First of all I don’t get the whole idea behind Miley Cyrus and the Hanna Montana thing. It smacks of a corporate manufactured phenomenon we’re supposed to accept as talent. I don’t have anything against the girl, but come on! She’s in a show that, being kind, isn’t very good and she makes millions of dollars for Disney because she’s marketed as some pop star. And, this is the sad part, parents let their kids believe this is true.

I have a problem believing kids out there really listen to her music. I think parents think of her as safe, then they try to get their kids interested in her safe music. The kids want to please their parents, so you have this phenomenon of her being a star and propped up by Disney.

The thing Disney and Nickelodeon faced this year is you can’t shepherd people the way you could in the 60s and 70s. What gets me and this is the main point of my musing, is how Americans can get outraged by little, almost innocent things yet real issues, or we can say more pressing issues, are ignored. It’s like we get fatigue or something after we go overboard on something little and when something big happens after the fact we can’t muster up the energy to feel bad.

Miley was the big Disney bad girl this year, with a shot in Vanity Fair that was considered ‘shocking’ by a good many people. Some even called the photo pornographic. It’s not in the slightest pornographic, and the thing is you bring what you see to the table when you label it as such. The disconnect comes in because you see someone who is 15 years old and because of the bare shoulder, some thoughts run through the head. The factor that probably caught most people’s minds is the fact she’s a Disney girl. Yes, the company for wholesome family entertainment let one of their contract people show bare shoulder.

What is lost in all the controversy is the stupidity of the controversy about this girl. We want to have children look up to someone, yet we want that person to be perfect. We don’t want them looking at the flaws, looking at the unseemly underside and we definitely want them to pin their hopes on the myth you can be ‘discovered’ and a plucky Midwestern upbringing can be good for you.

OK, not to say that those attributes aren’t admirable, but I have to say look at the role model you’re using. It’s more for the parents than for the kids, and it’s the way parents want their children to be in a world that doesn’t exist. The whole premise of her show and worldwide fame is she is this famous star who wants to be like a normal kid so she puts on a wig and goes to a ‘normal’ high school. The thing is, her father plays into the deal.

Not very real.

Again, I’m not sure why the controversy jumped all on her. It’s a shoulder. It seems we forgot about Jamie Spears. Sister of Britney she was also in one of those manufactured, milk unsuspecting kids/parents for money type shows, who got pregnant and had a baby. There was about three weeks of controversy, then she went off the radar a bit, Nickelodeon, the company putting out her show, gave indication they were going to stop the show but after realizing how much money that could make decided that after a year no one would care. Not a peep has been said about this in months yet Miley’s shoulder still rates as a scandal story.

Oh, and how can we forget the Cheetah Girls incident. Adrienne Bailon, like her other Disney playmate Vanessa Hudgens, was caught with some racy photos floating on the net. Anger and frustration gripped the land for a hot minute, because while being of the Disney sable of manufactured stars, The Cheetah Girls are one of the headliners. There are suspicions on how and why the photos got out, which may explain the lack of interest in the story, however the biggest issue in the story is Bailon herself. While you could call it a scandal, obviously, when a Vanessa Hudgens poses for raw, nude photographs (nothing to the imagination with those) and you realize she was seventeen at the time, the Bailon semi nude photographs are less shocking because the woman is 24 years old. Yes, this is group marketed as being wholesome 16-17 year old girls and one of them is outed as being 24.

Given the scandal with a bunch of young stars, a bare shoulder isn’t really what I would call a national crisis.

 

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Miley Cyrus - Scandal of the Year? - Feb 17, 2009
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