Meet the New Sacrificial Goddess? Same as the Old One?
October 2, 2007 by cadeveo
Having sacrificed Anna Nicole and Britney upon the altar of the Spectacle 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.
Forget The Police, Justin Timberlake or Bruce Springsteen. The undisputed hottest concert ticket of the year is for 14-year-old pop star Miley Cyrus, star of the Disney Channel’s “Hannah Montana” TV show.
Fans are so desperate for seats to her 54-date tour, kicking off later this month, that venues have sold out in as little as four minutes and scalpers are getting four to five times the face value — creating a torrent of complaints from frustrated parents.
“We knew it was hot, but we had no idea it was this crazy,” said Debra Rathwell, senior vice president of AEG Live, which is handling her tour. “It’s like the Beatles.”
About 12,000 seats for the Memphis show were gone in 8 minutes. It took 15 minutes in Columbus, Ohio, and swift sellouts have been reported across the country — Nashville, Miami, Lexington, Ky. The Kansas City Council is investigating the matter.
One ticket for the show in Charlotte, N.C., sold for $2,565.
Miley, daughter of country music singer Billy Ray Cyrus, plays high school student Miley Stewart, who lives a secret double life as a famous pop star, Hannah Montana. Her show reaches 5 million viewers a week.
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.
That she comes from money doesn’t quite fit the profile, for what that’s worth. Miley’s the daughter of a wealthy country singer, after all. Perhaps we could stretch things and say that since country (ol’ Billy Ray’s twangy mullet music) represents the salt-of-the-earth, the farming region, and the heartland Miley’s rise still resonates with cross-cultural sacrifices of representative goddesses centered upon the harvest. Who knows.
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.
***
For more thoughts in this vein, see:
Anna Nicole Smith and the Other Goddess Worship
The Bald Call: From Isht to ISht
I ain’t a prophet, I’m a poet. And after 9 months writing this site, I’m getting ready to birth somethin’ new…
Posting from outside the U.S.S.A.? Or are back already?
Now you have hit a subject near and dear to my heart, namely, music. I won’t go into why but I have a damn strong opinion (okay, stronger than usual) about music, and to a lesser extent, movies and literature (to use the term loosely these days) But the lowering of the standards that comedian Bill Hicks once spoke about is alive and well. Thriving in fact. When once upon a time you had to actually be able to play an instrument, be able to write your own music or at least be a competent vocalist, that’s all changed. We live in an age of staff songwriters, studio musicians, pitch correcting technology (Shanaia Twain, Aguilera, Spears etc, etc) and the next Big Thing is never an actual band anymore. Remember those? Where a group of people would come together around a common goal and creative ideal? You’d write, rehearse, record, play shows where ever anyone would book you, and write, rehearse and record some more. This would often go on long enough to try the patience of everyone involved. Usually tempers would flare. And if everyone persevered and endured you might wind up signing a contract and going out on big tours. All this to say, the fame and fortune (fortune is assuming you had the good sense to have the contract looked over by a lawyer first) was something that was arrived at by way of, gasp, choke, HARD WORK and dedication. And then some people just make their living on the fringes. Do any of you who read this have any idea how much brilliant original music exists out there that you’ve never heard of because it isn’t “marketable”? Sad indeed.
Anyway, I know this wasn’t what you were aiming at El Cadly, but you mentioned all the right names on the right subject and off I went.
But I do have to ask - Why do the masses require watching public figures go down in flames? It’s been this way for awhile and it’s f*cking weird. Pathological I think. Is it the same thing that causes people to stop and watch car accidents?
I wonder.
HCE
It’s all a game. It’s all about generating specific mind-sets and emotions.
The further you debase a culture, the more low-level energy you can get that culture to generate. On some level it is all about feeding…
Thanks. I never thought to match up Cyrus with Spears and Smith.
I watched the most bizarre thing the other day. It was Larry King and it was all about Britney, and he was interviewing her body guard who’d narced on her to get a book deal..I mean to save her children.
But King was all “So, you think she’s going to harm herself” and fat bodyguard was all “I hope not but…..”
It was like they were hoping she’d off herself, preferably while they were still live. It was not just disgusting, but it felt really dark…I had not followed one single thing about the Britney story and then I looked up and saw what seemed to me a very widespread effort to drive her to suicide. I’m exaggerating, but only a little and I think you may be onto something.
I wonder where Diana fits into this?
Well, Diana certainly looks to fit the profile, too. At least in her public image. She was much touted as the “people’s princess” and while living, particularly during the early days of her marriage to Prince Charles, much was made about her commoner roots, the fact that she was somehow less than royal (though the reality of that isn’t quite the same).
She was fairly young when she married Charles and she’d already borne him a few likely heirs to the throne by the time their marriage broke up, so in terms of the pattern, the bloom was off her flower, as it were. In the particulars there are things that don’t quite fit, but in the broad strokes, where the mythic theater of her role plays into Spectacle, Diana connects to the sacrificial goddess cycle. I could be wrong, though.
It’s worth investigating further. Wanna take a shot at it?
That Larry King program you describe, DE, is pretty disgusting, but not surprising, unfortunately. Maybe it’s just my warped reality tunnel, but I see that kind of shit going on all the time. And obviously, a big Britney death would be a “media event,” an orgy of Spectacle–entraining people to false mourning, to manipulated catharsis, etc. It would create a cottage industry in Britney nostalgia merchandise, and movies and, of course, compilations and covers of her musical output.
And her death could be used to push whatever agenda the large media conglomerates that aided her rise and her fall would like to get across. What that agenda or group of agendas might be, I’m at a loss to say.
As Guy Debord darkly mused, in these times it’s much easier to suicide someone. You get them to do it themselves through large, integrated efforts. If the media is spinning the “Britney’s gonnna kill herself angle” enough, all the folks watching at home will likewise entrain themselves to the “Britney’s gonna kill herself” belief and if Britney’s not strong enough in herself, hearing and seeing this belief all around her, she might come to believe it herself. And the rest would be tragedy.
It’s the Dark Side of The Secret. A magick ritual where most of the people involved (the mass of consumers and pop-culture addicts) don’t even know or at least won’t acknowledge that they are involved.
That’s why I’m pretty conflicted about even writing about this stuff explicitly any more, because it might end up feeding into it all.
Knowledge is power, write!
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