Twerk You, America

Miley Cyrus: The Problem, or The Symptom?

Last week’s MTV Video Music Awards (VMA) show is a wonderful reflection of contemporary pop-America at its worst. This refection is not one-dimensional.  Indeed each expression of dysfunction lays the foundation for appreciating the next, even more troubling example to follow.

Let’s start with the obvious.  Back in 2009 comedian Jamie Foxx and his Sirius Radio talk-show crew reviled Miley Cyrus during a show. One statement among the remarks for which he would be forced to apologize proved prescient.  Just has Foxx predicted, Miley Cyrus ended up on a stripper pole, and a millions of baby boomers and others too tragically un-hip rushed to online urban dictionaries to look up the term “twerk.” 

Frankly, many of the still images of the event bear more than a passing resemblance to another boundaries-shattering bleached blond.  Forget about Lady Gaga in the opening act; was Miley channeling Madonna circa 1992, when her book Sex preceded the release of her video Erotica by just a single day?  Sexwas beyond scandalous in its day; who could have that a decade later it would be appreciated as a “bold, post-feminist, work of art” noted for its impact on society and culture?  Or was she merely taking the Britney-Lindsay bad-girl behavior of this current crop of childhood stars to its absurdly logical terminal point? 

The outrage and umbrage inspired by Miley’s antics have themselves become a small sideshow in this pop-cultural Theatre of Our Absurdities.  The deeply embedded American Puritanical Streak has been aroused to let loose a mighty roar.  And yet, this same segment of American society that so prides itself as the lodestone to the larger cultural moral compass fails to appreciate the irony of it all.  Miley Cyrus is who she is today because of The Disney Channel. Not HBO or Showtime. Not Playboy.  Not Hustler.  Disney.  It would be ludicrous if the results were not so dire. It’s too bad for Miley Cyrus that Hannah Montana wasn’t an animated series.

Which points to the next level of absurdity. It’s just under the surface and not readily apparent here.  Miley got the Hannah role in large measure because she was Daddy’s Little Girl.  Billy Ray Cyrus had already been cast as the dad for Hannah Montana.  When Miley didn’t get the nod after a first audition, Daddy saw to it that she got a second audition, during which they sang a duet that made the difference.  Billy Ray was no stranger to the TV industry by 2006.  He spent 88 episodes from 2001-2004 starring as Dr. Clint Cassidy in Doc. I have to wonder why he was so committed to promoting his daughter’s career in that particular industry, given the all-too-common phenomenon of wholesome, innocent child-hood stars becoming chemically fueled, dysfunctional, unstable adult disasters.  

And now to juxtapose Billy’s absurdity with America’s pious outrage and umbrage:  Billy Ray Cyrus sits on the Advisory Board of the conservative Parent’s Television Council along with Pat Boone and Michael Medved (among others).  If that doesn’t paint enough of the picture, PTC’s founder L. Brent Bozell III was also National Finance Chairman for Pat Buchanan’s 1992 Presidential bid.  PTC’s response to the VMA’s included the following statement:  MTV continues to sexually exploit young women by promoting acts that incorporate ‘twerking’ in a nude-colored bikini. How is this image of former child star Miley Cyrus appropriate for 14-year-olds?

Which in turn points to the next level of absurdity:  by 14, the kids watching MTV have already been pushed into a discrete marketing demographic that in turns dictates the consumer products available to them, especially fashion.  Don’t believe me?  Ask any mother who has taken a tween shopping for a dress to wear at a typical American bar mitzvah party.  Modesty is not even passé in the tween fashion world; in general it is non-existent.  Do designers take delight when 13 year old girls wearing their clothing have to stop every three steps to pull their tops up and their skirts down?  More saliently: Do girls not old enough to drive reallyneed fancy clothing that exposes them from nearly every angle?

And finally, we get to the ultimate level of absurdity:  until it gets egregious, America just doesn’t care, or worse, it not-so-secretly approves, of the entire celebrity circus.  Think about it:  MTV doesn’t even show videos any more. Frankly, that’s not MTV’s fault; for them it is simply good business.   And yet the industry and the viewers are more than willing to go along with the flow and cede a level of social import to what MTV promotes, while forgetting that MTV is ultimately promoting its bottom line and trying to get our bottom dollars in the process.  If that means letting Miley defy common sense and good taste (Billy Ray, I do hope you were so proud of her!) then that’s what they’ll do.

So America, at the end of the all, we have a choice.  We can either promote values that preclude the debacle we saw courtesy of MTV.  Or we can learn to live with even more in-your-face expressions of “twerk you” in the years to come.

Finally Miley, just one comment to you:  Your talent can lead you to either make your mark on society, or be society’s mark. Similarly you have the choice to be a survivor of the insanity of your life, or a victim of it. I wish you luck with your decision.