David Bowie and Alan Rickman had many things in common aside from the impact they had on music/movies/art and movies/theatre/writing respectively, and the fact they were the same age or died of the same awful disease. Both men hailed from working class English backgrounds. Both men by all accounts were genuinely lovely human beings- I've never heard a bad word about either of them in their interactions with fellow creatives or journalists or fans or everyone. Both men were very committed in their family relationships- Rickman was with the same women from his teen years to his death, and Bowie was with his second wife for over 20 years. Both men had an impact that echoed across generations as the public outpouring of grief I've seen ranged from teenagers through to people older than the men themselves. As I reflected though I wanted to emphasis two commonalities...
The importance of public arts funding
As I said both of these men were from working class backgrounds, which meant neither was from a family that could fund establishing an artistic career or attending a private arts college. In fact both men attended publicly funded arts schools. In an era where these are things of the past in many countries and where governments routinely cut arts funding, the legacy of these men in part emphasises the importance of government arts funding. Not to make their deaths a political topic, but without public arts funding we might be in a world with no Jareth the Goblin King or no Severus Snape (on the big screen anyway), and what a poorer world that would actually be.
Privacy in a public world
We live in a world where day by day everyone shares everything on the web, but one of the biggest impacts of both of these deaths was how private they managed to be, especially in light of the level of cultural impact both men have. No-one outside a tight inner circle of friends and family knew either man was ill or that death was an imminent possibility. The public did not get stepped through their cancer journeys or to have a death bed vision of them down the lens of a smart phone. Maybe it was because they were men born in an age where privacy was more common and respected, but in their deaths, they showed that in the 24/7 social media whirlwind of the modern world, they reminded us that there are things that should be private. Families and friends of famous people have just as much right to private grief as do the families and friends of us common folk. Cancer in all its horrid manifestations is a drawn out and horrible illness, and since most of us have witnessed a loved one struggled through that journey, we can all understand that it is something you wouldn't want to invite the whole world to observe. I know it seems ironic to say this on a blog but there should be a space for the private and personal space in this world especially when sickness and death come to call. I am grateful that these two great men can reminding us of this, and I hope that the media and the broader public continues to respect the need to give their families and friends space to process and doesn't start trawling to find stories of how their last months were spent.
Those are the two commonalities that struck me, and the third thing that struck me was the interesting way in which the public interacts with the death of celebrities. As a society just as we don't do privacy well, we also in Western countries increasingly as awfully bad at dealing with death. We hide from it, we don't speak about it, and we try not to show weakness when faced with it by stifling our tears in public. However this is when we are dealing with personal death- the deaths of loved ones who others we speak to might not know. When a public figure dies, though we have never met them, the fact that we are admired their work and that they have inspired us or made us dream is something we share with hundreds of others. Having bottled our private griefs that others in the broader community may not share, we are hit harder by grief for people who shape our lives via popular culture but we have no personal relationship with. You could probably write a psychology thesis on this but I feel that the death of public figures sometimes gives the space to speak about death generally that society normally does not afford us, and what occurs is a distinct brand of grief unseen before the mid twentieth century. As many others spent last week in the same way that I did, listening to Bowie's music and watching Rickman's films, I know that there is definitely something more than trivial going on there. These men have been inspirations to hundreds (if not thousands of people) and it is one of these rare times where people across the world could agree that there is something profoundly sad and wrong about any death, and that each death should be mourned.
So from me, this is a brief thanks to these men. Firstly Alan Rickman...
I have been a fan of his work since I first saw the Ang Lee version of Sense and Sensibility as a teenager, and whilst I've seen the film he is perhaps known for to people my age (just breath, guys, I'm watching it...and by it I mean Die Hard... as I type). Though he is best known for the gravitas he brought to evil characters with his amazingly deep voice and flawless delivery but I actually most love his comedic turns. I know younger people will always remember him as Snape and older people as Hans Gruber but there is much more. So I thought I'd give a short recommend of Alan Rickman films that aren't Die Hard or Harry Potter... In fact, these are my top five Rickman films generally and count down.
5. Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy
Now Hitchhikers' Guide isn't a great adaptation of the book and I say this despite being a crazy fan of pretty much everyone in it, but there are one thing that the casting director could not have got more right. There are two characters out there that when I read the book I thought if they make a film of this and don't cast Alan Rickman, it wouldn't be a proper film of this book. One was Severus Snape (I read the other day that some Harry Potter fans thought he was miscast when the cast list was first announced and all I can say that these folk is, did you read a different book to me?!?!) and the other is Marvin the paranoid android from Hitchhikers' Guide. There is something about Rickman's voice that makes it ideal for the perpetually depressed Marvin.
4. Love Actually
OK this film is comedy but Rickman's character is not comedic. I love Love Actually but the Alan Rickman/ Emma Thompson story line just breaks my heart every time. Seriously I've seen it tonnes of times but the scene where he tries and fails to apologise for being a horrible husband and she replies by telling him that he has made "the life I led ridiculous" by cheating on her, I cry buckets of tears. Now that is mainly Thompson's performance, but it would be nothing if she wasn't playing off long time repeated co-star, Rickman. Rickman's character may be a useless husband in the film but Rickman makes him more than just a sleaze. Not to defend him but the character seems like a good boss- when it comes to Laura Linney's character that is, when it comes to his assistant...that's another matter (you don't sleep with staff!). Rickman manages to make it believable both that Harry is a supportive boss to Linney's character and simultaneously a deeply weak man who does something deeply stupid and wrong. One of Love Actually's strongest point is that a lot of its characters are flawed humans doing stupid things, and the Rickman/Thompson story line is the most believably real and has the least fairy tale ending.
3. Sense and Sensibility
Yes this is a comedy...haven't you read Austen? This is the movie that kicked off my love of Alan Rickman's work and it once again also features his Love Actually co-stars, Emma Thompson and High Grant. I remember watching it as a teen and thinking Colonel Brandon was very sweet but at the same time being horrified by the age difference between him and Marianne. When I read the book, I calmed down about the age difference (16 to 35 was pretty normal at that time) but when rewatching it this weekend, friends and I googled various things, and did the maths, Kate Winslet was 20 and Alan Rickman was 49 so I think I was right to be creeped out when I was a teenager (that said, oddly not creeped out as much nowadays). Colonel Brandon is the kind of character who risks being deeply dull (it is a criticism many lay at the feet of Sense and Sensibility) and it is why, more than any other Austen cad, I can understand why Marianne felt Willoughby was a preferable option. Rickman manages to get right past that with the stoicism he gives to the character, and I have to say whilst Brandon in the book is a tad boring, Brandon in this movie very attractive option (yes I know I'm talking about the man who would go on to play Snape).
2. Galaxy Quest
I watched this movie a lot when I was at uni- though I have to say I think I still have seen Love Actually more times and I definitely have seen the next film more times. This film about failed franchise stars who go from convention to convention, much in the vein of many people who starred in Star Trek, is one that enjoys mad nerd cult film status but is sadly underseen by others. Rickman plays Alexander Dane who was the Spock type character, and he is deeply hilarious as a theatrically trained actor who cannot get a role and has been reduced to a catch phrase- "By Grabthar's hammer, I will avenge you". That Rickman would go on to be a franchise star with his portrayal of Snape makes this performance even better.
1. Dogma
Now some might think this a bit of a shameful guilty pleasure confession but I LOVE the films of Kevin Smith (pre Clerks 2- that was not great- and I've not watched the subsequent ones). Dogma is one of my absolute favourite films of all time and Alan Rickman's droll portrayal of the Metatron is just perfectly pitched. If the voice of God is that slightly sarcastic, I'm fine with it. I could gush for hours about how amazing it is but I say just watch it (that said if you think sex jokes overly crash, a warning there are quite a few as this is Kevin Smith film after all).
So that is my thank you to Alan Rickman/recommendation of Alan Rickman comedies. Also I've now finished Die Hard and gosh it was AMAZING...it seems you all were right all along.
The next and bigger thank you is to David Bowie. Most people my age were introduced to Bowie one of two ways- by relatives who were into his music or by the movie, Labyrinth- and whilst I have relatives who are fans (particularly my older sister who even saw him in concert once... so jealous!), for me it was definitely the latter. Labyrinth has been one of my most loved films ever since I first saw it aged six or so, and long before I realised just how weird it is to combine a teen girl, a baby, animated owls, a sheepdog, muppets, and a grown man in very tight tights on the big screen (brilliant weird, but weird none the less). When I got into music as a teen, I discovered that almost every artist I loved (being all alt rock types as they were) listed Bowie as one of their biggest influences, and by the end of high school I had a vague familiarity with many of his hits and a quote from one of his songs scrawled across my school folder (it was the line from "Changes" that is the epigraph to Breakfast Club and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't mainly motivated by that film). As I've mentioned in previous blogs, most of my discovery of music that wasn't 90s alt rock/pop happened when I was at uni, and it was at uni that I truly feel in love with the music of David Bowie. As I listened, I understood what the bands I loved as a teen were talking about. They were shadows of what Bowie was (great shadows with great skills but still nothing on the original). Bowie's musical innovation, his constant reinvention, his questioning of societal norms (especially around gender), and his role as voice for the outsider, this is what modern bands could now merely aspire to because he had set the bar too high for them to comprehend. There is something in his music that I doubt we will see the likes of again. Personally for me, Ziggy Stardust is the height of perfection when it comes to an album of any type of music (along with Sergeant Pepper)...you can keep your Mozart and even your Beethoven, I would rather spend time with a skinny English man in flares.
The irony of just the sheer scale of Bowie's genius is that rumour has it we almost never got to hear it. From what I hear tell, when he came to pitch Space Oddity to his record company, they were at a loss as to what to do with it. They saw Bowie as a solo artist was trying to sell them what was primarily a folk album (which is in part true of some of the tracks) with a very strange and different title track that was not folk but was about an astronaut and was not like anything they had heard before. What a mercy for us all that they took a gamble on him...
I do have five tracks for you, including my two favourites (cannot pick five favourites as three of those would change any time I was asked), but I also want to say, if you have never listened to the music of David Bowie, do yourself a favour...buy a copy of Ziggy Stardust and mark aside a chuck of time this weekend to have a listen and prepare to have your musical life as you know it turned up side down. Also since I'm not listing anything off it below, I also have to say here, if you are Bowie fan (or even if you aren't) and you haven't bought a copy of Black Star yet, GET a copy! His last album is truly beautiful and amazing, and also really haunting when you consider the lyrics in the light of his illness and imminent death.
So five tracks to celebrate Bowie....
"Within you" from the Labyrinth soundtrack
I adore all of the music in Labyrinth and this also is a shout out to where I first encountered the genius of David Bowie.... also because this section of the film looks like a film clip when nope it is just a regular bit of the film.
"Under Pressure"- technically Queen feat. Bowie but both have featured it on greatest hits albums and perform it alive
Since Queen are also one of my favourite all time musical artists, I would be remiss not to include this. Also it is AMAZING!
"Life on Mars"
This completes the three songs that if you asked me another day I may not list as favourites. I love these three but I love also "Changes" or "Heroes" or "China Girl" or "Man who sold the world" (actually is there a better opening riff to any song ever then the one to "Man who sold the world"?), or "Golden Years" or "Space Oddity" or the list goes on and on... my two all time never changing David Bowie songs which you MUST listen to...
"Ashes to Ashes"
OK so this film clip is deeply odd to say the least and disturbing if like me you aren't a massive fan of clowns, but the song.... There is some much here. Dreams that have shattered, heroes that are failures. It is pretty much a motto for a generation of gen Xs right there. Also listen to it and just feel the power of the influence of Bowie's music on those who followed.
"Suffragette City"
It started live as a B side on Ziggy Stardust and it now rightly has found its way onto many of the Greatest Hits of Bowie albums out there. My all time favourite Bowie song...I just love everything about it!
So my thank you to Alan Rickman and to David Bowie for the amazing things that they did for the arts, and to quote the character that generations will remember Alan Rickman for, when will the influence of these men be felt? "Always"
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