In the busy streets of Manhattan a black jeep stuck in traffic is swarmed by hundreds of screeching girls. They pound the tinted windows and try to claw their way in — their object of desire is inside, the Jonas Brothers.
For the past two years the Jo Bros (as they’re called in glossy teen magazines) have dominated the Billboard charts and hearts of countless tween girls with their pop rock songs about love and heartbreak. With model-esque tailored attire, they’re the poster boys of the all-American heart throb, and now you can see them in 3D.
On February 27, The Jonas Brothers 3D Concert Experience hit theatres and was hyped- to be a bonafide hit. The hour and 16 minute movie features concert footage and backstage peeks. But the film was a flop, bringing in $12.7 million USD on opening weekend.
Under the Disney empire, the Jo Bros have been marketed as a wholesome American pop band. They sport purity rings and uphold Christian values, yet the film is riddled with degrading images of girls and phallic symbols.
The movie starts with brothers Nick, 16, Joe, 19, and Kevin, 21, escaping the girl-swarmed car. They run towards a helicopter to be freed from the raging pubescent hormones. In between performances of formulaic pop songs, there are shots of girls fainting and crying after meeting the brothers.
This female degradation is typical in Disney films, says Fiona Whittington-Walsh, a sociology professor at Ryerson University.
“They’re tweens and they’re just running on animalistic instincts,” she says, commenting on the depiction of Jonas fans. “It positions women’s sexuality as being out of control and part of the natural world where as men embody reason and control.”
Gender inequality is alive and well in this 3D experience, and it’s most evident when phallic symbols like hot dogs and police batons are probed at the audience.
At one point Nick and Joe bring out squirt guns and cover the audience in white foam. The girls scream and giggle excitedly, not realizing they’ve been symbolically cummed on.
“It’s the cum shot,” says Whittington-Walsh in agreement. “So he’s actually reaching climax, both of them, and the girls aren’t … The gun is the phallic because symbolically they’re (the Jonas Brothers) these fascist Gods. They want to dominate, so they’re dominating the woman, they’re controlling the woman.”
“It’s almost raping the audience in a sense. It’s coming at you, it’s so big and powerful and we’re just in our seats and we have to take it.”
Besides these subliminal messages there is no actual depth or meaning to the music. The whiney heterosexist lyrics rotate around falling in love, finding the perfect girl only to lose her. Granted, the boys do play their own instruments and write their own songs – unlike many past ‘boy bands’ — but their presentation is typical of the flashy boy band concert.
With a giant backing band, equipped with a string section and pyro-techniques, the Jo Bros rely on visuals to entertain the crowd. It’s a technique that’s been in use since seventeenth century opera, says David Snable, a popular music teacher at Ryerson University.
“I know people want a lot of visuals, that’s a part of it, but certainly having fireworks and 3D detracts from the actual sound of what you’re hearing,” he says. “Your mind goes into sensory overload.”
On the sound quality of the Jo Bros, Snable describes them as, “a cute tune, [with] inane sort of nothing words, a bit of a beat. Certainly no sophisticated harmony … They don’t know anything about musical subtleties.”
The formulaic pop that’s supposed to please the masses is part of the capitalistic music-marketing machine that’s been in full force since the 1930s. It started with Tin Pan Alley, an area in lower Manhattan where music composers shaped the structure of pop songs, which is still in use today.
Most pop songs have four sections; the first two are almost identical, the third section strays away bringing in a new tune, and the last section returns to the beginning.
Pop music has always been based on formulas, and the Jonas Brothers have the ingredients to make it work. Except these days it’s all about packaging and creating the most product.
“It’s a cash grab and that’s all it really is. It has very little to do with anything artistic,” says Snable.
Besides boasting a contract with Disney’s Hollywood Records, the Jo Bros also starred in the made-for-TV-movie Camp Rock, which aired on the Disney Channel (Family Channel in Canada) last June. The movie premier had 8.9 million viewers and fans can now buy Camp Rock dolls, t-shirts, necklaces, bed sheets and winter coats.
Disney is breeding the perfect consumer at a young age, says Scott Henderson, a pop culture lecturer at Brock University.
“It’s grooming them into a mass culture hegemony,” he says. “It’s a mass culture construction of what youth is supposed to be from a capitalist perspective.”
The identity being created by Disney is one of consumerism.
“They’ve been really successful in tapping into that youth tween market,” Henderson says.
The Jo Bros are just another wave of artists created by Disney to formulate the most product for the smallest cost.
In a 2003 article published in Fortune magazine, writer Julia Boorstin reveals how Disney has risen to the top of ‘tweendonium.’ When a new Disney star is introduced they usually get a television show then the movies and music albums roll in.
In the article, Boorstin says the Disney Channel only films 65 episodes of any show, as quickly as possible, before the star fades out of the limelight. By doing this they save loads of money, because once the star is famous they’ll demand more. Then the Disney Channel can show endless re-runs.
This is capitalistic child-exploitation; the first tween queen produced through this process was Hilary Duff, who starred in the Lizzie McGuire Show.
The new queen, 16-year-old Miley Cyrus, star of Hannah Montana, earned $64 million in 2007 from CD sales and concert tours. She also has a spew of merchandise, ranging from hair extensions to video games.
Unlike the Jonas Brothers’ 3D movie which did poorly, Cyrus’ 2008 3D film Hannah Montana-Miley Cyrus Best of Both Worlds brought in $31.1 million USD on its opening weekend.
As the Jo Bros prep for their upcoming TV show debut, J.O.N.A.S. on the Disney Channel, one can’t help but wonder how long they’ll last until the new wave of tween idols comes crashing in.
Already, fans are losing interest — evident through movie ticket sales — as the boys grow older.
Even my 12-year-old cousin, who had a year-long crush on Nick Jonas, is getting bored. “We don’t talk about them (the Jo Bros) anymore,” she told me. “When I was in grade six, we would talk about them all the time. (Now) we talk about other songs, I like the All American Rejects.”
So as the pop music cycle continues, it’s really the tweens who suffer. They’re presented with the same packages time and time again, just the names and looks change. The only way to combat this youth-culture homogenization is by getting youth to think critically, or as Whittington-Walsh points out, “they’re just going to keep wanting that kind of fluff, they’re not going to go out see the Che movie.”
Ronak Ghorbani is in her third year at Ryerson’s journalism school. She’s an editorial assistant for the Ryerson Free Press, a progressive alternative paper on campus, and a managing editor for McClung’s, a feminist magazine.
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