Before BB guestblogger Mark Dery became the brilliantly biting cultural critic that we know and love, he was a suburban Christian teen waiting for the messiah. Fortunately, Ziggy Stardust showed up sooner rather than later. Over at Religion Dispatches, Mark is serializing his nonfiction novella that he says is about the "religious subtext in Bowie lyrics, the christological symbolism in Ziggy, and my '70s transition from evangelical true believer to devout Bowiephile." From the opening essay, the first in a weekly series:
Proclaiming an astro-hippie gospel of transcendence through free love ("let all the children boogie," unquote), Ziggy seizes on rock stardom as the most effective media pulpit for his message. Not content with mere celebrity, he imagines himself a "leper messiah." But, like too many telegenic holy men, he ends up seduced by his own Cult of Personality: "making love with his ego / Ziggy sucked up into his mind" ("Ziggy Stardust"). In the Ziggy outtake "Sweet Head," he sings, "Your faith in me can last / Besides, I'm known to lay you, one and all," then tosses off a line calculated to outrage: "Till there was rock, you only had God."
In the end, he's murdered by his crazed fans, torn limb from limb onstage. His jealous backing band, The Spiders from Mars–who had "bitched about his fans" and toyed with Golgotha-friendly fantasies of "crush[ing] his sweet hands"–wash their hands, Pontius Pilate-like, of the whole sordid business: "When the kids had killed the man I had to break up the band."
"Till There Was Rock You Only Had God: How I Lost One Leper Messiah, and Gained Another, Part 1"
