Girls just wanna...

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

I've been trying to figure out why I have suddenly taken such a strong dislike to Miley Cyrus aka Hannah Montana. After all, it wouldn't be very poptimist of me to dislike her just because she's a manufactured pop princess, right? I should judge her on the basis of her songs/performances.
Yeah, she's a precocious 15-year-old, but I can't blame her for that - let her have her fun. And I may cringe a bit at the nepotism inherent in the daughter of a country-pop crossover star "proving" to the best of a thousand little girls eager for a starring role in a Disney project, but I don't really care about her so much to let that bother me.

To be honest, I think it's actually Disney that unnverves me. (Here, to be honest, I must note that I have never watched Hannan Montana on small or large screen, so I am mostly speaking on the basis on what filters through pop culture media. On one hand it's ignorance, on the other hand there are some things it's impossible to remain ignorant of.) There are lots of "machines" out there that generate stars. Not so many that create them across the whole media spectrum - usually it's the ambitious star theirself who parlays their album sales into a movie role (Madonna) or their movie roles into music careers (JLo). More power to them, I guess, if they've got the combination of talent and marketing moxy to pull it off. Something about Disney seems sinister, though: their own network, their own movies, their own record company, their own radio station.

Sure, it's all about money - Miley's aspirations to be famous are convenient to be exploited - so targeting a specific family-friendly, tween-teen audience makes sense. Maybe I've spent too long immersed in US politics, and so a market strategy aimed at keeping the conservative/religious right happy through wholesomeness while not alienating the left through keeping overt religion out of things just seems like a fifth column move to me. There's a kind of denial of reality in the Disney universe, as if we still don't know what will become of Michael J. or Britney S. when they grow up, not to speak of Kurt C. or the millions of people stuck in dead-end office jobs. So really, folks, of everything out there, was she really among the ten best things you heard this year? No better voices? No more interesting sounds? Can this fifteen-year-old really tell you things about life you didn't know? How can that be?

By general convention - and the spirit of poptimists, I think - we try to post questions and generate discussion. So my intention here is not to attack those that like Miley/Hannah - each of us appreciates different things, or sometimes the same things for different reasons. And for the same reason, I guess I'm not asking why you might like Miley. Maybe what I'm asking is to what extent... let's call them "political" considerations figure into your enjoyment of music. A lot of times we sniff at artistic pretensions by singers because we don't see any art in what they're doing, or because we're jaded from seeing art/authenticity rolled out as a marketing ploy. But sometimes these things are important, no?

Comments

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I'm wary of machine-driven wholesomeness as well, in a way, but whatever its faults it does have a track record of producing great pop songs (eg early Britney) - which is why I pay attention to it. Pretty much all the culture we consume is driven by some sort of machine, so it's easy to ignore - I don't see the Disney machine as any more sinister than, I dunno, the indie machine which drives popularity of Cat Power and the Arcade Fire and fucking Spoon (the Disney machine is at least better because it's so transparent, whereas the indie one seems to exist in order to reinforce listeners' smug complacency in their own superiority).

'See You Again' is definitely one of the best tracks of last year. Beats pretty much everything in eg the Pitchfork top 10 to a pulp. Who knows whether Miley will make any more great songs? Who cares?

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

The difference is the Disney machine is a monolith - it's one huge corporate machine. Despite your hate for indie, I hope you would admit there ISN'T an indie machine in the same way. Sure there may be hivemind out there, but it's hardly as if you see the Spoon movie, the Spoon TV show, the Spoon magazine, and the Spoon clothing line.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I would imagine Spoon (who I like a lot!) have band T shirts and appear frequently in magazines! And TV shows have been one of the huge reasons behind the rise of the new indie - look at the soundtracks to the OC, for instance. Spoon don't need a dedicated TV show, as they're hip enough to get TV show appearances and ad money should they want it: the younger end of teenpop has no such option.

I agree though that Disney's cross-promotion is much more co-ordinated: I don't personally see that as sinister and CERTAINLY not as new - are Elvis films or the Monkees TV show sinister?

I could definitely see it as off-putting though. If I didn't find the performer or character interesting in the first place then the cross-marketing would feel like overkill.

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

The Monkees is a good counterargument. Elvis is not, because he falls into that same Madonna/JLo model: it wasn't as if there was a faceless machine that started out with the intention to build Elvis Presley block-by-block. Elvis was a success as a singer, and then a huge success, and then Elvis' people (Colonel Tom, I guess) started to build out other opportunities. Do you see the difference?

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Well obviously I see the difference but I don't see one approach as being worse than the other! Why is it?

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

the indie "machine" is the market in which all the indies compete as equals: which does -- empirically if not "by an iron law" -- seem to deliver a certain hozrizon of interchangeability

meanwhile, the disney machine is no more internally transparent than other large social cluster -- probably less so than some (because neither internally competitive, nor internally robustly democratic) -- and it doesn't, simply by being a corporation, have a better grasp of how can art be manipulated to bring about the ends it believes it has: the monolith-machine aspect of it is as irrelevant as regards contents and effects (and indeed affects) as it is to self-understanding; like all hierarchies it's highly opaque and clogged with rotten information-flow -- it's more like a randomiser than anything else

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

short-term ends = opportunistic stab at profit <--- lots flung at wall to see if sticks (much falls off)

long-term ends = profitable cohesion of "disney brand" <--- but the gulf between this as a goal and the micro-managing of any element of (eg) hannah montana's career -- and value ass sales-platform -- is HUGE: literally layers and layers of content-related guesswork, second-guessing, sucking up, bad maganement instruction implemented reluctantly; amitious feuds within management leading to contradictory implementation; fashions in this month's marketing buzzword, effective (or incompetent) imitation of apparent successes elsewhere; panics; meltdowns; art-people foolishly over-wowed by business acumen and caving accordingly; business people over-wowed by art aceumen and going along with all kinds of half-baked nonsense

the irrational complexity of the stratified layers makes for a much richer and less biddable internal ecosystem -- outlay of this much less consistent of course (does a richer ecosystem has a higher rate of fatality?)

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

ASS-SALES PLATFORM!

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

What Tom said - also I find that I don't really feel the monolith to be too, well, monolithic or overwhelming: I find it very easy to cherrypick what appeals to me out of the Disney empire, and discard the rest (ie take some of the music, ignore the rest). I don't find it sinister if eg an 8-yr-old girl wants to buy into all of it, though.

SPEAKING AS A PARENT

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I *would* find it annoying if MY hypothetical 8-year-old girl were to buy into all of it cos it wouldn't be her money doing the buying. As the madness around H Montana tiXoR in the US suggests, though, pester power is pretty heavy.

So I would condemn from that POV the marketing tactics which say "If you're a *real* fan you'd see HM live AND buy the record AND buy the DVD AND buy the clothes AND etc etc." - those are certainly not exclusive to teenpop, though! And I dunno even if the HM brand does push that.

Re: SPEAKING AS A PARENT

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Yeah I guess that's my argument really - the marketing tactics Disney uses are not really any different to the marketing tactics used by the brands us adults are 'supposed' to like. I'm not a huge fan of any of them but it shouldn't be used as a stick to beat one with and not others. I do always try to be conscious of marketing when I actually spend money, and to not be seduced into it. I mean, I wouldn't buy Paris Hilton's perfume or anything.