more disturbing? The other photo in the scandal – Miley and her father Billy Ray by Annie Liebovitz
Usually I actually ignore stories like these. this one especially appears to be a storm in a teacup, a media furor that seems to have little to do with the actual people involved. here is a collection of further editorials on the subject that I thought were a particularly fascinating read. I especially like so many members of the media taking the time to explain what a non event it is and how so much of the media is hyping it up, it appeals to the ironic in me I guess.
So why the moral uproar over a photograph which is essentially the same thing? Even if, as Greer purports, Leibovitz’s dirty postcard aesthetic depicts Cyrus as post-coital, or even worse a child prostitute and Disney her pimp, isn’t this just a depressingly conventional piece of iconography?
From That Miley Cyrus photograph: artsy or outrageous? | Art & architecture | Guardian Unlimited
The real question is why we are only now concerned about the sanctified purity of a teenaged superstar who struts around in mini-skirts selling concert tickets on the all-but-explicit promise, “Your kids will thank you, and Dad won’t necessarily be bored.” Somehow, Cyrus’s Vanity Fair photo has become the cue for a moral panic. An Associated Press writer explained: “It’s what the photo suggests rather than shows — the idea that she might be nude, perhaps even in bed — that bothered some parents.” When these people find out that we’re all nude under fabric all the time, how can the heavens fail to fall?
From
Internal Dissent: Miley Cyrus’s “nude” photo for Vanity Fair magazine – Full Comment
While there may be an uproar around Miley Cyrus’s “topless” photo for a Vanity Fair shoot, it’s possible that this photograph of Miley with “Achy, Breaky” dad Billy Ray Cyrus is more disturbing. Or maybe it’s just because we have never seen a daughter pose like this with her father. Here’s the Vanity Fair article about Miley–where she says of the topless photo, “I think it’s really artsy. It wasn’t in a skanky way.… And you can’t say no to Annie. She’s so cute. She gets this puppy-dog look and you’re like, O.K.”– and here’s the behinds-the-scenes about the photo shoot.
From Gothamist: More Creepy? Miley and Billy Ray Cyrus for Vanity Fair
It was quite disturbing to witness the desperation of so many people to pretend a 15 year old was asexual. America is known for many things, but perhaps sexual realism is not one of them.
I think you are right Paul, in fact perhaps it’s the lack of sexual realism that is driving a lot of puritanism at the moment.. hmm, interesting stuff
I say just as long in the images, she isn’t doing anything sexual, I say let her pose naked all she wants.
The beauty of fabulous sensuality and art is in the discovery and the imagination. Its of little use asking Americans with their puritanical hypocracy what is in their minds acceptable. Great art is a little like pornography you can’t decribe it but you know it when you see it. Its all in the imaginations of the puritan. “Me think they protesteth too much” Shakespeare. Now there was an artist who was forced to create underlying eroticsim. Thanks for you article; love your work by the way. The Baldchemist