Now that every card-carrying citizen in the United States of America has had a chance to weigh in with their thoughts on the fact that a fifteen year-old megastar appeared in the pages of Vanity Fair with her shoulder vulgarly exposed for all the world to see, I figured I’d throw in my own two cents on the matter, if only for posterity’s sake.
You see, the thing about this week’s whole Miley Cyrus Media Melee is: it’s good for literally everyone on Earth.
The Media - Having reached its Celebrity Coverage saturation point after collectively pushing Britney Spears to the precipice of an existential abyss, the news media’s collective unconscious seemed to suffer a shift towards apathy when it came to celebrity news, backing off on the round-the-clock, in-your-face TMZ-coverage while everyone tried to wash off the emotional filth they felt after the whole Britney fiasco. Now that enough time has passed for everyone to feel borne again, their celebrity bloodlust is greater than ever, and as the South Park creators so perceptively pointed out, Miley Cyrus has emerged as America’s next sacrificial virgin. Miley’s exposed neck in Vanity Fair – despite its relative unimportance when compared to other things currently happening in the world – finally gave the news vampires something to sink their fangs into. And like Radiohead said, we suck young blood.
Miley Herself – Miley has been groomed to become a celebrity phenomenon since before she was even born, when Billy Ray’s one-hit wonder “Achy Breaky Heart” finally sunk its way out of the Top 100 and the family had to find a new way to sustain their newfound way of wealthy living. And she’s embraced this path every step of the way, an eager participant in her own Hollywoodificiation. This will be the event that finally pushes her through the ceiling of teen fame and into the wild, weird realm of household-name certifiable International Superstardom.
The Disney Company - Behind the fame is the fortune, and as the Miley Cyrus business goes bigtime (some estimate her potential worth to be in the billions), so do the profits of her corporate shareholders. Sure, they’re going to do their “concerned outrage” song and dance in the press, but make no mistake, Mileygate is money in Mickey’s cartoon pockets. She might not be appearing in their kids programming much longer, but that’s chump change in comparison to the TV shows, albums, and movies for grown-ups they plan to put her name on.
Read the rest, after the jump!
Vanity Fair – Do you think no one was paying attention when New York Magazine dropped jaws and broke sales records by putting Lindsay Lohan nudie pics into the pages of their so-called high-brow magazine? You can bet that the Miley photographs, and the ensuing media outrage (ie, every newspaper, magazine, website and cable news show’s total inability to talk about anything else for an entire week) was coldly considered, calculated and executed by the magazine’s marketing and editorial higher-ups, who were looking to move some product. And boy have they ever, with record hits to their website and what will undoubtedly be record sales in recent memory.
You & Me & Everyone Else – Let’s get real: we love sh*t like this. If Miley hadn’t come along and bared her shoulder for the world to scorn at, what the hell would we even have to think about this week? Whether those girls from The Hills might show up to the same party again? Who will be the next person to win American Idol and subsequently be forgotten? The next President of the United States!?! Been there, done that, so five minutes ago. Miley – like Jesus – sacrificed herself and her shoulder for each and every one of us, becoming a national symbol of immorality and poor judgement whose media flogging we can watch with self-righteous indignation as we absolve ourselves of the errors of our own ways.
Everyone wins, and the only thing about this we really need to be concerning ourselves with is: who the hell did her make-up? It looks terrible.
