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

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

As one of the biggest supporters of Disney-originating music 'round here, I should say that I devote a LOT of my time into figuring out how Death Star Disney (the transnational conglom bit) works, too, since one of my arguments is that, as pernicious and awful as Disney is as a company (sweat shop labor, intellectual property insanity, etc.) there is a divide between what they ARE and what they DO. In fact, this divide has actually been closing up a bit the more heavy-handed they've gotten about keeping their music in-house (compare, e.g., to the bonkers nature of early Radio Disney, which was an improvised novelty/pop channel that helped break Toy-Box and A*Teens and Steps and etc. in the States in some fashion) .

I've written a lot about how all this stuff happened -- the best summary I've done was leading up to HSM (before the solo stars and at the beginning of Hannah Montana) here (http://cureforbedbugs.blogspot.com/2006/04/first-ever-lovemarks-photo-shoot-in.html). And I recently wrote a bit about the seemingly grassroots support of "See You Again" on the US (and now Canadian) charts without a marketing push from Disney here (http://www.cave17.com/?p=29). The key point is that "See You Again" has (at least, to the best of my understanding) removed Disney from the equation, so that we can try to watch this network of kids/teens make musical choices without the looming impact of the Disney marketing machine. (The machine itself is remarkably transparent, but that doesn't make it any less evil, I suppose. Though my issues aren't with its pandering to conservative values -- I argue in my first piece that it's actually moved AWAY from "innocence," though HM and HSM are good examples of a potential "swing back" -- but with how it throws around its institutional weight in the realm of IP, distribution, etc.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Not between what they ARE and DO, rather, what they ARE/DO and "the music that results from the universe," either through production or promotion.