The views expressed in this piece are that of the individual writer and not necessarily that of Her Campus.
Less than a week after the most-talked-about performance of the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards, it’s almost impossible not to have heard all about how Miley Cyrus twerked, grinded, stripped and crotch-grabbed to her hit single “We Can’t Stop” and Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines,” alongside Robin Thicke himself.
The vulgar display was seen from a wide array of vantage points, with sentiments ranging from the tongue-in-cheek humor of comedians such as Kevin Hart, who jokingly suggested that Miley should “get a … pregnancy test after all of that grinding,” to the outright anger of parents and groups such as the Parents Television Council. The PTC’s director of public policy, Dan Isett, stated “MTV has once again succeeded in marketing sexually charged messages to young children using former child stars and condom commercials — while falsely rating this program as appropriate for kids as young as 14. This is unacceptable.”
With East Coast Twitter traffic peaking at 306,100 tweets per minute during the performance and a total of 4.5 million mentions about the performance on Twitter during the 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. ET airing, many opinions were openly expressed as people evaluated the performance for its gender and racial implications. But more notable than any social commentary Miley may or may not have been trying to convey is the astronomical amount of time, thought and analysis wasted on a few minutes of twerking by an attention-starved 20-year-old.
Along these lines, a satirical piece by The Onion titled “Let Me Explain Why Miley Cyrus’ VMA Performance Was Our Top Story This Morning,” criticized the attention CNN awarded the performance in its article “Miley twerks, stuns VMAs crowd.” The fake article ironically produced a realistic take on the provocative performance in the form of a phony letter, which The Onion pretended was written by Meredith Artley, managing editor of CNN.com.
“Putting that story front and center was actually doing, if anything, a disservice to the public,” the faux-article stated. “And come to think of it, probably a disservice to the hundreds of thousands of people dying in Syria, those suffering from the current unrest in Egypt, or, hell, even people who just wanted to read about the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s ‘I Have A Dream’ speech. But boy oh boy did it get us some web traffic.”
Shortly afterward, Artley tweeted a link to the article, saying: “To clarify, I did not write this… But I accept all compliments and deny all accusations. Tx for the page views.”
Though the letter itself was a fraud, it opens up the important question of how and why a celebrity’s controversial dance moves gained the ability to overshadow important global news on trusted platforms such as CNN. By discussing and picking apart such a distasteful display, news organizations continue to serve this power to an irresponsible ex-Disney-star on what ultimately becomes the silver platter of a global news headline.
Was Miley driven by a desire to make statements about feminism or race? Though it’s possible, it’s most probable that she was simply trying to create shock value. So to everyone who was angered by her performance and its implications for America’s youth, you’re in good company, but perhaps it would be more productive to prevent this type of behavior in the future by spending less time in the entertainment section of CNN and denying Miley what she desperately sought out and was (unfortunately) successful in receiving: attention.