2nd
More shameless ego-tripping
I wrote this too. Respect that.
Getting Real On Disney
Late last October, Hilary Duff released a video for her song “Reach Out”, a production that can best be described as a study in heroin chic. In the video, Duff wears sheer tops, gyrates on couches, sucks a shirtless man’s thumb, engages in acts with sadomasochistic bents and generally looks cracked-out. Hollywood Records, a subsidiary of Disney, produced the record and the video.
Duff, who starred in the highly rated show “Lizzie McGuire”, was once the poster girl for adolescent purity and goodness. Her Disney-backed persona is so thoroughly synonymous with innocence that Miley Cyrus, Disney’s contemporary version of Duff, felt obliged to thank Duff in 2007 for “making it cool to be a good girl”.
One year after making that statement, Miley Cyrus (most famous for her role in “Hannah Montana”) begins a whirlwind series of very serious and very stupid PR mistakes that make her assertion that she is a “good girl” hypocritical, if not straight-up ridiculous.
If, for some unknown reason, one is not familiar with 2008 in the context of Miley Cyrus, Cyrus’s downfall began with her pulling her shirt down to expose her bra and then taking a picture of herself. She was fifteen. Later that year, she was involved in a Vanity Fair photo shoot in which she was wearing a bed sheet and nothing else, exposing only her back; this picture inspired thousands of angry letters to Disney and an apology from Cyrus to her fans. The year finished for Cyrus with an internet hacker leaking her personal photographs, including such gems as Cyrus in the shower wearing only a white T-shirt, as well as a seemingly endless series of her lifting up her shirt and taking pictures of her belly.
The Disney Corporation has had a long and sordid history of young female stars becoming train wrecks, starting with Britney Spears and ending with the alleged self-mutilation of new star Demi Lovato. Therefore, a fairly reasonable conclusion is that Disney is, rather than a wholesome family channel, merely a well-connected, lollipop-fueled whore house. Some claim that Disney pimps out its young stars, sexualizes and then sexually represses its young properties, most notably the female ones. However, a case could be made that Disney simply has a chronic case of bad luck.
Disney could never have predicted that Lindsay Lohan would start doing a bunch of coke, start skanking it up and then start dating Samantha Ronson. The blame for Lindsay Lohan falls squarely on her shoulders. Britney Spears and Miley Cyrus similarly self-destructed. Yet there remains this lingering feeling that the Disney channel is somehow orchestrating these downfalls. The sheer number of young girls falling into compromising situations yields a natural suspicion of the corporation. After all, despite Miley Cyrus’s underage sexual hijinks, 2008 was also Cyrus’s most successful year to date. This begs the question of whether or not Disney is profiting from the sexual exploitation and expression of very young girls – which, of course, they are.
But child stars going fucking nuts by no means started with Disney. Corey Haim and Feldman, Tatum O’Neal, that girl who played Stephanie in Full House – all had their downfalls due to indulging in the excesses of stardom. The only difference contemporarily is that most young stars fall under the umbrella of the Disney Corporation. My guess is that being a celebrity at twelve, with all the money and responsibility that comes with that role, probably had more to do with hyper-sexualizing Miley Cyrus than a channel who caters to the tween set (and who consequently have a vested interest in keeping their stars drug and sex-free).
This is not to say that Disney is averse to sexually exploiting their female stars. However, they only allow their stars to have some kind of sexual expression when they are of an age to legally do so. Disney will back the 21 year-old Duff to make as many crazy slutty videos as she wants, because it isn’t really a problem to consider a person of legal majority having sex. Disney will, thank God, sexually stifle Miley Cyrus because she is 16 fucking years old. For all Disney and the general American population cares, Duff can fuck a Chihuahua in her next video – but Cyrus better keep it in her pants. Which makes me, for one, ecstatic; I don’t want to watch a 16 year old girl constantly reminding me that she has a vagina, because it makes me (and most sexually normal people) super uncomfortable to want to fuck a sophomore in high school. The over-18 set is not the market for Disney –your little sister is. So, bravo Disney, for making it cool to be a good girl.
It’s interesting to note that I consider these girls marked with the inevitability of the fall now, simply by virtue of their association with the Disney corporation. I am beginning to suspect that Disney is just a big front for an all-consuming evil, like that law firm in The Devil’s Advocate.
And what about the boys? When will the cracks start to show across the all-American veneers of, say, Zac Efron and the Jonas Brothers? Or is it that essentially good guys - these robotically consistent teenage pillars of respect and decency - have their own roll to play in this Hollywood farce; one that requires no hypocritical celebrity fuck-ups? How is it that they have managed to maintain their sanity and their careers? Do the Jonas Brothers have any dark songs musing on the corrupting influence of the media? I ask because I honestly don’t know. Research time!
P.S. You know I love shameless ego-tripping!
This is getting silly long. But I have to say that despite these sneaking suspicions, I really have come to believe that Disney is not the evil corporation that we all previously believed. I mean, what is wrong with wanting the stars of their channel to act in a wholesome manner? Maybe Disney’s means are fucked up (forcing these girls to act contrary to typical 15-yr. old behavior), but the ends are pretty respectable (delivering role models who inspire little girls to not become 11 yr. old sluts).
As for the boys, I have two words for you: Aaron Carter.
