A presentation from the Arts and Humanities Annual Conference 2014.
Themes of transformation are pervasive throughout classical myth and can also be found in popular music culture where heroes and heroines are forever changing and reinventing the artistic self in the struggle to survive in the brutal world that is the music business. After all who better than the chameleon of pop David Bowie to illustrate the gender bending trickster archetype? Bowie riding the zeitgeist: like a time traveling Zelig forever changing and resisting definition. The Laughing Gnome: The Man Who Sold the World; Ziggy Stardust Aladdin Sane The Thin White Duke and The Man Who Fell to Earth. It is significant that Bowie’s early failure and study of mime informed his later success and ability to reinvent. The Elder Statesman has now been canonized with an exhibition at the V&A his discarded skins on display for all to marvel at. The collocation of both a metaphorical and theoretical framework applied to capture an allegorical moment of transfiguration supports the view of Professor Robert A. Segal (2004) who writes: ‘Theories need myths as much as myths need theories. If theories illuminate myths myths confirm theories’. As a way of introducing mythology to the modern teaching environment this presentation will interrogate ideas of Transformation Authenticity and Archetypes.
