‘educate’ the rock audience” 20 . Such occurrences are not usually discussed as they oppose
the central ethos of postmodernism. The music Bowie was making at the time implies that
what he was producing was an intertextual form, but it is a rather shallow interpretation of the
intertextual form that characterises postmodernism and it as a result, “undermines the
postmodern thesis of cultural fusion, in its explicit effort to preserve a bourgeois notion of Art
in opposition to mainstream ‘commercial’ rock and pop” 21 . I would argue that, yet another
postmodern element of Bowie's Berlin Trilogy is that it is very self-aware as it consciously
moves away from any association with popular music by rejecting both the structure and tone
used to construct the traditional ‘pop’ song.
20
21
Wheale, Nigel. The Postmodern Arts: An Introductory Reader. Routledge, London, 1995.
Wheale, Nigel. The Postmodern Arts: An Introductory Reader. Routledge, London, 1995.