THE PSEUDO-SACRIFICIAL "SLUTTING" OF HANNAH MONTANA

[bks]

Jerky wrote:

I mean, just think about all those millions of young girls who've just spent the last seven years of their lives watching Hannah Montana TV shows and films, doling out literally billions of dollars to listen to Hannah Montana CDs, clothe themselves in the Hannah Montana fashion line, scent themselves with Hannah Montana perfumes, eat Hannah Montana breakfast cereal, sing into Hannah Montana toy microphones and go trick-or-treating in their officially sanctioned Hannah Montana Halloween costumes.

What is it, exactly, that these kids are supposed to take away from Sunday night's utterly bizarre and depraved debacle?

As Jack noted, the "normal" damage done over those seven years would have to far outstrip any incurred from viewing her twerking pelvis. And let's not forget: the responsibility for any betrayal those young girls might be feeling rests with the parental culture of bourgeois, gendered coddling that primed their daughters for this inevitable disappointment, and then offered them up for sacrifice in front of the electronic altar - a deed made all the more dysfunctional by virtue of the public professions of shock and disgust by those little girls' parents. As if they couldn't possibly have had a clue that it would turn out like this!

The culture of parenthood conspires with Disney to produce their children's cuteness, which is done strictly for parent's consumption. That is what is sick.

So I have my doubts about the betrayal. I'm thinking it may have been received with more confusion by those little girls (tinged perhaps with an inchoate anticipation of things to come?), which is what really set their parents/media off.

Barracuda's got the right approach. This is image marketing first and foremost.

[JackRiddler]

so wait-- miley cyrus is hannah montana?

wut?

I don't often wish there was a like button on here. But this is one of those times.

Ha ha. How did I miss that?

[JackRiddler]

I would say it is "all dead" left and right, 8bit. We embark upon a new "sensation" not of our doing yet all souls are culpable if you do not see the sensitivity of this. Does a football player or hockey star, male, get up and parade around the fact he has a penis?

Seriously? You're talking about the weekly mass theater of ritualized masculinity and dominance play?



There's some kind of macho display pretty much after every play. But it has the apparent convenience for you that it's only so if you decide to see it. In this case you are free to say, and the performer is free to think, that he is always and only ever wearing a cup. It's never a codpiece, oh no! The occasional strip of cloth hanging out over the crotch may allow feverish over-interpretations, but only to suggestible dirty minds such as my own.

Not all but often most of what we see is what we want to see, or what we are trained to see, or what we agree to see, or what we are conditioned to know everyone thinks we had better say we saw or else.

The reverse rule is that if Miley Cyrus ever swings her ass, no matter what it's going to be sexual (or attempted sexual, or material for demented body dismorphists to mock and feign public disgust over, as in the "chicken ass" graphics and comments). Of course she knows it will be seen as sexual when she does it, no matter what. That's the female role, in this culture tantamount to fate.

There'd be no way for her to swing her ass without people thinking that it's sexual. Is there? So she goes with it. She gives them what their dirty minds already are primed to expect. I'm not for it, I'm not defending it, I'm not even trivializing it: Girls should be something other than sexualized all the time.

But is there, in theory, an approvable, non-sexual way for her to swing the organ humans were designed to swing? I don't think so. Not for a girl at her age or in her position or of her looks. It will be always received as a matter of sexuality, and also as an object to rate on a scale of attractiveness applying to females. The difference here is in whether she provides a fig leaf of propriety for all the voyeurs so that it's hypocritically "family friendly," or whether she waves it in your face. Again, I say that not to make the latter into a nobler option, by any means. It's a double bind, as Mr. 82 loves to say.

.

[Julian the Apostate]

All I want to know is how can I keep my 3 month old daughter away from this stuff? I suppose it is hopeless, even if I didn't have a TV she would get it from her friends at school. I suppose all I can do is try to impress upon her what really matters, and what is not important. God help me and all parents particularly of daughters.

[Wombaticus Rex]

All I want to know is how can I keep my 3 month old daughter away from this stuff? I suppose it is hopeless, even if I didn't have a TV she would get it from her friends at school. I suppose all I can do is try to impress upon her what really matters, and what is not important. God help me and all parents particularly of daughters.

I have several friends facing the same quandary. We have discussed this at length and may actually have answers.

1. Consequences. My dad sat me down and explained that, although the Grateful Dead sang about drugs and getting high, a number of the personnel listed on the back cover of Workingman's Dead were deceased as a result of drugs. On the topic of sex, it's important to let kids know about the life-changing consequences of the most dangerous STD of all: pregnancy.

2. Alternate Realities The most effective stratagem, in terms of results, is raising kids swimming in different cultures -- Audrey Hepburn as role model -- lots of foreign cinema and lots of classic movies. One of my friends has a little one who is addicted to Pink Floyd & Flaming Lips DVDs like most kids are addicted to Disney films, it is a constant background. THERE ARE COMPETING SPECTACLES; most of them better.

3. Internal Effects. "How does that make you feel?" is a powerful question! Another family makes it a point to let their kids watch whatever they want, but only supervised. They talk about everything getting beamed into the room and it's been pretty effective at stuff like getting their two children to realize they don't like TV with advertisements, or that scary movies are based on cheap tricks and mostly pretty boring.

[Julian the Apostate]

All I want to know is how can I keep my 3 month old daughter away from this stuff? I suppose it is hopeless, even if I didn't have a TV she would get it from her friends at school. I suppose all I can do is try to impress upon her what really matters, and what is not important. God help me and all parents particularly of daughters.

I have several friends facing the same quandary. We have discussed this at length and may actually have answers.

1. Consequences. My dad sat me down and explained that, although the Grateful Dead sang about drugs and getting high, a number of the personnel listed on the back cover of Workingman's Dead were deceased as a result of drugs. On the topic of sex, it's important to let kids know about the life-changing consequences of the most dangerous STD of all: pregnancy.

2. Alternate Realities The most effective stratagem, in terms of results, is raising kids swimming in different cultures -- Audrey Hepburn as role model -- lots of foreign cinema and lots of classic movies. One of my friends has a little one who is addicted to Pink Floyd & Flaming Lips DVDs like most kids are addicted to Disney films, it is a constant background. THERE ARE COMPETING SPECTACLES; most of them better.

3. Internal Effects. "How does that make you feel?" is a powerful question! Another family makes it a point to let their kids watch whatever they want, but only supervised. They talk about everything getting beamed into the room and it's been pretty effective at stuff like getting their two children to realize they don't like TV with advertisements, or that scary movies are based on cheap tricks and mostly pretty boring.

Cool thanks, those are all good ideas. I think it’s especially important for her to have positive role models, and also have enough of a broad knowledge base that when she sees something like this she thinks “WTF is this crap!”

[JackRiddler]

All I want to know is how can I keep my 3 month old daughter away from this stuff? I suppose it is hopeless, even if I didn't have a TV she would get it from her friends at school. I suppose all I can do is try to impress upon her what really matters, and what is not important. God help me and all parents particularly of daughters.

It's a real quandary. I went through it with a boy - ostensibly easier, but not if they're sufficiently disturbed. However, I think it's important to look at the whole picture, and not to over-worry about the supposed exceptional evil of the sexualization to the exclusion of even worse aspects of socialization. Personalities can be crushed or otherwise fucked up in so many different ways. I think WR's advice is great.

Except, maybe:

One of my friends has a little one who is addicted to Pink Floyd... like most kids are addicted to Disney films, it is a constant background.

As one of whom this was true I'm inclined to dispute whether it was better.

.

[JackRiddler]

http://mathbabe.org/2013/08/27/i-dont-w ... -be-happy/

I don’t want you to be happy
August 27, 2013 Cathy O'Neil, mathbabe Leave a comment Go to comments

I was giving unwanted advice to my friend the other day, complaining to him about how he’s this absolutely fantastic, wonderful young person – all true – and he’s wasting his time feeling like he’s wasting his time.

Look, he’s obsessed over time. He’s always complaining about being late, or being too slow, or being rushed, and he never thinks he has time to do anything. He’s too old to embark on something.

He’s on tenure track, so that might be part of the problem, but on the other hand he’s gonna get tenure, even he admits that, so not really.

I was telling him to stop worrying about time and just enjoy being awesome. Here I am, quite a few years older, and I’m not at all rushed when it comes to accomplishment. Maybe it’s because I’m a woman and many of my favorite role models are women who change their careers at the age of 75, become potters or writers or poets or what have you. I don’t think I’ll ever need to feel like it’s too late to do something I really want to do. If I’m still alive there’s still time.

“Anyway,” I end my speech, “I’m just saying this because I want you to be happy.”

“Happy?” he says, “please don’t say that. You don’t actually want me to be happy. Come on, you can do better than that.”

And that’s when it hit me. I don’t want him to be happy. I just want him to have better suffering. Instead of suffering about the amount of time he has to do things, which is a self-produced drama, I want him to strive for goals and accomplishments without the noise of crappy I’m-too-late suffering.

I want him to have meaningful suffering, not happiness.

I mean, it depends on what you mean by happiness, but in that conversation he made me realize that wishing happiness on someone is a pretty bland goal. Maybe even an unkind goal.

In fact, it’s the goal I say I wish for my kids when I really hope they’re safe. I’m not so sure “happy” is all that different from “doesn’t get involved in the world too much, stays out of trouble, and is safe”. If you don’t believe me, check out this guy (hat tip Chris Wiggins), whose stated goal is to be happy but whose practice is to ignore all things that interrupt his world view and to make silly lists.

Example from my life. If a friend of mine got his college savings, bought an apartment in Paris, and spent his days combing the catacombs of Paris, I’d want to hang out with that guy. If my son did the same thing, I’d want to convince him not to do it, and to go to college instead. After all, I’d argue, it’s for his own good, he should get an education. I’d tell him I was urging this because I want him to be happy.

Two conclusions.

First, as a parent I’ll strive to spend less time protecting my children from harm and more time letting them seek their own adventures. I want more for them, frankly, than that they’re happy/safe.

Second, I want to start urging my friends to find meaningful suffering. Strive for something and be temporarily miserable when you don’t get it. Hate the world enough to never be satisfied with how shitty things are, love the world enough to stay engaged with it anyway.

[stefano]

It made me think of 8bitagent's comment about some kiddie pop star wearing a Ramones t-shirt, and the way pop culture has become a sort of manic recycling of themes (it's cool, and you're cool, if you catch a reference), because I thought the visuals recalled early 90s Madonna. This was Madonna dressed by Jean-Paul Gaultier on and around her Blond Ambition tour in 1990, before Miley Cyrus was a glint in her dad's eye:





ETA- Also Beetlejuice (1988), like the suit the chappie was wearing.

[barracuda]

The person who thinks there's no difference between Elvis on Ed Sullivan and Miley sucking on a menstration-stained foam dildo...

The key early Elvis performance was really on The Milton Berle Show, which predated his first appearance on Ed Sullivan and was viewed by over forty million people. That's the performance which earned him the sobriquet of "The Pelvis".

The sexual aspects of the two performances are rather roughly parallel, if one takes into account the nearly seventy years of sexual cultural inflation. Elvis simulated the pelvic thrusting of fucking, full stop, on national television at a time when there were only three channels to watch. Perhaps more scandalous but less widely acknowledged was his parody of the southern Pentecostal church gyrations which accompanied the transmission of the Holy Spirit to the congregation. But what riled up the concern trolls of 1956 was the response of the young women in the audience. They screamed and hyperventilated in ecstasy. Orgasms were achieved, maybe even.

Without Elvis' frantic thrusting, there would almost certainly be no Miley VMA show. At the least, it would be different.

An important part of what separates the two performances is the inherent racism of Miley's appropriations. She has the white privilege that allows her to ratchet around and crunk wearing a necklace made of black women's asses. Ultimately, her performance is sullied for me by the grime of inauthenticity rather than the sex part, which, upon third or fourth viewing, is remarkably mild even for a white chick.

All I want to know is how can I keep my 3 month old daughter away from this stuff? I suppose it is hopeless, even if I didn't have a TV she would get it from her friends at school. I suppose all I can do is try to impress upon her what really matters, and what is not important. God help me and all parents particularly of daughters.

Owning and viewing television is not a mandatory aspect of contemporary life. Yes, your daughter will learn all sorts of fucked up shit on the playground. But that's part of the process of socialization, which is vastly different from the sheerly indoctrinating effects of television viewing.

...perhaps you'd be so kind as to point me to the scenes in 'Bikini Beach' where Ms Funicello simulates Lolitaesque masturbation amongst teddy bears whilst fondling the backside of a giant negro woman.

Or something broadly similar. No hurry, I'll wait.

...and god bless Candy Johnson. Her magic blond pussy can knock you out of the room while the black gospel music plays on and on...

[JackRiddler]

Yeah, Madonna was obviously doing stuff just as wittingly "bad" decades ago, but she was never a Disney icon!

That's the offense here. It's a crime against Disney's front of propriety.

I'm not saying it's an offense in the reckoning of the present-day Disney corporation. (Her contract is done, right? I don't know what they think, but anyway maybe that girl should stay out of new-model Mercedes cars.)

No, it's an offense to the Disney-consuming public. They bought Hannah Montana for their children, damn it, and now look! She's a whore! How is this possible!!! Cyrus can't do the same fucked-up strip dance that all the other fucked-up MTV acts do without anyone noticing, because she "is" Hannah Montana: An entirely innocent tool of mass child-brainwashing with the hypocritical facade of asexuality. She's just a superstar. You can be a superstar, kids! Please be a superstar! A white one, with a wholesome country-singer father who never passes out drunk on the couch! Please have a worthy role model, a white one! And not, oh god, a sexual, vulgar being that sucks ass and does all these other things we must not. ever. acknowledge. exist. Because world ends!

.

But what riled up the concern trolls of 1956 was the response of the young women in the audience. They screamed and hyperventilated in ecstasy. Orgasms were achieved, maybe even.

Which makes this one all the more fake.

.

[DrEvil]

How about pimp-shaming that guy in the striped dress?

Or is he off the hook, since he's a dude and all?

[Wombaticus Rex]

How about pimp-shaming that guy in the striped dress?

Or is he off the hook, since he's a dude and all?

Well, SLAD was leveling some pretty serious biz necrophilia charges a few pages back, if that counts.

It doesn't, yeah?

Between "Blurred Lines" and "She Will," rape-pop has had a good run on the Billboard charts. Thicke is worth examining -- much like Jerky, he invokes the defense of satire and irony.

In fact, I think Thicke even blamed his wife for the video. I'm not going to fact check that.

[JackRiddler]

[Laodicean]

ETA- Also Beetlejuice (1988), like the suit the chappie was wearing.