In 2006, Disney Channel released the first episode of a new show that they had been working on about a teenage popstar named Hannah Montana. Hannah wasn’t who she was all the time. Underneath the blonde wig, was dark brown hair that belonged to a girl named Miley Stewart. Miley was just a typical high school girl that lived a regular life, just with a big secret to hide because once she puts her blonde wig on and bold outfits, she becomes Hannah Montana, the popstar.
The Stewart family was quick to discover Miley’s vocal talents when she was young, but was worried about a lack of privacy and still wanted Miley to live as normal of a life as possible if she was going to pursue a music career. This is when the creation of her second identity Hannah Montana was born. All Miley had to do was grow her wardrobe to resemble a celebrities and put on her blonde wig, then all of a sudden she had a completely different identity.
Hannah Montana was one of the Miley Cyrus’s first staring acting roles that also allowed her to further her singing and songwriting career. This TV show allowed her to grow her fame and make a name for herself outside of her family’s reputation since she is Billy Ray Cyrus’s daughter. It is important to note that it would later become a double for her within her own life because as she grew older her image emerged to something completely different. Some could argue that Miley Cyrus, Miley Stewart, and Hannah Montana are all separate from each other because they all have extremally different characteristics and personalities.
The Hannah Montana identity acts as a mask to protect Miley’s identity. In Basquiat’s “Famous” diptych there are several superheroes in the back of both panels. Superheroes and fame relate because superheroes often have a mask that can cover or hide their identity and people that are famous typically lack that privacy and sometimes wish that they still had it. However, in the case of Miley Stewart, Hannah Montana was her mask. She was able to have the fame and privacy at the same time. There is a lot of secrecy throughout the show because Miley can’t expose her second identity. This causes her to have to lie and deceive some of the people that she is closest with.
Miley Stewart can also be tied in with Braudy’s theory of the expressed and the unexpressed self. Hannah Montana represents the expressed part of Miley. Hannah is the bold, she is the glamor, she is the one who has everyone’s attention. Where Miley is more reserved, but still has a lot of personality she just doesn’t have the opportunity to show it to everyone because she doesn’t have the platform that Hannah does.
Miley wrote the songs that Hannah would perform and some of them were about the glamours life of a popstar, but it also allowed Miley to express parts of her unexpressed self through Hannah. She could sing about issues and feelings in her life being Hannah, but it related more to her everyday life than her celebrity life, and in this way the identity of Hannah Montana became an outlet of Miley.
In the show Hannah Montana you get the best of both worlds because you can watch the life of a teenage popstar, but also the life of a typical young high schooler. The theme song for the show is also called “Best of Both Worlds” and it is all about her overall experience being a high schooler and a famous singer. It describes her feelings about the positives of being able to have the privacy of a typical teenager, but also the glamours of a celebreality.
Ultimately, the show Hannah Montana relates to doubles and doppelgängers because of the duel identity that one girl has to provide privacy in her life. It also has common themes with other unit one texts of secrecy, fame, public vs. private, and deception.
