Lazarus Rises: Storying the Self in the Migrant Fandom of David Bowie
Keywords:
David Bowie, popular music, stardom and celebrity, music fandom, media cultures, audience and reception studiesAbstract
In this article we focus upon the ways that “migrants” in Melbourne have used David Bowie to story and make sense of their arrival to Australia, often as refugees or as people looking for a better life. In relation to identity and belonging, some recent work on music fandom (Groene and Hettinger 2015; Lowe 2003), has imposed a meta-frame on the empirical method, substituting voices for a top-down analysis and interpretation. Our approach is to instead draw both upon auto-ethnography and to allow our fellow fans to “story” their own responses, in an attempt to get beneath the modes of feeling that music fandom ignites – situated within the narratives that people construct as they talk these stories. We argue that Bowie’s alternative and outsider status resonates keenly with people who find themselves “strangers” in a new land. Keywords: David Bowie, popular music, stardom and celebrity, music fandom, media cultures, audience and reception studiesReferences
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Discography
David Bowie –
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. RCA, UK.
Diamond Dogs. RCA, UK.
Videography
The Man Who Fell to Earth. 1976. Dir. Nicolas Roeg. British Lion Films.
Interviews
Fan Reference Focus Group. 2016. Conducted by Toija Cinque and Sean Redmond. Deakin City Centre, Victoria, Australia, 4 February.
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