David Bowie is the Englishman from Mars: an examination of Englishness through stardom

ABSTRACT

Throughout his five-decade career, David Bowie played the role of pop star, sophisticated actor, alien from Mars, Berlin dweller and more. His propensity for change established a star identity that challenged societal norms, creating a new representation of the English identity that was rarely seen in mainstream media. This research explores how David Bowie, framed as an actor rather than a musician, used his celebrity status to project new types of English characters on-screen.This article applies theories of Englishness, cultural studies and star and celebrity studies to Bowie’s performance as Ziggy Stardust in the film Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars [The Motion Picture], tracking how his performance queers the stereotypical English nationality seen on screen during the post-war years. This research uses a mixture of semiotics and contextual analysis to explore how David Bowie, as a celebrated face in British pop culture, rejects the modern romanticism of Englishness and illustrates how Bowie’s performance is constructed to challenge our understanding of Englishness through media texts and challenging the connotations associated with English masculinity, sexuality and otherness.

KEYWORDS:

• Film studies
• celebrity studies
• star studies
• David Bowie
• Ziggy Stardust
• national identity
• Englishness

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Shelby Cooke

Shelby Cooke is a Master's graduate from the University of East Anglia in Film Studies. Her primary area of study is British cinema, with a specialisation in the cultural and societal impact of stars and celebrities on British national identity. She has undertaken additional research on David Bowie as a transnational identity, filmmaker Andrea Arnold's representation of motherhood, the queer identity of aristocratic men in Edward Berger's Patrick Melrose (2018) and Paddington Bear in a post-Brexit Britain. She has presented research at the London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research's “(De)Constructing Narrative Identities“ conference and at the University of East Anglia's “Critically Queer“ symposium. Shelby also writes about culture and media for various publications.