‘Oh man, I need TV when I got T. Rex’: Bowie and Bolan’s otherworldly carnivalesque intermediality

Abstract

David Bowie and Marc Bolan were peers in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, and during that time, they were sources for each other’s work. Perhaps due to Bolan’s own output being thus far relatively under-researched, Bowie’s relationship with him has also, until now, not been explored in scholarly depth. Thus, their mutual intermediality has also been overlooked. In exploring the links between the two artists, I argue that in particular, Bowie adopted and adapted Bolan’s early glam aesthetic, and further to this, that they drew upon each other’s carnivalesque personae, visual aesthetic, thematics and narrative structures. I argue that the intermediality between Bowie and Bolan also extended to a recognition, particularly within Bowie’s work, of each other’s media stardom. Theories of the carnivalesque, dialogism, and intertextuality provide the critical framework for what I contend is a dialogue between the two artists, in which they contributed to each other’s mythology and immortalised each other as the most important stars of the glam rock genre.