Wednesday 19 October 2016

MVid EG7: Miley Cyrus - Wrecking Ball

The music video for Miley Cyrus Wrecking Ball was released on September 9th 2013. 
The song debuted on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 at number fifty, and later became Cyrus' first number-one single in the United States after the release of its controversial music video. It retained the peak position during the following week. 
Nine weeks later, the track returned to number one, and consequently had the largest gap between number-one sittings in Billboard Hot 100 history. 
As of January 2014, "Wrecking Ball" has sold three million copies in the United States. 
Internationally, the song charted strongly; it topped the charts in Canada, Spain and the United Kingdom, and charted in the top ten throughout much of Europe and Oceania.


Intertextuality: 

The video has been inspired by Sinead O'Connor's music video for her song Nothing Compares 2 U. 
There is some intertextuality to O'Connor's video in terms of the extreme close-up at the beginning, where they both sing. 



Post-feminism: 

As Lady GagaMiley Cyrus also considers herself to be a post-feminist. A traditional feminist might see Wrecking Ball and Miley Cyrus as disgraceful and a sexual object because she is barely wearing any clothes. Other's might also argue that Miley might be exploited by her director Terry Richardson, allthough the people who know his work would argue that this is very normal for his work since he is involved in a lot of controversery music videos and photo shoots where the woman is exploited. However as the post-feminist she is, Cyrus believes that she is presenting the idea that she is free and  creating the art of music. 

Normative: 

Another point i wanted to comment on is her hair, since she is breaking the typical gender stereotype of females needing to have long hair and males having short hair. This again is a stereotype that has become a normative in society. This might also be the reason why it has been so difficult for Cyrus to break free from this stereotype and may be the reason for why she has gotten so much critiscism over the past few years. Through her hair she is being counter hegemonic, as she decides to ignore the restrictions of society hence breaking the gender stereotypes. 

Costume:

Her costume consisting of the white panties, white tank top and the black combat boots, exposes her body and in particular her strong arms. The arms are usually also seen as a gender stereotype of males having muscels and women having thinner arms. However, her arms are shown as muscular, which  would then be the stereotype of her being a lesbian, because she has short hair as well. Again, this is a  very stereotypical normative. However, the top is a form of crop top, which is also a feminine aspect of clothes and connotes that she is in some way mixing up the stereotypes and fighting against them.  

2 comments:

  1. you embedded this in Mulvey post - add an UPDATE with link to this post

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