Paisley Park is in your heart, or perhaps in France? Prince’s second feature film, Under the Cherry Moon, takes place in the south of France—but the geographic situating of the film reaches far beyond a homegrown Minnesotan’s dream of palm trees, sunshine, and balmy Mediterranean weather. The cinematic aesthetics and themes of the film reveal a more acute transcription of a Paisley Park utopia defined by freedom of oppression based on class, race, and gender. The film’s visuals echo jazz age entertainment reminiscent of performances by the Nicholas Brothers, the Berry Brothers, and Josephine Baker from the 1920s through the 1940s. The French locale adds yet another layer to the equation: during the interwar years, Paris became a haven for Black entertainers, artists, and intellectuals who discovered an almost utopian experience in comparison to the violent racism in the U.S. I examine class, race, and gender in Under the Cherry Moon through comparative analysis of Black writers and entertainers during the Harlem Renaissance and the French fetishization of Black American expatriates. In addition, this talk centers on a comparative analysis of Josephine Baker as precedent to Prince’s legacy. Overall, this study will critically analyze the philosophical and sociocultural underpinnings of Prince’s under-appreciated Under the Cherry Moon and, in turn, further examine cinema as a medium to communicate social engagement.

Karen Turman is a Preceptor of French in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard University. She earned her B.A. (2001) at the University of Minnesota, and her M.A. (2008) and Ph.D. (2013) in French Literature with an emphasis in Applied Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her interdisciplinary research interests include 19th-century Bohemian Paris, music, and dance during the Jazz Age, fashion and popular culture studies, community engagement scholarship, indigenous artists and activists in the Francophone Pacific, and topics of social justice and sustainability in the language classroom. Dr. Turman’s publications on Prince include an essay on Josephine Baker, Claude McKay, and Prince entitled “Banana Skirts and Cherry Moons: Utopic French Myths in Prince’s Under the Cherry Moon,” and “Prettyman in the Mirror: Dandyism in Prince’s Minneapolis.” She is currently working on a monograph on Prince and fashion.