Fashion, Code-Switching & Politics of Access in Under the Cherry Moon by Robin Shumays | #IWonderU40

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Good morning everyone.

[00:00:02]Okay, I'm going to start my timer and I'm going to be reading from my phone.

[00:00:08]All right.

[00:00:09]Let's get started.

[00:00:11]Um Down to go forward. There we go. Um so first Don't make me cry with those awes.

[00:00:18]>> [laughter] >> Um on the edge. Um yeah, I lost my mom in November and um she we had a very interesting journey especially where Prince is concerned. She had a lot of really funny things to say about him and if there's time at the end, I'll tell you a little anecdote about seeing uh Under the Cherry Moon with her >> [gasps] >> when I was 15. Okay.

[00:00:40]>> [clears throat] >> So, welcome to Impeccable Peasants: Fashion, Aesthetic Code Switching, and the Politics of Access in Under the Cherry Moon.

[00:00:50]Thank you.

[00:00:51]>> [laughter] [gasps] >> Um in 1996, 10 years [laughter] after the release of Under the Cherry Moon, Pen Print Pen Prince penned the song entitled Style. The narrative of the track centers on what he believes style is and isn't. At the tail end of the tune, he sings, "Style is when all black men are free. Style is you and me."

[00:01:20]Fast forward to 2025 Super Fine Tailoring Black Style Gala and Exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which highlighted black dandyism. The exposition, curated by Monica L. Miller, celebrated the history of black fashion and the designers who created elegant, impeccably tailored clothing to challenge societal limitations and redefine dandyism.

[00:01:44]For black folks, fashion has never been simply about beauty. Fashion is aspirational and political. We connected deeply to our freedom, dignity, and access.

[00:01:56]In the article Why Some American black men are dressing in suits to survive by David Yee, David discusses the politics of dress for African Americans with Emmett Price, author of hip hop culture and a professor at Northeastern University. Emmett says, "Black Americans have been adhering to this notion of the politics of respectability throughout history. It's black men catering to external expectations to present themselves as respectable and more so human." He explains.

[00:02:28]"Once we convey that we are human, then there is an opportunity for a relationship not and not and not one that is based on who is dominant and who is subservient. This dynamic carried over into how we saw one another.

[00:02:41]Upward mobility created friction within black communities. Poorer blacks often felt abandoned by those who attained wealth and status, labeling them sellouts, while the black bourgeoisie in turn distanced themselves. At times viewing the poor as lazy or prone to criminality and developed the sense that they needed to differentiate themselves to signal that they were the good ones.

[00:03:05]To the most immediate and visible way to do that was through appearance. It is within this framework that we can peel back some of the layers that Andrew the Cherry Moon is trying to reveal.

[00:03:17]In the film, fashion is at the forefront. I argue that this positioning is intentional. The prominence of fashion grounds the viewer in the elite white spaces Christopher, Prince, and Tricky Jerome Benton are attempting to infiltrate, while also highlighting how aesthetic code-switching can grant access. Ultimately, however, that access is limited and Christopher and Tricky are never allowed to fully belong.

[00:03:44]The film opens with Christopher at the piano dressed as regally as any prince.

[00:03:51]His suit is made of a dazzling lurex while a matching bandana with beaded fringe frames his face. As he pauses to sip his drink, a gorgeous socialite enters the space.

[00:04:02]With an entrance to rival any 1930s starlet, Francesca Enis captivates as Mrs. Wellington.

[00:04:10]She is couture from head to toe. A white fascinator with a birdcage veil delicately conceals her face, creating an air of mystery. She wears a classically tailored white suit adorned with plumes on the jacket's right lapel, a long silk skirt with an up-to-there side slit, and classic white pumps. The musician and muse are flawless, speaking the same language of style and luxury.

[00:04:34]However, Christopher's style is showy, more than a bit over the top. He has something to prove. She, on the other hand, does not. Her elegance feels effortless because it is. It comes from the security of wealth, class, and belonging. Inheritance over acquisition, or simply put, old money versus new money.

[00:04:55]The lady in white.

[00:04:56]The com- Despite the common association with of white with purity, here it is used to suggest cool, an elegance that does not need to scream to be noticed.

[00:05:09]Mrs. Wellington is a recent divorcee with many zeros before the decimal point on her alimony checks.

[00:05:16]Later in the film, he I suppose laughed at that. That was funny.

[00:05:19]>> [laughter] >> Later in the film, we learn about her affair with Mary's father, Isaac Sharon, who so so her lifestyle is probably in part also financed by him. Their connection further reinforces her position within that social structure.

[00:05:35]Throughout the film, Mrs. Wellington is never seems to judge Christopher. She is at a point in her life where she has everything she needs to be comfortable, and Christopher is intriguing, entertaining, and looks like a good time. Their attraction is based on that dynamic.

[00:05:53]Mary, played by Kristin Scott Thomas, on the other hand, lives comfortably, but is bound by the controlled existence of being the daughter of a wealthy magnate.

[00:06:01]She announces her arrival by surprising her party dress her party guests draped in a plain bed sheet and her birthday suit. The setting was the French Riviera, so no one seemed terribly scandalized by the sight.

[00:06:15]Mary immediately views Christopher as an outsider, not just because he's a party crasher, as she calls him, and it seems entirely possible that he could have been Mrs. Wellington's date, but because of the way he is dressed. Christopher arrives wearing a jacket with a padded with padded shoulders. The front of the garment drapes exaggeratedly down to his knees in the front, while the back is cropped high to deliberately show off his derriere and waist chains.

[00:06:43]I mean, you know, I I I was okay with it. Um the fabric appears to be a black and white black and gray devoré or burnout with a curled vine pattern. His He's wearing pants and even shoes to match. Rarely have you seen this much high fashion in one film scene. However, in the scene, Christopher stands out as unique and so overstated in how he is dressed that he once again screams new money, and Mary sees it. It's clear he doesn't belong, even if he had come as Mrs. Wellington's date.

[00:07:17]Mrs. Wellington is once again flawless in a floor-length black gown and white fur. Simple, understated, but absolutely stunning.

[00:07:27]And of course, there is Mary's dress when she reenters the party later that day. In Blackstar Rising in the Purple Rain, the Sonic Afterlives of David Bowie and Prince, Duke University Press, the film the film's lead costume designer, Marie France, reflected on her approach to costume in the actors for a black and white film in an interview with Jacqueline Stewart. Since it's supposed to be a black and white film, most of the costumes I desired designed were black, white, and grays. Not a lot of colors. I did use a few colors that would work well in black and white. The dress that Kristen wears in the party scene was in a mauve that would translate nicely to gray. Some of the fabrics I used were from Paramount stockroom. It was a treasure trove, a warehouse of fabrics left from their films of the 1930s, '40s, and '50s. It was only open to trade. I would climb over mountains of rolls of fabric to find what I needed. Those fabrics from the classic Hollywood era were perfect for this film.

[00:08:28]Under the Cherry Moon isn't set in a particular time period. It's all at once the 1930s, it's the 1980s, and all that lurex hints at Afrofuturism.

[00:08:39]The use of those vintage fabrics, though, gives the looks a specific authenticity and highlights how significant a place fashion has in the film.

[00:08:50]When Under the Cherry Moon debuted, it was immediately panned, and while the film being black and white in 1986 triggered some of it, it was utterly dismissed by by critics and some fans alike as Prince's exercise in narcissism.

[00:09:06]Janet Maslin of The New York Times called it an adolescent notion of sophistication, while Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel, who had praised Purple Rain 2 years earlier, gave Under the Cherry Moon two thumbs down and placed it on their worst films of the year list.

[00:09:21]During their review, Siskel went so far as to say that the film insults our intelligence, while Ebert questioned why Prince was not pursuing any black women in the film.

[00:09:31]Could it be that critics like Siskel and Ebert were comfortable with Prince's character, the kid in Purple Rain because he fit within familiar preconceptions, a wayward troubled mixed-race soul from the wrong side of the tracks. His black father abused him.

[00:09:46]He watched his father abuse his white mother. And then he turned abusive towards his Latina girlfriend. Of course, this narrative fit perfectly around what was to be expected of men of color.

[00:09:57]But by contrast, the two lead characters of Under the Cherry Moon, Christopher and Tricky, were almost impossible for white critics and audiences to process.

[00:10:07]Their soft life and self-possession offered no struggle narrative except perhaps their references to Miami.

[00:10:15]And the And the audacity of the idea that two black men could seduce rich white women out of their money and even find love among them. That absolutely was an insult to Gene Siskel's intelligence.

[00:10:28]>> [laughter] >> What Janet Maslin called adolescent sophistication feels like a thinly veiled masking of her discomfort with displays of grandeur in black, otherwise known as the disdain for the uppity negro, a term which emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly during the Jim Crow era, to describe a black person who is often well-dressed, articulate, and who refused to conform to subservience.

[00:10:56]Black brilliance and affluence have always been perceived as excessive, performative, unrefined, and undeserved.

[00:11:03]In this way, the criticism of Under the Cherry Moon mirrored how Prince was viewed at the time in popular culture.

[00:11:10]After Purple Rain, stories circulated about Prince having handlers warn people not to make eye contact with him at award shows. Then there were things like him riding piggyback on bodyguard Big Chick Huntsberry during the Purple Rain tour. And of course, his decision not to participate in the We Are the World recording session coupled with an altercation with the the that same night. These moments fed into his mystique, but they also positioned him as an unapproachable, unlikable diva.

[00:11:41]In the article "Other Uppity Obama", published in the Du Bois Review Social Science Research on Race, Charlton D.

[00:11:48]McIlwain writes regarding upward social and economic mobility, "Upper class or elite blacks are characterized as uppity, synonymous with the term presumptuous. Uppity is a racially tinged term that references historical relationships and power dynamics of sub-subordination and domination between black and whites characterized by Jim Crow segregation and the ideology of white supremacy following the US Civil War. A certain segment of folks had just grown weary of the real-life uppity behavior of the Under the Cherry Moon star, and that fueled the disdain for his new film, in my opinion.

[00:12:28]Compounding discomfort was the fact that the characters Christopher and Tricky challenge dominant perceptions of masculinity. Were they lovers or brothers as they suggest? It's not every day you see two cis males just having a friendly chat while one lounges in a sudsy bath and the other casually tosses rose petals into the water. And why is Christopher wearing a matador hat in the bathtub?

[00:12:52]The quirkiness of scenes like that made it easy for audiences and critics to eyebrow to raise eyebrows and dismiss the story. But even when I first saw the film at 15, I felt there was some depth to it. Under the Cherry Moon does in fact make important statements about class, wealth, and race in Reagan era America. Statements that deserve further exploration, and I just want to say that the seeds of this paper were definitely born in my mind when I was 15. This is true. I was thinking a lot of this stuff, maybe not quite as fancy.

[00:13:25]Chris and Tricky were are fluent in the language of wealth and luxury, especially luxury fashion. At one point, Tricky casually asked Christopher if he should wear his Versace or a Nush suit for a night out. Despite their distinguished taste in fashion and the finer things, their efforts to assimilate within white elite spaces along the French Riviera, their fluency fails to legitimize them where it is most important, with Mary and her family.

[00:13:52]The term peasant is hurled at them several times as an insult, first by Mary and then by her father. But why that word?

[00:13:59]The article unpacking the word peasant by the nonprofit group A Growing Culture gives a breakdown. According to anthropologist Mark Edelman, the word peasant first appeared in English during the late medieval period, used to refer to the rural poor, rural residents, serfs, agricultural laborers, and the common or simple people. It was used as a verb It was also used as a verb where to peasant someone means to subjugate that person. Peasant additionally substituted for other derogatory terms like stupid, ignorant, and crass. It was even indicated criminality.

[00:14:37]Uh there was an explicit political purpose behind the dehumanization the dehumanizing use of the word.

[00:14:48]Peasants were othered by noble classes, blamed for not using land efficiently, standing in the way of progress, having too many children, and for being dangerous and unsuitable for citizenship. Sound familiar?

[00:15:02]This label carries a long history of establishing the divide between who belongs and who doesn't. In the film, the term, especially when aimed at black protagonists, seems to be used as a sanitized stand-in for more explicit explicitly racialized language. In other words, the N-word, in my opinion.

[00:15:25]One of the most interesting turns in the film occurs when Mary invites Christopher and Tricky to Le Pavillon.

[00:15:31]While getting ready, they discuss the idea that Mary might be happier if she were to loosen up. Christopher decides that the way to do that is to bring her down to their world. In contrast to their discussion, however, Christopher and Tricky both dressed in very traditional tuxedos. When Mary arrives, she looks at Christopher and remarks, "Ah, so you do have normal clothes."

[00:15:51]Calling the tuxedo a vast improvement, in that moment Christopher becomes acceptable to her. What he is wearing is not only expensive, but classic and quietly signals old money.

[00:16:02]The comedic elements of the dinner scene distract from the very important underlying message about class and race.

[00:16:09]During the meal, Christopher and Mary clash when she toasts to knowledge, with Christopher suggesting that because she has not lived a street experience, what knowledge could she possibly have?

[00:16:20]She dismisses his point of view, and and he tells her that people from his world have more knowledge than she'll ever have living in her small sheltered world. He underscores this by comically shaming her for not knowing the meaning of the phrase "rack a stool".

[00:16:34]This scene is a bold statement on how the wealthy elite dismiss the poor, in this case poor blacks, labeling them as uneducated when in actuality they have had to learn how to survive, let alone thrive within systems that offer them little to nothing. Yet, someone like Mary is handed privilege and a silver spoon, and automatically is assumed to have intellectual authority.

[00:16:56]Who is superior here? The film calls all of this into question.

[00:17:02]Finally, when Mary lets go and allows herself to let go of judgement and step into Christopher's world, she begins to realize she is falling in love with him.

[00:17:10]She is drawn not only to his bad boy persona, but because he is free in a way she yearns to be. In him she sees the possibility of escape to live a life outside the future her parents have created for her. Ultimately bringing Mary oopsie doopsie. Ultimately bringing Mary to his world proves a grave mistake and the limitations of his race and class are made brutally explicit. When he refuses to be put back into his place, Mary's father ensures that he is removed entirely. In the article why some black American men are dressing in suits to survive, Jabari Asim, pro- professor at Emory College and editor at Crisis magazine explains, "While many black men are adhering to the politics of respectability, it's a futile action.

[00:17:57]How black men uniform themselves is irrelevant in the eyes of the police," he says. "He's not looking at your sneakers. He's looking at your skin. I certainly empathize with the men who dress up. Martin Luther King was the ultimate symbol of that. He was always in suits, always in his Sunday best. But he was shot to death like a thug in the street with sagging pants. It would be radical for black people to think about what makes them comfortable instead of being reactionary to making white people comfortable."

[00:18:27]In the end, Under the Cherry Moon reveals that while fashion can be powerful and aesthetic code-switching can open doors, ultimately they cannot grant true access.

[00:18:38]Nor can they change the mindset of an elite society governed by white supremacy.