![]() Or, as I told the students, Purple Rain is a movie where Prince plays Michael Jackson. He is a lonely, self-hating narcissist tortured by paranoia, seemingly destined for a tragic end. His skewed concept of masculinity leads him to groom, abuse, and discard women. Offspring of a failed marriage between a Black father and a white mother, The Kid relates to whiteness with a mix of attraction and revulsion his relation to Blackness is even more toxic, as every Black male in the film is antagonistic towards him, disgusted by his “softness.” Coded as queer, he appreciates pretty things that evoke childhood nostalgia. (The correlations between Prince’s actual biography and Magnoli’s film are slim.) In “creating” Prince, Magnoli went straight to trauma, writing The Kid as a tragic mulatto. Trusted with creating this fictional origin story, Albert Magnoli zeroed in on the Byronic image the artist had been cultivating since his 1980 LP, Dirty Mind. This failure to consider Black lives in all their complexity contributes to the overall dehumanization of Black Americans, the violent and deadly repercussions of which are a sickeningly familiar story.Īs part of his contract with Warner Bros., Prince demanded a movie among many favorable concessions from the studio. Black mental health is rarely treated with the respect shown in Purple Rain. Were “Is he okay?” a question afforded Black men, George Floyd and many others would still be alive. ![]() The film revolves around the dichotomy between his dysfunctional personal life and the effervescent live performances that made Prince an instant star upon the film’s success. The sequence is powerful for that reason, and one of the darker moments in a pitch-black musical it’s the moment when The Kid’s abusive tendencies infect his stage work. But she had gleaned that The Kid was having a nervous breakdown. Naturally, a high school sophomore understood the difference between fiction and reality. One of the students turned to me and asked, “Is he okay?” with sudden concern, as if the character were a real person. In this scene he shames his lover Apollonia for joining Morris Day’s pop group, making eye contact from the stage as he assaults her with the lyrics, calling her a slut. ![]() Even with parent signatures, when we reached the segment of the film where “The Kid” performs “Computer Blue/Darling Nikki,” I paused to ask each student their comfort level before letting them watch a shirtless, greased-up Prince simulate fellatio with his guitarist, sing about masturbation, and air-hump the stage. We watched the film, which required permission slips because Purple Rain is very R-rated. I structured the units in reverse chronological order, meaning the Prince unit began with his death and ended with Purple Rain, his breakout album. This provided me a chance to teach sociology through the works of artists who redefined our concepts of race, sexuality, and gender. In 2018, I taught a high school elective titled “The MTV Triumvirate,” about the work of Prince, Michael Jackson, and Madonna.
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