California P, 1993.Koch, Stephen. Stargazer: Andy Warhol's World and His Films. New York: Praeger, 1973.Lanham, Tom. "David Bowie." CD Review (October 1995): 28-32.Lynch, Kate. David Bowie: A Rock 'n' Roll Odyssey. New York: Proteus Books, 1984.Matthew-Walker, Robert. David Bowie: Theatre of Music. Abbotsbrook, Buckinghamshire: The Kensal House, 1985.McGrath, John Edward. "Trusting in Rubber: Performing Boundaries During the AIDS Epidemic." TDR 39.2 (Summer 1995): 18-21.McClary, Susan. Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, Sexuality. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1991.McRobbie, Angela, ed. Zoot Suits and Second-Hand Dresses. Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1988.Marcus, Greil. Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1989.Moon, Michael. "Flaming Closets." October 51 (Winter 1989): 19-54.Moon, Michael, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. "Divinity: A Dossier, A Performance Piece, A Little-Understood Emotion." Discourse 13.1 (Fall/Winter 1990-91): 12-39.Mowitt, John. "Performance Theory as the Work of Laurie Anderson." Discourse 12.2 (Spring/Summer 1990): 48-65.---. Text: The Genealogy of an Antidisciplinary Object. Durham: