The Color Purple

Dearly beloved, was it really a quarter-century ago that a long-haired androgyne genius invited “u” to take him higher? For anyone in 1984 between the ages of jailbait and 35, Purple Rain—not just the movie, but the like-titled album and concert tour—was a groove that rocked mighty hard. In these parts, we were proud of our little Prince, whose Citizen Kane of Minnesota movies, released in the middle of summer, immediately seemed something more than fiction. Yes, Prince was nominally playing The Kid, but this was still the story of Prince—a colossally talented, control-freakin’ producer-arranger-composer-performer (as he immodestly billed himself on astounding LPs such as 1999, released in 1982). En route to superstardom, this multihyphenate loner deigned to show the world that he wished to include others in his Revolution—not just other musicians, but all of us.

Rock-film history regards Purple Rain as the movie that bridges the considerable gap between Elvis’s Jailhouse Rock and Eminem’s 8 Mile. All three are lurid tales of narcissistic, misogynistic musicians who reluctantly learn to love. In terms of style, Prince’s primer for mainstream America (along with Flashdance and Footloose just before it) is significant for having imported MTV editing to cinema. Indeed, Purple Rain director Albert Magnoli simply dragged his plot-summarizing video for the fastest-selling single in a decade, “When Doves Cry,” into the middle of the movie—or maybe it was the other way around. Either way, it signaled the arrival of something fresh and new, even if Prince’s squealing guitar solo at the orgasmic climax of “Let’s Go Crazy” did sound distinctly Hendrixian.

Since Purple Rain, of course, Prince has become an indelible part of the cultural landscape. Unlike most artists of the 1980s, he has continued to evolve and adapt, and may now be enjoying a creative renaissance—or at least a commercial rebirth—as one of rock and roll’s senior statesmen. This outcome didn’t seem likely 25 years ago, but it hardly mattered, because somewhere between 1999 and 1984, Warner Bros. decided to throw $7 million at the task of turning Prince into The King of his pop moment.

How tough could it be? The model was clear. Back in 1957, anyone still fearful of Elvis and his pelvis took comfort in Jailhouse Rock, the plot of which had the rocker climactically crooning a purty ballad—“Young and Beautiful,” the “Purple Rain” of the Eisenhower era. If Warner Bros. had a slightly bigger challenge in making its sex machine safe for conservative times, it’s partly because Prince needed to be established in whitebread America not only as sweet, but straight.

As Vanity Fair put it at the time: “Prince has created a complicated sexual theater in the heart of Mondale country.” Dearly beloved! When Purple Rain began pouring on the box office, Prince and Minneapolis became, at least in the world’s imagination, the Caligula and ancient Rome of a brave new pop world. In Mary Tyler Mooreville? While the local press dutifully tooted its horn for the purple reign—the Minneapolis Star and Tribune ran no fewer than 43 articles in the last half of ’84—there was, as Prince would say, con-tro-ver-sy. After Rudy Perpich announced that the week of Prince’s five-show stand at the Civic Center would be known as “Prince Days,” the governor, having maybe forgotten that it was also Christmastime, received a hundred calls a day in protest of his sacrilege. At the state capitol, Christian picketers—including six teenagers(!)—waved high their signs, one of which read, “Prince of Peace, not Prince of Porn.” If that ain’t evidence of Prince’s (un)holy accomplishment, I don’t know what is.

Speaking of me: On Friday, July 27, 1984, I was one of the kids in the balcony of the Skyway Theater—a mere stone’s throw away from First Ave., the nightclub made famous in the movie—for the very first show of Purple Rain on opening day. It drove me crazy—nuts, even—that my best friend had already seen the film a full two days earlier; for this, he hid in a Skyway toilet stall for several hours until it was safe for him, sans invite, to join WLOL radio’s promo screening party. We’d heard about the sex scene, of course. I wouldn’t exactly say The Kid taught us teens heavy petting—and thank god we didn’t take our courtship skills from this Apollonia-slapper—but it did get pretty hot up there in the cheap seats.

The movie was arousing in other ways, too. Besides putting First Ave., the “waters of Lake Minnetonka,” and 30 other Twin Cities locations on the international map, Purple Rain reinforced the rest of early-’80s American culture by asserting that if, say, a welder by day/flashdancer by night could make it big, then so could “u.” In the meantime, there was stuff to buy: the album, a poster, concert tickets, 12-inch remixes, sheet music, T-shirts, et cetera. I even found and bought the movie’s original press kit, which I still cherish for its hilariously interchangeable use of “Prince” and “The Kid.” (Is it Prince or The Kid who “escapes from his despondency by turning the basement of his parents’ home into a protective environment which he can control”?) Though the artist formerly known to write “SLAVE” on his cheek might disagree, Purple Rain and Warner Bros. made Prince rich. The movie’s job was precisely to prove that The Kid—who would die “4 u,” after all—deserved to be a star.

This Purple Rain did by softening him up, showing that he could not only make it with women (and, uh, learn to stop slapping them around), but respect them enough to play their musical compositions. The thing is, on this count the movie is a playful cheat. Behind the scenes, Prince and the Revolution was, for the most part, Prince. “Purple Rain,” written by “Wendy and Lisa” in the film, is credited solely to the bandleader on the record. Prince referred to the movie (originally titled Dreams) as an “emotional autobiography,” and it remains fascinating as such—an image not real, but imagined so strongly that in many ways it became so. As his song “The Beautiful Ones” puts it: “Paint a perfect picture/Bring 2 life a vision in one’s mind.” Critics of the time went crazy for Prince’s vision. The Los Angeles Herald Examiner called Purple Rain the “best rock film ever made.” At Rolling Stone, Kurt Loder wrote, “Not since the Beatles burst off the screen in A Hard Day’s Night has the sense of a new generation’s arrival on the pop scene been so vividly and excitingly conveyed.” Even The Village Voice raved.

Alas, in the Strib, reviewer Jon Bream complained that the “acting is erratic, the violence and sexism are excessive, tasteless and gratuitous, and it takes too long for the viewers to become emotionally involved with the many players and plots.” Yadda yadda. With all due respect to Morris Day and The Time, Wendy and Lisa, Albert Magnoli, Apollonia, and Jon Bream, there’s really only one story in Purple Rain: Prince rules.

Rob Nelson is a member of the National Society of Film Critics. He writes regularly for Variety, Film Comment, and Cinema Scope, and teaches film studies at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.