Written By: Dr. Luke, Claude Kelly & Jessie J
Directed By: Chris Applebaum
Produced By: Dr. Luke
Media Representations
The music video for Miley Cyrus 'Party In The U.S.A' is mainly performance, but also has a narrative which links to the lyrics of the song. Miley is the main attraction/character in the video and is featured in almost every shot. A basic evaluation on the song lyrics/video is Miley Cyrus singing about coming from her hometown Nashville and arriving in Los Angeles, and then explaining how different it is and her thoughts and feelings on it, however because of the name of the song, 'Party In The U.S.A' the song is generally just explaining her thoughts towards a party. Throughout the video Miley Cyrus is represented as someone just genuinely having fun and the structure of the video i set out as a 'day experience' of Miley Cyrus, there are no costume changes for her and at the beginning of the video it's daytime then nearer the end it's gets darker and it's then night time. In the majority of the scenes Miley is seen with 'friends' which are the dancers, and other extra's which are there for the party. Yet throughout these scenes she is still singing to the lyrics as the whole video is just one big performance. However, in the scenes where Miley is by herself she is seen as more of the narrator to the song. It's hard to interpret what a real 'U.S.A party' would be like without going to one, but because of the things Miley says in the song, and the way the video is set out, the representations are very accurate.
Media Languages and Forms
The first few shots in the music video are shots of the location, which seems to be the outskirts of somewhere or a 'desert' type setting. There are lots of cars, and the way everything is set out it sort of looks like and reminds me of the car race in the film 'Grease'. After
further research into the video i found out that Miley herself wanted to replicate some parts of Grease into the video, specifically the part where Miley performs in the jungle gym on a swing, this replicates John Travolta's performance of 'Sandy' in the film Grease. Aspects such as the colours used in the video definitely connotate the meaning of the song, and the tempo of the song itself. It's very upbeat and catchy and the bright colours definitely add to the effect of this. There are many non-verbal structures of meaning in the text such as Miley's facial expressions, gestures and clothing. At 1 minute and 25 seconds into the song the lyrics Miley starts to sing are 'Cause all i see are stiletto’s, I guess I never got the memo', this links with the non-verbal structure of facial expressions as her face looks almost annoyed, then the shot cuts to a shot of the cowboy boots she is wearing, showing that she obviously didn’t get the memo about wearing stiletto’s because she is wearing boots. A survey held by MTV showed that many viewers thought that the costume of Miley Cyrus and the other dancers in the video added 'sexiness' to it, and showed the progression of Miley growing up and distancing herself from the 'Hannah Montana' look (Hannah Montana being a character she played in a TV show). As explained, the iconography in the music video is the musical grease and the relevance of this to the major themes in the video are very important, the settings of the music video help explain the lyrics of the song and Miley Cyrus's thoughts and feelings, and the majority of the setting's used come from the inspiration of grease and other aspects of Miley's life. Setting designs such as the American flag used as a backdrop during one of Miley's performance connotate’s and establishes the name of the song and possibly the location of where the video was actually filmed, it also transmits Miley's appreciation towards the U.S.A. Many establishing and wide shots are used throughout the video, these are purposely used to show the setting of the video and successfully define its purpose more. However, during lyrics which identify and reflect Miley's persona and during the final performance of the chorus which is in front of a crowd many close-ups are used.
Narrative
As the majority of the music video for Party In The U.S.A is performance, these performances must be often throughout the video and easy to identify, of course in many music video's there are aspects of performance, but due to the actual song Party In The U.S.A and the tempo of it, it's important for the performances to be bigger than just the artist miming the lyrics towards the camera. The narrative/performance of the video is well structured, Miley starts out by performing at what could be seen as a 'Nashville party', she's stood on the back of an open truck and singing into a digital microphone, there are also many cars surrounding and everyone seems to be dotted about having a good time. The next performance is Miley on a stage with the American flag as the backdrop and silver confetti falling down, there is no one there apart from Miley, almost as if it is her just practicing. The third performance shown is Miley in the jungle gym with a lot of dancers, after this is the final performance of the last chorus, this time she's on the stage, again with the confetti, but with her dancers and there's an audience. Because of these four main performances the narrative is almost set out in a structure of what Miley's life, in terms of performance has been like up to now, first performing for the fun of it and in front of people she knows, then practicing, then in front of audience. So because of the lyrics too, it's almost as if the video is showing a transition of her when she wasn’t famous, to her now being famous. In conjunction to narrative theories this specific music video fits within the idea's of the narrative theorist Kate Domaille, showing aspects of 'Cinderella' the third out of her eight narrative types. However, I wouldn't say that the music video would fit into Vladimir Propp's theory as his theory studied folk tales, so he has specific characters.
Genre
The genre of the song Party In The U.S.A is R&B/Dance-pop and the general genres of Miley Cyrus since she first started out in the music business are Pop, Pop-Rock, Country Pop and Dance. There are no major general conventions within the text; however you can easily tell that the song is typically within the same genre as a lot of other Miley Cyrus songs. On the other hand, although the music video is more performance than narrative due to the genre of this specific song the video has to include the characters having a lot of fun as well as the video being generally interesting to watch, which it is. I think the generic expectations of the audience are definitely fulfilled in the text to a very good extent, if you're already a fan of Miley Cyrus then you know that all of her music videos are entertaining, fun and show her personality, and the music video for Party In The U.S.A do this well. The characteristics of the genre, as already said, conform to the generic expectations of the genre, but in the case i think they do it playfully and not ironically, Miley Cyrus hasn’t made the video seem like something it's not but then still fit her genre, the video fits perfectly with the genre as well as with the iconography of Grease. Although the song wasn’t originally written for Miley Cyrus, some of the lyrics were just changed to match her persona, it's very obvious that Miley was the main thinker behind the video and managed to make the video match her persona too. Due to my research when i found out Miley wanted parts of the video to replicate Grease, i also found out she wanted it to replicate her parents courting days too. In several of the shots, Miley is leaning against a wall with the writing 'Corral Drive-in' written on it, this is referring to a drive-in restaurant where her parents once had a date. Miley is trying to make the video her own as much as possible therefore including aspects of her real life in the video or things that mean something to her.
Media Institutions
The purpose of the institution is to tell the song Party In The U.S.A as well as the artist, Miley Cyrus. The song was recorded and released with Hollywood records, Miley's current label, therefore meaning that because of the popularity of this label it more or less determined for the song to go straight into the charts. The music video has been influenced by Hollywood records in several ways, one of which being the fact that the video is centralised around American culture, such as the movie drive-ins and the American flag.
Media Values and Ideology
The music video references ideology to generally, a typical American in new surroundings and how they would feel in these surroundings. In this case, someone moving to Hollywood and becoming famous. It also represents the ideologies of any performer, in the different stages of a performance, as already explained, 'Practice, then the big performance'. On the other hand, the ideologies of the song Party In The U.S.A and the video generally stand regarding Miley Cyrus as the song reflects her thoughts and feelings at the time of her moving and getting ready for her first big performance.
Media Audiences
The music video/song would generally be aimed at Miley Cyrus' fans, therefore a lot of which being Hannah Montana fans too. This being the age of between 13-19 year olds. However i would say Miley Cyrus' fans at this current time probably go up to about the age of 25 or maybe even older as her music has now changed and she's seen as a woman now and not 'Hannah Montana'. Even people who aren’t fans of Miley Cyrus would of probably heard the song more than once too, as due to research i found out that Party In The U.S.A reached to number two in the Billboard Hot 100 so it would have been given a lot of airplay. Also due to research i found that due to the song just mentioning the U.S.A it gained a lot of recognition and was even viewed 'The current song of America' at one point.
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