MUSICVID #15: Miley Cyrus - Wrecking Ball

POSSIBLE POINTS OF INFLUENCE:

• Close-ups of the performer
• Close-ups of the feet

ACT: Miley Cyrus
TRACK: Wrecking Ball
RELEASE DATE:  2013
ALBUM: Bangerz 
DIRECTOR: Terry Richardson 
GENRE: Pop
LABEL: RCA Records (owned by SME)
SINGLE?: Second single, still before the full album has been released.

BACKGROUND

• Miley Cyrus started her rise to fame through acting in, at the age of 14 being a teenage star in the Disney children's TV series Hannah Montana, which
• The year after the series started she already released her debut studio album
• This was the second single of her fourth album, prior to this despite having a loyal following of young female fans, she wasn't well known with male audience

Description of the YouTube Video, promoting links to buy the full album through Amazon or Google Play. Other music videos are mentioned, and Miley Cyrus's website and social media accounts. Despite being able to subscribe on the red button right above, it's stressed again with a link towards the end. 

Themes 

• Classic post-feminist vs feminist debate
• Hammer as Freud's phallic symbol, very explicit sexual acts

PERFORMANCE:

31 seconds of close-up:
- Thick, Glossy Red Lipstick, sexual connotation. The Rule Of Thirds is followed as Miley's face is in deep focus.

Following this unconventional long take, there are three short takes for 6 secs.

Parodies

The male in female make-up is laughable, carrying on the hegemonic image that Miley Cyrus's look is normative for women. Clearly thinks that the hammer is a phallyc symbol



An old man, half naked waist upwards.



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REPRESENTATION THEORY - GENDER #4 - Post Feminism

A list of posts about post-feminism from DB Representation of Gender blog. 

REPRESENTATION THEORY - GENDER #3: VDB's Sexism Index

Vincent, Davis and Boruszkowski attempted to established a sexism index:

Four levels of sexism:

1. "Condescending"
2. "Keep Her Place" 
3. "Contradictory"
4. "Fully Equal"

(Laura Mulvey would say these are all elements that are pleasing towards a heterosexual male audience, thereby constituting the Male Gaze)

This lead them to one conclusion according to Andrew Goodwin, where they said

Females are portrayed as submissive, passive, yet sensual and physically attractive

Goodwin in his Dancing In The Distraction Factory saw this as highly problematic, as that this one conclusion "is banal", and that they "take no account of the androgynous disruption of masculinity (see Walser, 1989) that occurs in many heavy metal clips.

The three theorists conclude according to Goodwin,
"that rock videos perpetuate social norms so effectively"

REPRESENTATION THEORY - GENDER #2 - Judith Butler's Performative Gender Theory

Judith Butler is an American philosopher and gender theorist, argues that 



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Gender fluidity, the Other here?



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REPRESENTATION THEORY - CLASS #1/AUDIENCE - NRS Social Grade

From the wiki

Source: Entry from ukgeographics

Approximated Social Grade with its six categories A, B, C1, C2, D and E is a socio-economic classification produced by the ONS (UK Office for National Statistics) by applying an algorithm developed by members of the MRS Census & Geodemographics Group.

• It applies to every Household Reference Persons (HRP) aged 16 to 64. If they are not the HRP and were working in the week before the Census, they receive their own Social Grade. If not a HRP and not working in the week before the Census, they receive the Social Grade of the HRP (source: MRS MRS Census & Geodemographics Group).

• It is a discriminatory tool for media consumption and purchasing power in general. It has been used by National Readership Survey to discriminate readers of popular newspapers.

• The Social Grade model has been based on  Occupational Code 2010 code, Employment status, Qualification, Tenure and whether respondents work Full time, Part time or not working.

• Social Grade based on the Census 2011 data is available for all four UK countries (England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland).

Social Grade	Description	% HRP population (UK)
AB	Higher & intermediate managerial, administrative, professional occupations	22.17
C1	Supervisory, clerical & junior managerial, administrative, professional occupations	30.84
C2	Skilled manual occupations	20.94
DE	Semi-skilled & unskilled manual occupations, Unemployed and lowest grade occupations	26.05

Comparing 2001 and 2011 Social Grade !“A broadly similar approach was applied to the 2001 Census, however it should be noted that the 2001 and 2011 Social Grade outputs were modelled using different algorithms, employing different variables. Therefore, it would be misleading to use Census outputs to examine trends in approximated Social Grade profiles between 2001 and 2011” (https://www.mrs.org.uk/cgg/social_grade).
Household Reference Person – DEFINITION (source: ONS)The concept of a Household Reference Person (HRP) was introduced in the 2001 Census (in common with other government surveys in 2001/2) to replace the traditional concept of the ‘head of the household’.
HRPs provide an individual person within a household to act as a reference point for producing further derived statistics and for characterising a whole household according to characteristics of the chosen reference person.For a person living alone, it follows that this person is the HRP. If a household contains only one family (with or without ungrouped individuals) then the HRP is the same as the Family Reference Person (FRP).
For families in which there is generational divide between family members that cannot be determined (Other related family), there is no FRP. Members of these families are treated the same as ungrouped individuals.
If there is more than one family in a household the HRP is chosen from among the FRPs using the same criteria used to choose the FRP. This means the HRP will be selected from the FRPs on the basis of their economic activity, in the priority order:
Economically active, employed, full-time, non-student
Economically active, employed, full-time, student
Economically active, employed, part-time, non-student
Economically active, employed, part-time, student
Economically active, unemployed, non-student
Economically active, unemployed, student
Economically inactive, retired
Economically inactive, other
If some or all FRPs have the same economic activity, the HRP is the eldest of the FRPs. If some or all are the same age, the HRP is the first of the FRPs from the order in which they were listed on the questionnaire.
If a household is made up entirely of any combination of ungrouped individuals and other related families, the HRP is chosen from among all people in the household, using the same criteria used to chose between FRPs. Students at their non term-time address and short-term migrants cannot be the HRP.

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REPRESENTATION THEORY - GENDER #1: Laura Mulvey's Male Gaze Theory + Female Gaze

Laura Mulvey coined the term in her essay Visual Pleasures...