Metal City - Hai Ina Ia Mai Ana Ka Puana

The Passion Of The Thin White Duke.

With an example of - quite literally - biblical serendipity, it turned out that I saw Mel Gibson's new porno-religious popcorn epic The Passion, and fulfilled one of my boyhood dreams of seeing David Bowie live in concert the same week. Are the two events that dissimilar from one another? As it turns out, no. And, simply to prove my awesome mastery of the English language, I'm going to present to you - the people - the world's first DUAL review of both The Passion and Bowie Live, because - interestingly - I'm pretty sure that I'm going to be reviewing the same thing. Bear with me, long suffering reader, this is going to get a lot weirder before it gets any easier to understand...

Every young boy has his crushes. I don't necessarily mean crushes of the romantic kind - the innocent kiss behind the bike sheds with Susie From Number 42 pale into insignificance compared with the knid of crushes I'm talking about. The crushes that stay with us for a lifetime - the things that slash their way into the deepest nexus of our souls, clinging to the fibrous strands of memories which weave their way throughout our minds and hearts, becoming as much a part of us as blood and bone. For me, the ouvre' of David "Fancypants" Bowie epitomised this - he was there as a fixture of my childhood, and later my adolescence - growing in resonance as the years kicked on. Bowie never left me, for some reason - his back catalogue stayed with me, and it miraculously avoided being stained and bruised by the psychic carnage that negative memories can wreak upon one's recollection of music. Bowie never got me down - he was always comforting, always made me feel safe, and always transported me to a simpler, kinder place - no matter how bad life got.

For Mel Gibson, traitor to his country and all-round idiot, it would appear that he feels the same way about Jesus Christ. The Lord and I have never seen eye to eye on the subject of his very existance, and he refuses all of my requests to simply show himself, juggle some fireballs, help me score with an awesomely pneumatic babe, and perform a bunch of impressive tricks, hopefully involving lightning, in order to prove to me, once and for all, that he quite literally exists - and isn't simple a mechanism for stupid people to avoid freaking out over the certainty that they will one day die. And it won't be pretty. For the Melster, on the other hand, Jesus appaers to be something that he has loved for many years, and is as much a part of him as Bowie is of me, yet where I treat my love of Bowie with a certain element of pride and respect, Mel's own passion seems to be centred around self-loathing of his own faith. And so, like a spoilt child spitting lukewarm custard down his mother's shirt, Mel has had a tanty. The Passion is two and a half hours of Mel taking out the frustrations of fanhood on the body of his idol - J.C - by destroying the physical body of the man in meticulous, graphic detail. The Passion isn't ABOUT anything, really, beyond Mel's strange compulsion to explain to us that being crucified is a very nasty experience indeed, and even if you ARE the son of God, you shouldn't fuck with Mel's head, because if you do - Mel is going to get pissy, and someone's getting a flogging. Oh, sure - we get some shots of J.C hitting us with some of his more popular soundbites... he tells us that his body is bread, and that you should love your enemies, and other such waffle - but Mel doesn't bother with spending any serious screen time on Jesus The Man. Fuck that shit. Mullet Mel didn't do four 'Lethal Weapon' movies just to end up as a pussy in middle age. He isn't about the gentle teachings of a wise and loving man, dedicated to saving humanity from its own darker instincts - he's all about fucking shit up! What the hell would the be the point of a Mel Gibson film if we didn't hear some snapping bones? What would be the good of that?

No good. That's what. And so, under the auspices of 'cinematic realism', we get Jesus The Whipping Boy, his flesh hacked to pieces by crazy torture devices, and his mouth perpetually wrenched open in a bloody-toothed soundless scream, Mel's camera stiffy engorged with the blood of The Son, as he lets rip with a two hour ode to the problems of being a fan.

Because that's what The Passion is about, and that's what my experience at Bowie's 'Reality' tour apart. You may scoff at the thought of my heathen comparison between the deeply personal questions of faith and redemption, and an adolescent obsession with an androgynous rock star from the 70's. My response to that would be that YOU are the pretentious one - because there is nothing different at all.

Think about this, poor, berated reader. Being 'A Christian' requires dedication, a belief in the unshakeable greatness of the object of your love, ridicule for your impenetrable faith in your beliefs, and a lifelong dedication to not only the expansion and cementing of your own love and worship, but the spread of the word - a constant barrage of attempts at turning everyone around you onto your God.

Is this so different from worshipping Bowie? Even when he released crap, I still bought it - because he was Bowie, and as such, it had to have SOME merit. I was brutally mocked for being such a tosspot, especially in the age of Nirvana and Guns'n'Roses. But I didn't care. As the years have dragged on, I've kept listening to those golden recordings from the 70's, memorizing every note, every instrument, and integrating them into my own life - they are the bedrock of my memories and my interiority. And, as I've met new people, the phrase "You have GOT to listen to this.' is no stranger to those around me.

See?

Are the two really all that different? Can they be reconciled?

And so, just as Mel Gibson dealt with his own fandom by pouring his soul into a piece of boring drivel called The Passion, my own fandom met its destiny sitting in a $175 dollar seat at Rod Laver Arena, the house lights dimmed, and my head reeling and spinning with giddy excitement. I've been to a lot of shows, but this is one of the only times I remember feeling literally nauseous. My hands shook, a thin film of sweat - greasy and hot - coating them, with every indentation of the flesh immediately obvious when I rubbed them together, my palms electrified with tactile energy. A thousand thoughts ran through my mind, copulating with one another in an orgiastic frenzy, as the microseconds ticked by. This wasn't just Some Rockstar - this was David Bowie. Iconic. Detached. Innaccessible. For many, the artist supreme - the ultimate reailsation of rock's possibilities for entering the realm of the avant garde, and leaving behind in the dust the heavy burden of 'teen entertainment' that had plagued it since the 1950's.

And then, there he was. Launching into 'Rebel, Rebel' with the frenzy of a man of half his age. My mind exploded into a thousand shards of ecstasy, which liquified and sloshed around the inside of my skull, as a smile slowly yanked my lips upward, and my eyes locked onto the androgynous figure that prowled across the stage.

But why? Why is it so important to me? Why was The Passion the 'movie that Mel HAD to make'? Why did we both feel such a need to connect with our heroes, even if our methods were radically different?

The answer is memories.

The buffer zone between the presently understood, and the previously incoherent - memories do strange things to people. In my case, as I have already told you, the music of David Bowie plays a huge part in my development as a young shitkicker from the northern suburbs of Melbourne. He was there when I was a kid - in the questionable film 'Labyrinth'. He was there as a teenager, lulling me into a self-indulgent, tear-streaked slumber with his epic tales of woe. He was there as an angry young goth, engaging in an unholy union with Mr. Trent "Magic Fingers" Reznor, stirring me into cheers of support at this industrial superforce. He was there as a young twentysomething, as my first wave of nostalgia kicked in. And now, at twenty(something), he is still with me - coasting gently beside me, reminding me of where I've been, and giving me something to hold onto as I move forward into the uncertainty of the future.

But, this is no different to how it has always been. I have so many wonderful memories of Bowie's music, and it is almost like if I want to be transported magically to a particular time, or place, it costs nothing more than the price of playing a record. I like that - I really value it. I remember being 15, and getting 'Hunky Dory' and 'Low' for my birthday. I never thought I'd need any records for the rest of my life after that. Obviously, that was something I had absolutely no hope of sticking to - but the point is that I was truly in love with them. I remember playing Low's second side repeatedly, positive that I would find some magical truth hidden in the oozing, nightmarish soundscapes that the grooves contained. They soothed me, wrapping me up in their slinking, abstract sound like some wonderfully electric blanket - and there I would stay, often for hours at a time, playing the albums over and over again, and staring at the cover art. Bowie seemed to come from another world - he was absolutely everything I wished I could be. I projected my deepest, most personal fantasies of what life was capable of providing, and what it was that I might grow to be into Bowie - he was like a wonderfully warping mirror that took my reflection and cast it back as I wanted to see it.

Is this so different from Mel's love of Jesus? Isn't this the same redemptive experience as the one provided by religion?

As I sat in awe of Bowie, as he moved across the stage, my fan worship became zealous and intense - I found my mouth to be dry, and my eyes sore from my refusal to blink. I leaned forward, stretching my spine, and my face held the faintest flicker of a smile. I didn't want to grin - because I didn't feel like grinning. I was transfixed - bombarded from all directions by a mixture of the sound of the music, the awesome presence of Bowie on the stage, and the latticework of memories that flooded my senses with each song that he played. My eyes welled up with tears as he launched into 'Quicksand', from 1971's 'Hunky Dory', one of the first songs I learned to play on the guitar, and a fixture of my young, urban-paranoid period, when the more morose and miserable the song was, the better it was received.

Can the same be said for religion? Surely people associate more with the words of The Bible than the cold, clinical teachings of the gospels? When Mel sits down with his Gideon's, does he read Psalms 5:10, and think about the time he fell of his bike when he was 10, on his way home from church? When he reads Revelations 9:17, does it remind him of the last thing he read by the flickering light of his bedside lamp, the night before his grandmother passed away? Was John 13:11 quoted on the front of his high school yearbook?

And does it anger him that he has an idol that is utterly intangible, and impossible to ever engage with on a personal level, without - uh - dying? Does that drive him so insane with rage and insecurity that the only way to vent it is to make a film in which the body of the object of his affections is pornographically destroyed in a two hour marathon of homoerotic violence and loincloth-wearing?

Idols are funny things. They make you go a little crazy. Mark David Chapman shot John Lennon. John Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan for Jodie Foster. The famous are stalked, harassed, and torn to shreds by their fans - because, filtered through the media, they become all things to all people. We see in them what we want to see in them. In Bowie, I see what I wish I was. Even if I never get there, I always have the records when I want to pretend. In Mel's idol, he sees a source of pain, confusion, and self-doubt - and in his testosterone-amped way, he has dealt with it through violence.

My method - going to a show and languishing in a warm bubble of music and memories, seems so much healthier in hindsight. Don't you think?

Posted by David at February 29, 2004 01:03 AM | TrackBack