"Baby I'm a Star": Prince, Purple Rain, and the Audiovisual Remaking of the Black Rock Star

Abstract:This essay explores the 1984 film Purple Rain's role in the refashioning of Warner Bros. recording artist Prince from an R&B prodigy into a movie star and a rock star simultaneously, both through specific audiovisual techniques deployed by the filmmakers as well as more subtle, ideological work. I argue that Purple Rain exploited three concepts central to rock music's self-understanding—locality, liveness, and authenticity—to establish Prince as a "real" rock star, a designation which certain aspects of his music and image, most notably his race, had previously rendered unavailable to him. In so doing, I also argue that Purple Rain marks an underacknowledged landmark in the historical trajectory of Black movie stardom more broadly, as the first time in a narrative rock film that an African American performer held a lead role that had historically been reserved for white artists. In its exceptional intertwining of music industry and film industry through the sort of star vehicle made famous by the early films of Elvis and the Beatles, Purple Rain was a cultural watershed that managed to be simultaneously old-fashioned and groundbreaking, transforming Prince into the first enormously visible Black "rock" icon since Jimi Hendrix.