George Clinton, Ziggy Stardust in New York, and Blaxploration

As I was looking through the course material and ended up in the presentation about George Clinton, two things instantly came to my mind: Madness, and David Bowie. The back cover of Parliament's Mothership Connection, a New York back alley, gives off definite Ziggy Stardust vibes. Of course, Bowie stands in Heddon Street, in central London, and he looks nothing like Ziggy, his alter ego, or the Starman, the other alter ego, Lightning across the face and everything. Still, George Clinton, in his space disco funk attire, high heels, gold plates and all, could be just another Bowie character. Or the American Ziggy Stardust himself.

While Afrofuturism is a pioneering artistic genre, comparing African Americans and their fate in the western world to alien abductees, George Clinton turns an apparent sci-fi nightmare into a self-deprecating outer space cosmic funk parody. Everything about the album, from the cover to the funk-laden song titles, especially Supergroovalisticprosifunkstication, to the music itself, is a flamboyant imagination of black people in space. There is not much lyrical development, but with lines like "Free your mind, and come fly with me/It's hip on the Mothership" against the backdrop of the end of the optimism of the late 1960s civil rights era, it is obvious that Clinton's goal is to create an imaginary world in which African Americans can achieve anything, be it becoming president of the United States or exploring outer space.

This is also what Clinton intended in his live shows: The audience were able to leave the real world behind and join the mythological universe of black space exploration, including a giant Mothership stage prop. Through his expression of artistic freedom, Clinton turns blaxploitation into blaxploration. Shaft would be a welcome passenger on the Mothership, as would David Bowie. Clinton's vision of Afrofuturism is a world where funk beats oppression and everyone welcomes the Starman waiting in the sky, no matter what the color of his skin is.