Miley
August 30, 2013
MILEY CYRUS, the former Disney child actress widely viewed a few years ago as wholesome, is now just a porn star. But she’s been heading that way for years. Much has been written about her raunchy performance for MTV Sunday, in which she simulated sexual intercourse and masturbation, a performance which was almost certainly calculated to bring on just the sort of controversy it inspired.
There is only one proper response to a performance such as Miley’s. She should have been immediately arrested for public obscenity. But we don’t live in a sane world. Porn is perfectly legal. Miley was expressing her First Amendment rights.
M. Catherine Evans writes about her performance at The American Thinker :
[I]’m not one of those who thinks there’s too much attention by the media on Disney girls gone bad. They personify
a pornified culture held together by the entertainment industry, exploitative parents and sex reformers like the infamous Alfred C. Kinsey. The collateral damage from the progressive march toward sexual liberation keeps piling up.
The fact that sweet little Hannah Montana morphed into a 17-year-old pole dancing, girl on girl kissing entertainer with hardly a nudge and now, three years later, she’s performing simulated sex acts and faking orgasms in front of millions, has managed to rattle even the libs at MSNBC. Mika Brzezinski called the act “disgusting and embarrassing.”
Constitutional lawyer John Whitehead also weighed in on Cyrus’ metamorphosis from a self-avowed Christian teen to porn star. Whitehead cited unmonitored children as young as eight watching sexually suggestive videos as one way smut has been mainlined directly into their developing brains.
The bombardment of sexual images has made what used to be considered adult entertainment just part of pop culture. Miley’s a product of the sex lure present everywhere in the commercial world. She is just like her fans, plunged into a world where sex is as common as drinking a glass of water.
What I find most disturbing is the in-your-face marketing of porn to children. The initial promotion of girls like Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan and Miley Cyrus as wholesome, sweet throwbacks to the 50’s, only to have them rebel in the worst possible way later on, shows that these girls and their parents have bought into the sex selling industry.
What does the shift from cute to slut in such a short time do to their target audience, the six to 14 year olds, who now see their idol stripping and twerking all over the place?
The selling of these young women as images of innocence and purity for the sake of raking in a hundred million and then a few years later acting as if the whole thing was a joke, has to be one of the worst abuses today.
The marketing of porn is so endemic to popular culture at this point that there is only one reasonable stance for parents: boycotting it all. I don’t have much patience for those who think they can find some preserve of innocence on cable TV or who believe marketers of music and television can be induced to change if parents complain. It’s way too late for that and besides, no matter what’s on TV, it’s still unhealthy for children to watch television.
— Comments —
Mary writes:
Laura wrote: “I don’t have much patience for those who think they can find some preserve of innocence on cable TV or who believe marketers of music and television can be induced to change if parents complain.”
Nor do I have patience anymore. The only way to effect change is to withdraw approval in the form of ratings, i.e. money, as painful as it is to give up easy, relaxing entertainment. Yes, when everyone at a social gathering is talking about how cool Breaking Bad is, or asking how is it we’ve never seen Mad Men, well, one can get a pang – I used to be part of the zeitgeist. Not any more. Zeitgeist, schmeitgeist.
But it took a bit of detachment to gain that confidence – I had to cut myself off to really see the darkness behind most TV/movies. It’s amazing what scandalizes me now that I’m distanced from pop culture but I consider being scandalized more easily a good sign. I am shocked when I remember what I was exposed to during my teens and twenties and that was nothing compared with today’s culture. I won’t let my kids near it. That millions of children witnessed Miley Cyrus sexually abasing herself is a travesty which defies description.
As my husband and my eyes opened and our children grew, we slowly weaned ourselves off TV. We finally disconnected the costly pipeline of filth entering our home, better known as cable TV, several years ago. In our area this means not just no cable but no TV at all. We overhauled our viewing habits as a result and found a system of viewing that works for us (a combination of the library, video store and streaming). We always vet movies first (using kidsinmind.com or the imdb.com parents guide/content advisory) – that way, no unpleasant surprises. And the TV is no longer staring us in the face but is hidden away in a cabinet. That way turning it on is a decision rather than a reflex. We read a lot, needless to say.
Speaking of reading, the field of Young Adult literature (a made-up genre if there ever was one) also has some serious problems. Here’s a Wall Street Journal piece, recommended by the Pundit and Pundette blog, from 2011 and its follow-up that should be read by all parents.
Her parents helped her down this road, every step of the way.
Laura O. writes:
Let’s not forget Robin Thicke who danced along with Miley and allowed a 20-year-old tart to simulate sex with him on stage. He is in his late 30s, long married, with children. If I were his wife, I would be mortified.
Paul writes:
TV can be an excellent diversion and a teaching device. I grew up in the 50s and 60s when the most horrific scenes were Universal Studios’ black and white horror films or Roger Corman B-movies. Those were late Saturday night fare, when we would invariably fall asleep before the end even as fourteen-year-olds. There were many more wonderful G movies and TV series such as Lassie and Fury (with the tall, blond Peter Graves, the brother of the equally tall James Arness at 6’ 7”). June Lockhart, the mother in Lassie, was an ideal mother: pretty and sweet.
These are a small sample of the virtuous delightfulness we were graced with during those days. I suppose many today would ridicule the Disney movie Polyanna, a powerful movie about a young girl who always saw things in a positive light despite being persecuted. Even though the gorgeous Hayley Mills (of the famous English Mills acting family) was English, she sang America the Beautiful. It was the centerpiece of the movie and brought tears to my eyes even as a child and still does as an adult. I did not think of her as English at the time. She played her role as an American and did not hide her accent.
There are many ways parents can use TV and still protect their children. Disabling access to cable is a start, but a replacement system should be used. Virtuous people can get together and devise a system. I don’t understand why this was not done long ago.
Sept. 1, 2013
Paul T. writes:
It’s not very kind, but I admit I think of her as Slimy Vyrus. That’s probably what Al Capp would have dubbed her, same way he turned Joan Baez into Joanie Phoney. Anyway, over at Macleans Magazine (which as you may know is Canada’s equivalent to TIME, with a very slight neocon tilt), columnist Emma Teitel has a few amusing observations about another aspect of the story that liberals are getting very exercised about:
