Ladies and Gentlemen, the Revolution!

And so, with a mere introduction from Purple Rain, the revolution of product licensing began.

Okay, so maybe it didn’t begin with Purple Rain as it was probably a pretty common business procedure by the time of the film’s release, but the film definitely epitomized the full potential of synergetic partnerships that so many other pairings of film and album have since sought --and usually failed -- to replicate. As R. Serge Denisoff and George Plasketes detail in their article, “Synergy in 1980s Films and Music,” synergy is more a myth too stubborn to die than a formula for success with its seemingly lottery-like qualities. They assert that “the multitude of failures had been overshadowed by synergy successes in the corporate consciousness such as Top Gun and Dirty Dancing” and a number of other films that they support with an exhaustive list of synergies that succeeded and of others that crumbled.

Even thirty years after Purple Rain, licensed products are still as common when big films are released. Soundtracks and video games and companion-novels and t-shirts and toys and too many other products to list are things that we know all too well in a world of consumerism, predicated by successful spin-offs like Purple Rain (which is essentially a spin-off as it came out a month or more afterwards and the album was undoubtedly the partnership’s greater agenda). Then again, perhaps Purple Rain isn’t the best example to compare to today’s brand licensing, as the dominance of music in this process is something that is intrinsic to the “eighties.” Soundtracks today seem like more of an afterthought. With the exception of an occasional Bond flick, we hardly have any movies with catchy themes songs any longer (what’s up with that anyway?). But I’m getting off track.

I guess what I’m trying to say here, or at least tangentially work my way toward (there, I did it again), is that there is a collaborative objective to Purple Rain (film/album) other than its synergetic business goal. Denisoff and Plasketes make it clear that there is no knowing if a partnership is going to be successful, and they imply that synergy is a foolish practice if you can’t afford to bank your resources on a risky venture. So what makes a film like Purple Rain actually succeed? I have no idea. Smarter business-minds than I, have tried and failed to figure it out. But I think it has something to do with a unanimous effort between the two mediums towards a purpose that is not money-related. The film and the music must appease two very different audiences, or at least extrapolate the preferences of one audience on to their less favorable medium. By this I mean that Purple Rain captures the sensations experienced at a live concert, perhaps euphoria, and transcribes it onto a feature film so that both products make a unified, aesthetically hedonistic experience.

I probably just defined music videos, so let me point out that Purple Rain seems unique in that it anthropomorphizes emotion. Prince, and his many sexualized scenes and movements, do not merely appear erotic, they seem to be eroticism incarnate. Similarly, the atmosphere of the film is very sensory. It is sticky and intangible and incomprehensible. These are sensations that are stirred and experienced in real concerts, and so the concert scenes are prolonged so that they feel familiar. The other parts of this film, the “plot” scenes, are quite melodramatic as they are representations of emotion in its purest element too. We get humor and frustration and eroticism and sadness, and they are experienced, not discerned. These scenes could just as easily have had their sound and words revoked while Prince’s music played over their visualization (like a music video), and we still would have anticipated the same emotions. That’s why Prince’s irrational switches from sexual tenderness to misogyny is present in the film: not because he’s here to promote or condemn his actions but because emotions are murky experiences with no clear explanation.

Because this representation of emotion seems like an intended goal of the film, I tend to disagree with Purple Rain exemplifying postmodernity because I think that it blends other elements of traditional intent. It is obviously postmodern in some manners as the observation that I made in the last paragraph was aesthetically focused, and as we discussed at length with Blade Runner, that is a famous quality of postmodernity. Additionally, it’s historical background is postmodern in many ways. The film can hardly be scrutinized formally as it partnered with an album to tell it story, and it does portray a character that blurs The Kid and Prince, and viewers are never not aware of these connection. The fact that two different mediums are working together to tell one story -- the fact that they’re “synergizing” -- is, in and of itself, conceptually postmodern.

But I don’t think the movie is as deliberately artificial as some make it out to be; and I don’t find it to be contrarian with passionate and emotional, technically-sound music (attributes that are applied to non-postmodern music). Purple Rain also has the sincerity that videos like “Video Killed the Radio Star” lack. As for its technicality, just look at the scene in which Prince finds his father’s music -- technical, quantifiable music -- and melds it into his own work. If the movie had been interested in showing that all produced music was just spontaneous sparks of inspiration it would have just ended the matter with the line from The Kid’s father when his son asks him where his piano piece had originated from (something like “It’s all up here” as he points to his head or heart). But that isn’t the case. Sheets of music spill from a knocked shelf when The Kid wrecks the basement in a frustrated flurry and that is narrative assertion that seems relatively traditional.

Okay, so my argument still sounds like its detailing postmodernity and I’m just contradicting myself because my description of the movie’s postmodern elements outweigh the ones that I countered with. Perhaps the frequent Devil’s Advocate in me is just trying to be adversarial because, let’s face it, this movie is too aesthetically focused to be anything but postmodern. I suppose what I’m trying to say, then, is that this movie/album is a different form of postmodernity than we have discussed. And really, its rather crude of me to confine postmodernity to one definition anyway; the condition prides itself on not being clear-cut in the first place. Purple Rain just doesn’t have the ostensible aimlessness or the irony that many other postmodern pieces that I’ve examined have had. The construction and presentation of the film are postmodern, but its purposefulness seems rather traditional.

While the film and the album surely teamed up and synergized for financial gain -- and because brand licensing leads to cool, androgynous Prince action figures -- I think that it is the extra degree of intended passion and sensory objective that unified the two mediums to make this project so much more successful than others.