Prince's Halftime Imagery Questioned

Green Stuff From Associated Press article dated February 06, 2007 11:16 PM EST

First, this: "In the sensitive post-wardrobe malfunction world, some are questioning whether a guitar was just a guitar during Prince's Super Bowl halftime show." Well, I have to wonder myself. It was amazingly suggestive, and we were all, "Oh My God" but not in a bad way, mind you. It was more like, "leave it to Prince to mock everyone without being blatant about it, and at the same time giving an amazing half-time show."

As the AP reports, "Prince's acclaimed performance included a guitar solo during the "Purple Rain" segment of his medley in which his shadow was projected onto a large, flowing beige sheet. As the 48-year-old rock star let rip, the silhouette cast by his figure and his guitar (shaped like the singer's symbol) had phallic connotations for some." Proving, beyond any doubt, some people are in desperate need of a life. Yeah, it looked like he was strumming his instrument, but so what?

Daily News television critic David Bianculli called it "a rude-looking shadow show" that "looked embarrassingly rude, crude and unfortunately placed." Mr. Bianculli is a prude who needs to get stuffed. Some people have small minds. Who cares what it was? The show was good, not even remotely obscene. We should be so lucky if they're all like that.

CBS said Tuesday that the network has received "very few" complaints on Prince's performance. The NFL that produced the halftime show and league spokesman Greg Aiello said the league has received no complaints.At least someone has common sense. "We respect other opinions, but it takes quite a leap of the imagination to make a controversy of his performance," Aiello said."It's a guitar."

But, was Prince's pose phallic? "The short answer is, of course it is," says Rolling Stone magazine contributing editor Gavin Edwards, who points out that on Prince's "Purple Rain" tour in the mid `80s, he performed with a guitar that would ejaculate, squirting water out of its end during the climax of "Let's Go Crazy." But Prince's half-time performance, though celebrated, came in a much different cultural environment, where even the fleeting outline of a man and his guitar could, for some, suggest shaded depravity. "If people want to be hypersensitive, they can be hypersensitive," says Edwards.

This is much ado about nothing.