This BBC interview between Jeremy Paxman and David Bowie has gone viral, and with good reason. Partly this is because Bowie’s remarks about the Internet were prophetic and funny. But it is also fascinating for what it shows us about Paxman.
It is only too obvious that Paxman knew nothing, literally nothing, of what he was saying. Everything he says is comically wrong, and in the same silly-clever soft reactionary way that betrays he hadn’t thought about it much. At best, he had memorised some talking points – Bowie: reinvention, the Internet: just another delivery mechanism, or tiresome kids spraffing off – at worst he just responded to keywords. In fact, there is a moment in the video where he seems to falter and glances downwards, as if he was referring to a crib sheet. He has nothing constructive to offer, and nothing destructive that wasn’t glib cliché even in 2000.
Of course, this doesn’t mean for a moment that he is going to drop the Manningham-Buller Bullying-Manner act. What this shows us is that the Paxman persona has about as much to do with reality as Ziggy Stardust. His confidence isn’t drawn from mastery of his brief, but rather, from out of his backside. It is a style trope, a performance of scepticism, rationality, and authority rather than the real things. We are seeing a confrontation, or better, a collaboration between two great performers, rather in the way that rodeo judges give points to both the bull and the rider.
But the authentic fake here is Paxman. Bowie’s remarks during the interview about the way the Internet would transform the nature of celebrity and the relationship between the audience and the artist were of course right, but his manner is even more so. He is very obviously fascinated by the project, irrationally certain it was going to work, and willing to burn money by the sack. Paxman is a television personality, Bowie has become a geek, over-enthusiastic, obsessive, hyper-informed.
And of course this is the future we’re swimming in. Nothing gets across better than hyper-engagement and obsessive enthusiasm, for good or ill. Cool detachment is out, has been for a decade. Of course you can always fake this, but then authenticity is always a style trope. Who better to make the point?
Bowie’s thinking on his feet & he’s still got that mystical hippie edge to his thinking, so some of what he’s saying is a bit squishy, but the disparity between him & Paxman is just embarrassing – it’s like seeing Rowan Williams interviewed by a small yappy dog.
Someone should write a history of the British political TV interview (I know this one isn’t political, but politics was Paxman’s main arena) from the origins, through David Frost, through to the yappy dog and finally the cold shoulder where the government passes the ministerial appearance off to a friendly think tanker.