Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Prince as Queer Poststructuralist

1994; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 18; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/03007769408591556

1740-1712

Robert Walser,

Cinema and Media Studies

This chapter argues that these (flows, melting, delirium, machines) bodies of work deal with comparable concerns, however vastly different their institutional, biographical, and discursive locations. It points out that Prince's only successful movie, Purple Rain, was clearly a story about one kind of de-Oedipalization, the struggle over the social reproduction of patriarchy. In songs like Strange Relationship, Prince reflects on the contradictions built into dominant narratives about gender and erotic relationships. Prince uses an androgynous falsetto, trembling with desire and vulnerability. Tom Jones recasts the song in the manly voice of the aging hipster, centered and posturing, just like his dancing. Tom Jones changes a few words for his version: where Prince had warned that women, not girls, rule his world, Jones says women and girls, transforming Prince's preference for maturity into a boast of indiscriminate lust. Prince recordings of desire thus fall within the boundaries of queer performance.