May 28, 2017

Understanding the creepiness of wholesomeness.

Here's a piece by Amanda Petrusich in The New Yorker: "Miley Cyrus's Creepy Return to Wholesome." Do we think that a young woman is pure until she're not, and after that, if she presents herself as healthy and good, it's a disgusting fraud, and we've got to point fingers at her and call her out, so that no one is deceived into allying with this loathsome slut? That seems awfully retrograde for The New Yorker. Perhaps they never liked wholesomeness in the first place. Okay, now, I'll read the thing.

1. At the Billboard Music Awards, Miley Cyrus was introduced by her younger sister Noah with the (obviously scripted) line: "For the first time in years with pants on, my big sis, Miley Cyrus." Here's how that looked. The "pants" are very short white cut-off jeans. She also had the kind of off-the-shoulder blouse that we were just talking about in the Michelle Obama context. Instead of dancing about, Cyrus stood planted at the microphone, in the take-my-voice-seriously style of singers like Adele.

2. Cyrus has a video in which she "pets a dog, runs with balloons, and flashes her gold engagement ring." The song, we're told, "is a mix of Laurel Canyon and Nashville, equal parts bohemian and smarmy." Which doesn't sound wholesome. Petrusich says it's "lifeless." Lifeless isn't wholesome. Wholesomeness relates to goodness and health. Lifelessness is death. But Petrusich happens to prefer Cyrus's more vigorous demeanor in her song "Wrecking Ball" (which is about celebrating body-slamming ("I came in like a wrecking ball/I never hit so hard in love/All I wanted was to break your walls")).

3. Cyrus had a period a couple years ago in which she indulged in the white privilege of "trying-on and discarding of black culture," and now she's "essentially scrubbed her music and image of any hints of the hip-hop and R. & B.," and that might be "sinister."

4. Now, she seems to be doing a "good-girl routine," and it might be "a sendup" of — among other things — "our racially polarized political climate." Pop music is full of "artifice," we all know, and part of the "charade" is a cycle of "reinvention." Cyrus already reinvented herself from "Hannah Montana" to game sex object. To go back to "guileless, fresh-faced ingénue" is to pendulum swing between the 2 most obvious options for a female pop star.

5. Cyrus is getting married, we're told, and that seems to mean she needs to "find[] a new way to be (or act) virtuous." But what she's doing now is so "banal": "pretty, tamed, straight, still, white." Why is the "path forward" for young women so "narrow"? She can "become less selfish and wayward only by embracing antiquated notions of femininity and propriety."

Is that "creepy"? "Creepiness" is the headline-writer's word. Perhaps Petrusich's point is more that the reinvention is just banal and boring. A girl veers into badness for thrills and excitement. What comes next should be a better form of emotional satisfaction, not retreat to the starting point. But is retreat "creepy"?

Being boring and uncreative isn't really creepy. The creeping sensation — to get back to origins — is a feeling in the flesh, a "chill shuddering feeling, caused by horror or repugnance" (OED). If that's your point here, New Yorker, you've got to take this to the next level, to what I said in the first paragraph of this post and say that the pose is gross because what looks wholesome is actually unwholesome, and you feel revulsion.

But that wouldn't fit with the conclusion you chose, which was itself banal and boring, that after the innocence and debauchery, there's a new third stage, something less "less selfish and wayward" but not just "femininity and propriety." I guess that's supposed to sound like feminism, but I'm a bit creeped out by the statement that "femininity" is an "antiquated notion" and "white" is "banal."

Who's really creepy here?

By the way, if you declare "femininity" a "notion" — even without the "antiquated" —  how can you be trans-friendly?

68 comments:

tim in vermont said...

Cyrus had a period a couple years ago in which she indulged in the white privilege of "trying-on and discarding of black culture," and now she's "essentially scrubbed her music and image of any hints of the hip-hop and R. & B.," and that might be "sinister."

Wherein we damn her because she did, then damn her because she did not.

Fernandinande said...

"There is nothing as feeble as the human mind when it is in the grip of the desire to be fashionable."

Darrell said...

New Yorker HQ would make a good deportation center.

n.n said...

new yorker: no judgment

JAORE said...

Years ago comedian Steve Martin grew a full beard. Then he shaved on half of his face. The bit was he'd perform profile then reverse direction.

Perhaps Ms.Cyrus (Lady GaGa, Madonna, etc) could benefit from this example.

Darrell said...

Miley adopted the correct anti-Trump political ideology, so she will do just fine. The New Yorker is just punishing her in case she ever held a pro-USA position, common with C&W artists.

BillyTalley said...

What's creepy about the New Yorker's finding of creepiness is that the transgressive Left (as opposed to the conserving Right, the modifiers of both sides I think fit) has come to the place where their only way out is to transgress codified and routine acts of transgression. They can't bring themselves to go beyond their own calcified definitions. Their transgression has become conservative. Irony!

Oso Negro said...

"Wholesome" and "Miley Cyrus" in the same paragraph. How about that?

rhhardin said...

Some wholesome guy things would be nice. Learn math.

Wince said...

Do we think that a young woman is pure until she's not, and after that, if she presents herself as healthy and good, it's a disgusting fraud, and we've got to point fingers at her and call her out, so that no one is deceived into allying with this loathsome slut?

In Miley's case, think of it as college without the tuition and books.

"That's why every girl needs those slutty college years... You'll like it, it's sweet."

Laslo Spatula said...

It's the Modern Pop Star Arc.

First, though, you have to be at least mildly plausible as a Hot Slutty Girl. Sorry, Adele...

Britney Spears tried the Wholesome-to-Slutty Arc, starting with the simply naught Catholic Schoolgirl Thing, with the shirt tied up to show midriff. When she tried to turn slutty though it didn't quite work: she just looked like a White Trash Southern Girl returning to her roots. And then she didn't arc back to Wholesome, she just sorta waited a bit until Vegas called...

Christina Aguilera made the Arc: Young Clean Chick singing about Rubbing Genie Bottles to Dirty Xtina in streaked hair,panties and ass-less chaps. The problem is when she went back to wholesome she also got chubby: this raises the question of whether Wholesome was a Career Move or she just ate herself out of the Hot Slut Category...

Miley Cyrus went from Hannah Montana to twerking Paul McCartney, which seems to be Slutty With Daddy Issues. She also was photographed naked a lot. However, if she uses make-up to cover the tattoos she can still be somewhat convincing of Wholesome, or at least at leaving behind Culture Appropriation. Because there is no room for Wholesome in Hip-Hop...

Of course, Madonna tried to blaze this trail, but she never really went Wholesome, she just developed a British Accent. Then she kept that accent when she went back to being a Sinewy Dominatrix: this is not Slutty, it's just Embarrassingly Freaky...

Ariana Grande is in a tough position: she is at the point of her career where she should turn Slutty, but after the Manchester Murders it might seem in Poor Taste. Or more Poor Taste than is intentional, regarding the Slutty Transition. She has to tread carefully: however, the Massacre gave her some Good Will: Madonna probably would have killed for the Notoriety of a Muslim bombing one of HER concerts...

Just some thoughts, as we wait for the next fifteen-year-old girl to Hop On The Ride...

I am Laslo.

MayBee said...

I'm really surprised at how common it has become to use "white" as a slur, as a negative judgement.

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

" Madonna probably would have killed for the Notoriety of a Muslim bombing one of HER concerts."

A bomb set off at a Madonna concert would kill a lot of middle age white women and gays partying like it's 1989. The terrorists were after younger victims.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

If you have to constantly re-invent yourself, it means that at your core....you are nothing and nobody.

robother said...

"TV dinner by the pool, I'm so glad I finished school..."

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

MayBee said...
I'm really surprised at how common it has become to use "white" as a slur, as a negative judgement.

5/28/17, 9:05 AM

And many of the people using it as a slur are white themselves.

cacimbo said...

Agree that Petrusich, the quintessential example of "white privilege" sniping about white privilege is creepy and repulsive.

sunsong said...

People are more complex than this presents. Good grief.

cacimbo said...

"I'm really surprised at how common it has become to use "white" as a slur, as a negative judgement."

That is what the self loathing whites and angry blacks and browns who dominate our education system are indoctrinating their students to believe.

tcrosse said...

For a white person to use "white" as a slur is cultural appropriation from non-whites, am I right ?

Ann Althouse said...

"I'm really surprised at how common it has become to use "white" as a slur, as a negative judgement."

Ironically, it's white privilege for a white person to go on about white privilege.

You're mistaken if you read it as a negative judgment on white people. That is a veneer, and if the people talking about it were to realize that, they might stop. The truth is that this kind of putting down of white people reflects an embarrassing confidence in whiteness. It is actually a form of white supremacy.

Georgia Lawyer said...

"I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin."
Oscar Levant

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Being of Irish/Welsh/Scottish descent, I am more of a pale beige.

People are getting all wound up about the most ridiculous things.

Paco Wové said...

"It is actually a form of white supremacy"

Yes and no. It's a form of supremacy, sure, and it's being exercised by people who are white, but it's higher-caste whites pushing down on lower-caste whites, letting them know they should keep in their place and mind their p's and q's.

Being high-caste, of course they have confidence. They've always been top dog, how could that change?

Bay Area Guy said...

Hmm. The New Yorker on Miley Cyrus' return to normalcy. I'm trying to think of analogy here.

How 'bout - The National Enquirer criticizes "Baghdad Bob" for trying to come clean and be honest?

William said...

Amy Winehouse was dead for several years before I learned that she was a gifted singer. I don't pay much attention. Maybe Miley Cyrus is talented. I won't be around to see it, but after a few divorces, a couple of stays in rehab, and ,maybe, some struggles with her weight, her voice will deepen with experience and sweeten with sorrow. Old, fat Miley Cyrus will know something about life and will be worth listening to. It happened to Marianne Faithful.......As a vocational group, who's the most fucked up: rap singers, jazz musicians, rock stars, young female pop stars, blues singers, or fat opera stars? Some screwed up people are drawn to music. Entropy. If you create order and harmony in your music, you also create a corresponding amount of disorder and chaos in some other part of your life..... ..I like Alison Krauss. She's kind of youngish. Any hipster points for liking Allison Krauss?

rhhardin said...

Miley Cyrus doesn't seem to be an actress, at least not in my DVD collection.

Some singers show up there sometimes. I can't keep track.

Anyway she could go for a young district attorney role, if she wants to work her way back to wholesome.

You're allowed to know about sluts but don't do it anymore.

cacimbo said...

"The truth is that this kind of putting down of white people reflects an embarrassing confidence in whiteness. It is actually a form of white supremacy."

It might start out that way, but when you have an entire generation raised on the idea "white" is bad it takes effect. At Occupy meetings non-white females are given first option to speak, followed by non-white males, then white females with uber privileged white males going last. Today's youth view black/brown as hip, cool, WOKE. White is viewed as unfairly privileged, boring dull. Cultures emulate that which they admire.

Michael said...

Whiteness. When I think of that Word I envision Bach and Milton and Blake and Shakespeare and scores of cathedrals. I think of the Golden Gate Bridge and Beethoven, of the Hoover dam and Chopin and the King James bible and the printing press and even Stonehenge.

Sebastian said...

@AA: "if you declare "femininity" a "notion" — even without the "antiquated" — how can you be trans-friendly?" There's no contradiction. Making gender identity a "notion" is the essence of transgenderism, if for the sake of postmodern irony you'll pardon the antiquated essentialism.

@BillyTalley: "come to the place where their only way out is to transgress codified and routine acts of transgression. They can't bring themselves to go beyond their own calcified definitions. Their transgression has become conservative. Irony!" True. When all values have been transvalued, what's left for would-be transgressors to transgress?

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

From the hilariously spot on blog Stuff White People Like: Being the only white person around

"Many white people will look into the window of an ethnic restaurant to see if there are other white people in there. It is determined to be an acceptable restaurant if the white people in there are accompanied by ethnic friends. But if there is a table occupied entirely by white people, it is deemed unacceptable.

The arrival of the “other white people” to either restaurants or vacation spots instantly means that lines will grow, authenticity will be lost, and the euphoria of being a cultural pioneer will be over.

Being aware of this can be extremely valuable in your efforts to gain the trust of white friends and co-workers. If you bring a white person to an ethnic restaurant and another white person (or group of white people) shows up, you can lose all respect and trust that you have worked so hard to acquire. Do your best to find a table with a divider, or ask the waiter to put future white people out of sight."

https://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/02/20/71-being-the-only-white-person-around/

mockturtle said...

Whiteness. When I think of that Word I envision Bach and Milton and Blake and Shakespeare and scores of cathedrals. I think of the Golden Gate Bridge and Beethoven, of the Hoover dam and Chopin and the King James bible and the printing press and even Stonehenge.

Amen, Michael. And white men, at that.

Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...

Do we think that a young woman is pure until she're not...

Here's your problem right there. What the hell does "purity" even mean and what the heck's it got to do with some woman's vagina? Does she have some filthy disease? No?

Conservatives have no idea what purpose ancient sexual mores even served. Pre-birth control and DNA testing, property acquisition and transfer to a genetic male heir was a big deal, and one you didn't want to be defrauded out of. But nowadays there are ways to check and make sure that's not happening when it shouldn't. And hence, no reason at all to freak out about female chastity.

The world is sick and tired of being told to do stupid arbitrary things from days that have long since passed when it made sense to do them. It's stifling your minds and keeping the human race backward and benighted.

wildswan said...

I watched the video and it seemed choreographed and phony. So, like the New Yorker author and Althouse my thoughts turned to "what are the masters of music up to now?"
Miley Cyrus is no longer cavorting about a crowded, smoky, noisy stage like the Duke in Huckleberry Finn. She is beautifully dressed as a casual California beach girl. Posed against a surging sea (representing emotion) and gesturing stiffly (emotion under control, I suppose) she sings a few simple heartfelt lines about finding true love and a best friend after all that we've been through and watching the sun go down by the beach - together at last at twilight time. Once, balloons like those you can attach to texts if you have an iphone suddenly replaced the surging sea which I felt was ridiculous but I think that probably Millies wouldn't like four minutes to go by without some kind of text message or at least a reference to texting. The sea came back, still surging. I had been watching for two minutes and I felt that an eternity was going by - very slowly, if you can imagine that concept - and I might get stuck, suffering irrevocable brain damage while I tried to work out the new master plan for the arts. The sea surged, Miley gestured for the Millies, the sea sorghum surge, and I stopped - watching.

So the New Yorker thinks that this video-molasses indicates that the arts-masters have a creepy new master plan that excludes blacks and panders to whites, the master race in the race for profits. That's what is meant by Laurel Canyon/Nashville. Bad Rap Girl is hip hopping back to Blue Bayou. Malibu here I come right back where I started from, lippety, lippety, lop.

As Althouse says both the video and the New Yorker commentary are a pretty shallow view of what goes on when a woman stops pretending to be a hooker to show she's a grown-up and grows up.

But the video and New Yorker commentary might be a pretty accurate view of how the masters see American music if you strip out "cultural appropriations" from the blacks. But why do that? That isn't the next step. We've never had "American music" without black input and we never will. We'll never do it well without them. We aren't Europeans; we can't go back there and do it the European way with any reality or conviction. But maybe we should not only stop pretending we are woke hookers but also stop pretending the blacks are.

Sebastian said...

"It is actually a form of white supremacy." In a way it is. But that doesn't make it less destructive.

Anyway, not that the left cares about consistency, but if cultural appropriation is the sin du jour, and no racial group may appropriate anything from anybody, let's make sure non-whites don't use anything "white," from electrical power and airplanes to musical notation and the internet to penicillin and the Fourteenth Amendment.

rcocean said...

"Ironically, it's white privilege for a white person to go on about white privilege."

Which of course, brings up the question. Why are we now talking about and using the phrase "white privilege" when we weren't 10, 20, or 30 years ago?

Who put that thought/phrase in our heads? And why?

Ann Althouse said...

"It is actually a form of white supremacy."

Notice that it's "humble bragging." You're talking yourself down because you really do believe that the thing you're putting down is so good and you're adopting the faux negativity because you think you can get it across best this way. You won't want to admit that's what you're doing, not in the case of something you know you're not supposed to feel superior about.

Humble bragging will go on about things it's actually okay to be proud of, like how pretty you are, how well you're doing at work, etc.

rcocean said...

Isn't Ms. Cyrus' target audience young girls/women?

If so, why is some old white man from the New Yorker getting all worked about it?

Sounds creepy.

robother said...

Ann Althouse: "Ironically, it's white privilege for a white person to go on about white privilege."

True. But mainly, it is about one group of whites establishing elite status over another group of deplorable whites (and only incidentally over the eternal victim minority groups they are using to virtue signal.)

D 2 said...

Tough to try to categorize down to two paths. They are all evidently unique to their time & place. Maybe the debate sides are: "Distillation vs Re-invention". Adele is honing who Adele is. Miley is putting another layer on. In linking back to yesterdays post re Cher, might i suggest:

Miley/GaGa to Brit/Christina to Madonna to Cher.
Adele to Lilith Fairs (SarahMc/Jewel) to PatBenatar to Joni.

I was thinking for Path 3: Pink to ??(Hole?) to ChrissieH to LindaR. But that might be my bias for liking the Pretenders. Beyonce to Whitney to Diana is the onvious 4th path- dont know if it is respect/disrespect to highlight based on color, but i would think that the Re-invention thesis might be different for Beyonce than it is for Miley. Theres likely 3/4 more.

Gahrie said...

but I'm a bit creeped out by the statement that "femininity" is an "antiquated notion" and "white" is "banal."

You're a little late to the party....

Gahrie said...

Why does the Spanish language and Spanish culture get a pass? The Spanish language and culture are much more patriarchal than their English counterparts, and just as European and White. Spanish imperialism, colonialism and slavery was more oppressive and genocidal than the English versions. Where is the outrage?

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

Humble bragging will go on about things it's actually okay to be proud of, like how pretty you are, how well you're doing at work, etc.

5/28/17, 10:04 AM

Employer: "What do you consider your greatest fault?"

Interviewee: "I'm such a perfectionist. I worry about my job all the time because I want every project I work on to be way above average. My spouse tells me not to fret about it but..."

Robert Cook said...

"If you have to constantly re-invent yourself, it means that at your core....you are nothing and nobody."

It means you are your own product, and as with any seller of a product, the product's image must be refreshed periodically to keep it seeming current and in the minds of the consumers.

Marketing!

n.n said...

Modern "wholesomeness" embracec the final solution, [class] diversity, political congruence ("="), and other elective things (e.g. elective wars, extrajudicial trials). Progressive morality.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Ok...I am going to be really honest here. There IS such a thing as white privilege. There are a lot of privileges that people don't want to talk about as well that have zero to do with skin color. Not all white people benefit from privilege either.

Defining white privilege as being favored for job hiring, promotion, renting things, getting loans etc etc etc. Defining white as other than Black, Mexican and other ethnicities and generally being of European descent. The idea that white people are favored over blacks is true. The reasons are based in stereotypes (positive and negative) and stereotypes arise out of people's real life experiences.

Are stereotypes unfair to the entire group being judged. Of course they are. Not all people of color are unreliable workers, have poor credit, tend to trash their homes and commit crimes. A lot of 'white' people are just as bad. Stereotyping isn't just on a 'color' basis either. Some white person from the depths of West(by God)Virginia, trying to get a job in NYC in the financial industry (for example)is going to be negatively judged as well based on culture and an accent thick enough to be cut with a knife. White privilege doesn't help that hillbilly hick. How you dress, how you speak, how you comport yourself are all first impressions that either reinforce or refute the stereotype.

Businesses always are going to show preference for hiring people (in general) who have shown previously positive characteristics that will make the business better and not harm the business. Banks don't want to lend to poor people or people with bad credit...of any color.... because they don't pay back their loans. Businesses don't want to hire dumb, uneducated, rude people of any color. West Virginia hick, or black ghetto looking thug or barrio banger.

Yes. Privilege exists. How do you get past it? It is going to be really really hard. Change the stereotype. Change it by changing the culture that is producing the negative perceptions. It doesn't happen overnight. The Irish were the scum of the earth to the Americans who were here when they immigrated in droves. The Italians were all gangsters. Time and good perceptions of people that you get to know changes these things.

What doesn't work is violence, spewing hatred back at people who have no animus towards you. Destroying property. Throwing giant temper tantrums that only tend to RE-enforce the negative stereotypes. That isn't winning. It is losing. Bigly.

Bill Peschel said...

First note to those who didn't read the article: the author is Amanda Petrusich, a freelancer contributing to the website, not a member of the staff. She is 46, so her reverse slut-shaming could still be called "creepy."

I'm afraid my simple mind can't accept her cultural arguments. It should be acceptable for artists -- even pop-tarts -- to write about anything. It should be acceptable to sing and play music in a style that suits the song.

"Malibu" is about finding love with one person, a tale as old as time. Hardly a transgressive subject, but I remember when I found someone I could be comfortable with, be myself with, and the song conveys that very nicely (except for the being a tattooed young girl dancing in a string bikini on the shores of a rich white man's colony).

I suppose if she took this song and "Fancied" it (You should want a bad bitch like this (huh?) / Drop it low and pick it up just like this (yeah)) Amanda Petrusich would be applauding?

(I'm reminded of a line from Susan Sontag's diaries: "I’m finishing the [“Story of] O” review which has turned into a 35-page essay. It’s OK. Still, I don’t believe a word I’m saying.")

Seeing Red said...

So now growing up is creepy. And settling down. Boomer mentality.

Jupiter said...

"Spanish imperialism, colonialism and slavery was more oppressive and genocidal than the English versions. Where is the outrage?"

I beg to differ. The Spanish conquistadors wanted wealth. They were happy to have the Indians of South and Central America produce that wealth. The English wanted the land, not the people on it. Which is why most of the people moving here from Mexico are brown, while most of the people born here are white.

Lloyd W. Robertson said...

I was much too old for Hannah Montana, and there were no kids around to expose me to it. I've never had any interest in Miley the pop star, Miley the twerker, and whatever else. I like wildswan's comment:
"But the video and New Yorker commentary might be a pretty accurate view of how the masters see American music if you strip out "cultural appropriations" from the blacks. But why do that? That isn't the next step. We've never had "American music" without black input and we never will. We'll never do it well without them. We aren't Europeans; we can't go back there and do it the European way with any reality or conviction."
I like Miley's "Backyard Sessions," which I take to be kind of a Valentine to her boomer/hippy parents. If she feels free to go back to being Nashville royalty, is this phony or creepy? Is Nashville more wholesome than Hollywood? When I watch the Nashville/CMA Christmas special, it seems the stars are allowed one divorce each.

Earnest Prole said...

Is there anything in human history whiter than the New Yorker?

Bilwick said...

Ah, the great minds of today's Democratic Party!

Freeman Hunt said...

Sheesh. Heaven forbid young people have some space to change around and figure out life.

walter said...

Chose her sister to introduce her instead of brother Trace Cyrus.

Laslo, that wasn't a British accent Madonna "appropriated". You know..she was reverting back to her Michigan roots.

walter said...

Dust Bunny Queen said... The idea that white people are favored over blacks is true.

Uh..in terms of hiring and managiong, this really depends. I've seen plenty of instances of those in hiring/managing positions clearly favoring minorities when the opportunity arises. Same goes for looking the other way when some of these hires' work practices are sub par. If one has the "privilege" mindset occupying their brain, they're going to seek opportunities to prove to themselves and others they are above it.

n.n said...

The New Yorker: No Judgment. Sort of, kind of, maybe, selectively. Pro-Choice.

Martin said...

imho, what's creepy is that anyone cares about Miley Cyrus, one way or the other.

Dust Bunny Queen said...

Dust Bunny Queen said... The idea that white people are favored over blacks is true.

I've seen plenty of instances of those in hiring/managing positions clearly favoring minorities when the opportunity arises. Same goes for looking the other way when some of these hires' work practices are sub par.

Because, they "have" to do so. What with affirmative action and being beaten over the head with political correctness diversity training.

ccscientist said...

The author condemns Miley for her slut phase, but then makes fun of a good girl image. While it may not be plausible that Miley is really going back to being a good girl, that isn't the issue--there is no next phase for Miley that this author would approve of. And what if Miley really realized that her slut phase was...just a phase? And grew out of it? What would that look like?

Ambrose said...

To be fair, she has grown up in the public eye. It can't be easy doing that. I actually enjoyed Hannah Montana (my kids watched - I just happened to be in the room) and thought she had comedic talent.

The Godfather said...

I knew Myley Cyrus back when . . . .

Back when she was Hannah Montana. It wasn't voluntary on my part. My granddaughters loved, loved, LOVED the Hannah Montana show on television, so we watched that a lot. I even listened to it when I didn't see it -- we had a TV in the back of the mini-van, so when I drove the girls places they watched and I listened to the Hannah show.

This was one of the multitude of shows targeted at the young girl audience (mostly apparently products of Disney), with a teen-age girl star, teen-age friends who were funny (if girls) or goofy (if boys), and really, really REALLY feckless parents. The Hannah Montana show was less bad than most. For one thing Hannah had only one parent, her father, and Billy Ray wasn't as stupid and helpless as most fathers in these shows. Hannah was portrayed as reasonably grounded most of the time (given that the thesis of the show was that Myley was a regular girl with a secret identity as famous C&W singer Hannah). Her singing was pretty good, and she had a fairly deep, husky voice for a teen-age girl.

So I was glad when Myley grew out of her show so I didn't have to watch/hear it any more (but what the granddaughters watched instead turned out to be worse), and I hoped the adult Myley would develop into a good C&W singer.

I was sorry she thought she had to promote herself as a slut-figure, another Madonna or Lady Gaga. She may have actual talent, but twerking and swinging around naked on a wrecking ball isn't what I call talent.

The video of her new number gives me some hope that she might now be trying to build a career on her talent. I hope she does, and I hope she suceeds.

But please delete this comment, because endorsement from a grandfather figure is the last thing she needs to promote her career.

Cactiki said...

Of course its creepy to the lefty liberal New Yorker type crowd. They prefer rebellion to obedience, evil to goodness, sluttiness to chastity. The "white" people succeeded partly because they followed the rules, which adolescent minded liberals hate. They prefer more primitive types who can't control their animal urges, be it sexual, criminal, or social.

walter said...

Dust Bunny Queen said...Because, they "have" to do so. What with affirmative action and being beaten over the head with political correctness diversity training.
--
Kind of..
But..currently...the mindset has grown beyond/mainstreamed past such remedial formalities.

Rusty said...

Born again slattern ...

autothreads said...

"We've never had "American music" without black input and we never will. We'll never do it well without them. "

What would American music be like without George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Benny Goodman, Doc Pomus, Lieber & Stoler, Al Kooper, Bob Dylan, Leonard Chess, Carol King, and Jerry Wexler?

Robert Cook said...

"What would American music be like without George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Benny Goodman, Doc Pomus, Lieber & Stoler, Al Kooper, Bob Dylan, Leonard Chess, Carol King, and Jerry Wexler?"

They were all influenced by black music. The very idioms in which they worked were wholly or significantly developed by blacks. (But this is not to say what we think of as American black music was an immaculate conception by blacks in this country. Black music was influenced by the folk and popular musical forms that existed in America alongside them.)

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

"I'm really surprised at how common it has become to use "white" as a slur, as a negative judgement."

It's about as common as using code words for "white" as a slur such as "creepy" and "wholesome".

Bandit said...

In the immortal words of somebody from some movie

"That's why they call it show BIZZZZNESS"