{"id":56,"date":"2018-11-14T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-11-14T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mus235-06\/?page_id=56"},"modified":"2018-12-13T11:46:19","modified_gmt":"2018-12-13T16:46:19","slug":"princes-parade","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/mus235-06\/princes-parade\/","title":{"rendered":"Appearance"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Still from Prince’s “Kiss” Music Video, Xahmusic.org<\/em><\/p>\n

Prince<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Influenced by artists such as Little Richard, Prince loved to toy with the concept of androgyny and sexual fluidity in music as well as in music videos, especially through his appearance. Topped with slicked back hair, makeup, and heels, Prince shatters stereotypes and norms of gender and sexuality in \u201cKiss.\u201d During this time in the 1980s, there were not Black men in the mainstream American music scene who were as blatantly androgynous as Prince. While many critics and fans adored him, he often times received many critiques from Black men. Author and music critic Nelson George, and other critics like him, interrogated the political value of Prince\u2019s overt androgyny, viewing it as \u201ca betrayal of the struggles that artists like [Miles] Davis and [James] Brown had gone through to claim traditional masculinity, a role that had for too long been denied black men in America\u201d (Woodworth 2013, 127). During the era of the Civil Rights movement, Black men struggled to maintain their worth and manhood in the face of issues such as encounters of police brutality. Black men felt as if they constantly had to fight for their manhood. Because of this, those who witnessed that era were not always eager to be accepting of artists, and men, like Prince. Specifically, with his appearance in videos such as \u201cKiss,\u201d he challenged the very values and norms that many Black men, and Black people overall, had fought for for so long.<\/p>\n