After last night's VMA performance, this old video is charting on Reddit (where the top comment is "When can we start using The Onion as a credible source?"):
We were talking about the VMA performance in a post earlier this morning, and you can see it here. I was going to watch it closely and opine on the race-and-gender politics and the symbolism of teddy bears, but then I didn't. Let's just watch the old Bjork video, directed by Michael Gondry, for "Human Behavior." That had some strange bears around a puzzling young woman:
If you ever get close to a human/And human behavior/You'd better be ready to get confused....
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She is trying to be Madonna. And she really is very average looking. Not a good long term prognosis.
She is trying to be Madonna. And she really is very average looking. Not a good long term prognosis.
Alternative religion. Judge it by the principles it engenders. This one is suspiciously dehumanizing. Perhaps if she/they keep it to themselves, then we can coexist.
I didn't comment in the old post, so I'll say it here:
Miley: Don't try so hard.
She's not like Madonna. Madonna always comes across as someone who is making her own artistic decisions and is canny and self-aware. You might not like her choices, but they are her choices.
Miley is gamely following someone else's instructions. There is no self-expression on display, and because she is so young, I feel like I'm watching a kid being used up -- depleted, like the Onion said 5 years ago.
Miley is going through steps and sticking out her tongue to express the idea that she grew up and got bad -- that she's all about sex -- but look closely and you'll see an old-fashioned stage kid, counting the steps in her head, and doing what other people have told her to do.
She still looks healthy underneath all that crap -- costumes, makeup, cruel hair. Maybe she can live through that and enjoy the money she made while she was hot. Maybe she knows that's exactly what she is doing. It might not be horrible for her, but there is zero reason to want to watch. That's why people are averting their eyes.
Patience for dealing with Miley Cyrus stories has already depleted. :-/
As a side note: Jeez, thanks VMA's. Whatever happened on your show last night turned my Twitter feed - normally composed of various sports team fans - into something resembling a preteen's Facebook wall. I thought my brain was going to melt from all the vapidity. And to reset myself, I'm going to have to purchase a heavy cast iron skillet and bang it against my forehead for half an hour.
It does make me wonder if the entertainment industry has finally jumped the shark. Exploiting kid stars is as old as the business, but if they're now doing it so shamelessly and tastelessly that it's painful to watch, will that affect the future direction?
Probably not, but one can hope.
I am curious to know what Lena Dunham thinks!
She still looks healthy underneath all that crap -- costumes, makeup, cruel hair. Maybe she can live through that and enjoy the money she made while she was hot.
Even Courtney Love made her own artistic decisions.
She may be directed or is rebelling against her traditional development. She is at that age when reactive thoughts enter the mainstream, often with an inconsistent ability to moderate. Perhaps her antics are a late expression of puberty.
Well said Ann.
That was sad and painful to watch.
Ann Althouse said "She's not like Madonna. Madonna always comes across as someone who is making her own artistic decisions and is canny and self-aware. You might not like her choices, but they are her choices."
How do you know that? Madonna's image as a self-made superstar is carefully crafted. How do you know she was actually in charge at any point?
Is Oprah in charge of her image? Obama, his? Elvis, his? Michael Jackson, Justin Timberlake, Taylor Swift? Britney Spears?
The answer is that we cannot know. It's like Schroedinger's cat. Something's happening in that box, but we don't know what it is.
My guess would be that what teenagers call "the haters" would be most to blame for this. Nowadays, the haters have unprecedented opportunity for anonymity and misrepresentation of self. Any mostly clean teenager who comes across as more than slightly sexual in a well-inhabited public sphere is going to get dragged over the coals by haters decreeing her all manner of slut. Anyway, some teenage girls get fooled into thinking right-wing churchy types having excess indiscriminate fear of nasty sex are behind most of the hate, whereas actually nasty males (who may or may not be churchy) misleading nasty older women about the causes of the women's past problems are far more likely to be haters (I reckon).
And so the teenage girls foolishly try to take refuge with nasty males opposite to the churchy excessively clean types they mistake for the haters, and they get screwed up (not by the haters, who tend to go after older females, but by those nasty child molesters, drug dealers, etc. who tend to go after young females). Then eventually the girls as young women go on television doing something embarrassingly screwed-up and the nasty haters try to make it seem the problem with her is that she flirted with sex too much too early, whereas quite obviously the problem is not some excess of (now non-existent) youthful sexiness, but that she is dancing like she is into oral and rectal sodomy, which nasty males like. The haters fooled her into hating them so much and stupidly that they now can use her as example to point out what can happen later if a girl sings about sex too early even if in mostly innocuously clean ways--"see it's not nastiness that's the problem but excessively youthful sexuality", they might say. Probably nasty males who prey on women will try to convince her (while sodomizing her if they can) that she'll be totally fine and popular once she gives up the sort of sexual feelings that she might have had when 12 as a result of raging hormones, which would be unfortunate, because a corrupted girl needs to fall back on those feelings she had before corrupted.
Someday, I'd like to see a famous teenage starlet behave very sexy when young and remain totally clean with constant contempt for sodomy, drugs, and alcohol. She'd become ridiculously popular, probably. It's as though the forces that be in the music industry won't allow that, notwithstanding it would make them much money and greatly improve public morals.
Love Bjork! A truly original singer.
"Birthday" blew my mind.
van Susteren is running clips from the show, and it sure looks like porn to me.
I think that in the first 20 years I lived in the country, a burlesque show like this would have been promptly shut down, especially with a performer under 21.
and I agree with Althouse; this was very poorly done porn too.
Well, no need to delve into the racial politics of it all. The racist aspects of her dance routine -- the hell! you say? -- has been covered. Or, it's underway, anyway.
http://www.mediaite.com/online/embarrassing-columnist-sees-racism-in-miley-cyrus-twerking-minstrel-act/
Just a reminder: a high school in CA initially suspended girls who were found "twerking" a school wall on YouTube. After a parent outcry, the school instead deemed them "sexual harassers." This finding will go on their permanent high school records.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSMFqgyia64
Miley is just the puppet of an obsessed designer Marc Jacobs. Jacobs controls Miley and told her to act like that at the VMA. Marc Jacobs is a manipulator who wants to lead everyone! He controls Kanye West, Lady Gaga, etc. Read the truth behind Miley's shocking performance on: http://styleangelique.blogspot.hu/2013/03/marc-jacobs-thief-of-century.html
You know this was rehearsed, right? In front of lots of people. Most of those people thought this act was just fine for TV.
Some of those people may have thought that it was a bad act, but they obviously couldn't or didn't cut it from the live show. But I can almost guarantee you that no one working on that show gave a single second's thought that Miley's act was too raw for Tv.
They were right, based on the number of people who watched it. In fact, this happens every year. Different girl, worse music, new three minute segment on the "Most Shocking" clip show, weird public bitchyness from grown men who should have been watching pre-season football.
If there's any deep messaging to be extracted from this evident train wreck, it's this; old people need to realize that the MTV of the 80's isn't coming back and stop watching it.
I've hated the song since I first heard it. My daughter pulled up the video of the vma's which she forced me to watch. It was so painfully embarrassing I had to look away. Looking away forced me to listen to her horrible voice, so I finally turned it off. She wasn't attractive, singing was never her strong suit. She should be with us for years going by current entertainment standards.
I always thought she was a very natural actress. To bad she doesn't seem interested in that anymore.
On the chili led stars gone bad scale she's gone past Britney, but hasn't quite reached Amanda Breslin levels yet. Give her a few more years.
Bob wrote:
The answer is that we cannot know. It's like Schroedinger's cat. Something's happening in that box, but we don't know what it is.
There's something happening but you don't know what it is
Do you..... Mr Shroe(dinger).
Twerking, I never knew the name for it.
Modern dance, Broadway, and musicals in general - once the home of marvelous and articulate dancing - are now dominated by twerking.
Milie will be our next Madonna.
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