Gesturing Dust: Sensing David Bowie’s performance in Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence

In this chapter I explore David Bowie’s performance as Major Jack Celliers in Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence through a sense-based, close textual analysis of a single scene. This scene appears near the end of the film, where Captain Yonoi (Ryuichi Sakamoto) orders all of the prisoners, including the sick and injured, to gather outside their barracks. When Group Captain Hicksley (Jack Thompson) refuses to obey these orders, Yonoi demands that he and other prisoner officers answer a question about the level of military skills in their camp. Hicksley refuses to answer and an enraged Yonoi has him dragged to a position where he is knelt and forcibly held, and prepares to behead him. Other Japanese soldiers/guards train their rifles on the prisoners so that they do not break rank. At this point in the scene, Celliers suddenly, if nonchalantly, walks past the guards and stands between Yonoi and Hicksley. Yonoi pushes Celliers backwards and to the floor, and he responds by kissing him on each cheek. Yonoi raises his katana only to collapse and fall to his knees. Celliers is then attacked and beaten by a number of Japanese soldiers. The scene under analysis lasts for three minutes and forty seconds. I am centrally concerned with how David Bowie affectively acts in this scene, responding not exclusively to his star apparatus or wider cultural signifiers – although these play a central role – but to his movement, body language, gestures and ‘silences’. These gestures and silences – or linguistic gaps – allow his performance to register beyond representation, as an affective assemblage. There is an alienation to his performance in this scene that springs forth like a coil: affectively speaking, Bowie’s performance as Celliers registers as ulterior and unnameable. Further, what is being affectively enunciated in this scene is queer desire: a longing on the part of Yonoi, a liminality on the part of Celliers and of the star playing him. In addition, the asemiotic, aesthetic qualities of Bowie’s performance are analysed through the mise en scène, which is read as performative too. The textures and spaces of the screen, the costuming and the objects caressed, are seen as sensory forms, forming entangled connections with Celliers and the other characters.