Oh, the horror:
MTV has once again outraged an advocacy group that wants to reduce the level of adult content and profanity on television. The Parents Television Council, a nonprofit group known for criticizing shows, including “Family Guy,” for explicit content and adult jokes, took the network to task for airing condom ads and staging performances with skimpy costumes and sexually suggestive dancing during the Video Music Awards on Sunday.
Some viewers have said that Miley Cyrus’s performance, which included miming coitus with Robin Thicke and rump-shaking among dancing bears, was in particularly poor taste…
“This much is absolutely clear: MTV marketed adults-only material to children while falsely manipulating the content rating to make parents think the content was safe for their children,” a spokesman for the group, Dan Isett, said in a press release. “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?” …
Yeah, you guys didn’t have a problem with Billy Ray essentially selling his kid into indentured servitude at the Mouse Factory, as long as “Little Princess Froggy Dimples”, aka Hannah Montana, was selling family-friendly merch and cotton-candy-colored fantasies to your kids. But now the kid’s old enough to act out her feelings in public… and it’s pretty clear she feels like an abuse survivor. So ugly! So off-putting! Why can’t she settle for smiling silence and self-harm, like all those other mistreated child stars?
For extra credit, notice how Cyrus’s fellow celebs are apparently family-friendly, under the Boys Will Be Boys exemption. Maybe it’s just that playing pimp is properly capitalistic?
Video below the fold, since someone complained it auto-played on their machine:
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2013 VMA, Artists.MTV, Music, Miley Cyrus
(via the Stranger)
NotMax
This is front page material?
Pfui.
karen
Silly Annie Laurie, don’t you know when boys are sexual they’re just being boys and when girls are sexual they’re little sluts ?
Villago Delenda Est
Oh, someone get me some smelling salts, I do believe a case of the vapors is about to commence!
The broomstick-up-the ass squares of The Parents Television Council can find themselves a rusty chainsaw to remove the broomstick, as far as I’m concerned.
Keith P
You mean the actress consistently photographed bra-less, caught smoking salvia, and singing songs about ecstasy *isn’t* like one of her TV characters? Consider my mind blown.
JPL
Some of us didn’t know that his daughter was sold to Disney so lighten up. . Some of us went to Huffington Post today and watched a video that was suggestive. Some of us thought there might be a gal needing to talk to someone, if she found that attractive. Just sayin.
gbear
Can we at least agree that, whatever the sexual politics, it’s really shitty music?
Cygil
This has been the go since Elvis wriggled his pelvis, Jagger strutted his stuff, John Travolta rubbed his crotch and Michael Jackson grabbed his. And you can add in Madonna, Olivia Newton John, and Britney Spears.
Good to know the old “rock n roll is corrupting our chillens morals” piece never gets old in wingnut circles.
JPL
@Cygil: hmmm.. The foam finger got to me though. The routine sucked and she stayed around way to long, imo.
btw Katy Perry did a great job, sorta, skimpy outfit and all.
also,too.. I was never an Elvis fan.
The Sailor
Did anyone else get autpplay on the front page and autoplay again when loading this thread?
Helen
I’ve never seen her perform before. Wow – she’s super untalented. That’s what the outrage should be about.
Steeplejack
@The Sailor:
I did not get autoplay (Firefox 23.0.1, Windows 7). In fact, when I tried to play this video it churned and churned and never started. I reloaded the page because I got sick of waiting.
Irony Abounds
The whole VMA crowd is repulsive. Throw Cyrus in with the Kardashians (including the brother and Bruce Jenner), Justin Bieber, Lindsey Lohan, Paris Hilton, Robin Thicke etc. and you have a sickening culture – not because of the sexuality, but because of the extreme stupidity and tastelessness. Anyone who sat in front of their TV and watched last night’s proceedings must be brain dead (and if they weren’t when they started they certainly were by the end). If Miley Cyrus shoving her ass up against Thicke’s dick is a sign of an empowered woman, then don’t be surprised or upset if empowered women are called sluts. It was at best a crudely done attempt at being shocking. The Parents Television Council is a group of fascist thugs who want their only their vision of white bread America from the 50s on TV, but just because they are against something doesn’t make that thing good.
magurakurin
@gbear:
really shitty.
beth
Has this guy been to a middle school lately? Or dropped by a mall on a Saturday? Trust me, 14 year olds know all about this stuff already. My teen just blew off the performance and said “yeah, Miley’s a real skank these days”. She and her friends, however, just loved the condom commercial (it was pretty cute).
Gin & Tonic
“The crux of the biscuit is: If it entertains you, fine. Enjoy it. If it doesn’t, then blow it out your ass.”
Frank Zappa.
Ted & Hellen
I loved this performance.
She was goofy/fun/sporty/sexy/nerdy/silly/irreverent/spazzy and having a hell of a lot of FUN, and showing it.
Audiences forgive a great deal when they see a singer/performer enjoying themselves, engaging the audience, having a lot of fun, and above all not taking themselves too seriously.
Which is exactly the problem with Gaga. Every move she makes is fraught with deep meaning and artistic implications now…or so we’re told to pretend to believe.
I saw joy on the stage in Miley Cyrus’ performance last night. She made me laugh. And for that I forgive all the Disney cotton candy tripe that went before.
Ted & Hellen
@NotMax:
Speaking of taking oneself way too seriously…
Ted & Hellen
@karen:
Bingo.
Robert
The worst part about the Miley Cyrus press explosion is that the best performance of the night has been mostly ignored. Macklemore, Ryan Lewis, and unsigned singer/songwriter Mary Lambert performed a passionate rendition of “Same Love” in what should have been a star is born moment for Lambert. She sang one line of the chorus and the crowd lost it. From there, everyone onstage fed off the energy and turned out a real musical performance from actual musicians. It was a perfect storm of content and execution in the middle of a really inane awards show.
gbear
@JPL:
She’s surrounded by entertainment executives that are telling her that this is the hottest thing ever and will send her career into the stratosphere. This is what she hears every day that she spends in the entertainment industry. I’d feel sorry for her if she wasn’t already rich enough to get the hell out of the business.
As to the Elvis comparisons, in the 50’s, Elvis wasn’t manufactured. He was actually a bit of a freak. People laughed nervously at him on his early TV appearances.
Montysano
@Irony Abounds:
Geez, people, lighten up. It’s just pop music.
Cain
Miley’s performance was pretty bad. I looked at it and wondered what the hell I just watched. I mean, I think she was trying to be edgy but it just came off as a big wtf. I don’t think anybody in that audience thought that was quality entertainment. At least Madonna when she did it had a lot of a talent and knew what they were doing. This was just trying to provoke a reaction with no message.
She’s probably lost the respect of our former fans with such stupid stunts.
Gin & Tonic
@Ted & Hellen: Fun without talent isn’t very appealing.
My daughter is a middle school music teacher, so she knows a lot more about the tastes of the tweens and teens than I (or, presumably, you) and she was appalled not at issues of “taste” but at the un-musicality.
Bitter Scribe
So Miley Cyrus likes to sex it up. AFAIC, anyone who spent her childhood in the Billy Ray Disney fishbowl/blender gets to do whatever the fuck she wants.
Anne Laurie
@The Sailor: Moved it below the fold, just for you!
@Helen: I’ll admit I’m prejudiced, because the one time I was exposed to ‘Hannah Montana’ was a holiday marathon at the height of its popularity (family gathering, sister-in-law was using the kitchen tv to avoid talking to the rest of us while her kids watched something else in another room). Widowed dad had a very very “special secret” with his prepubescent daughter — she got to be a glamourous celebrity, but only as long as nobody else knew about it — and younger brother was “acting out”, threatening to “tell”, until Daddy bought him an expensive ATV or go-cart and explained that the minute anyone outside the family knew, it was No More Gravy Train for any of them. Ick ick ick ick! That’s appropriate for family viewing? — maybe in the Manson family!
Mnemosyne
@Robert:
If that song comes on the radio while I’m driving, I have to switch the channel, because otherwise it makes me cry so hard I have to pull the car over.
I bought that album based on that song and “Thrift Shop.”
Comrade Jake
Yes, the problem with Miley really isn’t her gender here, it’s her complete lack of talent and taste. The young lady can’t even manage to sing in key, for Chrissakes. Blurred lines, indeed.
Gwangung
@Gin & Tonic:
And I oughta know…I produced enough of that….
Anne Laurie
@Ted & Hellen:
Yeah, well, I saw defiance — good for the girl “taking back” her image, but it doesn’t feel like she was happy except that she knew she was pissing off the people who’d exploited her.
I’ll admit I could be over-thinking, since it’s not my musical genre.
Lawrence
Like an Adam Sandler movie that forgets to include the comedy (all of them) this is a sex show that forgets to be arousing.
Ed in NJ
@Comrade Jake:
Agreed. We are far from prudes or sexually repressed in my household. We watched with our 11- and 12-year olds, and we were unanimous in that she is horribly untalented and unattractive. If you are going to put yourself out there like that, you have to expect to be judged. And we judge her to be disgusting.
NobodySpecial
Her father got his big break shaking his ass in a country music video for legions of horny women. Talibangical type thinking – it’s ok for daddy to shake it, but gods forbid his daughter uncross her legs in public.
Lyrebird
Wow, that video is kinda sad! I think JPL and Irony Abounds have covered my take on this one…
Not sure what the opening scene was all about, the not-really-Pedobears’ Picnic? I recognize that she’s an adult with every right to make utterly WTF “art” — if that was her goal I think she’s succeeded on this one.
TheMightyTrowel
@Anne Laurie: The tell is that no one is complaining about Robin Thicke and his whole misogynist predator schtick. They’re freaking out over a young woman’s sexualised dancing. Just another round of slut shaming and one that, I agree with you AL, is even more atrocious because of the years of forced servitude to the Mouse that seems to have prompted at least some of it.
Genine
I didn’t think her performance was very good. I am not downing the raunchiness, but I AM downing raunchiness not done RIGHT. It looked like she was trying too hard and that put me off. Her singing was okay by Autotune princess standards but she didn’t come off sexy at all. Her movements were too big, too jerky and there was too much tongue. Had the moves been smoother, more gliding and there was rhyme or reason to the tongue it would have been okay by today’s standards. I think.
/old fogey
kc
@Ted & Hellen:
I can’t believe I agree with you. It was totally vulgar and over the top and . . . funny as hell.
kc
@Anne Laurie:
I never saw that show, but I hated the very idea of it. The first time I saw MC in action was when she hosted Sat Night Live a couple of years ago, and I liked her. She was surprisingly (to me) funny and appealing.
Donut
I watched it live. I’m not a fan of Cyrus, by any stretch. The first part of her performance just made me feel embarrassed for her. It was just…not interesting. Very clinical. Trying way too hard to be freaky and weird. Just came off as mildly creepy and at best, a forced edginess. She was going through the motions, IMO. Not sexy or even sexual. It reminded me more of the kind of thing one would presumably find in an exurban titty bar.
The song she did (which is from her record) showcases nothing about her talent, btw. She actually has a pretty good set of pipes and is not one of these kids who has to rely on auto tune.
The whole bit just got stoopid when Robon Thicke joined her. Again, totally the kind of thing that only induces boners in drunk middle-aged guys.
Overall, I give it one “meh” on a scale of 1-10 Mehs.
beth
@kc: I didn’t see it as being funny at all. I saw someone trying too hard to be talked about the next day – kind of like a three year old repeating the word “fuck” because he knows it gets a reaction from the grown-ups. My daughter likened it to watching your mom dance – it was just embarassing. And can we all agree that unless you’re Gene Simmons or a dog that’s been running around in the heat, your tongue should stay planted firmly inside your mouth?
Donut
@Anne Laurie:
See, the thing is, Cyrus has been remaking her image for a long while now. This silliness she put on, and it was a total put on, was not necessary for her to accomplish an image reset. That had already been done. She has been running with this “lookit me, I’m a freak now” thing for a good year, since her movie career starting tanking and her engagement fizzed out.
This stuff she did last night was done to get people talking about Miley Cyrus, period. She needs people talking about her to sell records, because despite her actual talent, she and her management are afraid no one gives a shit about her if she just sings and focuses on music over image.
As far as the artists involved are concerned, the VMAs exist because artists who appear on them want to juice their sales, and often do get big bumps in sales from them. MTV is all too thrilled to exploit Cyrus for that purpose and deliver eyeballs to advertisers.
Synergy…
That is one lens through which this can view this. My perspective is as a former major recording artist. It doesn’t mean I’m right, necessarily, but that’s how I see it.
hells littlest angel
Sexy as tuna salad.
PIGL
I have almost zero knowledge of Ms. Cyrus, but someone drew this to my attention recently:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2wvaWTTmz8
She certainly has talent and taste here.
wasabi gasp
So you’re saying that wasn’t Bieber then?
But seriously now, sometimes you just gotta chill out, step back and see the big picture. In that context, this isn’t a just world and Alan isn’t gonna shoot his kid.
Dream On
If you watch it with the sound off, nobody in that barn comes across well. She runs out of moves super-quick, the audience look like they are have barely even heard of music, the bears are the sexiest things there.
Pop culture: As shallow and stupid as always, now fortified with ho’s ‘n’ bitchas, playas and chiselers.
cinesimon
I saw a teenager expressing herself honestly. Sometimes to we adults, that’s ugly and over the top – always has been, always will be that way. And please don’t think ‘this is different’ – it’s totally not.
She killed or hurt nobody, and for someone whose life has been as bought and sold as hers has, I think such expression is far healthier than what many people in her position have done, are doing and will do. Namely drugs, of course. But forget that comparison to her less fortunate peers. She looks healthy, self aware and having fun.
Shame on her.
In America.
cinesimon
@Donut: Yours is certainly a valid point of view, but – and I share your industry background to a degree, though I’m still involved – as an recording engineer. I’ve seen a lot of fucked up kids come and go. None have been as bought and sold as her. None appear as healthy and happy and having fun as she does.
I don’t see it as cynically ‘product’ as you: primarily because she’s grown up in front of the world her entire life, I see that performance as very much her, being a young woman who is expressing herself & enjoying her sexuality for the fun and wonderful experience it should be, not hiding it as if it’s sinful – as everyone at her age does, in some form or other. I see nothing unhealthy in it. On the contrary – America needs such enlightenment, badly. Even most of America’s so-called ‘liberals’ need a shake up – they’re as(or should I say ‘can be’) prudish, as a generalization, as moderate republicans are.
cinesimon
Oh I’m sure this odd outpouring of the ‘lack of musicality’ is totally not about indirect slut shaming.
At all at all.
wasabi gasp
@cinesimon: No noticing her music sucks when she’s dry humping is the deal.
Miley could go and be as bad as she wants (go you! girl), but she’s got a ways to go to catch up with them tunes.
Omnes Omnibus
@PIGL: Damn, that is good.
FWIW, Blurred Lines is a catchy tune. Also, as far as the performances, I’ve seen worse.
Pete Mack
@NotMax: Actually, yes. This is the first rational explanation of why Cyrus did such a seriously creepy show. Despite all the innuendo, it wasn’t even a little bit sexy. The choreography was, well childish. The outfits were creepy. General response: WTF?? This is the first discussion that makes sense.
PurpleGirl
Gonna date myself here: Watching the video clip I couldn’t help but think of watching Gypsy Rose Lee on the Jack Paar Show. She often spoke of how she built her strip acts to be more of teasing acts than actually showing herself topless at the end. (The movie Gypsy may not be completely accurate about her and her mother but it is in terms of her burlesque act.)
prufrock
From the Shirley Temple link:
Jesus, no wonder she became a Republican.
Patricia Kayden
@Helen: Ha!!
mai naem
Mornin Ho was going on and on about this on Tues and this is the first time I got to see the whole thing. My first thought is: “that’s it?” I thought there was going to be wayyyy more simulated sex. I’m way past MTV age but isn’t this stuff on regular MTV rap crap videos all the time? I thought the performance was a hot mess but whatever. I actually found the Miley Cyrus spread in Vanity Fair a couple of years ago with her dad way creepier. The father daughter pics looked more like bf/gf pics. Just a real ewww factor.
BruceFromOhio
So, someone has managed to choreograph and record the kind of dream that results from mixing a late evening spicy tex-mex with benadryl and cheap vodka: dancing bears and a little gymnast who sticks her tongue out and shakes her ass at the ref. There’s even a “We’re #1!” foam finger.
It’s like all the worst of American pop culture rolled into one segment, no simple feat.
I give it two thumbs up.
HeartlandLiberal
Ah, yes, Hannah Montana.
If there is any topic that galls me, it is the descent of the Disney empire and TV productions into what is essentially exploitation of young boys and girls, and teaching behavioral ethos that pretty much boils down to, for the girls, “how to dress like a Ho”.
Also, all conversation must be shrill, as loud as possible, and as sarcastic and cuttingly obnoxious as possible.
Also, all Black girls are overweight, and all the boys are ignorant dolts.
In other words, Disney TV for young people pretty much sucks.
Walt has to be spinning in his grave fast enough that if only we could harness the energy, we could cut the nation’s coal burning out completely.
coin operated
@HeartlandLiberal: This. The reason there was no cable TV in my house when I took custody of my teenage daughter. Your comment sums it up perfectly.
I’ll also add: Hey, MTV? I watched your first video ever. WTF happened? Road Rules? Jersey Shore? The “Real” World? Yeah…there are SEVERAL reasons my TV was local broadcast only for several years.
Jay in Oregon
@TheMightyTrowel:
Ding, ding, ding. People seem to forget that there are two people in this picture:
http://media.tumblr.com/03a69f128d3b5fe20fd9c0d69dd29411/tumblr_inline_ms57ilJllJ1qz4rgp.jpg
This article draws an interesting parallel to Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson’s infamous “wardrobe malfunction” at the Super Bowl.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/music/2013/08/26/will-vma-controversy-affect-robin-thicke/2701757/
Van
@kc: Yeah, I take it as a camp parody of music video and oversexed dance numbers. I think she is trolling us:)
Forked Tongue
I like to think Hank and Marie are more on the Irony Abounds side than the Parents Television Council side:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8UUD3zyu7Ek
Pococurante
@gbear:
That is quite wrong. Research a certain illegal immigrant named Andreas Cornelis van Kuijk.
Long Tooth
If she had a sense of humor, she would have worn a mickey mouse t-shirt.
cinesimon
BJ old people think they’re different to other old people, it seems.
Apparently, we’re forever pop experts.
DFH no.6
Popular Music has gone to hell in a handbasket ever since Perry Como and Robert Goulet died in that plane crash. And Hannah Montana needs to get off everyone’s lawn, apparently.
“Elvis wasn’t manufactured”. That’s the funniest damn thing on this whole thread.