Recently, Ms Cyrus has been the Talk of the Town: first, there was that infamous MTV VMA performance, in which she stripped down to her underwear and mimed pleasuring herself with a foam finger, then there was the video clip in which she appeared writhing around on a wrecking ball wearing nothing but a pair of safety boots. When asked about the latter, she claimed to have been influenced by Sinead O'Connor's 'Nothing Compares To You' video, leading to Ms O'Connor writing a series of open letters, attempting in vain to show Ms Cyrus how she had entirely missed the point, and warning her of potentially dire consequences of her objectification. Curiosity compelled me to watch both the VMA performance and the wrecking ball video, and there raised several questions for me:
1) In the context of common practice in Pop music, are Ms Cyrus's performances that unusual?
2) When is nudity objectification and when is it art?
3) Does the objectification of Ms C's body spell the death of feminism?
Before I answer these questions, here is a brief summary of my impressions of the two offending articles, for those unwilling to tarnish their retinas and/or souls by watching the originals:
Exhibit A: The Twerking Incident
This is MC's MTV VMA Performance: the act opens with her flouncing out of the innards of a giant teddy bear, wearing a leotard with some sort of demented mouse on the front, her tongue hanging out like she's caught some sort of rare sheep disease; as though she were innocently on her way to a pre-teen modern
dance class when she suddenly became the first victim of a zombie apocalypse. She proceeds with a dance routine that would not have been entirely alien to the aforementioned pre-teen modern dance class, with the exception of the occasional crotch thrust, and bending over and shaking her bum, a move apparently called 'twerking'. The song in the background pronounces that 'It's our party, we'll do what we want'.
Following this, she rips off her leotard to reveal something resembling a beige 1950s bikini,
proceeds to mime pleasuring herself with a foam finger, and repeats the 'twerking' move, this time rubbing her bum against a somewhat lecherous-looking male singer who is wearing a thick striped black and white suit that makes him look like a used-car salesman. The chorus to the song for this scene is 'You're such a good girl. I know you want it.' So far, so tasteless, but hardly unusual for the world of pop.
Exhibit B: The Nudity Incident
This is Miley Cyrus's video for the song 'Wrecking Ball'. It opens with a closeup of MC's face, wearing vast amounts of mascara and red lipstick, with artfully controlled tears rolling down her synthetic-looking cheeks.
This, she claims, was inspired by Sinead O'Connor's 1990 video for 'Nothing Compares 2U'.
While O'Connor's video consists mainly of close-ups of the singer's face with some tears towards the end, Cyrus's goes on to show the singer writhing in her underwear in a partially demolished building. Then she is seen swinging around on a wrecking ball wearing nothing but her boots.
At one point, she also licks a hammer. The song itself is about the dissolution of a relationship, in which Cyrus describes herself as a well-intentioned 'wrecking ball', who only wanted to break down the nameless addressee's defenses. And yet, apparently, it is her who is wrecked. Whatever.
1) In the context of common practice in Pop music, are Ms Cyrus's performances that unusual?
No, they are not. So why are Miley Cyrus's performances more shocking than other semi-naked and sexualized women's pop videos?
To a large extent, what makes MC's 'sexy dancing' disturbing is the fact that she still effectively looks like a child. At the age of 20, she could still easily pass for about fourteen, and so her objectification is more disturbing than that of an older-looking woman, as her claims to be making her own decisions appear less credible. To some extent, this may be her motivation for engaging in shock tactics: having become famous as a child, to a child-audience, she wants to prove that she has grown up by presenting herself as seductive as well as capable of great emotion.
Unfortunately, the effect is cringe-inducing, rather than artistically effective. The extreme stylization of her video makes her emotion appear fake, while the protrusion of her apparently still-budding breasts through a ribbed vest evokes the horror of the image of an objectified child. By comparison, the scenes where she is wearing nothing and swinging around on the wrecking ball are a relief, because at least nothing controversial is actually visible- it reminds me of naked calendars you can buy, made by various amateur sports clubs to raise money, where sporting equipment hides the subject's intimate areas: not very shocking, and a bit twee.
To return to the VMA performance, Cyrus appears to be deliberately deconstructing her previous public persona: the demented mouse leotard is a corruption of Mickey Mouse who represents wholesome childhood, while all the sad-faced dancing teddy-bears and suchlike follow a similar theme. She keeps pointing to her sexuality, literally, by pointing to her vagina. But while I find comedians, such as Sarah Millican, making jokes about vaginas both funny and pleasantly challenging to social convention, Miley's performance reminded me more of a little girl I knew, aged two: during nappy changes, she would point at her bum, and say 'bum!' with an extremely smug look on her face, showing her pride in discovering the location of her bum, and knowing the word by which to identify it. Similarly, Miley seems to have discovered her vagina, but unfortunately has not yet learned the words to articulate her joy in this discovery.
2) When is nudity objectification and when is it art?
If the impressionists could get away with painting naked women in the nineteenth century, why can't Miley swing around naked on a wrecking ball to her heart's content?
Well, in order for something to qualify as an artistic expression, it has to contain some semblance of a meaning, as well as a modicum of originality. Probably. In the case of Ms Cyrus' VMA performance, it is difficult to argue that it could constitute art, as it appears to be a cynical agglomeration of titillating footage with no message other than a promotion of hedonistic partying, which, frankly, is no longer in any way original. 'Wrecking Ball', on the other hand, could have a case for being art: it appeals to a universal human emotion, namely the pain experienced as a result of rejection, much in the same way that 'Nothing Compares 2U' does. That emotion does come across through Ms Cyrus' facial expressions, if not through her body movement. And the scene in which she swings around naked on a wrecking ball could be interpreted as, rather than a poor excuse for gratuitous nudity, an expression of the nihilistic vulnerability of the subject of emotional rejection. Of course, all these readings are undermined by Ms Cyrus' comments on Twitter, which generally suggest that she has the depth of emotion of a creme cracker and the intelligence of the average tree frog, coupled with an unshakable conviction that she is right and everyone else is wrong - but who can blame her? That's what being twenty is all about.
3) Does the objectification of Ms C's body spell the death of feminism?
No - not more so than any other objectified woman in a pop video does. However, it does show that gender equality is still a long way off.
Pop music has never been a particularly feminist-friendly discourse. Take, for example, the Spice Girls: they allegedly supported the idea of 'Girl Power', and represented a range of articulations of femininity. However, according to the Spice Girls' model, girls could either be Sporty, Sexy, Baby, Ginger, Scary or Posh. None of these are particularly helpful in a real-world context, and with the exception of Sporty all involve wearing extremely short dresses.
If one takes a lipstic feminist position, Miley Cyrus' current public persona could represent a re-appropriation of her body and femininity through the open enactment of her sexuality and the flaunting of her nudity. However, due to the creme cracker - tree frog hypothesis detailed above, this reading seems far-fetched. It is exceedingly likely that Ms Cyrus' performances are doing nothing but perpetuate the sinister objectification of women in popular music culture, often to a vulnerable audience who were introduced to her in her insipid but safe incarnation as Hannah Montana. Is the world likely to end as a result? No. With any luck, one day she will put her pants back on and produce some music that doesn't perpetuate all that is bad in the world, both aurally and ideologically. I'm not holding my breath, though.
1) In the context of common practice in Pop music, are Ms Cyrus's performances that unusual?
2) When is nudity objectification and when is it art?
3) Does the objectification of Ms C's body spell the death of feminism?
Before I answer these questions, here is a brief summary of my impressions of the two offending articles, for those unwilling to tarnish their retinas and/or souls by watching the originals:
Exhibit A: The Twerking Incident
This is MC's MTV VMA Performance: the act opens with her flouncing out of the innards of a giant teddy bear, wearing a leotard with some sort of demented mouse on the front, her tongue hanging out like she's caught some sort of rare sheep disease; as though she were innocently on her way to a pre-teen modern
Following this, she rips off her leotard to reveal something resembling a beige 1950s bikini,
Exhibit B: The Nudity Incident
This is Miley Cyrus's video for the song 'Wrecking Ball'. It opens with a closeup of MC's face, wearing vast amounts of mascara and red lipstick, with artfully controlled tears rolling down her synthetic-looking cheeks.
This, she claims, was inspired by Sinead O'Connor's 1990 video for 'Nothing Compares 2U'.While O'Connor's video consists mainly of close-ups of the singer's face with some tears towards the end, Cyrus's goes on to show the singer writhing in her underwear in a partially demolished building. Then she is seen swinging around on a wrecking ball wearing nothing but her boots.
1) In the context of common practice in Pop music, are Ms Cyrus's performances that unusual?
No, they are not. So why are Miley Cyrus's performances more shocking than other semi-naked and sexualized women's pop videos?
To a large extent, what makes MC's 'sexy dancing' disturbing is the fact that she still effectively looks like a child. At the age of 20, she could still easily pass for about fourteen, and so her objectification is more disturbing than that of an older-looking woman, as her claims to be making her own decisions appear less credible. To some extent, this may be her motivation for engaging in shock tactics: having become famous as a child, to a child-audience, she wants to prove that she has grown up by presenting herself as seductive as well as capable of great emotion.
Unfortunately, the effect is cringe-inducing, rather than artistically effective. The extreme stylization of her video makes her emotion appear fake, while the protrusion of her apparently still-budding breasts through a ribbed vest evokes the horror of the image of an objectified child. By comparison, the scenes where she is wearing nothing and swinging around on the wrecking ball are a relief, because at least nothing controversial is actually visible- it reminds me of naked calendars you can buy, made by various amateur sports clubs to raise money, where sporting equipment hides the subject's intimate areas: not very shocking, and a bit twee.
To return to the VMA performance, Cyrus appears to be deliberately deconstructing her previous public persona: the demented mouse leotard is a corruption of Mickey Mouse who represents wholesome childhood, while all the sad-faced dancing teddy-bears and suchlike follow a similar theme. She keeps pointing to her sexuality, literally, by pointing to her vagina. But while I find comedians, such as Sarah Millican, making jokes about vaginas both funny and pleasantly challenging to social convention, Miley's performance reminded me more of a little girl I knew, aged two: during nappy changes, she would point at her bum, and say 'bum!' with an extremely smug look on her face, showing her pride in discovering the location of her bum, and knowing the word by which to identify it. Similarly, Miley seems to have discovered her vagina, but unfortunately has not yet learned the words to articulate her joy in this discovery.
2) When is nudity objectification and when is it art?
If the impressionists could get away with painting naked women in the nineteenth century, why can't Miley swing around naked on a wrecking ball to her heart's content?
Well, in order for something to qualify as an artistic expression, it has to contain some semblance of a meaning, as well as a modicum of originality. Probably. In the case of Ms Cyrus' VMA performance, it is difficult to argue that it could constitute art, as it appears to be a cynical agglomeration of titillating footage with no message other than a promotion of hedonistic partying, which, frankly, is no longer in any way original. 'Wrecking Ball', on the other hand, could have a case for being art: it appeals to a universal human emotion, namely the pain experienced as a result of rejection, much in the same way that 'Nothing Compares 2U' does. That emotion does come across through Ms Cyrus' facial expressions, if not through her body movement. And the scene in which she swings around naked on a wrecking ball could be interpreted as, rather than a poor excuse for gratuitous nudity, an expression of the nihilistic vulnerability of the subject of emotional rejection. Of course, all these readings are undermined by Ms Cyrus' comments on Twitter, which generally suggest that she has the depth of emotion of a creme cracker and the intelligence of the average tree frog, coupled with an unshakable conviction that she is right and everyone else is wrong - but who can blame her? That's what being twenty is all about.3) Does the objectification of Ms C's body spell the death of feminism?
No - not more so than any other objectified woman in a pop video does. However, it does show that gender equality is still a long way off.
Pop music has never been a particularly feminist-friendly discourse. Take, for example, the Spice Girls: they allegedly supported the idea of 'Girl Power', and represented a range of articulations of femininity. However, according to the Spice Girls' model, girls could either be Sporty, Sexy, Baby, Ginger, Scary or Posh. None of these are particularly helpful in a real-world context, and with the exception of Sporty all involve wearing extremely short dresses.If one takes a lipstic feminist position, Miley Cyrus' current public persona could represent a re-appropriation of her body and femininity through the open enactment of her sexuality and the flaunting of her nudity. However, due to the creme cracker - tree frog hypothesis detailed above, this reading seems far-fetched. It is exceedingly likely that Ms Cyrus' performances are doing nothing but perpetuate the sinister objectification of women in popular music culture, often to a vulnerable audience who were introduced to her in her insipid but safe incarnation as Hannah Montana. Is the world likely to end as a result? No. With any luck, one day she will put her pants back on and produce some music that doesn't perpetuate all that is bad in the world, both aurally and ideologically. I'm not holding my breath, though.
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