America thrives on the frisson created by the image of the tits-in-your-face, bare-midriffed sex goddess who is nonethless virginally pure and a repository of Christian moral values.
The controversy is an expression of America’s disappointment that Miss Cyrus has now been taken off that pedestal and cast into the pit of sluts that lies at its base alongside Brittney Spears and several ex-Miss Americas.
Too bad. Next candidate, please!

Posted by: ralphieboy | Apr 29 2008 20:17 utc | 4

Having sacrificed Anna Nicole and Britney upon the altar of the in the past year, we have a new representative goddess of debased Spectacle culture ready to take the ritual stage.
Her name is Miley Cyrus.
Her young age, certainly fits the bill for a sacrificial goddess, if we remember good ol’ James Frazier’s the Golden Bough:

“The honour of living for a short time in the character of a god and dying a violent death in the same capacity was not restricted to men in Mexico; women were allowed, or rather compelled, to enjoy the glory and to share the doom as representatives of goddesses. Thus at a great festival in September, which was preceded by a strict fast of seven days, they sanctified a young slave girl of twelve or thirteen years, the prettiest they could find, to represent the Maize Goddess Chicomecohuatl. They invested her with the ornaments of the goddess, putting a mitre on her head and maize-cobs round her neck and in her hands, and fastening a green feather upright on the crown of her head to imitate an ear of maize. This they did, we are told, in order to signify that the maize was almost ripe at the time of the festival, but because it was still tender they chose a girl of tender years to play the part of the Maize Goddess.”

And what is it with all the Disney links anyway?–Britney, Justin, Christina?
More to the point, why are these goddess symbols almost always blondes, at least when first (re)presented to us–something about “amber waves of grain,” maybe? In the Aztec version of the representative goddess sacrifice, you certainly have the golden color of the maize to correlate with this prevalence of blonde goddesses in the pantheon of our Spectacle cult-sure.
Does that make us the new Aztecs?
How long before Miley is doing the public nudity and scandal circuit, the blow and lesbian-teasing with whoever her generations Paris Hilton will be? How long before the eventual crash, which the entrained consumers of Spectacle secretly need and yearn for?
Hopefully it never comes. We’ve seen that script too many times already.
Perhaps, though, the secret-agent angle of Miley’s Disney show points to a different symbolic role than that of sacrificial goddess. Mayhaps, hers will be more of a magickian-priestess role, a mistress of illusion, a la Madonna.
Or maybe she’ll just grow up, become a mom and retire to a farm somewhere.
And grow a mullet.
And be happy, well adjusted and a master of herself.
Let’s go for that one. And I’ll do my part for the cause by never mentioning or paying attention to young Ms. Cyrus’ image again. Like that “Leave Britney Alone!” guy knows, if it’s being represented to you–it’s just that, an image: an illusion for consumption and addiction; a false celebrity idol we are intended to sacrifice emotions, time and psychic energy to, anyway; that is, before we sacrifice the unfortunate one who bears that image.
Enjoy the ride, Miley.
Me, I’m getting off at the next exit ramp and going on a ride of my own.

Posted by: Ghost of Saddam Hussein | Apr 29 2008 20:52 utc | 6

Sorry b. I have a completely different take on this. I suspect that you may be falling for an artificially instigated controversy.
After seeing the images and what they are trying to achieve (moving the product from Hannah Montana teenie bop queen to Miley Cyrus slightly ‘hip’ adolescent), it wouldn’t surprise to to hear that daddy Billy-Ray used some of his contacts in the Country Music/xtian loon nexus to create the fuss about an otherwise rather mundane photo shoot. Jeez Liebowitz has even taken to putting herself into the frame, one of the chief instigators of the sick culture of celebrity is determined not to miss out herself. The fact annie libeowitz is a low life peddler of corporate propaganda is totally unrelated to her ethnicity. That is a side track anyway. Billy Ray prolly paid the xtians to kick up.
The obscenity has nothing to do with sex, it is the deliberate efforts of Billy Ray and the xtians along with the corporate media to draw pre teens into the life style of consumption that is obscene and the fact that the xtian loons had nothing to say about that (wouldn’t want to bite the hand that feeds them) that betrays their real agenda, that is to cash in on some of the whole hanah/miley lucre.
When miley finishes her teenage rebel thing she will undoubtedly be getting born again in some televangelist show near you. This is one tightly controlled highly packaged product. There won’t be any more than a few vague rumours of miley/hannah doing a britney. just enough to titillate the teens and keep ‘the buzz’ going.
see how the younger girl is before the cameras too, she is gonna be shoe horned into the hannah montana persona while miley ‘grows up’ with her target group.
It’s sick stuff but it can’t be fought thru the media, even blogs prolly, since any reaction at all is twisted into ‘a positive’ for the product.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Apr 29 2008 22:10 utc | 8

Recall, if you will, ABC/Disney and Scholastic, Inc. Solicited Teachers to Peddle Lies with “The Path to 9/11” etc…
Also, some of you may have caught this last time I posted on the topic.

Document 4: United States Embassy, Iran Cable from Edward C. Wells to the Department of State. “Motion Pictures–The Film Two Cities,” May 16, 1950.
Source: National Archives. Record Group 59. Records of the Department of State. Decimal Files, 1950-1954.
Suggests Walt Disney might help out with propaganda.

Lets not forget, Dr. Eric Haseltine former NSA head is now at Disney.
Dr. Haseltine brings more than 23 years of private-industry experience to NSA/CSS, most recently serving as the Executive Vice President, Research and Development at Walt Disney Imagineering in California. Prior to over 10 years at Walt Disney Engineering working in various research and development senior leadership positions, Dr. Haseltine was employed by Hughes Aircraft as their Director of Engineering.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Apr 30 2008 4:33 utc | 10

Better to spend their time on this.

The Department of Defense statistics are alarming — one in three women who join the US military will be sexually assaulted or raped by men in the military.

One in three.

Posted by: beq | Apr 30 2008 10:57 utc | 12

maybe pertinent to this thread is the term “tween,” as in the relatively new (and extremely lucrative) marketing demographic of children be-tween 8-13 years old. One reason this age group is so sought after, besides their discretionary cash, is their influence over their parents when it comes to expensive new-tech products. Because Y/Z generations have grown up with so much technology, the thinking goes (and studies show) they often know more about the products than their parents.
It doesn’t hurt that the increasing invasiveness of advertising and the willingness of parents to subject their toddlers and infants to literally kid programming has prepared these tweens to absorb without question the images and messages fed to them by an industry that boasts cradle-to-grave marketing as its goal.
And it must be working. How else to explain the conversation i had with my coworker today? We were discussing the “controversy” of Disney pimping their jailbait for Vanity Fair, when he described going to a birthday party with his six year old daughter. The birthday girl was apparently wearing knee high leather boots with heels and a short skirt. It’s like the sick/sad world of pageant whore-ifying is spilling into generally accepted pre-tween fashion. Did these kids watch Hannah Montana? You better believe it.
And we wonder why there’s so many sexual predators prowling social networks online?

Posted by: Lizard | Apr 30 2008 20:42 utc | 14