The subversion of an exquisite corpus: against the grain with David Bowie

The critical need for identity formation has been underlined by the theory that ‘language’ and culture provide representations that produce meanings, and these meanings regulate social practices. Regulation is understood here to comprise intersections between various structures within a culture that might limit or delimit the use of a ‘text’ be it art, music or film. That is, regulation is an articulation of a number of formal and informal processes that lead to contingent and variable outcomes for (on a micro-level) listening/viewing bodies and (at the macro level) societies in general. Widely divergent perspectives on the weight of creative texts in society exist, offering complexity to the study of media as more than simply industries and technologies on one hand, and audiences and what they ‘do’ with the media on the other. This article considers that the ways David Bowie has become significant within the media-rich world around us. The purpose is to comprehend David Bowie via regulation on the circuit of culture in an interpretive analysis of this ‘moment’ with a specific focus on exploring ontological issues to do with the cultural politics of key forms of regulation brought forth by and surrounding David Bowie’s dynamic and frequently contested works.