Miley Cyrus

Miley Cyrus is known as a teenage icon through her acting and singing career. From the age of just 11, she rose to fame as a Disney Channel star by casting the role of Hannah Montana, a children's television series about a teenager who runs two lives; one normal and one as famous pop star. Now at the age of 20 years old, she is building up her own unique style and image to attract an older audience rather than the Hannah Montana image and young audience that she left behind a while ago. Being the daughter of the country singer Billy Ray Cyrus, Miley has been in the starlight of America from a very early age.

Throughout Miley's career, she has been represented through various media texts in all kinds of approaches such as photo shoots, music videos, album covers, posters, magazines/newspapers, film and TV. During her time at Disney she was known to be represented as a young innocent 12 year old with her young role in the children's TV series Hannah Montana. The Disney series helped her to make the move towards the music industry by bringing her own songs and voice into the series, which then became so popular they were made into an album. Miley then began to explore the representation of other texts, for example she started to do photo shoots to influence the image of innocent, young, Disney star to her fans and audiences ranging from the age of 7-15 years. As she progressed through Disney, she took on the role as Hannah Montana more seriously with the various released albums and a film which demonstrated her maturing into a teenager. Her soundtrack of the film introduced her to country and adult contemporary markets which helped lead to her adult image.

During the past few years, Cyrus has developed an adult image and mainstream pop sound with the album called 'The Time Of Our Lives' (2009) and her maturing image progressed with the film 'The Last Song' and her third album 'Can't Be Tamed' in 2010. These albums featured more prominent dance elements than her earlier releases and was promoted through sexually-themed performances. In these texts, Miley presents herself as a teenage icon and shows that she has matured from the Disney stage of her career to a more adult career. However she also promotes sex appeal to the audiences due to the long hair, revealing tops, the eye line in photos and the shorts and other clothing she wears to show off her figure.




Throughout the past year, Miley has progressed through a different route as she has developed the ability to perform more revealing and provocative music videos, photo shoots, interviews etc. Her audience first noticed this change when she bought out her latest songs "We Can't Stop", "Wrecking Ball" and when she performed with Robin Thicke at the VMA Awards earlier this year. Her image makes the audience feel like she has moved on from her Disney days to a fun, young adult but some believe the change could be bad due to her younger audiences who were big fans of Hannah Montana, becoming influenced by her actions of drink, drugs and sex.



I decided to analyse one of Miley's older music videos to demonstrate the contrast of her image from 2009 to now. Here is her video for 'Party In The U.S.A' which was released in 2009.

- Sex appeal shown through the camera angles and medium shots of the hips and legs which are shown through the mise en scene of the tight shorts. -revealing top also supports this.
- Cutting rate of the camera in sync with the beat of the song helps involve the audience into the video.
- Master shot of Miley singing with a vintage microphone on a stage with the American flag which supports the title of the song. - Just her on stage brings across a rebellious side as she has no backing singers, instruments or band members.
- Establishing shot at the beginning to identify the desert styled scene and the typical teenage rebellion especially when the friends and Miley are dancing and singing on the back of cars.
- Mise en scene of Miley roughing her hair up with her hands throughout the video supports the sex appeal but indicates the innocents she still holds within her.
- Particular shots of her getting out of a car in style showing that shes the spotlight of the video especially with the cowboy boots.