I have no idea what I watched, but I like it.
The video starts with an image of bad 80s video effect. It's Bowie wearing pale white makeup. He's a clown with a Harry Potter-ish "7" scar on his forehead. Hey, that's why he's the star and I'm just some guy with a blog read by about five people. The music begins as we look down at a planet made entirely out of orange and black chalk. There are a couple people on a beach but we'll get to them later. Bowie starts singing about his famous Space Oddity video.
He asks us to remember about Major Tom, the astronaut in the original song who launched successfully but then disappeared. Bowie is concerned about the rumors he heard about him. Clown Bowie holds up a postcard that suddenly shows a scene of another Bowie singing. I think. It's hard to tell it's him when he's not dressed weird. This is followed by what appears to be a blonde ballerina and three Observers dressed like Q from Star Trek: The Next Generation's pilot. They recount the part of Space Oddity where Ground Control was talking to Major Tom. Although Ground Control didn't talk about his love life and promised sordid details in the original. I guess they were updating it for the 80s.
The Bowie we saw in a postcard is now on screen. He holds a postcard of another Bowie. This Bowie has been locked away for being crazy. For you see, he looks and dressed normally! Poor guy. By the way, I just realized I got it wrong. Major Tom is the Action Guy in the song. Therefore the "sordid details" were his last words from Space Oddity. Man, I'm bad at interpreting songs. So to sum up, the previous scene with the clowns and ballerinas were about Major Tom telling us that he happy he is.
Major Tom gives us the details. It isn't pretty. He's bald, broke, and living a nothing life where all he has are his Japanese girly pics. Remember when I complained about the ending of that song? Now we're going from a song about youth where the sky is the limit to a song about mid-adult hood where everything has gone wrong. Bowie sings about how he's trying to kick AH HAH! If this song isn't about someone on drugs than I will donate a hundred dollars to Lita's favorite charity!
Chorus time. Clown Bowie, the ballerina, and the three men who I guess are priests walk in front of a tractor. They sing that Tom Major is a junkie. Oops, my wager looks useless now. Instead of being in space, Tom Major just thinks he's in heaven. Clown Bowie shows us his hand shaking to illustrate the theme.
Crazy normal Bowie is huddled in the corner singing about how he intends to break the habit, but he's too weak. We see him on set of a fifties style sitcom and he sings about an attempted suicide. Ralph Kramden, the reality. When he sings about flashing light the set explodes but his sitcom wife ignores it. She's a pro.
Clown Bowie rises above some water to sing that Major Tom never did anything bad or good. Nor did he do anything unexpected. Well, maybe that's your problem. He wants a figurative ax to break himself out of his problems. His problems are illustrated by a new David hooked up into a wall as if he was in The Matrix. Man, Bowie videos are so influential.
We get a repeat of everybody singing about what a junkie Major Tom is and the song wraps up by saying that his mom told him to not mess with the Action Man. Clown Bowie walks with an elderly woman, one of the priests is a woman, and Neo Bowie is still stuck.
I like this song despite the emptiness of it. Don't ask me what the video means, let's just say it's a Bowie video.
The awesome part is everything because it's a David Bowie video, but I'll pick the exploding kitchen.
1 comment:
It's true: When you see a kitchen in a video, it's either gonna blow up or the appliances will start doing it.
It's the law or something.
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