Two nights ago, my wife and I had just finished watching Bret Michael's VH-1 reality show, Rock of Love Bus, and my daughter came in the room wanting ol' Foot Foot to rock her. I began manually* changing the channel to the Baby Show network (I'm not sure if that's the actual name of the network, but it's close, and that's what we call it anyway), and I came across the very beginning of Purple Rain on VH-1 Classic (I'm not sure if that's the actual name of the network, but...you get the picture). Wow, instant flashback to 1985, the year after Prince's movie debut was released in theaters.
I--like Ricky Schroeder in Silver Spoons--was never allowed to see Purple Rain on the big screen,** but when the movie was released to HBO, I thought that my parents would let me stay up late and see it because I was now a year older and more mature (or so I thought). They didn't want me to be exposed to so much sex and nudity, and I informed them that my friends told me that wasn't any graphic sexual stuff and only brief topless nudity. They looked at each other, and...I don't remember if they actually said, "No," but I do remember being disappointed. A few months later, it was on again during primetime, and I bugged them again, and maybe some of the PMRC Prince outrage had died down, and they acquiesced. So I turned it to HBO, and the movie had already started, and Prince was riding his motorcycle down through the weeds and reeds to a pond, and there stood Apollonia, wearing something close to nothing***, and my parents freaked, and they changed the channel, and to this day, I've still never seen the entire film.
What's the big deal, people? What's wrong with nudity? We all see it everyday, multiple times...I mean, just look down and...see what I mean? It's natural. It's our bodies. A naked body shouldn't be considered disgusting or repulsive (though, if you're talking about mine, then my wife might disagree with you), because, man, it's who we are. Why should a woman's breast--other than purely aesthetic reasons--be considered more erotic and alluring and evocative than, say, her hand or her arm? It shouldn't, should it? A woman's breast serves no sexual function, not really. Its only useful utilitarian function comes after sex. If this is the case, why are naked breasts**** considered pornography? And why is pornography such a bad thing?*****What's wrong with watching naked women on television? What's wrong with watching some filmmaker lavish visual praise on the female form****** in all its glory? Nothing, I say. In his scintillating single, "Turn My TV On," neo-soul singer Van Hunt says the same thing.
Hunt had been writing, producing, and playing various instruments for various performers for about seven years before his debut landed in 2004. From that debut album, he scored a minor hit with "Dust," (which--if he's known at all--is what he's best known for), a slinky little Prince/Curtis Mayfield number (which, other than its superb production, is pretty nondescript). Two years later, he released another album, and it didn't move any hits, major or minor, though the quality was roughly the same.
The next year, in '07, Hunt switched labels from Capitol to Blue Note, released the digital-only EP The Popular Machine (from which hails the single "Turn My TV On"), and then lost whatever progress he'd made on his forthcoming LP when he and the label had a falling out. He tried to buy his recordings back from them, but their price was higher than he could afford, and he's...yet to release any new work.
Part of the reason for Van Hunt's lack of production comes from time spent in legal dealings with Blue Note/EMI, and part of the reason probably comes from angst/depression over the lost hours on this hassle, but maybe part of the reason lies in the fact that Hunt is not only an artist, but a lover of art as well, an appreciator, a critic. He surely spends his time assessing the work of some of the most beautiful art the world has ever created. What art, praytell? Why, porn, thank you.
How do I know this? The man tells me so. That's what this song's about...really! It's about a man sitting on his couch on watching pornography. That's it. Nothing else to it. Sounds dirty, does it? Disgusting? Not to me, bucko. Not with that music Hunt cooks up for it, the opening bass and guitar riffs worthy of the best of Bernard Edwards's and Nile Rodgers's (both formerly of the disco/funk band Chic). Then, Hunt lays on the squiggly, space-y keyboards, and what we've got is the best funky Prince track of the past fifteen-or-so years. Hunt continues with his Prince-like vocal mannerisms, the oohs and ahhs and breathiness, and they work, and they work well, and even if the work here is derivative, it's derivative of some of the best dance/funk/rock work ever recorded. Hunt's production is so pristine--so fresh and so clean, clean--that the record doesn't come across as homage or pastiche; it comes across as exciting, as a continuation of Prince's ideas--musical and lyrical--before his funky highness fully abdicated his throne fifteen years ago.
The music here doesn't just call to mind Prince, it also--and I believe deliberately so--mirrors the terrible funk soundtracks of so many seventies porno films...only it's better. This is boom-chicka-wow-wow music given form (it's already got its function), given a new do, a new pad, a new wardrobe, and a new outlet. Remember, this was a digital-only release, so if this record is porn music for the new century, then the porn for the new century can be found digitally as well. 'Cept for one thing: internet porn just doesn't have the same quality as porn films of the seventies.******* Why?
Seventies porno films--even the worst, cheapest ones--look better than iPorn because the seventies' pornos were shot on film, and iPorn is shot digitally. That difference is significant, because digital motion pictures--even those shot by first-rate directors--look too real. There's no sheen, no veil, no haze, no filter to elevate that which we see to something greater than what are normal eyes behold, and that's what film (I don't mean film here as movies; I mean film as in the actual material that records images) does that pixels don't. Film can provide a more heightened means of escape, as it provides for a distanced viewpoint; digital pictures can seem too real, and when dealing with pornography, believe it or not, most people (who watch pornography) don't want real--they want, as Billy Idol sang, flesh for fantasy. Van Hunt knows this. He sings, "Everyone loves a stranger/Nobody wants the danger," proffering the following hypothesis********: pornography as safe sex. It don't hurt no one that way.
NOTES*********
*Our remote control recently ceased operating. In a fit of nostalgia for the good old days of always having to rise from a place of rest to change the channel or adjust the volume, my wife has insisted that we live without a remote control.
**Further discussion of my parents' problems with Prince can be found here.
***Actually, removing the words something close to from that sentence would be more appropriate, for Apollonia was topless in that scene.
****Not counting women from either Africa or the Nazi concentration camps, I do understand that breasts are secondary sexual characteristics, and that the onset of breasts indicate that a woman is ready to bear children, thus stimulating the manly urge to procreate...but still....
*****Okay, I know the numerous ways that pornography can be a terrible, demeaning, criminal, criminalizing, and misogyny/violence-creating practice, but not all pornography is heinous.
******I also admit that if that female form happened to belong to my wife or daughter, I'd turn into a fundamentalist Christian in a second. Don't trust me for a second, folks.
*******Or so I've been told.
********I'm aware that this song's message is satirical; however, the music's too good to be satire, and that resultant quality changes the meaning and message, as--with this music backing him--no longer is Van Hunt laughing at those whose only new social and sexual experiences come through the television and the computer, he's a complicit participant.
*********I've currently reading the new Annotated Dracula by the noted and award-winning (deservedly so, for his work in this book is exhaustive) Leslie S. Klinger, and his annotations are (at least) equal in length to the text, so I think Klinger's work has definitely begun to influence my own (thus the lengthy notes).
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