Gina

David Bowie & Tilda Swinton in a short film/music video for Bowie’s newest single “The Stars (Are Out Tonight)”. Lots of 50s kitsch & camp, fantastic outfits & make-up, Swinton as Bowie & Bowie as Swinton, genderfuck & glitter, and sex & flesh (or, at least, as much sex as they could get away with in a music video on youtube).

Also, the opening credits of this music video honestly remind me of porn opening credits. Fellow pornicators & porn fans, do you also see the pornyness? I mean, I seriously fetishize this kind of glam rock spectacle, so it is likely that I would read it through a sexual lens no matter what because that is how I roll. But still.

Bowie is crucially and kind of embarrassingly important to me as a cultural figure. I don’t think of him as perfect or awesome in every way — dude has fucked up a lot over the years, for sure. But uncomplicated relationships are for uncomplicated people.

Part of why Bowie’s music and general pop culture iconography are so fucking important to me is that he is both an early pervert root for me and an early genderqueer root for me. I mean, I’m kinda joking when I use the word root, but I’m also kinda not? It’s not just that he’s a musician whose work I enjoy (although that is also true). It is that his albums and music videos and general persona & spectacle made me feel both less alone in the world when I was in middle & high school, and they made me feel hot — in the sense of feeling turned on, and in the sense of feeling desirable.

Bowie’s music gave me my body back in some fundamental ways. I could write a whole book about this. I might, some day.

(I might also, some day, make the glam rock excess/spectacle porn movie I keep fantasizing about.)

abellandapomegranate:

Bowie/SWINTON/the spectre of fame/both of them as each other/lots of things being said but I’m not quite sure what they are.

So, that’s a thing.  All I know is, Tilda Swinton doing retro femme is extraordinarily queer.  Possibly, so is David Bowie in a dad cardigan.

Joe Jackson’s “Real Men” — the original video. This is campy as all hell. I kinda can’t believe it was on VH1 in the eighties. I love the cruising leathermen, the teenage boy shaving in the mirror, the slingshot scene between the boys and the little girl, and the fact that Joe Jackson is playing a white piano in the middle of the wilderness. For some reason. Y’know, it’s ARTFUL.

Still? This song, and the video, manage to tug on my heartstrings. I am not ashamed to admit that I love love love these lyrics:
You don’t wanna sound dumb
Don’t want to offend
So don’t call me a faggot
Not unless you are a friend
Then if you’re tall, handsome, and strong
You can wear the uniform and I can play along

So sexy! So tender! So snarky!