DEMI AND THE DISNEY STAR: A GENERATION RAISED FOR FAME
The Disney channel ruined my life.
This isn’t a takedown piece. I love the Disney channel.
I credit my entire personality to the network.
It changed my life for the better, as a child. It gave my Friday night plans when nobody else would. It provided comfort when nobody else could. It gave me hope.
But now, as I get older, I have to wonder if that hope was a false hope.
As I workout in the gym as a twenty-three year old man, I put on a Disney Channel playlist. Hannah Montana. Camp Rock. Cheetah Girls. These are the usual suspects that always make me dance. But this time, it just elevated my already anxious heart rate.
Between “Rockstar” and “Breakthrough” and “Why Wait,” I start to notice something. Nearly every Disney channel property from 2006-2014 centers around a young person desperate to become a star. From Lizzie McGuire's shining moment with Paolo on her Roman holiday and Mitchie Torres’ Final Jam performance to Starstruck’s titular Hollywood siren song and Lemonade Mouth’s journey to playing Madison Square Garden, the Disney of my youth told me one thing.
Every young person should aspire to be in Hollywood.
Now, pair this with the real life stories of Selena Gomez, Miley Cyrus, and Demi Lovato, Disney’s “Big Three” from that era. It was not uncommon for a kid born in the late 90s to want to achieve stardom via the Disney Channel.
Disney raised a generation to be obsessed with fame. To be obsessed with stardom. To be obsessed with Hollywood. It made fame look appealing. Like all my insecurities would go away if I could sell out an arena or have paparazzi follow my every move.
And, now, as I move from the treadmill to the weights, I think of Demi Lovato’s most recent album. Released not even a week ago, Holy Fvck is the peeled back curtain of that stardom. And it doesn’t sound like the glamorized life of a child star we all hoped to experience ourselves. On the Holy Fvck track “Happy Ending,” Demi even comes to this conclusion herself, saying “I was your poster child, it was working for a while, But it didn't fill the void.” We now know that fame wouldn’t have healed us, but is our desire to be heard too wild to be captured and put back in Pandora’s Box?
As our generation, the elementary schoolers who watched Hannah Montana and Sonny with a Chance, graduate college and enter the workforce, we’re all scratching our heads wondering how fame evaded us as our coming of age came to a close. And, as we hear the nightmare stories from childhood stars now revealing the dark side of the industry, we wonder if the fame would have even been worth it.
The classic trope in coming of age movies is a parental figure saying “son, you’re giving up your dream” to which the son in question responds “no, dad, I’m giving up your dream.” So, as I move deeper into the workforce I have to wonder if my shift away from fame and stardom is me giving up my dream, or giving up the dream Disney Channel had for me.
But, to be fair to the mouse, it wasn’t just Disney channel. Children’s media in the early-to-late 2000s was littered with an intrigue of fame for fame’s sake. Nickelodeon’s iCarly showed us the power of becoming a YouTuber, Victorious had us all wanting to stumble into a class at a performing arts school. (I won’t mention how the late ‘00s flaunted “non-fiction” beacons of celebrity like Paris, Lindsey, Britney, and the beginnings of Kim Kardashian. Nor will I discuss Lady Gaga’s 2008 debut album “The Fame,” a comprehensive thesis on celebrity.)
Now that we’ve discussed the core values of the media Gen Z grew up on in our first decade, enter Instagram. As Hannah Montana ended (2011), Instagram and Snapchat entered the public conversation (2012).
The tweens who learned to crave the spotlight could now create their own platform. Dictate their own stardom. So where does that leave us?
A culture where everybody wants to be center stage.
I have to imagine an alternate universe where Disney encouraged their audience to be doctors. To be social workers. To be kind people, even as a supporting character.
I love that the Disney channel encouraged stardom. It gave little, ten-year-old me something to strive for. It made me feel like my voice was worthy of a microphone. And I know I’m not alone in that.
Because now everyone my age feels as though they are worthy of having a microphone. And the prevalence of social media means everyone actually does get to have unlimited access to a microphone.
In short, social media democratized the fame we wanted but, by nature, fame isn’t meant to be democratized.
We’ve become a generation of talkers rather than listeners. Self-centered. But can you blame us?
Our childhood heroes, both in fiction and reality, were gunning for the highest levels of fame. And then our teenage media space afforded us a control over our own desire for fame.
And now the fame market has been oversaturated.
There are so many faces out there, it’s hard to know which ones are worth looking at. If a friend to all is a friend to none, then is a follower to all a follower to none?
The world isn’t equipped for every individual to hold the weight of celebrity. It’s the social equivalent to the economic debacle of printing more money so everyone can be rich. That doesn’t solve the problem. Neither does giving everyone a platform.