“Ashes to Ashes” Music Video (Major Tom in Seat)

Bowie portrayed four distinct characters in the “Ashes to Ashes” music video. Another of them was a man sitting in an elaborate mechanical chair. He could have been Major Tom, though he more certainly appears elsewhere in the video in a different outfit. The character and his chair sit rather incongruously in an idyllic suburban laundry room as a woman works nearby. At multiple points in the video, sparks and smoke shoot out in the room, though she does not seem to pay them any mind.