Hybridations et effacement du chanteur : l’emploi des codes de la lyric video dans le clip de « Where are we now? »

Abstract

“Where are we now?” was the question David Bowie asked in a music video directed by American plastician Tony Oursler, and released in 2013. Over the years, Bowie created many avatars, notably thanks to music videos, and in 2016, he would even metaphorically depict his own death in Lazarus. In Where are we now?, he highlighted the questions of disappearance and posterity in particular. On a formal level, the video refers to two genres which can seem very opposite: on the one hand, lyric videos, that are official textual music videos, featuring the lyrics of the illustrated song; on the other hand, video installation and contemporary art. This paper proposes to analyse this music video in the light of equivocality, ambiguities and duplications within a dense network of signs. It will also consider the hybridization, of genres and of Bowie’s body and self-representation as well. The writing of lyrics on screen, which is specific to lyric video as a genre, seems an invitation to interpretation. Specifically, the importance given to the text leads to notice the gradual fading of Bowie himself, as a singer, behind his own song. In the end of the video, he will indeed totally disappear from the screen – a disappearance that echoes afterwards with Bowie’s actual death, a few years later.

Keywords

• lyric video
• music video
• hybridization
• song lyrics