This past weekend marked the 30th anniversary of the release of Purple Rain, Albert Magnoli's nearly two-hour-length music video that made Prince an enormous star to go with his enormous talent. I often show it in my Rock and Roll Films class, and I did in fact do so the other night. Just coincidence. I hadn't realize the anniversary was coming up. It was a student in the class who e-mailed me a link to this NPR piece remembering the film with fondness.
I discuss the film with some clear memory of the Summer of 84, for me the Summer of Movies, as I probably saw more in those two and a half months in the theaters than I ever have since. I joke in my presentation about how many virginities were lost either in the theaters or at parties or in cars where the film's hot soundtrack was playing. The film is vibrant, exciting, the music performances dynamic (though the acting is pretty lame) and very sexy. NPR's Michelle Norris recalls what the film meant to her home town of Minneapolis, where much of the film was shot, and you can see this incredible, diverse music scene at the famous First Avenue club. Critic Eric Deggans tells of how the narrative of the film actually had happened to him and his band.
But what we cannot ignore -- and Jon Lewis in his review of the film for the journal Jump Cut certainly pointed it out -- is the film's relentless misogyny. As Lewis notes, Prince's character, the Kid, can get away with being an asshole, including slapping his girl hard, just as his father beats his mother, because he's just such a musical genius. He shows little respect to Appolonia, who clearly likes him, making her undress and jump into a cold lake. The female members of his band, the lovers Wendy and Lisa, get mocked for complaining that the Kid won't even listen to the songs they are writing. But all is forgiven when he performs their song in the film's final music sequence at First Avenue, even giving Wendy a kiss on the cheek as they near the end of the title song. (It reminds me of a more chilling moment in a film made years later, Brian Gibson's What's Love got to Do with It, when Ike Turner, after having demanded that a tired, post-partum Tina go out on stage with him, leans over to her and kisses her just before they begin to play. It's a horrific moment illustrating the abuse dynamic.) And Appolonia, who wants a career, too, who is momentarily taken under the wing of the Kid's rival (which earns her the Kid's slap, and a mocking of her as he performs "The Beautiful Ones" as she and said rival are at the club together), is there crying at the beauty of the song, and in the montage of other images that are shown as the band plays "I Would Die 4U," she's there, helping him clean up the mess he's made of his house, the rage he went on after his father has shot himself in a failed suicide attempt.
The film's sexism isn't limited to the Kid. Morris Day, the rival, treats women like objects, quite literally; as one woman accosts him on the street, asking him where he was last night, Morris's henchman, Jerome, picks her up and tosses her in the dumpster. This is funny. Seriously. You're supposed to laugh; you've never seen this person before, her acting is crappy, she sounds annoying, so why the hell not just put her in the trash? (Except of course for the obvious reason that you don't treat anyone like garbage, you know.) His attitude to his dancers is pretty much the same.
Just as most music videos still do, and certainly did in the days when MTV showed videos, Purple Rain is essentially an adolescent male fantasy. It says: you can be a jerk and mistreat women but if you can sing and play and dance (he's a great dancer; he took more than just his sound from James Brown), you can still triumph. Despite its R-to-X-rated lyrics (which helped to create the Parents Music Resource Center, the "Wives of Big Brother" who sought to slap labels on record albums),its "wild" fashion sense, and its erotic drive, Purple Rain is just as symptomatic of Reagan-era conservatism as more obvious films of the period like Top Gun (another feature-length music video). If you read film critic Robin Wood's chapter on fantasy and ideology films of the Reagan era, from his book Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan, you realize that much of Wood's characterization of films like the Star Wars trilogy and other forms of "Reaganite entertainment" fit Purple Rain. The film, like so many "classics" of the eighties, puts women in their place.
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