Textual analysis: 2 videos

How has the introduction of the internet impacted upon the representation of women in the music industry in texts such as Miley Cyrus' 'Wrecking Ball'?

(The video at the top is a directors cut, as it is banned from linking it to the blog)

Miley Cyrus's 'Wrecking Ball'

Miley Cyrus is using her new music styles and public appearances to change the image she wants, as she was a Disney star this is a video made to add the representation of her maturity to her performance. Two well known singles that have show cast her in a different light are the single hit videos 'Can't Be Tamed' and 'We Can't Stop', in which she uses partying and wild behaviour to show herself in a more mature manner.The style of video is narrative/abstract, as shown through the video Miley Cyrus is symbolising destruction which is the action or the process of causing so much damage to something that it no longer exists or cannot be repaired, but the destruction is a metaphor for her emotional distress. 

As Miley cyrus is nude in the video she has responded stating “I think the video is much more if people get past the point that I’m naked, If you actually look at me, you can tell that I actually look more broken than even the song sounds. The song is like this pop ballad that is one of those songs everyone is going to relate to, everyone’s felt that feeling at some point.”The use of colour is very evident and useful as the use of white is becoming a norm and identity of Miley's, as it was shown in 'We Can't Stop', in clothing and setting, which is representing her new beginning as a different person from being Disney's Hannah Montana. 

The close ups on her face are very intense and emotional, and is allows us to see the pain she is trying to get through in the video, this is vital and shown as an importance when she is naked especially,as we can see that it is meant to be a statement about vulnerability, rather than sexuality.

Internet exclusive interview: Radio broadcasting (one of the texts)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/24911610
Miley Cyrus says she's one of the biggest feminists

 Miley Cyrus has said she believes there is a "double standard" when it comes to men and women, and body image. She says, I feel like I'm one of the biggest feminists in the world because I tell women to not be scared of anything," she said. She also said that her on-stage persona and revealing outfits were all part of her act. "I don't actually walk around all day twerking with my tongue out dressed as a teddy bear." The 20 year old said she doesn't worry if people think badly of her controversial performances because she knows she is a "good person". 

Even though Miley is showing in numerous of ways through her videos, and steamingly cat fights on social networking sites with dirty dancing on live TV! In this specific interview Miley is represented in a different light as she says that she want's women not to be scared of anything. So in a positive way women are influenced strongly because Miley in this instance is showing that you should be who you are individually and not be dominated by another human being. The message she is showing through her 'act' may be looked differently through many people but as she is a 'good person' she isn't afraid or isn't always tensed on how people judge and view her performances. Because she's creating 'art' and as she says so whatever she does on live tv etc it's not like she's actually doing her signature moves and sticking out her tongue all day long, from this extract she is showing a message to her fans and believes highly on how of a high feminist she is.

Commenting on headlines suggesting she smoked marijuana at Sunday's MTV EMAs, she said: "I never worry about what I do on stage making me look bad."I think people if they actually knew me would be surprised at how normal I am."I'm definitely crazy but I'm normal. I feel like [I am] socially probably more acceptable than a lot of people in this industry because I've just always grown up around this and so I never have any kind of attitude."Miley has been criticized for the video for Wrecking Ball, which sees her swinging naked and licking a sledgehammer. 

Media magazine

Music with an edge

The music was, and is important because it always kept an edge to it. Unlike the Pop Idol panel, who treat the performer like a well-oiled machine that must continually pass its rolling programme of MOTs (tests on the voice in different styles, tests on the body in different costumes, tests on the personality in different promotional settings), the Factory produced a very different line of goods.

Factory artists were encouraged to stamp their own identity on the music, keep it personal and even 
joyously messy and awkward. Hence, Factory artists did not possess lead singers with Will-like qualities of harmony and pitch; they had singers with flawed (i.e. human), but always distinctive voices that were immediately recognisable. So Ian Curtis of Joy Division, Barney Sumner of New Order and Shaun Ryder of Happy Mondays all sung in a Northern monotone that established their music as ‘real’ not only in terms of emotion, but also in terms of place.

Keeping it local

For another vital thing about Factory Records is its sense of cultural geography: it expressed a very particular set of values, ideas and feelings about the city of Manchester. Like so much of the Factory story and of the wider tale of independent music production in this country (dance and rock, house and indie), this was made possible by the punk moment of the mid-to-late Seventies. Tony Wilson, co-founder of Factory Records, explains how he and his peers were inspired to get involved with creating their own music industry after watching the ultimate punk rockers, The Sex Pistols, at a live gig in Manchester:There are just forty two people in the audience, but every one of them is feeding on the power and strength and magic.

Musical freedom – 

I believe that this ‘power and strength and magic’ is largely the freedom to be young, to be angry, and to speak from a specific place with a particular identity. Such an idea now seems bizarre indeed at a time like ours, where so much music seems to come from some kind of Pop Utopia (literally the word ‘Utopia’ means ‘no-place’) or depthless post-modern hyperspace where the origins of the music and the artist are both carefully erased. And in today’s climate, how liberating and wonderful is Tony Wilson’s alleged comment: ‘I will never interfere with the freedom of my artists. Artists make their own rules.’?

Representation – For Every Band that’s Made it

There is a Band that Should Have The film’s informal mode of address and narrative style shape its cinematic representations. Focusing on the stories of the bands themselves, Anyone Can Play Guitar does not include any of the iconic imagery normally associated with commercial celebrity or music stardom. Notably absent are any glitzy mag snaps, gold-plated records, glamorous girlfriends or fan-swamped limos. Jon Spira explains the reasons why:The point of the film is not success, it’s to play guitar. That’s what the song is about really. Fame does usually define bands and I wanted to puncture that and show them as real people – part of a vibrant scene of bands, fans and promoters who inspired and encouraged each other.


Changes in the music industry

In the last decade the music industry has faced the most complex set of changes in its history. The conventional industry models have been challenged, largely due to the emergence of new technologies and new ways for music lovers to listen to, and own, the music they love. The industry is still struggling to deal with how these changes have affected their balance sheets, and the pace of change doesn’t look like slowing yet, but for those who wish to pursue a career in music, it’s important to see how many of these new developments can be used to your advantage.

a perfect way for artists to distribute music. While Napster made it easy for users to share other people’s music, it wasn’t a massive leap to imagine that artists could use the same technology to promote and distribute their own music, thus cutting out two of the important functions of a record company. In this new world, there would be no place for physical records; instead music would live as data on people’s computers. The advent of the iPod and its followers cemented this new paradigm. If, in the future, the distribution of music no longer requires anything to have a physical form at all, then its distribution could be virtually free. And, in fact, that has come true: the music rights organisation PRS for Music reported this year that CD and DVD revenues fell by £8.7 million in 2009, but digital revenues grew by £12.8 million.

Twitter hits the headlines

When Twitter started hitting the headlines in the UK it soon became a part of everyday conversation. Esther Addley, Senior Reporter at The Guardian, noted that, in November 2008, 40 articles about Twitter were published, by December 85 had appeared and by January 2009 it was 206. In January this year the first pictures of the Hudson River plane crash appeared from keen citizen journalists via TwitPic, Twitter’s photo-sharing client. By April, celebrities Demi Moore and her actor husband Ashton Kutcher added to Susan Boyle’s rise to fame when they tweeted about her extraordinary Britain’s Got Talent appearance, which, in the space of a few days, led to millions of YouTube views of the clip of her Les Miserables song.

Although social networking should be for everybody, it certainly seems that different sites attract different user demographics. Whilst Facebook was originally set up for university students in 2004 (you had to have a university email address to register) it soon spread to high school students before being universally accessible. Now it is used by those aged 13 (the lower age limit) to 103. The latter is no exaggeration; in 2008 the Daily Mail reported that the oldest Facebooker is 102-year-old (at the time) Ivy Bean, who currently lives in a nursing home in Leeds.

Twitter has yet to show its popularity amongst younger users; it tends to be more of a communication and publicity tool for professionals, which includes well-known politicians and celebrities. Organisations use the site to promote upcoming events or share news. Many universities and colleges are also jumping on the bandwagon to pass on information to students or use the site as a way to share current news.

Amazon books

In the limelight and under the microscope: forms and functions of female celebrity- http://www.amazon.co.uk/Limelight-Under-Microscope-Functions-Celebrity/dp/0826438555/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1384860340&sr=1-1&keywords=representation+of+female+celebrities

Page #2: "One reason why stories of professionally accomplished/personally troubled female celebrities circulate so actively is that when women struggle or fail, their actions are seen to constitute “proof” that for women the “work-life balance” is really an impossible one."

Some people still consider that women are traditionally constructed, and they believe it's impossible for them to work and if they have kids not able to work effectively. Therefore, when a celebrity struggles in their career and acting wise this is shown as evident of proof that they aren't able to 'work-life balance'. This is one of the representations depicted to women in today's society as they disbelieve the pure fact that women aren't as equal to men. 

Page #3: Indeed, a major strand of the coverage of physically, emotionally and or/financially “out of control” female celebrities is predicted on public fears that we don’t know what talent is anymore and that the traditional expectation that fame is based on talent dying out, giving rise to set to  “illegitimate” female celebrities who are famous for “nothing”.

From this quote in the book I can gather that it's trying to make a statement how people consider women to not be able to control themselves when it's to do with physical. This could be the way they look, if they put on a lot of weight the media straight away draws this to the audience and they are portrayed and represented as negatively. This therefore shows signs that they are unable to control themselves, and are recognised as a negative example to their fans. Emotionally, as women tend to get really weak and some may be sensitive as when they for example are dating it is shown over all the coverage. But when she has a break up but really loves the person she can emotionally break down and loose her control and this stereotypically leads to an overdose of medicines, taking drugs, or drinking an overdose of alcohol. From this specific quote it's stated how women tend to be famous for nothing, but some 

Page #5: new media networks can be seen to be changing the very ontology of celebrity. Exemplary in this regard is Lady Gaga, whose phenomenal rise to fame in recent years has been underpinned by a canny deployment of new media including haptic technologies that promulgate fantasies of enhanced intimacy with fans. Future work in celebrity studies will need to attend closely to the ways in which new communication channels such as Twitter feeds and interactive websites are re-writing the terms of celebrity/fan engagement, raising the stakes for Omni mediated (and seemingly omnipresent) celebrity and adapting to a fully convergent media environment. 

This is vital as it discusses the term on internet and technology and how advance it will become in the coming years, as the media and celebrities are related as their whole life is emphasized on the social networking sites.

Emillie Zaslow: Feminism, Inc: coming age in girl power media culture 
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Feminism-Inc-Coming-Power-Culture/dp/0230608140/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1385047093&sr=1-5&keywords=female+celebrity+identity

    "The term girl power entered our everyday lexicon when the short lived, but overwhelmingly, successful British pop singing group, the spice girls proclaimed that girl power was a way to identify with feminism without having to use what had become a ‘dirty word.’ The spice girls composed of five female performers each representing a different manufactured identity- Scary, posh, baby, sporty and ginger- which promoted a notion of girl power that was both feminine and feminist; they celebrated the athletic beside the cute and the spicy rage at being oppressed beside the desire to be decorated with the trimmings of femininity. Decked out in miniskirts, plunging necklines, and go-go boots, the spice girls sang of female solidarity, demanded the ability to control their relationships, and voiced their sexual desires."

As people have different opinions on how they represent different celebrities in this specific quote the spice girls as a group band who have gone about and have dressed up in what they want 'mini-skirts' and proclaiming to the world that they can actually control their relationships and voice their sexual desire. 

Gender, Branding and the modern industry: the social construction of female popular stars

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gender-Branding-Modern-Music-Industry/dp/0415894905/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1385047683&sr=1-1-fkmr0&keywords=female+representation+in+the+music+industry

"Many of the female artists who have since succeeded at the highest levels of the industry have adapted this formula to reflect contemporary cultural norms. Fergie, who has sold millions of singles and CD's as a solo artist and part of the Black Eyed Peas, exemplifies this strategy in action. In "Fergalicious" she teases her presumed male audience repeatedly, telling them how tasty, delicious, and hot, hot she is. But she also tells her presumed female audience that she has her reasons for teasing the men (turning them on and taking their money) and declares that she 'aint promiscuous all that shit is fictions'"

Miley Cyrus - From Hannah Montana To Twerking on MTV, A Look At The Life Of A Disney Child Star Who Grew Up To Be A Popular Singer And Social Media Powerhouse ... Cyrus Life Story, Twerking MTV Miley Cyrus) 

One of Cyrus’ comments about growing up really stuck with me: "People get a connection. They feel like like they really know you, and get really entitled ... and then [they say], 'She changed.' Well, yeah!"

Her point is a good one. Don’t we all, at some point, go through a transformation? The path from childhood to adulthood is tricky for nearly everyone, between social pressure from peers, media influences, and guidance from parents and teachers. Add the attention of the entire world into the mix and you’ve got a tricky situation. A lot of child stars fade from fame as they grow and later reemerge as a full-fledged adults, but Cyrus is different, because she never really left the spotlight. We’ve been watching her grow up, and to define herself as an adult.

Cyrus is right to address the negative attitudes toward her change. She’s entitled to form her own identity, and the people complaining because she’s not the same probably haven’t considered that celebrities are people, too.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Medial-Mirror-Female-Representations-Magazines/dp/3638645436/ref=sr_1_sc_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1385049659&sr=1-2-spell&keywords=representiation+of+females

The Medial Mirror - Female Representations in Men's and Women's Magazines

As I am studying texts in which miley cyrus is represented this is a vital book to view: "Images of femininity and masculinity are always present in every day life. Mass media supports the gender specific perception and forms the examples with which we are supposed to be conform. This contributes to the maintenance of stereotypic believes about men and women in our society. When we talk about images of women we mean all the little things that are connceted with the notion woman."

self evaluation

Review critical investigation research

WWW: I am reading thoroughly through relevant key terms from my question, picking up useful quotes.

EBI: - I need to complete my Google scholars tasks, which was due from homework and use relevant tasks and sum it up with my own quotes and notes on how it will help me in my critical investigation.

-Look at media magazines

- search different texts for which Miley Cyrus appears

- identify how the internet has impacted on different celebrities use examples

- continue thorough contextual analysis

Critical Investigation academic research GOOGLE SCHOLAR

Ten different relevant quotes
1. http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=r42C8NAGseUC&oi=fnd&pg=PR3&dq=representation+women+in+the+music+industry&ots=LHzHMv6JRB&sig=aWF7G7aXAHOuIvdSZJyOlslk0YE#v=onepage&q=representation%20women%20in%20the%20music%20industry&f=false
From the book "Women and popular music sexuality, identity and subjectivity"

Joni Mitchell was a singer in the 1960’s she was trapped of the dilemma in wanting a man but at the same time needing to be free. And she knew how to sign about it and demonstrated that she was capable of earning a living through selling her creativity. She was the woman who represented how all the women were like at that time trying to come to terms with her identity. In the 1970’s there was a norm created where women stayed at home and looked after the children whilst men were outside the home potentially to generate political structure.

As we live in a time where there is popular music over the past 20 years no more than five women have been appointed heads of any UK based record companies, major or otherwise in the US. Women in the music industry get frustrated of working in a record label company where it’s dominated by males.

2. http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=VAof87kvK84C&oi=fnd&pg=PP2&dq=+representation+of+women+in+the+music+industry+&ots=_F5loZ14iZ&sig=LO_4QMgZNdwp5kdeGsTimrriMgs#v=onepage&q=representation&f=false

From the book: "Gender, Branding and the modern music industry"

The music industry is in a state of constant flux, but for female pop stars, some things never change. For more than 3 decades there has been an imperative to look beautiful and be willing to emphasize sexuality in order to sell their music. Today technology speeding the pace of the industry and ever-younger starlets popping up, the impulse to sell sex above music is stronger than ever. 

3. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09589236.2012.681184#.Uoojy8TIZA1

Book: Images of powerful women in the age of 'choice feminism'

A number of scholars and journalists have argued that Western culture has become ‘sexualized’. Both women and men, they maintain, are highly sexualized in popular media. At the same time, scholars have examined the sexualization of women as part of a broader cultural ‘backlash’ against the gains of second-wave feminism and women's increasing power in society. We contribute to both of these fields with a longitudinal content analysis of four decades of Rolling Stone magazine covers. First, we analyze whether both women and men have become more sexualized over time and, if so, whether such increases have been proportionate. Second, we examine whether there is a relationship between women's increasing power in the music industry(as measured by popularity) and their sexualization on the cover of Rolling Stone. In the first case, we do not find evidence that US culture as a whole has become sexualized, as only women– but not men – have become both more frequently and more intensely sexualized on the cover of Rolling Stone. In the second case, we find evidence that sexualized images may be part of a backlash against women's gains since, as women musicians' popularity increased, they were increasingly sexualized and under-represented on the cover of Rolling Stone.

As in my question I am discussing specifically about texts, and one of the texts include a magazine. In this case it is Rolling Stone' and from this website they have identified how women's popularity has increased and have become continuously represented on the magazines and become more frequent and intensely sexuality.

                

                                

4. http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=QkPzCfr2Ei0C&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=miley+cyrus+bio&ots=BgnnbaKcdJ&sig=y2K91WivbCjTfbVBCyPNHrF4Ycc#v=onepage&q=miley%20cyrus%20bio&f=false

Miley Cyrus: A Biography

 By KIMBERLY DILLON SUMMERS

That little Miley Cyrus.. she’s like a little Elvis. The kids love her because she is Hannah Montana, but what people don’t realize about her is she is such a fantastic singer and songwriter. She writes songs like she’s 40 years old! She’s really deep! Music and the ability to perform are in Miley’s blood. To understand Miley, her values, and her work ethic, one must look at her background where it all started.

5. http://abs.sagepub.com/content/45/3/383.short

 Internet tools have become a significant conduit of social life and work life. The surveys of the Pew Internet & American Life Project in 2000 show that more than 52 million Americans went online each day, and there are significant differences in use between men and women, young and old, those of different races and ethnic groups, and those of different socioeconomic status. A user typology can be built around two variables: the length of time a person has used the Internet and the frequency with which he or she logs on from home. The authors contend that use of e-mail helps people build their social networks by extending and maintaining friend and family relationships.

6.http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/591311?uid=2&uid=4&sid=21102950720057

Social media technologies let people connect by creating and sharing content. We examine the use of Twitter by famous people to conceptualize celebrity as a practice. On Twitter, celebrity is practiced through the appearance and performance of ‘backstage’ access. Celebrity practitioners reveal what appears to be personal information to create a sense of intimacy between participant and follower, publicly acknowledge fans, and use language and cultural references to create affiliations with followers. Interactions with other celebrity practitioners and personalities give the impression of candid, uncensored looks at the people behind the personas. But the indeterminate ‘authenticity’ of these performances appeals to some audiences, who enjoy the game playing intrinsic to gossip consumption. While celebrity practice is theoretically open to all, it is not an equalizer or democratizing discourse. Indeed, in order to successfully practice celebrity, fans must recognize the power differentials intrinsic to the relationship.

7. 

5 Google Advance Search: Continuous notes and quotes

Institutional research 
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/nov/10/videos-miley-cyrus-rihanna-ratings
Sexually explicit music videos 'should have ratings system'
Campaign demands cinema-style restrictions on graphic material aimed at teenage girls

A growing clamour to tackle sexually explicit pop videos will find a new voice this week with the launch of a campaign group to demand cinema-style ratings on lewd content aimed at teenage and pre-teenage girls.
Critics of the pop singer Miley Cyrus, who has unleashed an extraordinarily sexualised new image on her young fanbase. Jo Heywood of Heathfield School called on parents and teachers to give girls alternative images to the ones being peddled to them.
Heywood endorsed the efforts of newspaper columnist and author Caitlin Moran, who has written a TV sitcom to combat what she calls the one-dimensional image of teenage girls being hyped by the pop industry. Moran says girls are being force-fed the notion that "being hot" is all that they should aspire to.

The debate over explicit lyrics and videos exploded last month with new material from Miley Cyrus, Rihanna and Robin Thicke all coming in for intense criticism. A survey this month by parenting website Netmums showed strong parental disapproval over sexualised content in many music videos.

Traditional media representations of femininity

http://revisionworld.co.uk/a2-level-level-revision/sociology/mass-media-0/media-representations-age-social-class-ethnicity-gender-sexuality-and-disability

• Wolf (1990) suggests that the images of women used by the media present women as sex objects to be consumed by what Mulvey calls the male gaze. According to Kilbourne (1995), this media representation presents women as mannequins: tall and thin, often US size zero, with very long legs, perfect teeth and hair, and skin without a blemish in sight. Wolf notes that the media encourage women to view their bodies as a project in constant need of improvement.

http://uk.eonline.com/news/457670/miley-cyrus-says-wrecking-ball-video-is-about-much-more-than-her-naked-body

Miley bares her soul—and her body—in her just-released "Wrecking Ball" music video. Though it's already broken the VEVO record for most views in 24 hours, the Terry Richardson-directed clip has also caused plenty of controversy. During a Sept. 11 Elvis Duran and the Morning Show radio interview, however, Cyrus downplayed the video's in-your-face nudity.

"I think the video is much more [than that]. If people get past the point I make, and you actually look at me, you can tell I look more broken than even the song sounds," she explained of the haunting track, produced by Dr. Luke and Cirkut.

he song is a pop ballad that everyone can relate to; everyone has felt that feeling at some point. If people can take their minds off the obvious and go into their imagination and see what the video really means, it is so vulnerable."

Cyrus, as more than 19 million viewers know, spends much of the video in tears. "If you look at my eyes, I look more sad than actually my voice sounds on the record," she pointed out. "It was a lot harder to do the video than it was to record the song. It was much more of an emotional experience."

http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/files/2012/05/miriam-lowe.pdf

Research into the Representation of Gender and Body Image in the Press: A Visual and Textual Analysis Examining the Presentation, Portrayal and Treatment of Gender and Body Image in British National Daily Newspapers
A growth in the production and consumption of celebrity and as a result has spawn an interest and concern for its potential impact and effect on society. Like it or loath it, celebrity culture is with us: it surrounds us and even invades us. It shapes our thought and conduct, style and manner. It affects and is affected by not just hardcore fans but by entire populations” (Cashmore 2005: 6).Combine the increasing importance of celebrity with the way body image and gender is portrayed in the media, the potential for physical and psychological damage certainly demands serious attention. Numerous studies have been conducted over the years that have also concentrated on the link between the ideal body image promoted in magazines and body dissatisfaction, not only amongst women but men too.

http://uk.eonline.com/news/457670/miley-cyrus-says-wrecking-ball-video-is-about-much-more-than-her-naked-body

Miley Cyrus responds to pot-smoking controversy following EMAs

In the wake of the fresh batch of hand-wringing over her Just Being Miley, Cyrus took to Twitter to lay out her case. “Sometimes in life you just gotta decide to not give AF,” she wrote.

Meanwhile, MTV finds themselves in the good graces of a group that typically condemns them: The Parents Television Council. That groupapplauded MTV for editing out the footage of Cyrus smoking when the show was rebroadcast on Stateside MTV.

“Last night MTV made a responsible decision and they executed it perfectly,” PTC President and M.I.A. nemesis Tim Winter said. “It is unclear whether MTV’s actions suggest stricter content guidelines for its TV-14 programming, or whether this is just an example of the old saying that ‘even a broken clock is right twice each day.’ We certainly hope it is the former. We applaud MTV for taking responsible actions to eliminate the drug use from its U.S. broadcast, and we urge them to make that a uniform policy for all of its programming.”

Tutorial targets 4/11/13

• Quote tweets (use the guardian)
• Book research - representation/music industry
• Guardian articles - feminist point of view
• Textual analysis of video- media language used 
• Include all references