“Space Oddity” in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

In poking around for uses of “Starman” in movies— and there are many— I came across this audio clip of “Space Oddity” from the soundtrack of the 2013 Ben Still film, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. The clip uses Bowie’s original, but inserts the voice of the movie’s co-star, Kristen Wiig, the effect of which is to make the song a duet. I have never heard this before. It works well— maybe surprisingly well. The movie is an adaptation of an old James Thurber story, which was previously turned into a movie in 1947. I have never seen either movie, but assume the 1947 movie has nothing to do with “Space Oddity” (though Bowie was born that year, so maybe there’s…no, forget it…)

Taking the easy way out, I looked at the Wikipedia page to find out who the second voice was on this song and discovered that the song turns out to play a significant part in the movie’s narrative. Though I don’t like quoting extensively from Wikipedia, I’m going to make an exception here:

“The song “Space Oddity” by David Bowie plays a significant role throughout the film. Walter Mitty is referred to mockingly as ‘Major Tom’ by his new boss, Hendricks, in reference to the astronaut Major Tom in ‘Space Oddity’, due to his frequent daydreaming: the boss interprets the line “ground control to Major Tom” as akin to ‘Earth to Walter; come in Walter’. Cheryl later tells Walter that Hendricks misunderstands the song, as “it’s about courage and venturing into the unknown”.

“The song is featured in a crucial scene in which Mitty decides to leap onto a helicopter after imagining Cheryl singing the song. Stiller talked about the importance of “Space Oddity” in that scene during an interview in which he said that, ‘I felt like the way it fits into the story, we got to this point and this scene which was sort of how the fantasy and reality come together for Walter, and that was what that came out of. That song, and what he mentioned in his head, and what he imagines and what he does, it all just seemed to come together over that song.”

I have to say that I don’t think the song is about courage and venturing into the unknown. I’m guessing that Ben Stiller doesn’t think that either, but in light of the quote about jumping on to a helicopter, he might have been trying to suggest that the character is unrealistically optimistic, or that his relationship to objective reality is tenuous. Not to put too fine a point on it, but there is nothing in the lyrics of “Space Oddity” about courage, or that obviously suggests that Major Tom is especially courageous. I have read interpretations of the song that suggest that Major Tom is a loser who ends up drifting into the abyss, and there’s a popular interpretation that the whole thing is a metaphor about heroin (“Ashes to Ashes” does nothing to disabuse that theory). I can even see the song as being about suicide, which given the context of songs Bowie was writing around that time like, “Tired of My Life,” and later, “Quicksand,” is something he might have been thinking about.

Anyway, I look forward to getting around to see the movie. Meanwhile, this version of “Space Oddity” is worth hearing.