To what extent are young women such as Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift
represented stereotypically in the pop music industry today?
The representation of young women differs in different
areas of the media, but is rapidly changing. ‘The representation of females
in film has become much more narrow and cartoon like than in the 20s, 30s, 40s
and 50s’ (10). Young women from the ages of 18-25 in the pop music industry
are becoming increasingly objectified within their material and music videos
launched into the media proving this in the documentary Miss Representation it
states ‘In the 1990’s
studies found a steady increase in explicitly sexual images in advertising‘ But this could also conform with most texts within the media. I am
going to be investigating how young artists such as Miley Cyrus and Taylor
Swift are represented and how they represent their selves in the pop music
industry today, by analysing Miley Cyrus' music video 'We Can't Stop' (3) from her new album Bangerz (1) and Taylor
Swifts music video 'We Are Never Ever
Getting Back Together' (4) from her album 22. (2)
Firstly I will be exploring whether young female artists are consciously
objectifying themselves within their music video’s to increase their success or
whether they are just puppets for the music industry. Secondly I will analyse
the lyrical content of the two artists and how it investigates their
chosen theme of the song. And lastly I will be discussing the effects that both
of these points can have on the artists ‘intended’ audience and what the
consequences of this might be. To help answer these investigations I
will be applying a number of theories such as: Laura Mulvey’s – The Male
Gaze and how women are objectified and seen through the eyes of a male.
Hyperreality and postmodernism will be discussed to see if there is a true
representation of ‘real women’. Uses and Gratifications will also be applied to
assess how representations affect others and reasons why they watch and listen
to music by artists such as Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift.
The Male Gaze, developed by feminist, Laura Mulvey describes how the
audience, or viewer, is put into the perspective of a heterosexual male. (5)
This can be applied to most visual texts in the media industry and specifically
music videos such as Miley Cyrus’ ‘We
Can’t Stop’ (3) from her album Bangerz (1). Discarding any technical
aspects, in the first fifteen seconds we see Miley in a tight white crop top
and leggings, being forced to see a lot of her body and this is where the
objectification starts. However to contrast in Taylor Swifts music video ‘We are never ever getting back together’
(4) you could say that it subverts to the idea of objectification, and that the
audience of this video is not necessarily put into the perspective of a male.
There are no obvious ways of Taylor being objectified or looked at in a sexual
way. Even in Miley’s video the mis en scene gives sexual connotations, as the
first thing you see is a bed – the first thing that comes to my mind when
seeing a bed is sleep, or sex. However in Taylor’s video again like Miley she
is in her bedroom, but the environment that she is in would seem a lot more
homely with things like bright colours in the background and stuffed birds,
which would be seen as childish. Also Taylor is wearing some bright colourful
pyjamas that do not show any skin or fragment or objectify her body.
Today people might say that young female artists are consciously
objectifying themselves to increase their success in the industry. Laura Mulvey
states that ‘There are circumstance in
which looking itself is a source of pleasure, just as in the reverse
formulation, this is pleasure in being looked at’ (6). This could conform
to artists such as Miley Cyrus. Being a former Disney star meant that she had
been given a ready-made image from the ‘good girl’ character she played for the
show ‘Hannah Montana’. However to subvert the Disney image she had been given, in
2013 Miley bought out her new mature, all grown up album ‘bangerz’ (1)
including the controversial singles such as ‘We Can’t Stop’ (3) and ‘Wrecking
Ball’ (7). My question is whether or not producing such ‘mature’ and
provocative music/videos have gained much more success compared to more laid
back and not so sexualized music from artists like Taylor Swift. When the music
video for ‘We Can’t Stop’ (3) came out it hit
10.7 million views within the first 24 hours, it was the fasted video to hit
100 million views and broke the record of most views in 24 hours (8). As of
now the video has almost 300m views on YouTube (3) Where as Taylor Swift’s
music video to ‘We are never ever getting back together’ has the smaller number
of almost 200m views but was released 10 months before Miley’s. Is Miley’s
video more popular because of the objectification and sexual connotations, and
what are the differences between the two? There is such a big contrast within
the visual content of both videos. In
the ‘We Can’t Stop’ video (3) during the chorus of the song the scene is shot
where Miley is singing lying on a bed and the camera is placed in between her
legs and shot with hand held motion, making it seem as if you were there. This
is clearly putting the audience into the position of a male or someone who
would gain scopophillia from the view of Miley’s crotch and cleavage. You can
see that Miley here is consciously objectifying her self by the way she moves
on the bed and leaning her chest towards the direction of the camera. However
if you look at the first chorus of Taylor’s video (4) it’s a totally different
story. The shot is of her almost, childishly dancing in big chunky glasses and
a pair of printed pyjamas with her band members in fluffy animal costumes. The
shot is of a room full of people so she isn’t the main focus disenabling you to
really fragment or objectify her body as there are no close ups and there is a
narrow depth of field therefore everything/everyone in the shot is clearly in
focus. Analysing both text you could
definitely say that Miley’s video adheres to the idea that objectification and
sexual maturity in her videos has gained her more success. You can determine
weather it was a conscious decision by looking at previous music videos of hers
that are not so grown up such as the video for ‘When I look at you’ (9) from
2010 only has 96,024,138 views, which isn’t even half of the views for her
current video, and then later she bought out ‘can’t be tamed ’(9) which
involved slightly more mature content later in 2010 and gained even more views.
(Ending of this needs to be improved…)
In society today, one of the
stereotypes of women are that they are dependent of a man and that men are the
ones with power. I the documentary Miss Representation Jackson Katz states that
the media today is ‘socializing boys to believe being a man is
being in charge and dominate’ (10)
the content of Taylor swifts song ‘We are never ever getting back together’
from her album ‘red’ (2) subverts from this idea. The song is written about an
ex-boyfriend, in which she has the power of saying that they’re never getting
back together, in this she is the one with the power and in control of the
situation.
-
Miley Cyrus ‘we can’t stop’ – stereotype of teenager wreckless etc. trying to
show maturity – not succeeding? (more to add... stuck on how to write/analyse
lyrics….)
Lastly I am going to be discussing what effects the previous two points
have on the ‘intended’ audiences of both artists. Considering Miley’s old image
of being a ‘Disney girl’, her audience started rather young, as teenage girls
would tune in to watch her on ‘Hannah Montana’ playing a young teenage girl
living her dreams of being a pop star. But as Miley has grown up, so has her
audience, now making her a role model for an audience of teenage girls and
young women.
- Hyperreality: Miley is a false representation of reality. Copying a
copy – such as Madonna.
-18th June 2013 Miley Cyrus was voted to
be ‘the worst celebrity role model for young girls’ in a poll of 2,407 parents
(11)
! Conclusion !
(My
second 2 aims are yet to be finished but there are some notes of things to
include underneath)
Bibliography:
(1) Miley Cyrus ‘Bangerz’
(2) Taylor Swift ‘22’
(5) http://katiehamilton25.blo
gspot.co.uk/2012/09/the-male-gaze-theory.html
(10) Miss representation documentary
