Prostituting their image

I'm not a fan of children's television, and I'm particularly not a fan of television aimed at "tweens."  Generally, it's well established that that children tend to watch television which the producers of which have aimed at an older demographic, so TV aimed at tweens really hits a younger demographic than that, just as the teenage soap dramas that television loves to slop out tends to hit tweens. 

Most of the tween TV is incredibly vapid.  The plots are all stamped out of a mold, and the shows are overall extremely irritating.  It'd be better, in numerous ways, if the entire genera didn't exist at all.

Of of the tween television that's been around in recent years, one of the very worst, in my view, was Hanna Montana.  I hated it, but my daughter simply loved it when she was a little girl.  This isn't surprising.  Overall, Hanna Montana had a huge following amongst girls.  For those so fortunate as to not know what the show was about, it centered on a early teenaged country music star who lived a double life, being Hanna Montana while on the stage and being Myley while not.  It was stupid, in my view, but it was relatively harmless, and it wasn't at the chemical weapons grade level of irritation that the Suite Life of Zack and Cody were.

I mostly dislike these shows because I hate how stupid and predictable they are.  I frankly think that they grossly underestimate the intelligence of children, but I have to confess looking back that when I was in grade school, when we went home, we'd watch Gilligan's Island, McHale's Navy or Hogan's Heroes, shows of equal stupidity that were aimed at adults.  At any rate, my dislike, therefore, is largely personal and perceptional.

But, amongst the other reasons to dislike this genera of television, indeed to hope for its demise, is what it apparently does to its starts, the young actors who are featured in these shows, and what that in turn does to our culture.

Popular entertainers are, in general, seemingly uniquely plagued by personality problems.  Perhaps that has something to do with why they entered those fields in the first place.  There are people in any sort of performing art who are stable as can be, but for those who are singularly focused on the regions of those fields that produce fame, there seem to be a lot of truly messed up people.  And our culture has become so debased that for those who need to feed off of constant fame, the depths to which they need to reach down to are increasingly deeper.

For that reason, I'm often amazed that anyone thinks anything that people in the entertainment industry does is interesting or avant-garde.  Most of it is just "look at me!"  This is particularly the case when they take up a cause, as the basic nature of their personalities is such that what ever cause is trendy at the time, which they can fallacious claims as avant-garde, they will.  In other words, if Hollywood is protesting for you, you are probably yesterday's news.  If an entertainer really wanted to shock, the most shocking thing they could really do would be to espouse orthodoxy on something.

Indeed, given that this class of people, while famous, seemingly uniquely plagued by peculiar problems, it further amazes me that anyone is really interested in their personal opinions on anything.  Take any number of actors who run through spouses and housemates like cats run through kibble and ask yourself, why would I listed to this screwed up person's opinions on politics?  But I digress. . . .

Back to child actors, one of the things that being a star, young, in these fields seem to do is to create a massive dependence on news media attention in the souls of these people.  But translation of childhood success into adult success, as an entertainer, has always been against the odds.  Most don't make it.  But, up until recently, most seemingly tried to make the transition and faded away, with some never adapting very well to the spotlight's glare growing dim.

Now, however, with our debased focus on the vulgar and obscene, these declining personalities have hit on the truly pathetic, the prostitution of their image.

This seems to have really started to be noticeable, in its current form, with Lindsey Lohan, who started off as a child actress and then went into her teens as sort of a troubled soul. Right about that time, she took up a lot of public bad behavior, and then finally, in an attempt to get back into the public eye, determined to show all she had in Playboy magazine.  So, an actress associated early on with "identical cousins" in the renewed Parent Trap, or high school glamor girl in other shows, now was bearing it all for inspiring lust in glossy print.  Pretty sad decline, but apparently one that didn't serve to reverse the declining fortunes of ossified creepster Hugh Hefner's sagging empire.  Apparently the bloom was already off her rose.

More recently, we've been unwilling participants in Amanda Bynes efforts to run out in front of us and show us everything.  Bynes was a child actress and the focus of her own show, which was so bad that I wouldn't let it be played in the house.  Past her prime, apparently, she's' been unable to handle it, and has been taking nearly topless photos of herself and tweeting them..  By all accounts, she's troubled, but a lot of that trouble may be based on an inability to just handle reality.  Being young and well off isn't a bad thing.  You'd have the luxury to devote yourself to worthy pursuits.  But apparently the drug of fame, or what being in the entertainment industry does to you, is too corrupting to address.

As bad, weird or pathetic as the Bynes example is, we're now all spectators in the more calculated efforts of Myley Cyrus, the Hanna Montana of old, who now has is repeatedly showing us all she has in a manner that's nearly inescapable.

Cyrus has been becoming increasingly trashy in her public personal for some time, in what seems to be a calculated effort to shed her childhood actress persona. The chosen method has been to be as brazen as possible, thereby seemingly set to destroy the old image with a new one that's as wantonly sex driven as possible. Not too long ago Cyrus appeared sans clothes in a campaign to draw attention to skin cancer, but which tended to serve to draw attention to Cyrus as well, and not in a good way. This past week she went a step further and performed Blurred Lines on a televised music awards show. Blurred Lines is already in the trash category and Cyrus adopting it for a species of striptease, sort of, isn't surprising, except as an illustration of how far down the latter we've climbed.  Apparently the performance was so prurient that it could not be shown in its entirely on the morning news shows.

A person can pretend that this is all artistic self expression, but they'd be pretending. This is simply a desperate effort to get a "look at me" reaction from somebody whose fame was indelibly associated with a childhood role. And she shouldn't do it.

Cyrus, like others of her ilk, want fame, but the fame they have now comes only due to a childhood image.  If they no longer wish to be associated with that image, that's their right, but they don't have right to pretend that they have any other claim to it, and they shouldn't prostitute it.  That is what they are doing. Their image is based on a childhood portrayal of innocence, and they use that association, which they seek to escape, in order to draw attention to themselves.  They're trading on their former fame, exchanging memories for leering glances.

When they do that, they destroy the image, in some ways, for the thousands who were attracted to it as children in the first place.  Fame is conferred, not owned, and in this case they are seeking to grasp a continued hold on something by wrecking it. 

When I was in high school the J Geils Band had a popular song on the charts entitled Centerfold. The song centered around the shock of a young man finding that a girl he had a crush on in high school was now a centerfold. Satyric and comical, the song used a central theme of shame that would be almost inconceivable now.  Portrayals like Cyrus' have made it so.

If Cyrus et al really want enduring fame, they have a brief window of opportunity to build on that fame conferred by a childhood role.  A few managed to do that, most do not.  It requires smarts and exceptional talent, however.  Simply parading nearly naked isn't going to do it.  It does damage to them, and to us.  By doing it the fame they achieve will be a species of infamy in a real sense, and the positioning that gave them the ability to trade for it shows itself to be corrupted in some fashion by its impact.  And with each nearly naked former childhood actress on the television, the overall culture becomes that much more cheapened.

Epilogue

Since writing this, Myley Cyrus has reentered the public eye, quite literally, through photographs associated with a single she is releasing entitled "Wrecking Ball."  Not to be outdone by Thicke's parading around of naked models, Cyrus apparently decided to parade herself around naked, apparently, further debasing herself.  Wrecking Ball would seem to be an apt name too, as she appears to be intent on wrecking herself.

On this, I can't help but think of an automobile advertisement of a few years ago, I think it was by Volkswagen, in which some parents buy a toy for some kids at a gas station. Advertising the mileage of the car, we next see the family when they finally stop again. The toy was a "Rapping Ball", which repeats, over and over again "I'm a rapping ball!"  The parents are sick to death of it when they stop.  I suspect that's generally what will be happening to Cyrus.  Or already is.

Epilogue II

I have to give Cyrus credit for having a unique talent for destructive self promotion.  Every time I think she, and therefore in this overbroadcasted world the rest of us, have hit rock bottom, she proves me wrong.  Not even a week or so has gone by in her clothless self promotion of her latest musical release when we now awake to find out that the news is reporting that she has had "rolling stone" tattooed on her feet.

I suppose this is some sort of odd shout out to the old phrase "a rolling stone gathers no moss", although I think relatively few people even know that there was such a phrase and think, instead, it's simply the odd name of a British rock band.  But it is such a phrase.  Of course, all rolling stones eventually come to rest and are reabsorbed by the earth or crushed into dust, so the ultimate lesson of the phrase isn't really cheery, in so far as that goes.  But as a phrase endorsing low material attachments, I suppose it has its merits.

It seems, however, that Ms. Cyrus is gather a lot of moss.  Perhaps stones that roll through a bog do gather moss.  Or rather she isn't so much a rolling stone as she is some poor creature caught in a swamp.  I suppose to really avoid those sort of attachments, and indeed to be a real rebel in this day and age, you'd actually probably have to enter a religious order with a high attachment to poverty.  There are such orders, of course, but I don't expect Cyrus, or Lady Gaga, to any such person, really be a true radical by taking such a course of action.

At any rate, I hope for a week with no Cyrus news soon.

Epilogue III

I happened to read the USA Today this morning and found that it had an article relevant to this discussion.  The article, moreover, is both revealing and not too surprising.

It turns out that almost all of the really libertine music popularized by young female musical performers recently has been written by, you guessed it, men.  Indeed, the whole exploitation of the female image, both musically and in terms of the video presentation of it is male in origin.  Basically, as the article concludes, what we're seeing and hearing isn't a female image of this topic at all, but rather a middle age male fantasy of it.  Women's aspirations and feelings in this arena remain quite traditional.  I suppose male explotation of females is, unfortunately, traditional also.  In other words, pimping remains male.

Over time, it seems that some musical artist exploited in this fashion have objected to it,  but not enough to prevent it.  Olivia Newton John apparently objected to the video for Physical, but not enough to keep it from occurring.  And Fiona Apple was horrified about the release of a video some years ago that depicted her nude, which she was pressured into doing.

So, not surprisingly, these videos are both destructive to females, and the product of males regarding women in a cartoonish way.  All the more the shame.