It’s the news story that has dominated headlines, drawn high profile figures into fierce debate and divided opinion across the world. The prospect of military intervention in war-torn Syria? Oh no. Five days on from Miley Cyrus’s MTV Video Music Awards furore, controversy is still raging over the former Disney child star’s explicit dance routine at the ceremony during a collaboration with Robin Thicke, performing his summer smash ‘Blurred Lines’ – during which Cyrus twerked her way into the bad books of everyone from charities to Cyndi Lauper. But who has she managed to piss off the most?
Paramore singer Hayley Williams accused Cyrus’s moves of being racially insensitive in an interview with news network WENN. “It seems like more people are focusing on the trashiness or the dancing, the clothes. But I actually am uncomfortable with the racial aspect of it,” she said, with a nod to twerking’s in West African dance. “I feel like she’s sort of taking a culture that isn’t really hers and sort of using it as an accessory, and that actually bothers me more.”
If Thomas Edison had lived to see his prize invention, the light bulb, reduced to a prop in a lewd sex ritual to accompany a kitschy pop song he’d probably be quite annoyed, so it’s understandable that Steve Chmelar, inventor of the giant foam finger, is less than pleased by Cyrus. “She took an honourable icon that is seen in sporting venues everywhere and degraded it,” he told ESPN. “Fortunately, the foam finger has been around long enough that it will survive this incident.”
“For people that like that kind of entertainment, I’m sure that it met their needs,” Chmelar said. “If I had a choice between Julie Andrews singing ‘The Sound of Music’ and Miley Cyrus doing ‘Can’t Stop,’ I’d go the Julie Andrews route, but everyone has their choice and their decision.
The Teddy Bear Fund charity are an organisation which provides stuffed animals to young people residing at abuse shelters – and weren’t impressed with Miley’s gyrating against giant size grizzlies. “Miley made a poor choice to use a universally loved children’s teddy bear in an offensive way,” read a statement. “There is always good art and bad art – unfortunately… this was bad art.”
“This much is absolutely clear: MTV marketed adults-only material to children while falsely manipulating the content rating to make parents think the content was safe for their children,” said America’s Parents Television Council, an offshoot of the American Parents Association, in a statement issued in Sunday’s aftermath. “How is this image of former child star Miley Cyrus appropriate for 14-year-olds?” Won’t someone PLEASE think of the children?
Father Billy Ray Cyrus bailed on a sit-down with Piers Morgan for the Brit presenter’s CNN show minutes hours before he was due to go on air, as the realisation reportedly dawned on him that he couldn’t explain away Miley’s actions. The former chart star might also be made to quit his role on the board of directors at the Parents’ Television Council. It’s understood he’s mystified and angry behind the scenes, but at least he’s putting on a public show of support for his daughter: “Mile, if twerkin woulda been invented…. And I had a foam finger…. I woulda done the same thang you did,” Miley quoted on Twitter. Now that’s a mental image
“Mile, if twerkin woulda been invented…. And I had a foam finger…. I woulda done the same thang you did.” – DAD
— Miley Ray Cyrus (@MileyCyrus) August 28, 2013