SONG: "Life on Mars?"WRITTEN BY: David Bowie
PERFORMED BY: David Bowie
APPEARS ON: Hunky Dory (RCA, 1971)
Music exists in a limbo, in which the importance of language and images is either subjugated, or obliterated by the power of conspiring melodies to move the human heart. One needs no prior training in the craft of “music appreciation”, nor expertise in the field of music theory to feel what is great in a song. Film occupies a divergent and parallel space in the world of art. In film, image is primary, while sound functions as a secondary means of expression. But the synthesis of these two disparate mediums has become an art form unto itself.
Since A Hard Day's Night (United Artists, 1964), The Graduate (Embassy, 1967) and Easy Rider (Columbia, 1969), popular music, and movies have enjoyed a fruitful symbiotic relationship in which both mediums transform, inform, enhance and clarify the meaning of the other. For me, a scene from Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (Touchstone, 2004), featuring David Bowie's anthemic "Life on Mars?", embodies that elusive alchemical quality. Film and song wed express the underlying despair threatening to overwhelm them both. The image is indelible - it makes the picture and reinvents the song.
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LIFE ON MARS?
-David Bowie
It's a godawful small affair
to the girl with the mousy hair,
But her mummy is yelling, "No!",
and her daddy has told her to go,
But her Friend is nowhere to be seen,
Now she walks through her sunken dream
to the seat with the clearest view
and she's hooked to the silver screen,
But the film is a saddening bore,
for she's lived it ten times, or more,
She could spit in the eyes of fools
as they ask her to focus on
Sailors fighting in the dancehall,
Oh, man! Look at those cavemen go,
It's the freakiest show,
Take a look at the lawman beating up the wrong guy,
Oh, man! Wonder if he'll ever know
he's in the bestselling show?
Is there life on Mars?
It's on America's tortured brow,
Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow,
Now the workers have struck for fame,
'cause Lennon's on sale again,
See the mice in their million hordes,
from Ibiza to the Norfolk Broads,
Rule Britannia is out of bounds
to my mother, my dog and clowns,
But the film is a saddening bore,
'Cause I wrote it ten times, or more
It's about to be writ again
as I ask you to focus on
Sailors fighting in the dancehall,
Oh, man! Look at those cavemen go,
It's the freakiest show,
Take a look at the lawman beating up the wrong guy,
Oh, man! Wonder if he'll ever know
he's in the bestselling show?
Is there life on Mars?
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