By Myles Ludwig
Scoff as you may, but I’ve been musing on the meaning of Miley.
I‘ve come to think the emergence of this self-described “bad bitch that I am” from the animatronic cocoon of Disneyworld, sanctified by SNL and Fallon, sanitized by Ellen, glorified by Rolling Stone and celebrated with a way-pre-tour promo video on MTV, this tall, pig-tailed, lizard-tongued creature of the Twitter generation who belts out a song like Ethel Merman signals a shift in the popcult paradigm: a shift from irony to metaphor.
OMG, you might say. A metaphor for what, you might ask.
Well, I admit I’m not exactly sure, but I can feel it. I can hear it coming like a freight train. It feels just like the time I returned to the United States after living in Asia for several years, saw some hip-hop awards show on TV, and couldn’t understand the language of the winners. It seemed like they, not me, were from a foreign country, not the America I knew.
Maybe every generation feels that way.
Of course, every generation gets the pop star it deserves; the one that defines the zeitgeist of the minute. Those zeitgeists are certainly flying by faster now. It was a pretty long stretch between, say, the celebrity of Charles Dickens and Sinatra, between Josephine Baker and Cher, between Presley and Prince, between the Chi-Lites and the Beatles, between James Brown and Janelle Monae.
But not so long between Madonna and Britney, less between Queen Bey and Lady Gaga, and only a nano-pop between Taylor Swift and her flip side, this showbiz kid in a teddy bear onesie whose obsession with being a raunchy “adult baby” via Alice in Wonderland scares real dads into thinking they’re teetering on the precipice of pedophilia.
This is a different America. An America where mushrooms dance. An America where Miley considers a haggard Britney an inspiration, passing her the twirling baton, despite Madonna’s futile yoga-fried attempt to grab it at the Super Bowl.
This is an America that seems to have skipped a grade, maybe two.
This is an America where a one-time Brooklyn drug dude suits up in Tom Ford (viz.“a white sport coat and a pink carnation, all dressed up for the dance”) and retro-velvet in Vanity Fair. Even Diddy, once the symbol of black consumerism in our time, only got as far as Macy’s. This is an America of post-racial revenge anthems: clap your hands for Crystal; say hey for Courvoisier; make some noise for Maybach.
I can see how a “hipster” is an ironic twist on being hip, but not this. This is metaphor and Miley is a byproduct of this America, as music producer Pharrell Williams wisely said.
Pure subtext. Meta-merica.
Detroit gave us a gritty but striving Eminem in a hoodie from the wrong side of town, but this California girl with a bobble-butt action figure is at the head of an army of today’s creaming suburban teens who grew up in an America of electronic acronyms. This kid makes Lindsay Lohan seem tame. And kind of old-fashioned. And, wriggle as she may, Miley’s no diva singing for dictators and human rights abusers.
It’s our mouth, we can say what we want to. Girls just want to have fun. Let’s get crazy.
Where’s the difference between these generational commands?
We understand the references even though we’re too old for today’s cool alternative realities. Mick Jagger is a geezer. In some states, we can score weed on Medicare scrip.
These kids today … our thumbs are no match for theirs.
Our time is done. We’re looking at life through the wrong end of the telescope, hoping to surf the remaining waves on a raft of wisdom.
Give the kid a break. She’s no Nobel Prize winner, but how will her tats look when she gets to be our age?
Myles Ludwig is a media savant living in Lake Worth.