After her shocking MTV Video Music Awards performance Sunday night, Miley Cyrus was all the media could talk about. Her outfits, her explicit use of a foam finger, her twerking and her dancing put the Internet, radio and TV in frenzy. From gossip websites to CNN, she was the trending topic of the day.
Initial reactions were of disgust and disbelief, but then some bloggers and commentators began to defend Cyrus.
The question became: Should we applaud her? Should we shame her? Or should we just leave her alone?
Here are the media's main arguments:
1. The performance was inappropriate for her younger fans to see. She wasn't being a very good role model!
"Lance Bass also spoke about theperformance, noting that his nieces and nephews tuned in to MTV to watch him perform with *NSYNC. 'I didn't know I had to warn them that their little Hannah Montana was going to be naked and humping a finger,' Bass said during an interview on Sirius/XM." — cbsnews.com
2. Her performance was racist.
"By expressing her desire for a black sound, then turning up with this mess, she is playing into the stereotype that this is all black people are. To her, and anyone else who's frame of reference does not extend beyond her, this is what it means to be black." —Jezebel.com
3. Her performance was offensive to women because her dance moves objectified her sexuality, and "Blurred Lines" glorifies rape.
"So here's a fun theory: Was Cyrus's and Thicke's performance actually a thought-out response to 'Blurred Lines' criticism? Even before the song hit No. 1, 'Blurred Lines' and its oft-parodied video have been accused of treating women like objects and promoting rape culture with its 'I know you want it' hook, physical aggression, and subtle messages about alcohol and consent. Cyrus's performance with Thicke played with several of these themes in a way that could be read as commentary--though, at best, failed commentary." — TheAtlantic.com
"Miley needs to know that in fact, she can stop, and she should. The reaction comes not because of her age or upbringing but because she was absolutely classless and self-degrading. ... Less than a hundred years after our nation guaranteed women the right to vote, after decades of societal development for women, we cry out for this degradation of our self-respect to end. Come on, ladies, we can do better. We are better." —FoxNews.com
4. It was a good career move because everyone is talking about it, and she gave viewers the shock they wanted to see.
"Miley's VMAs performance was groundbreaking in one regard: She adapted it directly from her amorphous online presence, rather than trying to create a spectacle specifically for a television event (as Katy Perry so winningly did, and Lady Gaga less successfully attempted to do). It was sloppy and surprisingly vulgar, like a lot of what you watch or read online-and not unlike appropriation itself, which is never a spic-and-span process." —EW.com
5. Robin Thicke was equally (if not more) to blame.
"And still, when Twitter almost broke on Sunday night, it was mostly to harangue Miley Cyrus's actions on stage. Little attention was paid to Robin Thicke's involvement in the train wreck debacle. To be fair, Thicke has received a decent amount of reprimand for his video "Blurred Lines" over the course of the summer. ... And yet, Thicke, in regards to the Video Music Awards, has emerged relatively unscathed in all of the media attention. He has escaped the throngs of hatred other anti-feminist characters-like Chris Brown or Kanye West-have attracted. While he was an equal participant in Cyrus' juvenile glorification of delinquency, no one has written him off as a pariah to popular culture and society." — ReleventMagazine.com
6. It was actually empowering to women in comparison to the video for "Blurred Lines," which featured naked women being used as props.
"You might hate Cyrus' songs or disapprove of her using the stage as a glorified strip club. But at least she was nobody's ornament." — LATimes.com
7. She's just being Miley.
"But what exactly has Cyrus done that's so bad? As I wrote this morning, she's not throwing bongs out windows or shaving her head in public. She's flaunting her body and twerking. It's not the end of the world. None of this, of course, is to say that Cyrus's performance was actually good. (As McLeod observed succinctly, "The other problem [with Cyrus twerking] is that I'm afraid she just isn't very good at it.") But that's all it was - rather silly and not particularly accomplished. It wasn't a racist minstrel show or the spectacle of a deeply disturbed anorexic or the harbinger of America's moral decline - it was a gangly 20-year-old making a fool of herself with some silly dance moves." —Flavorwire.com
What do you think? Has the media missed any angle on this trending story?
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