Madonna to Miley

350 Words2 Pages
In the essay “Pop’s Drop: From Madonna to Miley” Pagila talks about how the American pop industry is slowly becoming shambles. The thesis in the essay states that sexiness has always played a role in the entertainment industry and how it takes skill to perform sexily. Pagila then compares Miley’s recent sub-par performance at the VMA’s to Madonna’s profound performance at the first VMA’s to illustrate the difference between having skills and just relying on shock value. The writer includes all of the bad critic reviews to try to persuade the reader to agree that Miley cyrus’s performance was dreadful. Pagila also starts the essay off by including her own personal opinion about Miley Cyrus’ recent performance calling it “atrocious”. Pagila then introduces Madonna into the essay by comparing Miley Cyrus’ VMA performance to hers. The writer describes Madonna’s performances as the “best art-works of the decades”. And then goes on to say “Today’s aspiring singers. . . rarely have direct contact with those superb precursors and are simply aping feeble imitations of Madonna”. This points out that recent singers are trying to replicate Madonna’s great skill but are not doing an adequate job at it and that Madonna’s skills, performances and aura would still be superior to singers of today. This essay is somewhat effective because it is showing the faults between American pop now and American pop a few decades ago. As for persuasiveness it is lacking to an extent, the author mentions briefly why Cyrus’ performance was atrocious but does not elaborate on it enough. The essay seems as if it was merely a summarization on American pop’s history, the music industry and gives a brief insight on the influences and achievements on successful pop diva, Madonna. I find the point of “Pop is suffering from the malady as the art world, which is stuck on the tired old rubric that shock
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