Abstracts that we'd like to see I

David Bowie vs. Mick Jagger: who is the best on the silver screen – and why? A. Lisandro Cressi (Ph.D. candidate) UNITOBA (University of Manitoba) Strong empirical evidence has proven that Mick Jagger is a complete failure as an actor. Films like that science fiction flick about immortality and time travel, the one in which Mick Jagger plays the role of a bodyguard, or movie set in a concentration camp, or that one about breaking Nazi codes in World War II, they were all astounding box office failures, and none of them turned out to be cult movies whatsoever (Pondé 2013). On the other hand, any film starring David Bowie has been commercially profitable (Saphatle 2013), and some of them have become cult movies. Examples multiply: Nicolas Roeg's The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976), Nagisa Oshima's Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (1983), Tony Scott's The Hunger (1983), Jim Henson's Labyrinth (1986) etc. It is somehow illustrative of this phenomenon the fact that in this very abstract we forgot the titles of the movies featuring Mick Jagger, whereas all films starring David Bowie can easily be recalled and kept in mind forever. In summary, we suggest that David Bowie is a multimedia, multitask, manifold artist, an everlasting success and demi-god, whereas Mick Jagger lacks talent, representing a typical looser and a misfit restricted to the rock band scene and a certain timeframe (the 1970s and 1980s). Drawing on previous studies (Marx 1969; Lapin 2013; Bueno 2014) which have proven that Mick Jagger is far from being a lucky person or luckbearer (i.e. someone who brings luck to other people, such as in Lapin's 2013 analysis of Mr. Jagger's attendance to stadiums), this paper aims to better understand why every film in which the former rolling stone appears turns out to be a complete failure and disaster. Incidentally, we would like to notice that the source of Mr. Jagger's mischief and bad fortune might be ascribed to one of the first films that featured him as a main character: Julien Temple's Running Out of Luck (1987). Curiously enough, this film suggests a liaison between Brazil and the rolling stone, as one can see in the following synopsis: “A rock singer goes to Brazil to shoot a video, but winds up getting kidnapped and turned over to the oversexed owner of a banana plantation”. Authors such as Pondé (2013) and Saphatle (2013) have sustained that Temple's film foresaw Mr. Jagger's cinematic curse and convoluted relationship with the country of the future. It is worth mentioning that our methodology consists of film analysis (Jabor 2010) complemented by statistical data concerning both Jagger's and Bowie's filmographies, followed by a survey inspired on reception theory (Manchu 1895). This survey will be conducted in a minute tribe in the Amazon rainforest, known as the N'uaktii. The reason for choosing the N'uajtii lies in the fact that they had no contact with neither white men nor Western civilization until 2014. Discovered by the British anthropologist, biologist, historian, philosopher, taxidermist, gambler, gunslinger and womanizer Sir Allan Quartermain (Quartermain et al. 2014), this tribe represents the perfect test group in our experiment, given the fact its members have had no contact with the media this far, remaining unbeknownst to Sting or any other pop star throughout the whole 20th century. Therefore, N'uaktii individuals will be exposed to films starring both Mick Jagger and David Bowie. Following the film screenings, a questionnaire designed to measure affection and sympathy - with questions ranging from “I would kiss him on the face” to “I would bear his child” - will be given to N'uaktii individuals which will then answer Y/N to each item. Film stills featuring closeups of both Jagger and Bowie will be also presented to N'uaktii individuals while they are having meals, in order to test their receptiveness and tolerance. Drawing on McIver (1985) ideas on the star system, the collected data will eventually be interpreted under perspectives proposed by Pondé (2013) and Saphatle (2013). We strongly believe that this double-blind experiment, reinforced by a Marxist (from Groucho Marxism) framework and a twist of Surrealist automatism will finally cast light on this long-lasting controversy: who is the best and most complete artist, Mick Jagger or David Bowie? References:

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