“Prince is in charge and he knows how he wants to appear — like Dionysus crossed with a convent girl on her first bender,” the New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael wrote in her review of “Purple Rain” (1984). It was a largely negative review, but she captured something critical about the musician, who died on April 21 at the age of 57. For as much as he’ll be remembered for his music, he’ll also be remembered for his image. The ruffled shirts, thigh-high boots, bikini underwear, nudity — there are many variations of Prince’s visual style. It was as sensual as it was striking, powerful and penetrating.So powerful, in fact, that he began to run away from it. My first impression of Prince is in fact a non-image, a defiant attempt at erasure. I saw a clip on MTV of the singer with the world “slave” scribbled on his cheek. The word was an act of protest against his record label, Warner Brothers. The company was refusing to let him release his music the way he wanted to have it released. He felt that if they owned his music they also owned his name. So, in 1993, he replaced it with a symbol that print outlets had trouble reproducing and television stations found difficult to put into words. Hence his temporary title, The Artist Formerly Known as Prince.The image of refusal was confusing yet intriguing. He released a few albums during the period when he renounced his name, but they are widely considered acts to fulfill his contractual obligation to his record company. (When his contract was done with Warner Brothers, he went back to performing and recording under the name Prince.) For me, his work during this time period contained a link between the punk rock I found exciting and the undeniable pleasures of pop. The songs were erotic and mysterious. But it was the album covers, especially “Dirty Mind,” that I found most thrilling. In the past, to discover imagery like this you had to search the margins of culture. Now, it was out in the open. The cover art provoked ideas that seemed complex but were bathed in the conventions of popular entertainment.This was pushed further in “Purple Rain,” the ultimate document of a pop star in full control of all his sonic and visual power. It’s undoubtedly a work of genius, a film that hints at autobiography but remains in a world of fantasy. To return to what Kael wrote, it’s a combination of Dionysus and a convent girl, of innocence and experience. The dramatic moments reach back to a faraway time, and the musical moments crash like a lavender waterfall, soaking everything in sight.Prince only made two more dramatic films. “Under the Cherry Moon” (1986) is in many ways the most interesting of his three forays into film acting — it expands the mythology he was building around his image while also twisting it and making it even more obscure. Prince also directed the work, and it shows the influence of auteurs such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Francois Truffaut. “Graffiti Bridge” (1990) is an ostensible follow-up to “Purple Rain” that sees Prince, who also directed, reprise his role as The Kid. The film is wonderfully aimless and contains performance scenes that rival his other films, heightened to an almost comic tone.But “Purple Rain” is always the film people will return to. It took the purity of pop imagery and turned it purple, and will continue to provoke, to be a source of pleasure, and to turn people on.
↧