Purple Rain

Purple Rain is a very interesting film to me. It's not good  in the traditional sense. There is nearly any real storyline to it, the characters are underdeveloped, and the acting is... eh, okay. But no one can deny that it was successful in what it was trying to do, and that was to promote Prince as an artist. When the song "When Doves Cry" started playing during the film I just remember thinking "what a classic!" I don't think there are too many people that I know of who haven't heard that song at least once or haven't at least heard of Prince and his image (another element they were trying to push in the film). Prince also won an Oscar for the score of the film. In the article, it also mentions how the film grossed over $100 million. Not too shabby for a film that was only made for $7.5 million.

I think that the fact that this film and others like it in the 80's (Dirty Dancing, Flashdance, Top Gun, etc) were so successful in pushing the music through a film is because people were looking for a visual component intertwined into the music they listened to, synergy as the article calls it. I mean, although there were "music clips" before this time, the 80s were when the trend of the music video really took off. In 1981, the television network MTV first broadcast and played "Video Killed the Radio Star" by The Buggles. Music fans in the 80s obviously wanted something new, something visual, not even something that necessarily made sense to them but just excited them. So, in that aspect Purple Rain is brilliant. It's one long music video showcasing Prince's talents, image, etc. with there being a sort of story tied into it to keep the audience watching.

This idea of a visual component juxtaposed with the musical element in the 80s is also extremely present in another artist from around this time and that's Michael Jackson. His 14 minute long video for "Thriller", amazing! Basically all early 80's MJ songs/videos are incredible and I think relating them to Purple Rain is interesting. The video that we watched in class "Billie Jean" and the film were pretty similar to me in a few ways. They both had this gritty/raw quality to them. The article refers to Purple Rain as a home movie and I kind of get that same feel from some of Michael Jackson's music videos (a good example is "Beat It"). I think that they also both show how including some sort of story element can keep an audience interested in their music, which is really what the music videos/film is trying to promote.

Moving on to a completely different note the similarities between the two of these artists also fuse into their image. Prince and Michael Jackson were both a little bit androgynous. There were both feminine and masculine elements to them. This is pretty interesting to also look back at some of the other characters in 80s films we've seen. For example, in Nightmare on Elm Street, Freddy Krueger really isn't androgynous but he doesn't have these incredibly masculine qualities that can be seen in some of the well known villains and action heroes today. Even in Rambo: First Blood the main character breaks down and shows a different side to himself. One that wouldn't be considered "masculine" in today's stereotypical society. This rise of interweaving both feminine and masculine qualities in characters in movies and the images of certain musical stars in the 80s is another compelling thing to me but I'm not sure where it's stemming from. There's this fear of AIDS, considered for awhile to be seen as the "gay disease" and the rise of the moral majority during this decade. Is it maybe a rebellion against that?