David Bowie – Mutant Sympathizer?By Dana Gier
Starting with his 1983 album Let’s Dance, I have been a David Bowie fan pretty much since I’ve been listening to popular music. However, with a discography of twenty-five studio albums dating back to 1967, I had never given all of his work a good listening to. So recently, I had been checking out some his albums, which had so far escaped my attention. Among them was 1971’s Hunky Dory. I was listening to it when I came across the song Oh You Pretty Things. I’m sure I heard it several times before I realized what he was saying. Here is the last verse and chorus:
Look at your children
See their faces in golden rays
Don't kid yourself they belong to you
They're the start of a coming race
The earth is a bitch
We’ve finished our news
Homo sapiens have outgrown their use
All the strangers came today
And it looks as though they're here to stay
Oh you pretty things (oh you pretty things)
Don't you know you're driving your
Mamas and papas insane
Oh you pretty things (oh you pretty things)
Don't you know you're driving your
Mamas and papas insane
Let me make it plain
You gotta make way for the homo superior
Was the Thin White Duke down with the X-Men? Had he been reading the works of Lee and Kirby, or by time this album was released, Roy Thomas and Neal Adams? Of course, science fiction themes were always common in his work since his second album, Space Oddity, to be followed by The Man Who Sold the World. Additionally, Wikipedia has this to say about the song:
“Thematically, the song has been seen as reflecting the influence of occultist Aleister Crowley and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, and heralding ‘the impending obsolescence of the human race in favour of an alliance between arriving aliens and the youth of the present society’”
Not the explanation I expected. Also, in researching this article, I found the term homo superior pre-dating the X-Men by decades. The term appears in several works of science fiction, the earliest from 1934 novel Odd John, by British author Olaf Stapledon.
“Homo Superior faced the little mob of Homo Sapiens, and it was immediately evident that Homo Superior was indeed the better man."
Was Bowie influenced by the X-Men series? Judging by the research, the answer is probably not. However, though the song may not be specific to the merry band of mutants, it does seem to apply to their situation pretty well! I may be fooling myself, but it is nice to think that perhaps David Bowie, maybe while coming down from a particularly cosmic trip, had been browsing his comic book collection when he was inspired to pen this ode to the Children of the Atom.
Yes, Hunky Dory was well ahead of its time. David Bowie wrote it in a burst of prophetic creativity ... this was 1970, 1971, perhaps ... years before the big mutant craze. But then Bowie always was a trendsetter.
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