David Bowie, The Force Awakens, and the power of giving everyone a voice

Representation is the stuff from which true democracy is made

The Finn Star Wars toy.
(Image credit: Andrew Burton/Getty Images)

In the immediate wake of David Bowie's death, a piece of footage made the rounds on social media, a bit of video in which an excruciatingly polite Bowie grills an MTV interviewer about the channel's failure to broadcast videos by black musicians.

Having been told by MTV's Mark Goodman that viewers in "the Midwest" would be "scared to death" by Prince and "a string of other black faces," Bowie says: "I'll tell you what the Isley Brothers or Marvin Gaye maybe mean to a black 17-year-old — and surely he's part of America as well."

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Emily L. Hauser

Emily L. Hauser is a long-time commentary writer. Her work has appeared in a variety of outlets, including The Daily Beast, Haaretz, The Forward, Chicago Tribune, and The Dallas Morning News, where she has looked at a wide range of topics, from helmet laws to forgetfulness to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.