David Bowie a nazi ?

[Pickman's model]

Pretty incoherent waffle eh.

yeh but it's the notoriously pretentious nme in't it

 

[ska invita]

I stumble into town just like a sacred cow
Visions of swastikas in my head
Plans for everyone
It's in the white of my eyes

Thanks. Weird lyric. I find it all a bit creepy

 

[Pickman's model]

Thanks. Weird lyric. I find it all a bit creepy

can we say that?

 

[ska invita]

can we say that?

Sure why not? I find all of China girl a bit creepy tbh... Throw in the video and its all a bit disgrasian

 

[andysays]

Sure why not? I find all of China girl a bit creepy tbh... Throw in the video and its all a bit disgrasian

You're welcome to find it creepy, but I'm now finding this apparently serious discussion about whether Bowie was a Nazi a bit fucking ridiculous, TBH.

Maybe you should have a read of this before you say much more.

A few quick quotes illustrating things you may be unaware of

"China Girl" is a song co-written by David Bowie and Iggy Pop during their years in Berlin, first appearing on Pop's album The Idiot (1977)

Paul Trynka, the author of David Bowie's biography, Starman, claims the song was inspired by Iggy Pop's infatuation with Kuelan Nguyen, a beautiful Vietnamese woman

Along with his previous single's video for "Let's Dance", Bowie described the video [for his version of the song, which he recorded so Iggy would get some royalties] as a "very simple, very direct" statement against racism. The video consciously parodies Asian female stereotypes.

I'd also be interested in hearing you back up your earlier comment that he

...possibly very creepily manages to turn the classic VU track into what feels like a white power anthem...

You also seem to have got your fascist symbols confused - the symbol on the stage set isn't the same (though it's certainly similar) to the one you've linked to. Maybe someone with more knowledge that either you or me can comment.

His 1976 comments about Fascism and Hitler were stupid and irresponsible, especially given the existing political climate in the UK, but to keep banging on about this and finding tenuous shit to supposedly back it up strikes me as being ridiculous.

 

[eoin_k]

For the sake of balance: while he seems to have turned a corner at some point in 1977, he was coming out with some of this shit as early as 1974. So, it can't just be dismissed as a bad year.

 

[butchersapron]

During this period on top of the living on milk and cocaine and doing ill-disciplined reading of trash about nazis and the occult, he was also rehearsing and researching and preparing to try and win a number of roles playing nazis.

 

[bi0boy]

During this period on top of the living on milk and cocaine and doing ill-disciplined reading of trash about nazis and the occult, he was also rehearsing and researching and preparing to try and win a number of roles playing nazis.

The Townshend defence.

 

[eoin_k]

Good thing Dustin Hoffman was the method actor in Marathon Man, rather than Laurence Olivier.

 

[Ranbay]

During this period on top of the living on milk and cocaine and doing ill-disciplined reading of trash about nazis and the occult, he was also rehearsing and researching and preparing to try and win a number of roles playing nazis.

Fact: Milk is for babies and children. If you are an adult—i.e., not a baby or child—you should not be drinking milk.

http://jezebel.com/adults-should-not-be-drinking-milk-1685033047

 

[Epona]

His 1976 comments about Fascism and Hitler were stupid and irresponsible, especially given the existing political climate in the UK, but to keep banging on about this and finding tenuous shit to supposedly back it up strikes me as being ridiculous.

It was a fairly big deal at the time though.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Thanks. Weird lyric. I find it all a bit creepy

Mentioning a sacred cow, then swastikas, only points one way for me > Hinduism.

 

[eoin_k]

I realise that I have probably stuck the boot in a little over enthusiastically in some of my posts. Patteran made a well balanced defence of Bowie on the thread LiamO started that has things into perspective for me, along with other posters comments. Having said that the lyrics to Quicksand (1971-2) feel a bit ambiguous given where he ends up by the mid 1970s: portraying Himmler's dreams/Churchill's lies etc. On their own perhaps they're just some lyrics about his (mis)reading of Crowley and Nietzsche, but given the stuff he comes out with a few years later they might cause a few raised eyebrow.

I'm not trying to suggest he was proto-Ian Stewart Donaldson, but I also think some people have sought to frame it as an interest in iconography or one bad coke-fuelled year. It seems like he had an unhealthy fixation with this shit during the early and mid 1970s... which was the height of his musical career.

 

[ska invita]

Mentioning a sacred cow, then swastikas, only points one way for me > Hinduism.

no its not that - the full context comes with the next line:

I stumble into town just like a sacred cow
Visions of swasticas in my head
Plans for everyone
It's in the white of my eyes

My little China girl
You shouldn't mess with me
I'll ruin everything you are
I'll give you television
I'll give you eyes of blue
I'll give you man who wants to rule the world

Sounds to me he's saying he's the white invader with "plans for everyone" who will ruin her racial purity (blue eyes etc). In the 80s China was far behind the Iron Curtain and so seemed untouched by the west some how. The video opens with a chinese woman behind barbed wire...

The video consciously parodies Asian female stereotypes.

A parody? Ive never gotten that from it - there are no clues to make it seem a parody. Were the patronising lyrics a parody too? To me it seems utterly authentic orientalism at every level, and to lots of other people. If its a parody its too sophisticated for me I'm afraid.

You also seem to have got your fascist symbols confused - the symbol on the stage set isn't the same (though it's certainly similar) to the one you've linked to. Maybe someone with more knowledge that either you or me can comment.

Yes its a slight alteration, the real thing might have been a step to far dont you think? But someone like Bowie who takes such intense care over the visual representations he makes wouldnt have stumbled on this by mistake - its not just a coincidence - especially considering how prominent the far right were at that time.

As to the crazed on drugs defence, drugs tend to bring out deeper feelings rather than ones that are nothing to do with you. Ive known lots of druggy people and none of them started making nazi salutes and making positive statements about hitler.

An old Rolling Stone has a little round up of some of this stuff:

In late 1976, following a suggestion by writer Christopher Isherwood, Bowie moved to West Berlin, with his friend Iggy Pop. For a time the retreat only relocated Bowie's troubles. He became a heavy drinker. He threw up in alleys at night. He reportedly called out to people, "Please help me." He also did worse: He became intrigued by Third Reich history and Nazi mythology. He had said years earlier in an interview, "I believe very strongly in fascism."

In 1974 he told Playboy, "Adolf Hitler was one of the first rock stars. Look at some of the films and see how he moved. I think he was quite as good as Jagger."

In Strange Fascination, Buckley reports that customs officers detained Bowie at the Russian-Polish border in April 1976, and seized a collection of Nazi memorabilia. When an assistant later criticized him for his interest, Bowie grew infuriated. "Fuck you," he said. "I changed the world! Kiss my arse" – then broke down and cried.

The worst moment came in 1976, when Bowie arrived in an open-top Mercedes-Benz convertible at London's Victoria Station and was photographed giving what some people wrongly thought was a Nazi salute. The reaction in England was furious. Bowie was sickened when he saw the photo. "I'm NOT a fascist...," he told Melody Maker in October 1977. "That didn't happen... I just WAVED... On the life of my child, I waved."

The longer Bowie stayed in Berlin, the more he came to understand the ruin that fascism had done to Germany and Europe. He was repelled by nationalists and racists, and was horrified to see his name made into a swastika in graffiti. He later called his interests "ghastly," and said he had been coming out of a year of terrible duress. "I was out of my mind, totally, completely crazed."

Read more: Cover Story Excerpt: David Bowie
Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook

 

[butchersapron]

My little China girl
You shouldn't mess with me
I'll ruin everything you are
I'll give you television
I'll give you eyes of blue
I'll give you man who wants to rule the world

They lyrics are saying modern western driven capitalism will destroy the authentic culture of traditional societies (as he saw them) in the far east and replace it technologically advanced but potentially damging consumer comodities - they may as well have been a paraphrase of marx's famous claim from the manifesto:

The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.

 

[ska invita]

yeah that too - framed with language of swastikas and blue eyes

ETA: considering the theme of remaining pure from the west it makes all the images used in the video seems even less of a parody. I really want to believe its a parody but having just watched it again its still not clear to me. Oh well, maybe it made sense in the 80s.

 

[pocketscience]

I'm surprised you can't see the parody. Combining Nazi aesthetic whilst dressed thus:

Seriously? Does he look like your average Hitler worshiper?

Sid vicious also did it, albeit not quite as subtle:

maybe it made sense in the 80s.

70's

 

[Orang Utan]

yeah that too - framed with language of swastikas and blue eyes

ETA: considering the theme of remaining pure from the west it makes all the images used in the video seems even less of a parody. I really want to believe its a parody but having just watched it again its still not clear to me. Oh well, maybe it made sense in the 80s.

if he did have fascist/racist views, he at least didn't keep hold of them

 

[butchersapron]

yeah that too - framed with language of swastikas and blue eyes

ETA: considering the theme of remaining pure from the west it makes all the images used in the video seems even less of a parody. I really want to believe its a parody but having just watched it again its still not clear to me. Oh well, maybe it made sense in the 80s.

It's not about being pure (and most certainly not 'racially pure') but of having a way of life imposed on you by those pursuing their own damaging (individually, socially etc) and that potentially taking place under the illusion of choice - it's an attack on the destruction of social solidarity by the insidious anti-social effects of consumer capitalism.

 

[ska invita]

70's

China GIrl was the 80s

By all accounts it wasnt a parody, it was an influence - the exact nature and degree of that influence only he knows. Im not on here to try and demonise - im trying to understand something that was before my (conscious) time.

 

[butchersapron]

China GIrl was the 80s

Not originally it wasn't.

 

[passenger]

He was doing an absolute ton of coke at the time too.

thats what Hitler said

 

[ska invita]

Not originally it wasn't.

The video, which is what I was referring to as maybe making sense as a parody in the 80s, was in 83

 

[pocketscience]

China GIrl was the 80s

By all accounts it wasnt a parody, it was an influence - the exact nature and degree of that influence only he knows. Im not on here to try and demonise - im trying to understand something that was before my (conscious) time.

China Girl (song) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"China Girl"
Single by Iggy Pop
from the album The Idiot
B-side "Baby"
Released May 1977
Recorded July 1976 – February 1977;Château d'Hérouville, Hérouville, France;
Musicland Studios, Munich;
Hansa by the Wall, Berlin
Length 5:08
Label RCA Records
Writer(s) David Bowie, Iggy Pop
Producer(s) David Bowie

 

[pocketscience]

The video, which is what I was referring to as maybe making sense as a parody in the 80s, was in 83

Sorry, thought you meant the lyrics weren't a parody.
But point stands... I think his career was parody, just done geniusly artistic

 

[passenger]

1. 
   David Bowie - China Girl - YouTube
   
   
   
   Artist: David Bowie
   Album: Let's Dance
   Released: 1983
   Awards: MTV Video Music Award for Best Male Video

 

[ska invita]

As I said, the video, which is what I was referring to as maybe making sense as a parody in the 80s, was in 83...though if its recorded in 76 that puts it right in the possible fascist years, and recorded in Germany no less - so the swastika and blue eye lyrics, recorded in Berlin and Munich ... whatever the meaning and intention, its clearly on his mind

 

[Bonfirelight]

apparently if you play warszawa backwards you can just about make out a massive rant about untermenschen and liebensraum.

 

[ska invita]

I think its wrong to just fudge it away as delusions from drugs - it was definitely something he was actively thinking about, and the fact that it was mixed up with glam challenging gender norms makes for an unusual mix - but they definitely dont cancel each other out.

 

[Orang Utan]

I think its wrong to just fudge it away as delusions from drugs - it was definitely something he was actively thinking about, and the fact that it was mixed up with glam challenging gender norms makes for an unusual mix - but they definitely dont cancel each other out.

a lot of people have thought shit things and then come to their senses though.
ricky tomlinson was once in the NF