Miley Cyrus’s Bangerz tour kicked off in Vancouver on Valentine’s Day. While critical reviews have been mixed, there is universal consensus that the 21-year-old pop star’s biggest tour to date is pushing the boundaries of age appropriateness. Between skin-laden video montages, mocking oral sℯx on a man in a Bill Clinton mask, on-stage masturbation, and grinding with her back-up singers, it’s a tween parent’s worst nightmare.
In response to that bad trip, parents are walking out of the show, 9-year-olds in tow, flooding Cyrus’s record company with complaints and calling for the entire tour to be cancelled. While that is not likely to happen, her record label and tour staff have been discussing ways to tone the show down. If they’re not able to rein in Miley, it’s possible that the Bangerz tour could be the catalyst for a concert-rating system, similar to what exists for albums, movies and video games
Part of the outcry of parental consternation is her seemingly overnight transformation from Disney too-shoes to tongue-licking sℯx pot. It was just a few years ago that Cyrus was entertaining pre-teens on the Disney channel as her alter-ego Hannah Montana. While she has been undergoing a gradual transformation over the last five years to appeal to an older audience, 2013 marked the biggest break from the Miley of old. In 2013, Cyrus hired Larry Rudolph, who had previously worked with Britney Spears, as her manager. Under his guidance, Miley’s evolution into adulthood shifted into sℯx-and-drug-infused overdrive.
While it’s fair to ask how any parent buying Miley Cyrus tickets wasn’t aware of the less-than-innocent headlines she’s been generating over the last six month, it’s clear that some did not. In the age of multimedaoverexposure, such cluelessness makes clear that the burden of notification rest with the maker of media, not the consumer
This has long been the case with other forms of media and movie ratings have been around in one form or another since 1930. Video games have had ratings since 1994. Those ratings, which are assigned by the Entertainment Software Rating Board, were a response to the first wave of extremely violent and sℯxually-charged console games like Mortal Kombat. In movies and video games, ratings are required while music’s ”Explicit” Parental Advisory Label is not required and is up to the label to affix. Otherwise know as PAL, the ‘Explicit’ designation was adopted in 1985, with Prince’s Purple Rain serving as the biggest selling album that year to receive the warning.
One of the unintended consequences of the introduction PAL on records was that demand for records with the label actually increased, precisely because of the label. While it’s unclear if issuing an ”explicit” warning for anyone buying tickets to see Bangerz would have a similar impact, it would certainly make clear that Miley Cyrus is not just a more mature version of Hannah Montana. For anyone isolated enough to have missed out on her very public transformation, it would also be fair warning.
