TWERKLING GIRL
THE END OF HANNAH MONTANA
OH. Miley. God. The erstwhile child star went into overdrive on Sunday last week trying to kill off her Disney millstone, Hannah Montana, at the MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs) in New York.
It was enough to drive the online conversation mad for most of the evening and well into this week, as Time magazine points out with its analysis of why many, many people will be talking about this little performance for some time to come.
Those reasons include, for the uninitiated, Cyrus’s near-naked performance (dancing in a flesh-coloured bikini), the audience reaction (a viral image of Will Smith and family watching on aghast did the rounds, although it later turned out they were actually looking at Lady Gaga’s set) and debates around what is and is not appropriate on and off stage from a 20year-old — a 20-year-old that used to be a Disney starlet.
Miley Cyrus has twerked, gyrated and grinded her way into a new look faster than you can say MTV Video Music Awards. She is clearly keen to shed her childhood star image. In the blink of an eye, it seems, this little girl — a teen idol cast in the TV series Hannah Montana— has grown up. Cyrus is now a woman: not a teen, not a girl. And this “woman” has not wasted any time in portraying herself as a half-naked, tongue-sticky-outy “package” complete with oodles of sex appeal — not unlike most of the girls you see gyrating about in today’s music videos.
Within hours, the Buzzfeed site was posting the “15 Weirdest and Craziest Moments” from Cyrus’s performance, which was aired live.
So what is really new here? There have been countless performances over the years of good girls gone bad: just think back to Rihanna’s risqué performance on The X Factor a few years back. Her gyrating and grinding drew many complaints from viewers who said it was not appropriate on a family show.
Cyrus’s memorable moment was certainly great for MTV and social media. An estimated 10.1 million people watched the annual programme on Sunday, up 66% over last year for a show that is fuelled by the buzz from talked-about moments, the Nielsen ratings company said.
Cyrus’s performance eclipsed Lady Gaga’s opening performance of her new single, Katy Perry’s closing rendition of her latest hit and Kanye West’s artsy set. The 20-year-old even grabbed more attention than Justin Timberlake’s reunion with his ’N Sync band mates.
So does it really matter? The fact that Cyrus was accompanied mid-performance by Robin Thicke for a rendition of his number-one single Blurred Lines — which has also attracted a lot of controversy — is, in effect, a two-fingers up to those who sniffed at this in the first place. It is just a laugh. It is just a video. Just a performance . . . isn’t it?
Either way, their performance immediately began trending on Twitter. There were a record 306 000 tweets a minute during Cyrus’s medley of her song We Can’t Stop and Thicke’s Blurred Lines.
Fellow Disney star Selena Gomez, 21, praised the performance, describing it as “amazing”. “I loved it,” she said. Other stars appeared less positive, however. Despite having sparked controversy for her raunchy performance and skimpy outfit during her song on the X Factor Final in 2010, Rihanna also seemed less than impressed. Stars including Taylor Swift and One Direction also looked awkward as Cyrus strutted around the stage.
The VMAs are renowned for controversial and dramatic performances. In 2003, Britney Spears and Madonna shocked audiences by sharing a kiss on stage.
Regardless, what is clear is that Cyrus, like many other artists before her, used the stage to show the world — and her potential fanbase — what she is all about now, long after she was cast as the Disney TV character. Whether we like it or not, she has followed in the footsteps of many other female teen stars who “grow up” and presume that means behaving and looking like a sex symbol. (Just think Holly Valance, the former Neighbours star who transformed into a semi-naked goddess on the cover of a lads’ mag.)
Brooke Shields, who played Cyrus’s TV mother in Hannah Montana, called her act “desperate”. Whether you agree or not, it seems almost inevitable that for many young women in the pop music world, marketing yourself to the masses equates to the old adage of “sex sells” more easily than it should.
Whether Cyrus will shed her childhood label of Hannah Montana in the process depends on whether people stop referring to her as “the former Disney star”. And yet, in the light of her most recent performance, this little fact is one that many a column inch will find it hard to ignore.