Life on Mars?

This song is all about how our entertainment, movies, music, TV, has become so all-encompassing and important that our very lives have begun to mimic it.

The first verse focuses on “the girl with the mousy hair.” She’s got drama, and it’s a big surprise with who; her parents. This song came out in ’71, so the whole baby-boomer rebellion thing was popular. Now, to deal with her drama, she seeks entertainment, escape. But it’s a “bore”. She rejects it, or should, thus setting up the youth as valiant, righteous rebels.

But wait. Is her rebellion original? (She’s lived it ten times or more) Is it what she truly thinks, what she feels deep down, or is this rebellion merely an expression of values that the media has taught her to value? Bowie deliberately chooses not to answer this.

The chorus again treats our theme. At the beginning, you think Bowie is describing entertainment in general, things actors do in movies, and cavemen, something that could only exist in a movie. But by the end of the chorus, one line throws us off completely: “Wonder if he’ll ever know he’s in the best selling show.” Why would an actor not know he or she was in a movie? By bestselling show, it seems he means the “movie” that is our life, the drama that takes up our daily lives. This is deliberately confusing. He chose to talk about two things at the same time on purpose.

The last line in the chorus, “Is there life on Mars,” can be seen as a very clever reference to Orson Welles’s broadcast of War of the Worlds. The show was made famous for causing an actual public panic because of its realistic newscasts describing an alien invasion. Although it was a radio show, people actually thought there was an alien invasion, fitting perfectly with our theme.

The next verse moves on to more general commentary but sticks with the theme. Mickey Mouse, a popular figure in children’s entertainment, is personified as having grown up, and it’s not pretty. He’s a “cow,” a decidedly negative adjective. Metaphors congruent with the main theme are boundless here, but I think Bowie meant to contrast the image (the entertainment ideal, the perfect actors with their perfect makeup, Mickey’s happy adventures) with the reality behind the image (our lives can mimic, but never achieve the perfection that the plot of a movie has) by personifying Mickey. The simile is genius because, in reality, people grow old, but Mickey looks the same every time you re-watch an episode of Mickey’s playhouse. If Mickey can grow old, then he is “real.” But that can’t be true, as he’s a cartoon. The lines between entertainment and reality are again blurred. The next line is the clearest Bowie gets in the song. He says, “The workers have struck for fame because Lennon’s on sale again.” He obviously means to say that the working class is only invigorated in their struggle because the entertainment industry (John Lennon, but Lenin works just the same) has sold them entertainment telling them that they’ve been wronged, exploited, etc, which is ironic because they prop up the same system that exploits them by consuming its products. The next few lines go on to describe the extent of the problem: the whole of the westernized world (From America to Ibiza, an island off of Spain, to the Norfolk Broads, in England).

Bowie’s song is a post-modern critique of pop culture. He is saying that the westernized, capitalist democracies of the 20th century have produced entertainment and consumables that have eclipsed the very life they were spawned from, leading one to question whether it is entertainment that comes from reality or reality that mimics entertainment. Is there even a difference anymore?

And for the crowing piece of this metaphorical masterpiece: Where does this critique appear but in the very popular culture it is critiquing? Surely it is intentional -- it represents Bowie’s acknowledgment of the complete annexation of reality by entertainment. The irony is palpable, and we can answer the question posed it the end of the previous paragraph: No.