Gosh, I hope a lot of you never say something offensive in private.

Prince did not released this song. Nor did he release Extralovable (1982), Lust U Always or U.

if there's one thing this forum does best it's discussing social issues with the nuance and care they deserve

I can't believe that saying that someone is likely bisexual generates so much angst.

I've thought he was for 30+ years but pardon me.

It was a bad ryme in bad taste on a song he never released.

Agree with someone else about the context of this song, given that it's between a man and a woman--and I'm assuming Stanley is referring to Blanche here. Not a homosexual in sight. Prince must have been using the word in place of something else...of which, sadly, we'll never know.

LoveGalore said:

Margot said:

Bowie was bisexual.

Sure, if you haven't updated your news archive since 1976. Bowie recanted the gay and bisexual claims decades ago.

Off topic comment deleted - l'ange bleu - moderator

Please focus on the thread topic and discuss the above on a separate thread, should you so wish.

^ The eighties sure were a strange time, Bowie recanting his bisexuality, Elton John marrying a woman

jaawwnn said:

Cerebus said:

TheBigBang said:

I'll never understand this current need to go back in time and pick apart songs that were written over three decades ago using today's social morays. Also, understand that in "a song about a girl named Blanche and a dude named Stanley," that Prince isn't actually talking as Prince.

I do get it but I don't think it should be a tool to question the moral compass of artists of that age but rather another sign how our moral and social framework of what we find acceptable has shifted over the last 40 years.

There is plenty of popular culture from the past (especially adverts) that would not pass the current sanity test of what is acceptable.

Having said that, my stance is that you can find such things unbelievable and bad by current standards but I find it difficult, and not always right , to bannish that material. Just make sure that when showing this stuff now that you frame it in it's context of that time.

You see people on the net throwing "educate yourself" on a variety of topics and ignoring the fact people in 40 years time will also whoop their ass for stuff that passes as OK today. No matter how woke you think you are.

There is no endpoint just an ever evolving set of framework of standards.

In that sense his latter utteringson homosexuality are far worse.

Another point to make

The vault was his sketchbook, his raw playground and will contain tons of unfinished songs with unpolished lyrics, raw ideas that might never have made it to a final project in that state. Artists should be allowed their own playgroun to be creative that isn't anybody's business. Maybe another reason why it was locked in a vault.

Margot said:

andrewm7 said:

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

Cerebus said:

Y'all smh I swear

It's 2021. The world was a different place ten years ago, twenty years ago, FORTY years ago. Lawd. You can go back and pick apart the lyrics of literally thousands of songs from artists who got more woke as time went on and societal views changed.

I was only 16 but I guess that's no excuse

My sister was 32 lovely and loose

You're down with incest? You are aware that didn't happen, right? Prince told stories, he created characters. Aristic license people. It's a thing. Prince wrote about an abundance of topics and used a plethora of words that he would never go back to after his conversion. For that matter he changed the way he wrote lyrics numerous times in his career, even if he was largely writing about the same topics. We're talking about the man that is the main cause for the Parental Advisoy stickers being splapped on albums, who then decided he was never going to curse again. Ya know?

Also, consider the number of times Prince was called fag, or gay, or accused or being such. Whether he was or not, as was rightly pointed out in this thread, is not the point and it's never anything I cared about. But Prince absolutely took his real life experiences and twisted them into something unrecognizeable as being about himself.

In short, don't read too much into every damn lyric from his catalog. Some of them are just a *cough* sign of the times.

youre acting like 1987 was the 1920s. this was in the decade of AIDS. you think someone like prince wouldnt have been aware that fag might not have been a cool term to throw around. then again, this is a guy who didnt want to sing MJ's bad as a duet because it had the line 'your butt is mine'.

i dont think saying fag is really baiting censors how head or darling nikki were. those were challenging the status quo. saying fag is more or less going along with the status quo. that doesnt really make prince some brave artist pushing the boundaries. it just places him in the same group as any number of bigots.

its funny how when its a line that might be seen as questionable, ppl resort to the defence that 'its just a character/story' but when its something like IIWYG or breakdown or june or sacrifice of victor, people start to go to town on how true to life it is. funny, that.

Precisely. It was worse BECAUSE it was the 1980s when so much hate was fueled at the gay community. I get the argument that it wasn't released and his lyrics tended to be freaky, but the 80s were such an incredibly vulnerable time for gays and the fact that my musical hero chose to use that word at that time is disappointing. This is not cancel culture, as I remain a Prince fan. It is really dismissive of anyone who has a reaction to the lyric to assume that this is where they are coming from. Similarly, it would be equally dismissive to assume the everyone who posted here who didn't have a negative reaction to the lyric as being homophobic. Constructive dialogue these days is becoming extinct in Western culture.

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

so i love the song blanche.

but this line does dissapoint me

ultimately it proves that prince didnt ever really take his interest in challenging gender constructs that seriously

it was probably really just a superficial thing - e.g wearing frilly costumes, womens clothes, high heels ('women dig em'), something everyone was doing at the time, so he was just going along with the trend in the late 70s/80s

which is actually totally fine, not everyone has to be a warrior on all issues, and hey, most people are contradictory, so i can accept that not everyone is going to be 100% consistent

but this line in blanche (in 87, not his JW period), and later stories of him and larry lecturing bobby z on why homosexuality is wrong show that prince didnt care much about offending his gay fans (idk if madonna for example, or dolly parton would cut a song with a line about fags in it), of which there is probably quite a big number, similiar i am guessing to all those people who saw bowie in the 70s and felt like there was a (sort of) gay presence they could see in popular music at last

ofc prince is allowed to mock gays if he likes

but i guess this line shows that for all the people who like to hold him up as some sort of fighter for marginalised groups is pretty questionable

prince was a freak, he flew a freak flag for others too, but didnt mean that that came without prejudices

[Edited 2/4/21 12:05pm]

This take cleverly and purposefully omits that Prince was called a "f*g" in REAL LIFE on a regular basis from the time he was a teenager through the rest of his life. There is a reason why this is left out of the stream of consciousness.

In art, if a writer wrote a story or a screenplay about the 1950's should the writer omit the facts of segregation or racism or the word "nig***"? If the writer added that word, would that make the writer racist?

Prince in the context Stanley, writes a song called "Blanche" in that song he's using his ability to tell a story through song and was true to the character of Stanley who would call a man he though was a coward a "f*g."

Regardless of Prince's religious coversion and beliefs. He worked with and championed LBGTQ artists until he passed away. Any attempt to reduce Prince to a single lyric in character, in a single song, is sick. Please. please, please don't ever do this again.

yes, thanks for reminding me that it is in character.

so deep did prince get into this stanley guys head that i could never have even guessed that this was in fact a prince song! prince never wrote lyrics like those on blanche in his life

you guys claiming its all just in character, well, newsflash, characters and stories reveal something of their authors too.

such a deep character study, im sure brando would have struggled to inhabit prince's version of stanley. shame prince spent so long on the graffiti bridge script when he could have instead written his own version of streetcar named desire.

Blanche, throw away your pride
Blanche, you know you ain't been driven until you try my ride
Blanche, don't you want to try?
Baby, I can keep you satisfied, uh
My name is Stanley
Oh, yeah
My name is Stanley
Desire
Blanche, you got me on fire!
Ow!

Ah-ah-ah!
Huh!
Yeah!

Ah-ah-ah!
Ah-ah-ah!
Fuck it, Blanche
Ok

[Edited 2/6/21 7:36am]

[Edited 2/6/21 7:37am]

Off topic comment deleted - l'ange bleu - moderator

Off topic comment deleted - l'ange bleu - moderator

Off topic comment deleted - l'ange bleu - moderator

Off topic comment deleted - l'ange bleu - moderator