Abstract
In September of 1986, megastar Prince journeyed across the Atlantic to France to begin filming his second motion picture Under the Cherry Moon. Having captured the US imagination in the commercially successful Purple Rain (1984), “The Kid” (Prince’s Purple Rain alias) was eager to begin shooting his idea for a wry comedy in black and white in “homage to the B films of the 1940’s” (Goodman, 1986). Prince’s artistic, transcontinental trek was already on display with his 1985 Around the World in a Day, an album that at once pushed him forward musically by looking backward to 1960s psychedelic, Beatles-esque pop. An avant-garde experimentalist, Prince was seemingly constructing a new musical paradigm that linked past and present in kaleidoscopic fashion. The title song might have Prince playing the melodious wanderer: “Open your heart, open your mind, A train is leaving all day, A wonderful trip through our time, And laughter is all U pay.” Parade: Music from The Motion Picture “Under the Cherry Moon” continued the sauntering theme as the diminutive Prince declares in the title track, “The little 1 will escort U, 2 places within your mind.” In this manner, the wanderings of Prince’s character Christopher Tracy took him “more often to the strange corners of Paris than to its historic centre, to the strongholds of multiculturalism rather than to the classic headquarters of the Gallic tradition” (White, 2001). The purpose of the article is to present Prince as a postmodern flâneur. Beyond notions of his dandyism, most directly observed in his use of signifiers that convey gender ambiguity/bending, Prince’s urban representations, traveling imagery, solitary character, social commentary, contradictory relationships with women, and transformative creativity mark a new take on the flâneur.
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Notes
I will also reference Prince’s films.
Here, I borrow Vassilena Parashkevova’s (2012) ruminations on the portrayals of the urban in Salman Rushdie novels.
In “Architectural Exclusion: Discrimination and Segregation Through Physical Design of the Built Environment” (April 2015), Sarah Schindler reminds us that bridges were designed to reinforce segregation, often times built so low that buses could not pass under them in order to prevent people of color from accessing a public beach. Graffiti Bridge, while a box office bomb, lends insight into a gritty urban environment, portraying an “internecine struggle within the Minnesota musical mafia—Prince (and Paisley Park sidekicks Tevin Campbell, George Clinton, and Mavis Staples) vs. Morris Day and the Time,” according to one Washington Post review.
Though both of Prince’s parents were African-American, many think Prince was multiracial, either because he misleads the media or in the case of the semi-biographical Purple Rain, The Kid’s parents in the movie are white (mother) and black (father).
Born on October 16, 1854 in Dublin, author, playwright, and poet Oscar Wilde was a popular literary figure in late Victorian England, known for his brilliant wit, flamboyant style, and infamous imprisonment for homosexuality.
Prince wrote “Nothing Compares 2 U” originally for girlfriend Susannah Melvoin and the group The Family, released on their album The Family in 1985 (Morton 2007). Sinead O’Connor covered the song in 1990, which led to a contentious relationship with Prince as O’Connor’s producer ignored much of Prince’s original arrangement and emphasized O’Connor’s piercing vocal (Ro 2011).
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Bautista, A.A. A Flâneur in the Erotic City: Prince and the Urban Imaginary. J Afr Am St 21, 353–372 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12111-017-9364-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12111-017-9364-6