What is it exactly about Miley Cyrus' teddy bear dance and provocative exercise in "twerking" at the recent MTV Video Music Awards that has rendered the entire nation apoplectic about the calibration of Miley's moral compass? Why are we seeing and reading so much infantilizing Victorian era moralism from our finest pundits?
One such reaction came from Lisa Belkin, writing in the August 26 Huffington Post. Belkin, who blogs for the New York Times, disappointedly criticized what she called Cyrus' "grinding declaration of adulthood" in the form of a letter, one that reads like a haughty and dismissive parental lecture that ignores, as these lectures usually do, the fact that we've all made debatable choices on the road to figuring out just who the hell we are.
Many of the stories about Cyrus in the last few days drip with manufactured outrage and follow the same formula: shots of Cyrus dancing with large teddy bears, sticking her tongue out, cavorting with Robin Thicke (whose mom, Gloria Loring - who once had a Top 10 hit with a song about an affair - wondered publicly about Miley's actions) to his equally provocative hit, "Blurred Lines," interviews with parents and teens shocked and stunned that Miley pushed the Lolita button, commentary from academics that conveniently ignores that Miley's actions aren't new - all capped by reporters earnestly wondering (without evidence, I might add) if her performance will turn the nation's young women into promiscuous antisocial sluts.
But so what if Cyrus wanted to say "'screw you' to wholesomeness'" as Time.com's Lily Rothman speculated in her column about the controversy? So we're pissed because Miley wants to distance herself from Hannah Montana, who was just quirky and provocative enough to suit us? Is this such a bad thing? Cyrus operates here at a decided disadvantage: her act of rebellion took place on a national stage. We can watch her hint at adult feelings and experiences in a sanitized Disney world, but the moment she takes a walk on the wild side, we freak out? Maybe we've forgotten our own acts of rebellion. Or maybe we envy her bravery, having chickened out when the time came to give the world the finger - or the tongue in Miley's case.
And when did MTV turn into Prude Central anyway?
It is the height of disingenuousness for folks in the media to rip, as Belkin did, Cyrus for "using outrage as a marketing tool when you have so much else to sell." Faux outrage is all the rage; it is the mainstream media's current meal ticket, its raison d'être. Calm and considered contextualization is about as rare in media content these days as Ralph Nader appearances at Tea Party conventions - or Gore family reunions.
As for having "so much else to sell," I think it's not out there to say the powers that be would never let Miley, say, record an album of Big Band standards. We want to keep Cyrus - and most young women, for that matter - in the "we can gawk at you while marginalizing you for expressing yourself sexually" box. The millisecond a young woman wants to go down an unapproved sexual road, we trip over ourselves to defend our endangered values - and provide more evidence that we're maybe more repressed than ever. Every member of the mainstream media must also somehow be forced to acknowledge their role in marginalizing feminism to the point that "leaning in," the virtues of "opting out," and the gyrations of barely post-adolescent recording artists are now what the nation contemplates when it tears itself away from Sister Wives to assess gender equality.
All this while we allow debate about whether global warming is actually taking place and children die in Syria.
Or it could just be that folks in the media respond in knee-jerk fashion to displays of sexuality - only by young women; men rarely are critiqued for acting provocatively - because they might cause the 17 conservative soldiers still fighting the "culture wars" to mass at the border and fire off 18 threatening emails, as they did when Janet Jackson did (or didn't) accidentally expose her breast during the Super Bowl halftime show some years back. Those 18 emails are then transformed into a "national controversy," and off we go again to the Argument for the Sake of Ratings Land.
So when later today you watch, or Google, or stream Miley's VMA appearance for the tenth time, do me a favor - two actually: first, when you're done, immediately find and read an article about the potential for our intervention in Syria; and second, fondly rather than judgmentally celebrate your own acts of teenage rebellion.
It reminds me of what Bryant Gumbel said recently about the whole A-Rod outrage, essentially what's the big deal about A-Rod, when our country as a whole is addicted to drugs?
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When it comes to Miley, I think she touched that weird nerve in the US where we love sexuality but not when it's too real. A sexy music video is fine because it has a glossy finish, but we don't want to see it live at a music awards show. We can't separate the person from the sex when it's obvious they're doing it of their own volition, not at the direction of someone else behind the camera.
There's a lot more too it and I agree with your article wholeheartedly. The VMAs must also have been pretty boring if this is the only story to come out of it.
That, and the irony that MTV hasn't aired a music video since who knows when - thanks for the comment!
DeleteI have sort of crashing thoughts about this, none of which are particularly organized, but the central idea of it comes down to autonomy, even bodily autonomy to an extent. (That may be taking it a bit far, but the idea remains.) There is a prevailing sense that women do not get to decide for themselves what to do with themselves. We are told there is a certain and specific way to look and act that is "good" and that any other way we look and act is "bad" (or awful or tragic or whatever adjective seems most condescending).
ReplyDeleteWhen you extend that notion to any person (usually women but men, too) in the entertainment industry, it becomes even more compounded. Miley Cyrus, from the time she was a young actress, has never really been a person. She's a product. A product that must look and sound and act a specific way. That kind of pressure--to conform and be "good"--ruins the lives of average young women every day. How many times do we really need to see it play out on a national stage, as you mention, before we get it? There's no wrong way to be as long as you're not hurting yourself or hurting others.
Granted, there may or may not be legitimate concerns of deeper problems for Miley. But it is incredibly arrogant to try to extrapolate what those problems may be based on public behavior. The constant exposure to the public persona of an entertainer provides a false sense of intimacy, and we extrapolate based on our own experiences in our own circles (and often our own psychology) the things that we "know" about a public figure. The truth is, we don't really know why Miley chose to do the things she did.
The larger point is that she is really the only one who gets to decide what she does and why she does it.