The Miley Cyrus VMA Nontroversy

I’ve avoided putting my two cents in on the 2013 VMA performance by Miley Cyrus and Robin Thicke mostly because everyone paying attention to pop culture has an opinion about it, so why add to the cacophony of drivel? But a day ago, Miley “broke her silence” about the performance (did anyone ask her to speak?) so now I will break mine.

For starters, Miley said of her libidinous VMA performance that too many people are overthinking it; how she violated that foam finger is no different from anything Madonna or Britney Spears has done. She’s wrong on both accounts – there was a point to Madonna’s overt sexuality; her performances were meant to antagonize and draw attention to the institutions that oppressed women, like the Catholic Church. Madonna didn’t act slutty because that was the only way to advance her career during her heyday. So, when anyone compares what Miley did to anything Madonna has done, I don’t think those people have much of a sense of pop music history. (Or, are trying to protect Miley from scorn for who-knows-what reason). Nor is Miley’s performance anything like a Britney Spears performance if just for the fact that love or hate Brit’s music, Brit is ten times the stage performer. [One wonders why Miley would want to compare herself to Brit anyway given Brit’s meltdown a few years ago. But the mind of a teenage girl is nothing anyone can figure out.]

Second, I think it is fair to say that many people who criticized the performance were offended simply because those people cannot divorce “Slutty Miley” from Hannah Montana. Well, I can’t help people who are that narrow minded but Miley didn’t help them by going the easiest possible route it is to go for a female “artist.” Really, we have enough overtly sexual female music performers. How much better would it have been for Miley to have gone all Rage Against the Machine on the audience and called out President Obama for not taking action on Syria? I assure you that had Miley done that, people’s jaws would have dropped all the same and her sales would have increased just as they are now in the wake of her VMA pandering. On the other hand, as I’ve just said, with her sales boosted by her krewting (the attempt and subsequent failure of a white person to twerk), can you really blame her for giving the masses what they want, that is, a slut? Well, yes, because as I just pointed out, she didn’t have to go down that road. Then again, her father is Billy Ray Cyrus, a man lazy enough to steal a dance and call it his own. Really, how else did anyone think Miley’s career was going to evolve given her gene pool?

I certainly have no problem with women expressing their sexuality on stage, but at least don’t half ass the performance or for the sake of the VMAs do something original. Yet the fact is that this particular performance by Miley Cyrus was uninspired and weak (at NO point was she twerking, oh white defenders). Art is often thought of as something people know when they see it. Well, if that’s the case, what Miley did at the VMAs wasn’t art. Art would have been Miley slowly stripping Robin Thicke nearly naked during the melody and him gyrating all over her. See? See how easy it is to be original? It just takes a second of thought.

Finally, let’s not let Robin Thicke off the hook. His failure in the performance certainly complemented Cyrus’ as men are expected to sit back and feast their hungry eyes upon a woman while not being expected to do any work. Sure, no one expects pop artists to be agents of change, but the stale act by Cyrus and Thicke certainly didn’t “make history,” as Miley says they discussed. Take note, Robin and Miley – those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Indeed.

[Got a minute to spare, literally? Read Miley Breaks Her Silence.]

This Argument is a Little Bit Gay

Here’s an old salvo making new rounds in the anti-homophobia multi-media campaign…When Did You Choose to be Straight?

 

The point is to get straight people to think about when they chose their sexual orientation. By illustrating that heterosexuals never did choose their sexual orientation, the same must be true of homosexuals. If that’s the case, homosexuals cannot and should not be blamed or ostracized for who they are. (Ironically, the people who think this is an effective argument at the same time feverishly cling to the concept of Free Will. But, whatever.)

While I do not think anyone besides a Scientologist should be blamed for their sexual orientation, I do think this “simple question” that portends to be some kind of panacea for homophobia is not the ingenious argument everyone seems to think it is. This is because it is quite easy to imagine someone who is otherwise heterosexual to choose a long term sexual partner of the same gender. [We’ll disregard solitary instances of homosexual behavior as “experimenting,” especially for women since that’s really hot.] I can easily imagine someone with a long history of physical or mental abuse by an opposite sex partner switching teams, so-to-speak. I can also use myself as an example: Given a do-or-die choice between partnering with another man or a 400lbs Samoan woman, I’m probably going to choose partnering with a man because a 400lbs Samoan women is much less likely to turn me on than another man. (Naturally, this all assumes the man is a good-looking billionaire philanthropist with mommy-issues who flies his own helicopter.) Of course, this might raise the question of whether the person who switches teams is actually a homosexual, but only if one thinks narrow definitions trump real world actions. Such a person may be bisexual, but such definitions obscure the point seeing how bisexuals have been maligned almost as much as homosexuals throughout history. But I digress…Not every heterosexual who may have been abused in some fashion might be tempted to switch teams, but I’m quite sure it’s happened more than one time. I’m not saying it happens more often than people born with an inclination towards their preference in partners, just that it does happen.

I realize my hypothesis can only remain as such because it is too difficult to empirically verify. While scores of homosexuals could be interviewed as to whether they chose homosexuality or homosexuality chose them, we couldn’t be sure – without elaborate brain monitoring – that such interviewees weren’t lying. Besides, any fundamental theist worth their salt will tell you all homosexuals are liars, so what’s the point of conducting a study? (I’m not singling out homosexuals as liars, it’s just that everyone lies, especially fundamental theists.) We cannot verify exactly how many times people are “born” gay. Does it matter, though?

I do believe asking people when they chose to be heterosexuals is a good way of demonstrating that it is possible that homosexuals never had a say in whom they find attractive. Such a demonstration may advance the idea that homosexuality is not a highly unusual anomaly, but to what end? Such a demonstration doesn’t do much to defeat a passionate homophobe since the demonstration doesn’t address the societal or moral implications of a homosexual acting upon their impulses, even if those impulses are natural. It may be shown that homosexuality may be a natural inclination for a certain percentage of the population but that doesn’t mean accepting homosexuals is necessarily good for society. That’s an entirely different argument.

I do understand that by getting people to consider homosexuality as something not completely unnatural is a stepping stone towards discussing the real issue, such as I have just posed it. I do giggle a little bit though like Harvey Fierstein imagining La Cage aux Folles in IMAX 3D when people take this homosexuality-is-normal argument as the killing blow (no pun intended) against homophobia. The argument is just a baby step towards the greater discussion and if one can’t see the argument as only a baby step, they’re in no position to tell you why there’s a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.