Current Contemplation: Where Are We Now? (The Role of Religion in Our Critical Analysis of Art)

Bowie performing his final music video "Lazarus"

In an earlier post, I talked about one of my biggest pet peeves: people who only discuss nihilism in Bowie's work.  But today I want to expand on this topic in a broader sense.  This leads me to my current contemplation: Are we as a society/culture so against anything religious (here defined as relating to an organized religion that believes in the existence of and has its basis in following God) that it is no longer considered as a valid component of analysis in determining the meaning of a work? Let me elaborate.

In Torrey, we read Sir Isaac Newton's Philisophical Writings.  The collection included The Principia, which details Newton's laws of motion that lay the groundwork for classical mechanics.  Although I didn't understand everything about the work in terms of mathematical principles, I did understand Newton's preface.  In it, he talked about how his belief in God and his faith lead him to examine the mechanics of the world around him.  He believed that God wanted humans to understand how His creation worked, and The Principia was his attempt at fulfilling this mission.

Whether or not you agreed with his assertion that God wanted humans to examine how the world works, or even that God exists, one thing can't be taken out of consideration: Newton was a religious man.  And as such, it was his religion and religious beliefs that led him to pursue the avenues of discovery that he did.  If we are to think critically about Newton's work as a whole, we cannot negate the context under which it was created.

But, you say, Newton's work was "scientific".  Belief in God is not really "essential" to looking at his mathematical work.  Sure, I agree.  Mathematics in terms of "only numbers" isn't religious, and proofs don't have to do with God's existence.  But the heart of mathematics, and mathematicians, contains a love of investigation, discovery, and problem solving which is absolutely philosophical.

But let's say I concede your point.  If I only look at "non-scientific works" religious beliefs and symbols increase - not decrease - their significant role of defining and shaping the work.  If I read Locke's Two Treatises on Government or Milton's Paradise Lost, I can't ignore the religious symbolism and ideology behind why the authors wrote the way they did.

I can't dismiss the fact that Locke's arguments on our natural rights as humans only exist because of his belief in God ("....and that therefore God hath certainly appointed government to restrain the partiality and violence of men." Second Treatise, II.13).  In fact, his fundamental belief in God is what shaped the book that we now look to for the foundation of modern democracy.  I also can't choose to ignore that the "paradise" Milton refers to in the title of his epic poem is, in fact, the Garden of Eden.

Even Nietzsche, one of the key figures in shaping modern-day existential nihilism, (which is a philosophy that believes there is nothing with objective meaning, purpose, or value), had to start somewhere - and that somewhere involved religion.  His text On the Geneology of Morals fundamentally starts with assuming that something we call "morality" exists.  And this makes sense.  He needed to examine the current religious convictions/beliefs of his time before he could attempt to refute them.  In order to prove that there is no objective "good" or "evil", how Christians conceive of it, Nietzsche has to interact with the existence of religion and "objective morality" in the first place.

All of this seems obvious.  Whether or not you agree with the religious convictions directly, or indirectly, addressed in the work, the context of religious belief sets can not be ignored if you want to fully understand and analyse the arguments/work being put forth.  Any critical thinker worth their salt  recognizes that all contextual variables should be taken into account when deriving the meaning of a piece.  How odd would it be if we tried to figure out the meaning of Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous speech "I Have a Dream", but we refused to look at the historical events which prompted it or the fact that his oratory skills and philosophical ideas were first grounded in his work as a Baptist minister?

Yet today it seems that we are so against interacting critically with religion of any kind that we refuse to acknowledge its presence at all.  We prefer to be baffled and reject any art with elements of religion.  This can be seen in a lot of art made today, but of course the most apparent examples to me can be found in critical response to Bowie's last works: his final album ★ and the musical Lazarus.  In this post, for the sake of brevity, I will only be examining Lazarus.

Some reviews about the musical briefly touched on themes of nihilism and existential angst, but most agreed that everyone was stumped and had absolutely no idea what to do with the musical, which in turn earned the production lukewarm reviews at best.

"David Bowie has landed on East Fourth Street with a work of blistering nihilism, no small sum of inscrutable foolishness and a fistful of the most brilliant contemporary rock songs you will hear anywhere....At its core, Lazarus is a two-hour meditation on grief and lost hope (with no intermission), but it takes so many wild, fantastical, eye-popping turns that it never drags." - Deadline Hollywood (Pegg, 2016) 

"Many New York critics, on the show’s debut last December, professed to be bewildered by the plot. I took it to be an exploration of the existential angst that pervades Bowie’s music: this is the story of a man never wholly at ease in himself or his surroundings." - The Guardian 

"The opening number Lazarus – the third track on the final album Blackstar – begins with the words “Look up here, I’m in heaven”. They make us think, immediately, of Bowie; their relation to the earthbound Newton (straight-cut looks and a Bowie-esque lilt from Michael C Hall) is less apparent." -The Telegraph 

"Lazarus is a god-awful strange affair, perhaps because it was assembled in haste by a man who knew he was dying. But, in fairness, it does at least feel like a fitting testament to the real Bowie, who peppered his career with pretentious missteps and failed avant-garde experiments, rather than the infallible art-rock genius he has become over the past 11 months of posthumous canonization. A more conventional jukebox musical, referencing Bowie's own life in a more naturalistic manner, would probably fill larger theaters and earn warmer reviews. It will happen. -Hollywood Reporter 

I’d be hard put to pin down the precise significance of Michael Esper’s superb Valentine, who proves that a man may smile and smile and be a serial killer, or to explain why the key redemptive act seems to be so brutally paradoxical. The deep imaginative integrity of this meditation on despair, hope and the seeking of release is, however, beyond question.' - The Independent

Have we honestly so forgotten how to critically analyse works that they leave us baffled beyond understanding? Grasping at some loose thematic work that we can "somewhat" understand?

For a start, watching the main source material which inspired the musical could be helpful.  Lazarus is meant to be a sequel to Nicholas Roeg's masterpiece The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976).  In it, Bowie starred as an alien who "fell to earth" named Thomas Jerome Newton, who hoped to bring water back to his dying planet.  Instead, however, he falls victim to being addicted to money, sex, and alcohol, as well as being experimented on by government officials.  The film ends with Newton being stranded on earth with no hope of returning back to his home planet - eternally youthful, wealthy, and alone.  This, of course, is my very brief version of cobbling together the basic plot of the film.  The work itself is much larger and grander than that.

It's a piece of high art - a surrealistic 1970s cinematic experience that uses visual and auditory cues more than any dialogue or conventional plot devices like character development.  The work as a whole is a dark examination of the loss of spirituality - of God Himself - in culture (particularly America).  The symbolism for spirituality in the film being water, which is also Biblically sound (the Book of John has a lot of verses relating the Holy Spirit to water). This motif is coincidentally later appropriated by Bowie on his song “Looking For Water” (“Take my hand as we go down and down/Leave it all behind nothing will be found/I’m looking for water”).

Throughout the film, the characters seek to find meaning and purpose for their lives, only to be disillusioned and disheartened in their quest.  As a result, the stand-ins the characters turn to for coping with this loss of objective morality and spirituality include alcohol, sex, and material wealth.  If this wasn't enough, the film also examines the role media has played and continues to play in perpetuating this "new" godless culture.  Not to mention Newton's inability to age/die both on screen and on stage, which plays a significant role in his isolation and the theme of death being bound with "release/redemption/life".  Therefore the film is, in short, a damning piece about searching for spirituality and finding nothing.  It's my second favourite movie of all time, and I highly recommend watching it.  It's one of the most powerful existential pieces of art I've ever had the pleasure to examine.

Thus, if Lazarus is meant to be a sequel to this work, and you believe that Bowie is clever enough to work out the thematic concepts of the original piece, then you know the musical will be concerned with many of the same elements.  Spiritual searching, examining isolation and literal alienation, and seeking for a way to communicate with others - all the most prevalent themes in both the film and Bowie's work (Bowie himself acknowledged were the only themes his work was about for over fifty years.) [x]

Of course, the circumstances in which Bowie wrote the piece are widely acknowledged.  It's his "swan song" - the last thing he worked on while battling cancer before he died.  The foreknowledge of his death, and his preoccupation with planning for its eventuality, is impossible to separate from his last works.  Nor should you, since the piece itself is named Lazarus, a story all about a human man who died and was raised from the dead.

Which, speaking of, this brings me to my main point: if you're going to analyse a piece, why would you not look to the title of it? Of the dozens of reviews I've read that have attempted to decipher the meaning of both the musical and the single/music video, I can not find a single one which mentions the inspiration behind the title.  The title! That should always be the first place you start when trying to determine the significance of a piece (they're not chosen lightly, you know).  At best, reviews called it "haunting" and referenced the song with a link to a music video everyone refused to interpret past Bowie predicting his death. [x]

Which, if you would allow me to briefly digress, let me talk about his music video for the single, which clearly advances the theme of spiritual searching that the original film also undertook.

The video opens with a shot of a woman stepping out of an old wardrobe.  Upon exiting she looks fearfully to screen left. It’s Bowie.  His eyes are bandaged with the same costuming piece from the "Blackstar" music video, and he's lying in a hospital bed, covers up to his chin.  Immediately the song “All the Madmen” (1970) comes to mind (Bowie came from a family with a long history of mental illness, particularly of schizophrenia, and it loomed as a dark shadow over most of his life).  It also visually conveys the condition Bowie kept secret from the public for eighteen months - his life in and out of hospitals while battling cancer.

The atmosphere is set. The place Bowie is in is one of illness, death, and finality. But then wait a second - the next shot shows the woman hiding under the bed.  Her hand comes up around the side of it, reaching for Bowie, whose body begins to float off the surface of the bed, mimicking a spirit rising from the corpse of a dead man.  The camera work underscores this point as it refuses to adhere to the "mortal" law of gravity.  Instead, it spins around until Bowie’s image is upside down to parallel the line “dropped my cell phone down below”. It’s as if Bowie has already ascended to heaven and has foregone all earthly connection as symbolised by the "cell phone".  The song isn't about just death and finality - it's about resurrection and life after we leave this earthly plane.

The video then hard cuts to the most striking shot in the film. It’s a close-up on Bowie, out of bed, dancing in a striped costume as he sings, “By the time I got to New York”. This is intercut with shots of Bowie levitating on the bed. It then depicts Bowie madly writing on a desk as he fervently attempts to write down his thoughts.  The frantic writing clearly symbolizes his artistic genius, desperate to continue writing despite the pain. The crazed gleam in his eyes mimics the mental illness, as previously discussed. The final shot then shows Bowie himself, still in the striped costume, as the one to go back in the wardrobe before closing the door behind him.

The significance of the striped outfit he wears can’t be underscored enough. The outfit was first seen in the promotional photos for his ISOLAR I tour in 1976 (otherwise known as the “Station to Station” tour), but has also been brought back in many different iterations including on the “Glass Spider” (1987) and the “Outside” (1995) tour. As this blog post most brilliantly outlines, “the stripe design has traditionally been seen as something that was worn by outsiders. In the Middle Ages, for instance, it was mainly worn by prisoners, women of easy virtue and clowns. In the twentieth century, artists used it as a form of rebellion; examples include Picasso, James Dean and Elvis Presley.”

Meanwhile, the pose he strikes in both the “Lazarus” and “ISOLAR” promotional photos resembles that of the ancient Greek “kourous” statues.  Again, as the post explains, “Despite the statue serving a variety of purposes, the appearance as well as the pose remained the same. The kouros therefore embodies mortality as well as immortality. The images potentially possessed magical powers, or were intended to demonstrate the beauty ideal of the athletic youth”.

Indeed, the article presses on to offer an interpretation of why the costume and pose were both used when it states, “With [the “ISOLAR” and “Lazarus” images] [Bowie] seems to refer to the, until then, darkest period in his life, thus indicating that he was once again experiencing similar difficulties. In addition, the outfit looks like a red thread running through Bowie’s career. He wore it in difficult times, but even in less turbulent periods the outfit seemed to convey an ominous message. The pose Bowie has adopted resembles that of the kouros. As mentioned earlier, this type of statue represented immortality as embodied Apollo, the god of healing, music and poetry. These properties of the kouros as Apollo would have appealed to Bowie in his darker periods. In addition, the kouros also represents mortality, as evidenced by its use as a funerary ornament, yet it also refers to death. This dichotomy of mortality/immortality is also found in David himself”.  Thus, the music video itself underscores this dichotomy of immortal youth and life with mortal age and death - a juxtaposition that Newton in the film and musical had to wrestle with as he remained eternally young and trapped in an empty existence - which also relates back to my main point.  The title.

The title of "Lazarus" itself should be a "dead" give away that the musical (and song) could never be about empty nothining-ness after death, or have a meaning that is lost in obscurity. The original story found in the Gospel of John is all about Resurrection and Hope. Not death and despair or meaninglessness.

For those who don’t know, the story can be found in John 11:1-44, and it is traditionally viewed as the final “sign” of Christ that He has come to save mankind. In the narrative, a man named Lazarus from the city of Bethany is ill and Jesus is asked to heal him. However, Jesus does not go immediately to him. This is because he knew that, “[Lazarus’] illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” (11:3) Instead, Jesus waited to go to Bethany after Lazarus had been in the tomb for four days. Once he goes there, he is confronted by mourning and grief for Lazarus’ death. He too weeps with those assembled, moved by the reality of suffering and death. However, the people’s grief soon turns to joy and belief in Jesus as Christ. Jesus is lead to the tomb that Lazarus was buried in, and called for him to come out before the man himself emerges. As Biblical scholars point out, the fact that John does not record Lazarus’ response or the aftermath of his resurrection (other than that the people believed), shifts the story of Lazarus to that of Jesus, Glorifying God.

Thus, why would a musical which uses this story as its eponymous source of inspiration be about despair, death, and meaninglessness? The story doesn’t stop with Lazarus dying. It conveys the real sorrow and grief felt by Jesus (and the crowd) at the reality of suffering in this life, but the narrative most definitely doesn’t stop there. And Lazarus isn’t known as “that one friend of Jesus’ who only died and stayed dead."  Moreover, in case you missed it, even the cover design for Lazarus includes the outline of a city skyline. A skyline which includes a cross - the ultimate Christian symbol of salvation and resurrection.

Have we forgotten so much about religious symbolism that we refuse to address it when we want to discuss the meaning of artistic works? Have we as a culture so scorned anything to do with religion (whether or not we believe in it) that we don't even want to mention anything that has to do with it? That we become baffled and reject any type of art that holds such imagery?

This seems to be exemplified in the reviews for the final three Bowie tracks which appear on the musical's soundtrack.  All of them seem equally adverse to ever mentioning his extremely religious song "When I Met You", other than to simply say "it exists".  This is in comparison to the longer discussion of his other two songs "Killing A Little Time" and "No Plan", which definitely embrace a more "familiar" existential and nihilistic thematic framework:

"On “Killing A Little Time”, a song that sounds as though it wouldn’t be completely out of place on The Man Who Sold the World...he sings “I’ve got a handful of songs to sing, To sting your soul, To fuck you over”[....] The second song, the boilerplate “When I Met You” is the weakest of the three, sounding a little like something he might have recorded in the mid-Nineties, if he had been trying to deconstruct a Joy Division song, that is.  The third song, “No Plan”, is the standout, a genuine Greatest Hit...A ballad both mournful and uplifting, the version sung by Sophia Anne Caruso actually sounds like a classic show tune, while Bowie’s version is one of the most haunting things he’s ever done. Ever did. It’s a beautiful song, and sounds almost as though it’s covered in a buttery light. The words, too, while seeming to slip easily from Newton’s lips, could quite easily apply to Bowie’s present and perennial disposition: “There’s no music here, I’m lost in streams of sound, Here am I nowhere now? No plan?... All the things that are my life, My moods, My beliefs, My designs, Me Alone, Nothing to regret, This is no place, but here I am, This is not quite yet.” Ouch. It almost sounds apostolic. -GQ 

Bowie comes on violent and threatening in the industrial "Killing a Little Time," snarling, "I've got a handful of songs to sing/To sting your soul, to fuck you over." "When I Met You" is pop charm, with a Lindsey Buckingham quiver in the guitar twang. But the real prize is "No Plan," where Bowie croons an eerie torch song about drifting into space, floating over New York City – "There's no music here/I'm lost in streams of sound." It's a crucial part of Bowie's long goodbye to a world that wasn't quite ready to let go of him. -Rolling Stone 

"It’s the three new Bowie tracks, the last songs he ever recorded, that give ‘Lazarus’ its titular sense of creative reincarnation, though. It’s impossible to separate them from the circumstances of their writing – oceanic Radiohead-ish ballad ‘No Plan’, for instance, sounds like an anthem of deathbed fatalism, Bowie’s warm and fragile voice facing a blank, empty future (“This is no place, but here I am”), while ‘Killing A Little Time’ finds him wailing, “I’ve got a handful of songs to sing, to sting your soul, to f**k you over”, over Nine Inch Nails tech-rock beats and murderous saxophones in his classic cockney arthouse quiver, simultaneously helpless and ferocious. Finally, the Ziggy-leaning ‘When I Met You’ is a discordant, fractured glam romance in which he declares to a lover, “When I met you I was the walking dead”, while a robo-Bowie chatters unsettlingly in the background. Further signs that, right to the end, Bowie was testing himself with new tones and textures, raging magnificently against the dying of the light." -NME 

"Each one has its own flavour. "When I Met You" is the kind of briskly anthemic, self-quoting rock that Bowie delivered on his 2013 comeback album The Next Day, climbing a ladder of chords to a stirring chorus, until a swarm of overlapping backing vocals knocks it sideways, giving it a stranger, more chaotic quality. "Killing a Little Time" has the same neurotic momentum as "Sue (Or in a Season of Crime)" and a touch of Outside’s 1990s industrial clamour, pitching Bowie’s sinisterly theatrical vocal into shrieking, churning jazz-rock....Bowie sounds like a man coming apart — “I’m falling, man / I’m choking, man / I’m fading, man” — but it feels like Newton talking. Bowie is just the cracked actor.  The best of the three, "No Plan", is also the one most likely to inspire literal readings. It’s an exquisitely lush, star-speckled torch song, which refracts the late-in-life stocktaking of Piaf or Sinatra through the stasis and fatalism of Talking Heads’ "Heaven". “All the things that are my life / All my moves, my beliefs, my designs / Me alone, nothing to regret / This is no place but here I am / This is not quite yet,” Bowie croons. Taken alone, it would be a hell of a swansong (“Am I nowhere now?”) but play it beside the feverish discontent of "Killing a Little Time" and it loses its soothing finality. Again, these are numbers from a musical. They might feel movingly true at times but they’re stories, from a master storyteller." -The Guardian 

Clearly, no Love is Lost for the final track listed on the soundtrack, but is that because it truly is a "mediocre" "mid-90s" throwaway song? Or is it because no one knows what to do with lyrics like:

When I met you (When I met you)
I was too insane (I was too insane)
Could not trust a thing (Could not trust a thing)
I was off my head (I was off my head)
I was filled with truth (I was filled with truth)
It was not God's truth (It was not God's truth)
Before I met you (Before I met you)

Unlike Lennon's semi-agnostic sort-of-philosophical piece "Imagine"(which our post-philosophical society understands with its opening lyrics which impore us to imagine a world in which there's no heaven or hell - "it's easy if you try"),  Bowie's Lazarus doesn't offer such an option.  His work contains a robust spiritual reality behind the framework of his carefully chosen lyrics.  Even in his eponymous song for the musical, his opening lines are, "Look up here, I’m in heaven/I’ve got scars that can’t be seen".  There is a heaven, and he (whether as Bowie or Newton) has ascended to it.

Thus, without even seeing the musical, I can already guess what it will be about from the context of the titular homage, original film inspiration, the music video, and Bowie's own life.  The story will be a rumination on spiritual searching in all its forms: death and resurrection (on multiple levels, both physically/spiritually), isolation, seeking a way to communicate and, above all, love others.

Of course, there is a bias, you might object.  I'm a Christian, so aren't I purposefully looking for Christian imagery? Perhaps, but I don't think so.  As a Christian, I have a heightened awareness of religious - particularly Christian - symbolism in works of art.  However, I don't assert that their presence means that the work of art is solely about "Jesus and all that".  If a work had an Islamic artist behind its creation, I would look to the Quran and central figures/symbols/images in Islam to help determine the meaning of the piece.  If a work was created by an atheist, I would be sure to use that frame of reference for understanding the piece and the artist's perspective on making it.  As to Bowie? I am not attempting to claim that he is a Christian, or that his work doesn't have existential/nihilistic themes within (because it does - see: "The Supermen", "Quicksand", and "No Plan" to name just a few).  But there's only one "Lazarus" that this musical could be referencing in the title, and he is a predominant figure in the Judeo-Christian canon.  Consequently, the Christian faith must be a critical component to examining his work.

Thus, how could we, so quick to embrace the nihilistic symbolism, be equally eager to forget the religious symbolism in the work? Has our secular society truly come to a point where we are willing to "analyse" art only as so far as it relates to our personal convictions and steers as far away as possible from religion? If so, then I fear that our critical analysis of art will never be accurate, objective, and driven with the purpose of truly understanding the meaning of a piece.  And I have no hope that any work of art made by someone of any faith background will ever truly be understood.  They too will be relegated to lukewarm reviews by baffled critics, who only want work that panders to popular taste.   So what should we do?

We should never forget that religion can be a valid form of analysis for any work that demands it.  If the title of a musical has the name of a preeminent Biblical figure, don't be afraid to mention the Bible.  If the lyrics reference God, it's okay to wonder what that would mean.  If the main thematic work calls for an examination of spirituality, be able to recognize that for what it is and be open to discussing how it fits in with the meaning of the work as a whole.  Is the theme ever "answered" (resolved)? Or is it left up in the air - an eternal quest with no right answer?

Willingness to engage with philosophical questions related to religious convictions, beliefs, images, symbolism, etc. (whether or not you believe in them) is "critical" to critical thinking.  Without it, our ability to analyse and derive meaning is lost because it shows that we are unable to interact with ideas and concepts that may be different from our own beliefs.  As a result, our own convictions are weakened because we refuse to examine our own rationale for why "we believe what we believe", and are unwilling to be open to the possibility that we might be wrong.  Thus, in order for critical thinking to flourish, we should not be so ready to forget religion when we want to examine the meaning of any work.  It is an essential component for understanding the context and imagery of not only work like Lazarus, but any quality artistic work.  So please, don't dismiss the role of religion in critical analysis.  If you do, you might miss out of discovering the meaning of not only the work of art, but of analysis itself.