"On Prince"

Below is the introduction and the first paragraph of an essay written for a class called 'Celebrity Cultures', the title is included below. I chose to write it about the one and only Prince, purely because I was listening to a lot of his music in the weeks proceeding this task...well that and the fact that he perfectly embodies a challenge to the heteronormative view of masculinity.

How does gender shape our relationship to celebrity? How does celebrity shape our own relationship to gender?

Andrea Cornwall noticed that when it comes to gender studies there is a focus on the female experience.[1] While there is legitimate cause for this, Rhiannon Graybill reminds us that using the word gender as synonymous for “female representation and experience” allows masculinity to slip past unproblematised.[2] For this reason the following essay will focus on the latter half of the title question in reference to masculinity in heterosexual relationships. According to Brenda Boudreau men have been in “crisis” since the mid 1980s as they are no longer provided with a straightforward answer to the question of what it means to be a man.[3] Instead men are taught that masculinity is something “to drape over the body” rather than something internal.[4] There are multiple different types of masculinity and it is not “simple state of being”, instead it is something that is created in relation to a specific moment that is capable of change.[5] One type is hegemonic masculinity, which is the practice that supports the idea that men are dominant and justifies the subordination of all those who are ‘other’.[6] The hierarchy of masculinity means it will also discriminate against other marginalized ways of being male, for reasons such as race or sexual orientation.[7] Michael Kimmel suggests that type of masculinity, due to it being based on a rejection of the feminine as opposed to a reaffirmation of the masculine, is very fragile.[8] This “crisis” of masculinity coincided with a movement throughout the 70s and 80s in which the concepts of gender and sex were separated.[9] Previous to this movement, gender and sex were presumed to be confined within the same binary system, which implied that gender mirrored sex and was therefore restricted by it. This however is not the case instead gender can be viewed as a “free floating artifice”.[10] This prompted Judith Butler to pose the question, if gender is a societal construction, can it be deconstructed?[11] In order to investigate the ways in which masculinity is deconstructed, this essay will focus on the iconic musician, Prince. To narrow this conversation, the case study of his song ‘If I Was Your Girlfriend’ from the 1987 album Sign “O” The Times will be used as a loose framework. This song is perhaps an obvious choice in order to display the ways in which Prince subverted ideals of masculinity, the opening line being “If I was your girlfriend…”.[12] But since Prince was anything but subtle, the album ‘Controversy’ is testament enough, this love story is a perfect illustration of his thoughts on conventional masculinity. It is worth mentioning Prince is credited with writing, performing, and producing this album.

In order to begin this discussion it is fitting to start with the physical make up of this song. The music is classic early Prince with a smooth, jazzy, and sensual backing track. Not only does this foreshadow the subject matter but it also provides a simple accompaniment for the lyrics bringing his words to the forefront. With regards to his voice Prince is singing within his trademark falsetto, which although sounding feminine, follows in the footsteps of male funk artists such as Marvin Gaye and Curtis Mayfield.[13] According to critic Michael Freedberg this technique, with specific reference to Prince and this song, is used to “demonstrate to his intended lover that he understands her fears and desires” as if he were female.[14] While his intent is to become trustworthy, visible in the line “Can't you just trust me?”, traditionally voices of a higher octave are regarded as untrustworthy due to their relation to the feminine. [15] In classical culture masculinity is defined by its relation to sound, with reference to the concept of “sophrosyne”. This describes the ‘masculine’ qualities of self-control and if a man were to, for example, abandon logos and express emotion, he would be labelled as feminine.[16] This concept also requires males to police females voices, as they supposedly do not possess the ability to moderate their own. Prince adheres to none of these guidelines. While his vocal range does span from E2 to B6, he is more well known for his falsetto in songs like ‘Kiss’ than his Baritone in songs like ‘Daddy Pop’.[17] Keller puts this down to a cultural shift whereby a male voice with “exceptional range” is now more attractive than the deeper voice, a more traditional symbol of manliness.[18] Prince also does not hold back his emotions and adhere to “sophrosyne”, he remarked in an 1983 interview that he found it a “drag” that most men struggle to show emotion.[19] On top of this he does not police his partner either, as the latter half of the song is filled with questions to ensure her comfort. There is a certain disregard for bringing what is on the inside into the public domain within this literature, which serves to dissociate a man from what is occurring inside of him. For this reason having a man like Prince, who openly displays his emotions in the public domain, creating art that reaches millions, is a positive step away from a restrictive, silencing masculinity.

Citations

[1] Andrea Cornwall, ‘Men, masculinity, and ‘gender in development’’, in Men and

Masculinity, ed. by Caroline Sweetman, 3rd edn. (Oxford: Oxfam, 2004), p. 8 [2] Rhiannon Graybill, Are We Not Men?: Unstable Masculinity in Hebrew Prophets, (Oxford:

Oxford UP, 2017), in Oxford Scholarship Online, [Accessed 10 December 2019] p. 11 [3] Brenda Boudreau, ‘Sexually Suspect; Masculine Anxiety in the Films of Newil Labute’, in

Elwood Watson, and Marc E Shaw, Performing American Masculinities, (Indiana; Indiana

UP, 2011), in ProQuest, [Accessed 10 December 2019], p. 37 [4] Susan Faludi, Ibid. [5] R.W Connell, in ‘Obama’s Masculinities: A Landscape of Essential Contradictions’, Marc.E.

Shaw and Elwood Watson, Performing American Masculinities, (Indiana; Indiana UP,

2011), in ProQuest, [Accessed 10 December 2019], p. 135 [6] Cornwall, p. 11 [7] Ibid.;R.W. Connell, and James W. Messerschmitt, ‘Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the

Concept’, Gender and Society, 19.6, (2005), pp. 829 – 859, in JSTOR, [Accessed 10

December 2019], p. 846 [8] Micheal Kimmel, in Brenda Boudreau, p. 39 [9] Cornwall, p. 8, 9 [10] Judith Butler, Gender Trouble, (New York: Routledge, 1990), p. 6 [11] Ibid. [12] Prince, If I Was Your Girlfriend (Minnesota: Paisley Park, 1987)

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4n0j2ZAqeVk> [Accessed 10 December 2019]

[13] Simon Reynolds, "How Prince’s Androgynous Genius Changed The Way We Think About

Music And Gender", Pitchfork.Com, 2016 <https://pitchfork.com/features/article/9882-

how-princes-androgynous-genius-changed-the-way-we-think-about-music-and-

gender/#>[Accessed 8 December 2019] [14] Ibid. [15] Anne Carson, ‘The Gender of Sound’, Glass, Irony, and God, 3rd Edition (New York: New

Directions, 1995), p. 119, 120 [16] Ibid., p. 127, 126 [17] _____, The Vocal Ranges of the Greatest Singers (2019)

<https://www.concerthotels.com/worlds-greatest-vocal-ranges> [Accessed 2 December

2019]. [18] Ibid. [19] Barbara Graustark, "Musician, September 1983 - Prince Interview Archive",

Sites.Google.Com, 2019, <https://sites.google.com/site/prninterviews/home/musician-

september-1983> [Accessed 8 December 2019]