This happened to me at a wedding earlier this year. I didn’t know how to react, but I managed to soldier on. Miley Cyrus seems to be either hiking a football or acting out her eating disorder. She is grinding it out, for sure. Meanwhile, I can’t get over how Robin Thicke gets off stealing Marvin Gaye’s “Got to Give It Up” and then sues his estate in some kind of defensive maneuver. It makes me shudder just to use Robin Thicke and Marvin Gaye in the same sentence.
Miley is showing us how point and click hasn’t been made obsolete by Google Glass’s tap to shoot video quite yet. Girl is owning her sexuality is what I’m sayin. It may seem like a crude gesture to you, but you obviously haven’t studied semiotics. The foam “We’re #1 Finger” she’s wielding is a hashtag for pleasure. Not only that, she’s wearing something that looks like the kind of rubber underwear that was popular in DC during the Clinton administration. The truth once revealed by confession of forbidden sexual activity is now revealed by repetitive hip movements. I think she just might have put her finger on it.
Just when you thought all of this could be about sex, it turns out it’s about race. Who is Miley licking? What is Miley smacking? Is she speaking in tongues, or races? That’s Miley’s genius for you. She is displacing the skinny white ass onto her strange Aunt Jemima fantasy of what she imagines a powerful-ass ass to be. It’s Elvis all over again. New York magazine says it’s about ratchet, which I guess is the Dirty South’s version of gatas sandungeras. Meow.
My favorite GIF of the series. The black and white treatment makes it dreamlike. Is Rhianna repulsed or aroused? Doesn’t matter, the Repeating Afro-Caribbean Island is watching. Why does the One Direction guy have his hands folded so tightly his knuckles are exploding? Are white males still “on top”?
One thing is clear: We have collectively made ourselves throw up and the mess we made is Miley. America has gone off its meds and is now a sleepwalking minstrel show. Brooklyn’s gritty streets are sterilized even as the marketing machine celebrates its grittiness. It’s all part of the plan. GIFs R Us.