Jump Down That Rainbow Way

David Bowie “TVC 15”

A lot of paranoid, cynical songs have been written about television as a corrupting, socially destructive medium. Most of them seem kinda quaint and silly now, particularly in the era of internet saturation and smart phones. In light of much bigger problems, it’s hard to take something like “Television, the drug of a nation!” seriously, and knowing what life is like now, if you go back over old Zoo TV footage, the notion that clicking through 57 channels of television amounts to “INFORMATION OVERLOAD!!!” is kinda laughable. Nevertheless, as much as this stuff comes out seeming ham-fisted and clunky today, the artists were right to be concerned about media, and the increased mediation of daily life. Being wrong about the specifics doesn’t mean they weren’t basically right about the future.

Of all the songs I know about television, David Bowie’s “TVC 15” is the finest, and also the earliest. It’s also the funniest, the smartest, the grooviest, and the one that has aged the best. Some of that comes down to the fact that it takes place in the future, and the technology is beyond what we know now. More importantly, though, there’s not any particular judgment in the song. It’s basically a surreal love story — some guy’s girlfriend literally disappears into the immersive, holographic world of his television set, and he ponders the possibility of jumping in and finding her. The song isn’t a strident comment on propaganda or a statement in favor of a more authentic existence. I mean, how could it be — when Bowie wrote this he was obsessed with Nazis and in a state of severe cocaine psychosis! If anything, the song is really about that paranoia and detachment from reality, and the fear that he could lose the ability to tell the difference between real life and colorful fantasy. And, perhaps accidentally, that’s how “TVC 15” resonates today — not as a condemnation of virtual life or an information glut or an overdose of escapism, but as a song that approaches this intersection of various forms of reality as a weird, scary, lonely, fun, and romantic place to be.

Buy it from Amazon.