(cue stock '70s Bowie anthem of alienation + post-modern dehumanization)

Greatest Junkie Love Story ever...(cue stock '70s Bowie anthem of alienation & post-modern dehumanization...)


This is THE hot shot of all downward junkie spiral cinema...the truest, most life-like, gutter-fabulous portrayal of adolescent cult worship gone awry. This film has style, it has presence, and it has substance (literally, many of them in fact).

The fact that Bowie is eerily present somewhere in most scenes is likely mistaken for simple teenage rock'n'roll hero worship. But this Berlin-era Bowie is no Elvis, no cheery, giggling Paul, John, Ringo and George. When Christiane gazes longingly into those (intentionally) mysterious, piercing pale blue Bowie eyes from the front row, she is transferring onto Bowie everything that she considers herself to be lacking: Maturity, style, matinée idol good looks, and above all, that most-elusive COOL that bonds her to all the other "young dudes" in the audience. The beauty (and the calculated genius) of Bowie's asexual stage persona was just that: why have only half the audience become obsessed with BEING you when you can have the WHOLE audience, boy AND girl, want to be you?

This cult worship notion in this film, I feel, is drowned out by the hit-you-over-the-head obviousness of the drug message. But the drugs are only part of the problem, if this is indeed to be considered a "problem" in the youth culture of the past 30 years, post-punk, post-new wave, and post-dancehall eras.

What I am trying to say, despite obvious pretense (which i cannot help), is that much like the hundred-foot iconic images of Mao, Stalin, Che Guevara (or even Barack Obama currently), the constant marketing of David Bowie's image in the film's depiction of 1970s-era Berlin, the album covers, the subway walls, the rock clubs constantly blaring Bowie's latest, is all a kind of intentional indoctrination by the subversive powers-that-be of the youth nation. The too-clever marketing of a David Bowie, or a Kurt Cobain, or a Tupac Shakur, or Britney Spears, whomever you choose, is only the means to an end. And to what end?

Mass control of youth culture. The kids become hooked on the same heroin that Bowie copped from Lou Reed and made fashionable to the mainstream, just like he did with homosexuality and cross-dressing, except more sinister and destructive. To quote one of the kids in the film, "Look at them. The more shots they've had, the cooler they are." That is the mantra. And it is NO COINCIDENCE that our cutesy little daytripper Christiane's first blast of heroin comes when?? After the David Bowie concert!! Am I the only one to pick up on this?? The message is so heavy-handed that I am shocked that nobody here has even touched on anything remotely approaching this idea. Mass control of the youth culture, in any proto-fascistic society, is to be promoted and desired, as it ultimately prevents the youth culture from being AWAKE to the REALITY, harsh and cruel as it may be, that pervades every inch of their environments.

The only real question, to me, is whether or not a David Bowie is conscious of his role as a shill for the powers-that-be, in subtly doing his own advertisements for heroin culture, via stage performances or elaborate subliminal marketing techniques.

I am sure to be labeled a wacko conspiracy theorist, but at least I am not going to waste this bandwidth making 8th grade arguments about which was 'grittier', this or Trainspotting or Requiem for a Dream. Can anybody please join in this discussion with something remotely relevant and thought-provoking? I'm really trying to hit on something, but it may take one of you to help me get there. Please! The Christianes of the world are depending upon you to help expose the true motivations behind getting a society's children addicted to smack and turning them out as prostitutes and hustlers as young as possible. I beg you to brainstorm with the above rant as the bass line thumping along as you scour your own fragile psyches for melodic fragments, tiny clues that may help us find the answer to this dilemma that both plagues and oppresses youth culture.....