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ABSTRACT
Death constitutes an end to consciousness for the departed, while for the living it represents an event out there in a world of objects. The memory of David Bowie as a celebrity was certain to live on via documented images, music and performances, irrespective of the cessation of the acting subject David Jones. When reviewing the single ‘Lazarus’ upon its release in 2016, British journalist Kitty Empire expressed an unwillingness to interpret it as Bowie’s swansong. Her rationale – ‘the starting point for analysis [of Bowie] has never been lived experience’. Yet, this article considers how, had Bowie not served as an agent of his prospective memory and addressed his death directly via his final musical iteration, he may not have died at all in a socially networked society flooded with boundless media content. This article explores how the assured endurance of Bowie’s oeuvre and his standing as a revered cultural icon almost necessitated a reorientation of public engagement with his death in the modern age in order to acknowledge death as an end state that stands in contrast to ‘being’.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
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Notes on contributors
Gareth Schott
Gareth Schott is an Associate Professor in Screen and Media Studies at the School of Arts, University of Waikato (NZ). His current research interests are focused on media representation of death and dying in the modern era. He is the author of Violent Games: Rules, realism, effect (Bloomsbury Press, 2016) and co-author of Computer Games: Text, narrative and play (Polity Press, 2006). His research has been funded by the Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Grant (NZ), Office of Film and Literature Classification (NZ), Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK) and University for Industry (UK).