Androgyny: David Bowie’s Pursuit Of Cultural Identity

David Bowie was the pioneer of glam rock in the 1970 s.He was famous for his changeable image and music style.At the intersection of the 1960 s and 1970 s,he led the trend of gender ambiguity as an androgynous image.After World War II,the comprehensive strength and international status of countries changed rapidly.The counterculture movement launched by the American youth also swept the UK.However,the economy,culture,social and other aspects in Britain were still under the shadow of World War II.For the sudden emergence of a new popular culture from the United States,Britain as a more conservative and traditional country was greatly affected,and the influx of new culture has brought a crisis of identity to the British.David Bowie,who was a teenager at that time,also joined the group of hippies and tried to obtain the identity of the strong culture in the way of music.However,in the early days,he just intended to be the same with hippies and tried to imitate and cater to the hippie culture but failed several times,which made him stagnated on the road of constructing identity.However,after communicating with other marginal cultures,David Bowie,who was bisexual,started to re-recognize himself and decided to break British’s strict gender regulation to pursue a cultural identity which was different from the past,so as to gain recognition on behalf of marginal groups.This paper takes David Bowie as the research object,combines Stuart Hall’s cultural identity theory and Judith Butler’s gender identity theory,and analyzes David Bowie’s process of pursuing his cultural identity.The main part of this paper is divided into three chapters.The first chapter mainly discusses that under the 1960 s counterculture background,some hippies caused the sensation in the music such as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones that attracted British teenagers into the ranks of hippies.David Bowie tried to join the hippie craze like others by imitating the music,hair,and dressing style of The Beatles and other bands.Nonetheless,his music works were imitation without personal characteristics.After experiencing several failures,hefell into the identity crisis.The second part mainly argues that David Bowie took a break from music and turned to learn mime performance and attracted by androgynous fashion which made him start to face his identity again.The third part mainly analyzes that he broke the traditional concept of gender to construct the new identity and led the 1970’s era of glam rock with the gender ambiguity theme.Finally,this paper argues that Bowie’s cultural identity is constructed by breaking the binary opposition of gender and dissolving the single and stable identity model.