Constellating stardom, Berlin-style: Bowie, Christiane F, Hedi Slimane

ABSTRACT

This article charts the importance of Berlin in the constellation of Bowie’s success and probes what stardom means in the context of Berlin. It links what Berlin meant to Bowie with what Bowie’s connection to the city has meant to Berlin in its establishing itself as the ‘poor but sexy’ clubbing capital of Europe. In order to get at the stylistic implications of this form of stardom, I bring together Bowie’s Berlin experiences with those of two countercultural personalities the city brought him together with, who are black stars in their own right: Christiane Felscherinow and Hedi Slimane. In ascertaining that Felscherinow and Slimane share with Bowie a dark aesthetic, which is also a politics and ethics of time and space, I probe the German Romantic lineage of the concepts of constellation and elective affinity and their critical potential via the writings of Berlin-born Walter Benjamin to show that this aesthetic is characteristic of the kind of stardom that the city of Berlin is struggling to maintain in the face of gentrifying pressures. Its appeal, I conclude, lies in the potential it offers for a lifestyle counter to the hegemonic, heteronormative, nuclear-family one of bourgeois modernity.

KEYWORDS:

• Bowie
• Berlin
• Christiane F
• Hedi Slimane
• Walter Benjamin
• elective affinities

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The catalogue was published on the occasion of the exhibition ‘David Bowie Is’, from 23 March to 11 August 2013 at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

2. Rüther’s book was translated into English in 2014 in the wake of interest generated by The Next Day (Rüther 2014).

3. Bowie’s personal connection with Slimane remains. His wife Iman wore a necklace of his name, David, designed by Slimane on her first public appearance after his death in September 2016 and vowed that she was ‘wearing this until my death’ (Schnurr 2016).

4. As is well known in Bowie studies, the concert was recorded not in Berlin but in New York, where Bowie was on tour at the time, just as he never met Marlene Dietrich in person during the filming of Just a Gigolo (1980, dir. David Hemmings).

5. See, for example, the Deutschland Akut interview of 27 November 2013, ‘Nach den “Kindern vom Bahnhof Zoo,”’ in which she is asked ‘But how relevant is The Children of Bahnhof Zoo today? Is it right that the book, 35 years after its appearance, is still a mandatory read in many German schools? What does Christiane F.’s story have to say to young people today besides romanticizing drugs and providing misery voyeurism?’ (Deutschland Akut 27.11.2013 – Nach den ‘Kindern vom Bahnhof Zoo’ 2013).

6. Felscherinow tells of her experiences in these scenes in Berlin, Switzerland and Greece in her second memoir (Fescherinow et al. 2013). For a reading of it, see (Ingram 2018).

7. For reasons of copyright I am unable to include any images from the film of Christiane wearing a Bowie jacket with her back to the camera and of her walking past a Bowie poster facing the poster here. They are available for purchase online on the Christiane F. Movie Wallpapers website (http://wallpapersin4k.net/wallpaper/178608).

8. These images can be found on the Autre website (A David Bowie Concert Diary By Hedi Slimane 2016).

9. I am borrowing from the catchy title of Enis Oktay’s delightful essay in Geoff Stahl’s 2014 Poor, but Sexy: Reflections on Berlin Scenes volume (Otkay 2014).

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Notes on contributors

Susan Ingram

Susan Ingram is Associate Professor in the Department of Humanities at York University, Toronto, where she coordinates the Graduate Diploma for Comparative Literature and is affiliated with the Canadian Centre for German and European Studies and the Research Group on Language and Culture Contact. She is the general editor of Intellect Book’s Urban Chic series and the co-author of the volumes on Berlin, Vienna, and Los Angeles. A past president of the Canadian Comparative Literature Association, her research interests revolve around the institutions of European cultural modernity and their legacies.