by Chris
Before I start, I want to make a few things clear. One: I was never a fan of Miley Cyrus and never watched a single episode of Hannah Montana. Two: I actually abhor most rap music and the hip hop industry in general. Three: The proceeding words are utterly biased and were written without any consideration given to alternative viewpoints. Good, now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about Miley Cyrus!
No, no, not VMA Cyrus, not rapper Cyrus, let’s talk about “clean” Cyrus. Long before she was twerkin’ (Wow, autocorrect removed the “g;” I’m not even kidding) on middle-aged men and smoking marijuana on stage, Miley Cyrus was the idol of millions of prepubescent girls. She was clean, couth, compassionate, and just a bit country. And to top it all off, she was the star of her very own show on Disney. Now as I said before, I never watched Hannah Montana, but surely I can deduce a few things about it: the lead character was a blonde girl; the plot revolved around trivial conflicts; the settings were horrendously artificial; the saddest episodes involved one of the many static “friends” of the protagonist moving away. All of these things sound about right, but I forgot one thing: the star of the show (read: Miley Cyrus) had to embody her character constantly.
It wasn’t enough for Miley to play Hannah Montana; she had to become Hannah Montana. Prepubescent girls simply aren’t mature enough to distinguish between what’s real and what’s manufactured. Sure, they know that movies aren’t real, but they don’t understand that characters like Hannah Montana are played by real human beings like Miley Cyrus who often have completely different personalities. So while Miley Cyrus appeared clean, couth, compassionate, and country on TV, she was probably anything but in reality. She was simply marketed. Is it any wonder that the recurring idea of “We Can’t Stop” is “I can do what I want?” I can do what I want? Clearly this implies that at one point in time she couldn’t do what she wanted. Why? Because her success depended on conforming to the expectations of millions of naïve girls. What we’re seeing with Miley today is the reaction to years of restriction. She was never allowed to truly express herself; her world was artificial and superficial. Playing Hannah Montana meant being marketed as a product for Miley Cyrus, her individuality forsaken in the face of profit.
This is perhaps the greatest tragedy; Miley Cyrus was forced to conform to the expectations of little girls and their parents, to be a “role model.” Why can’t parents be role models to their own children? Why are they so reliant on the media to raise their children, to teach their children right from wrong? Could it be that life in a commercialized world of consumerism and materialism, which holds money above human life, inhibits the ability of parents to interact with their children and thus leaves said children at the mercy of an advertising apparatus so sophisticated and so pervasive that it indoctrinates the children into the world of consumerism and wage labor that originally robbed them of parental guidance? Then, continuing the tradition of indoctrination, the children grow up and chase false dreams in a fast-paced world, leaving their children before the onslaught of that very advertising and sensationalism, thus reducing human existence in America to nothing more than consumption.
Whoops, my Orwell is showing. But what’s curious is the public outcry against Miley Cyrus. Doesn’t she represent our modern age? She’s young, white, rich, sensational, bereft of morals, and ostentatiously (yet awkwardly) sexual. Any impartial observer would say she complements our society perfectly. Why, then, is she discussed in the most scathing, vehement terms our language can muster? I feel she is a scared little girl navigating the turbulent waters of adulthood. She’s searching for her true identity, and she is throwing off the shackles of that artificial world that once held her. She embodies the totality of the American spirit. And yet, America spits on her for daring to defy expectations, for divorcing herself from the Disney doll Hannah Montana. That’s the tragedy of it all: we are so wrapped in the tentacles of consumerism and sensationalism that we cannot see the glory in Miley Cyrus twerking.
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