Essay Task - How does a star's image develops over time through a music video?

The star I will be analysing is Miley Cyrus. Active since 2001, the artist is focused in the Pop genre and is a singer/songwriter/actress. I will be analysing Miley as it is clear that she had made a rapid and dramatic change in her star image over the years. As she has aged, her videos have become more explicit as with the topics of her music.

In early videos, Miley was established as being a teenage idol. Miley was on her own TV show and her music career progressed from there. The image of being a good girl who was innocent and could do nothing wrong was appealing to children everywhere and her career was jumpstarted by the TV show. In her videos such as Best of Both Worlds it is clear that she is very innocent and young. This appeals to her target audience who want to be just like her.

Later in her career this image changed, she progressed into being a pop singer with still innocent music with clean content however as she got older this changed. Her videos and songs became much more explicit such as Wrecking Ball. She does not play a character is most of her music videos, she rather just lip syncs the song and dance to it. She is shown performing in some of the videos but this rarely occurs as she is more focused on her look than her performance. The most significant visual effect used was the wrecking ball, the swinging inspired copycats and imitators, this also paired with her twerking which became an online meme and a video sensation.

In most videos, Miley uses close-ups as her work relies on her appearance and therefore she showcases this as much as possible. The record company has portrayed her as being a sex symbol, this is a dramatic change from the innocent child she once was. She shortened her hair, perhaps to show a more rebellious side or to make a change. Her clothing is very explicit as she usually wear little to no clothing and wears the minimal amount accepted.

The artist was popular when she was younger due to teenagers her age wanting to be her, as people wanted to emulate her, her popularity grew. However once she grew too old for the innocent persona, she became a more explicit and sex symbol artist. In todays world, the sex symbol is a very popular look which is why she had so much support.

Overall it is clear that as Miley's career progressed, she had to adjust in order to survive, this meant that she needed to become the opposite to what she originally was.