No, David Bowie is not just the “White Duke”
No, David Bowie is not just the White Duke. We come from days of celebrations: ten years have passed since his death, in 2016, and in remembering him we often use “Duca Bianco” as if it were a synonym of Bowie. But it isn’t. It’s like calling Christian Bale “Batman”, or Sylvester Stallone “Rocky”. They are characters they have played, they are not their entire world, just like for Bowie. The White Duke is one of his most famous masks: but where was he born? It was Bowie himself who presented this alter ego of his, born in conjunction with the album’s release “Station to Station” in 1976 (we will dedicate a special to the album in the next few days).
Elegant, very thin, cold, distant, almost aristocratic, a figure far from the multicolored glam rock of a short time before. “The thin white duke” is a character that reflects alienation, control, and also an extreme personal moment for Bowie in which his addiction to cocaine was consuming him, also leading him to have a fascination for the occult and to utter phrases apologizing for Nazism. No, Kanye West wasn’t the first to rant about these issues. Bowie himself, over time, will distance himself from this character and apologize. In that period he also had his first real experience in the cinematographic field, acting as the protagonist in the film “The Man Who Fell to Earth”. The White Duke, from an aesthetic point of view, was extremely disruptive, which is why over time it has become such a widespread nickname. But he didn’t want to be a statue or a permanent icon. Bowie was constantly transforming: let’s remember this when we encase it in the words “White Duke”.
