A MileyCyrus Night's Dream
Click to viewThe more I listen to Miley Cyrus' newest single "We Can't Stop" and the more I watch the video, the more I like them. I've been a huge fan of radio pop for over a decade (marked by the release of Justin Timberlake's Justified and my discovery of music ratings communities), so I'm not sure whether or not my opinions there are particularly useful or discerning, but I think the lyrics in conjunction with the video definitely have something interesting to say and in a tone that I hadn't heard before on this subject.
"We Can't Stop" is a song about celebrity and how the public treats them, specifically the type of celebrity that Miley Cyrus is, a girl who became/is becoming a woman in the public eye and underneath media scrutiny. The song's lyrics center around a fairly common theme these days, "haters gonna hate, don't let em get to you." On their own, the lyrics aren't particularly good or revelatory, but in conjunction with the video and even a cursory understanding of what Miley is responding to, I truly appreciate the song/video's place in discourse right now.
The way that popular media treats young women, in particular those transitioning from childhood to adulthood, grosses me out. Well, the way media treats all women makes me extremely uncomfortable. But there's a particularly nasty way that the press treats young women that's widely accepted even sometimes in more liberal leaning circles. Essentially, I get the feeling that people think there's nothing wrong with calling them "crazy," usually because they fuck around or take nude photos or do a bunch of drugs. Obviously there's a gender bias there because young men usually have to do something completely despicable (as opposed to what I would call fairly healthy transition to adulthood behavior) in order to receive the same level of scrutiny. Often, young celebrity men are let off with a simple "boys will be boys."
I will return to the video in a moment, but while I'm on the subject, I want to state that I think the media facilitates this destructive cycle. I believe that the media finds fault in pretty much every type of behavior by young women. And when every possible path is wrong, why not do the worst and most dangerous? What's to gained from "behaving" when it doesn't free you from the scrutiny and judgment? And why is fault found in every type of behavior? In my opinion, what the public truly wants is for them to remain children forever because what their real problem is, is actualized women with agency and a sex life. Their adult behavior is problematic because girls becoming women is problematic (in our patriarchal world).
Cyrus' "We Can't Stop" isn't the first pop song or music video to address this subject, in specific or general. I don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of pop music or their accompanying videos, but I know that Britney Spears' "I Wanna Go" features her literally fighting robot paparazzi who are attacking her. What I like isn't simply that Cyrus is addressing this subject (and I suspect some of you think maybe the song/video doesn't address it since it isn't made explicit) but the tone and manner in which she does. I think it's very Puckish, and I love it.
I feel that Diane Martel (the video's director) and Miley anticipate her criticism a bit and have intentionally made a video that plays into those criticisms. I wouldn't go so far as to call it a troll (it doesn't feel malicious at all), but like Puck of A Midsummer Night's Dream, I think Cyrus and Martel point out the foolishness of these people. The video has sex and weirdness, but both feel like sex and weirdness lite. This isn't Luis Bunuel or Russ Meyer we're talking about here. And I think that's because it's supposed to be goofy and an in joke. The filmmakers aren't actually trying to say anything about drugs or sex or partying or avant-garde cinema. I think what they're trying to do is separate those in on the joke from those who are the punchline.
I'd like to see a more pointed criticism of these things (looking at another Martel video, the one for Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines," which kind of disgusted me for being extremely patriarchal, I'm not sure if she's the one to do it), but I'm very happy with what Cyrus and Martel have done here. In particular, I love the image of Cyrus and her dancers jumping around with the giant teddy style backpacks. The teddy backpack is a symbol of innocence and schoolchildren, but the hugeness of it makes it literally an unwieldy burden. Miley seems to be saying that her childhood image is something she has to carry around still and that it weighs on her current self.
I wish the media would take these criticisms more seriously and realize the ways in which their behavior contributes or even causes the types of problems that they stand in judgment on (to be clear, I see no problem in people experimenting with drugs and sex, which is usually the major type of behavior that's labeled crazy), but I'm actually glad that Miley Cyrus isn't taking these things seriously. That she's aware of the malignant ways she's seen or expected to act and is letting those who have those shitty attitudes fall for the prank that this video, in my opinion, represents. I hope she continues to mock "authority" and have fun and not let those influences negatively affect her attitude or lifestyle.