The New York Daily News reports that just days after Disney tried to shame Vanity Fair and photographer Annie Leibovitz for releasing a photo of tween Disney Channel sensation Miley Cyrus wrapped in a bed sheet, it’s been revealed that the company is selling Disney underwear in China via billboards that show adolescent models wearing even less. A Disney spokesman claimed the Chinese ad “has caught us totally by surprise” –– which seems about as credible as the suggestion that the company had no idea what was happening on Leibovitz’s set. The shock shouldn’t be that Disney is selling sex; the shock should be that Disney is not only feigning shock, but that they’ve turned feigning shock into a business model.
Earlier this week, Stu Van Airsdale at Defamer tried to deflate the hysteria (or, depending on your perspective, stoke it even more) by suggesting that the Cyrus photo does nothing more than speak to a truism of our culture: “teenagers ****.” “Disney can tell Annie Leibovitz no,” Stu wrote, “And a few hundred million dollars’ worth of Hannah Montana franchise decline will only illustrate how quickly the company would have interceded had it had the chance.”
But of course, it’s not that simple, and if Disney actually loses any money from any of this, I’d be seriously surprised. A Disney corporate policy has emerged, and its pure honesty is refreshing: You want to sell underwear to teens? Show teens wearing underwear. You want to sell a tween icon of repressed desire? Create a faux-scandal in which that icon is forced to apologize, atone for and make a big public show of repressing desire.
Because Miley Cyrus isn’t just a Disney channel star in the mold of a young Hilary Duff or Britney Spears, who offered Disney-appropriate values with a wink-wink, which they summarily abandoned as soon as they hit voting age––Miley Cyrus has made millions of dollars by namedropping Jesus. More specifically, she’s sold the idea that Christian worship is compatible with all the other things teenagers like to do: shop, shop for inappropriate clothing, wear inappropriate clothing whilst dancing suggestively, and generally devote most of their free time to feigning sexual confidence without actually earning it. Yes, some teenagers ****, but most teenagers play-act sexiness long before they actually confront the scariness of Sex for Realsies.
Disney understands that there’s money to be made from an update of the Catholic school girl, a role model who plays up a sexed-up image whilst reminding her fans that it’s all surface, that no matter how it might appear, she never goes all the way. And maybe Miley Cyrus goes all the way in really life, but if so, she should really keep that to herself for as long as possible––as the Saga of Britney has taught us, a woman who actually has sex is far less desirable than a raging ball of tease and restraint who can’t possibly take responsibility for her own sexiness. And that’s really the game that Disney is playing as well––they’re putting the sex out there, and then pretending like it’s happening magically, without their knowledge or consent. In some twisted way, it’s absolutely genius.
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SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth