The American Spectator : Getting to Know Miley Cyrus

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Getting to Know Miley Cyrus

By James Bowman from the May 2010 issue

Blissfully unconcerned that the Creator of the Universe could be anything other than an indulgent parent.

New Yorkers walking down the streets of midtown Manhattan in March were suddenly alarmed to notice the figure of a naked man perched on various rooftops and on the 26th floor ledge of the Empire State Building. There were 31 of these effigies, all plaster casts rendered in fiberglass or iron of the same man, who was the artist himself, British sculptor Antony Gormley. The nearest Mr. Gormley could get to explaining to Janice Turner of the Times of London what he thought he was doing was to tell her that "to me it is going back to the basic condition, which is: ‘I am here now, I am an animal living in time, dependent on air, food and having a place.' For me this is the first principle."

Not that the animal himself was the one on the rooftops. So of course he was not here, now, as the living, breathing being he is. Rather, he has left inert bits of himself, like giant droppings, all over the city as a public announcement of his own momentous existence -- and nothing else. Self-discovery has always been a part of artistic creation, but today self-discovery is getting harder and harder to distinguish from self-publicity. The idea that self-advertisement is some kind of human right has wrought havoc in the art world and, more and more, the world at large.

Over the past few months I have had several public debates with a guy who not only regards "Who I am" -- that is, who he is -- as an ontological certainty but who believes that the very existence of this Platonic ideal of himself confers certain rights upon him which have never before in human history been regarded as rights at all, let alone rights so absolute and imperative that they must override even any negative effect their exercise might have on national security. Who he is is a homosexual seeking to "repeal" the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy on the strength of this same belief, amounting almost to religious faith, in the perfect and unquestioned existence of "Who I am." This "I," so often identified with sexual or other self-chosen behavior, we might call "true psychic reality," belief in which differs from other kinds of faith in requiring a public affirmation for its validation.

As I sat down to write today, my eye fell upon the cover of Parade magazine, delivered every Sunday with the Washington Post, on which there is a photo of a heavily made-up teenage girl with very long hair wearing very tight and low-slung jeans. Next to her image is a quotation, in 72-point type: "I Know Who I Am Now." Why knowing who she is now should be considered a remarkable feat for a 17-year-old girl or why, even if it were, it should be a matter of any interest to the rest of the world is apparently not a matter of any doubt or uncertainty. Such questions are never raised in the accompanying article, or by Miss Miley Cyrus herself who, in contrast, entertains a certain skepticism about her Christian faith. "Yeah," she says with teenage sarcasm, "I'm going to go to hell because I'm wearing a pair of really short white shorts. Suddenly I'm a slut. That's so old-school."

Some might say that God Himself is rather "old-school," but Miley is untroubled by any suspicion that the Creator of the Universe could be other than an indulgent parent to her. She is equally certain about having discovered "who I am" (or, possibly, "who I am now") by falling in love with her co-star in her latest movie. For her, as for the would-be gay soldiers, it is not surprising that the question of who she is should be all bound up with what she does or doesn't do sexually. What is surprising is that she and Parade magazine should regard her announcement of same as a matter of public interest. Perhaps it's like saying, back in "old-school" days, that one had found Jesus -- an act of witness to a reality that, like the permanence of Miley's attachment to Mr. Liam Hemsworth, might otherwise seem a bit dubious.

When in The Last Station, Michael Hoffman's excellent movie about the final days of Leo Tolstoy, Helen Mirren's splendid Countess Sofya Tolstoya cries out that her husband (Christopher Plummer) is tearing pieces off her so that "I don't know who I am anymore," we realize at once that the question of who she is is not an existential one. That is, it is not a question about true psychic reality but something much more down-to-earth. In fact, it is just because she has no doubts of her own about being the wife of her husband, the mother of her children, the mistress of the estate of Yasnaya Polyana, that she finds it so shocking when her husband puts his duty to mankind (as he sees it) ahead of his duty to his family. For her, identity is not in the least mystical or problematical, something to be discovered and announced to the world, but, as it is for most people, something determined by their families, their relations, the bit of land they inhabit, their class and their country. "You are the work of my life," she tells Tolstoy at one point, "and I am the work of yours."

Mr. Hoffman's movie is all about this tension, much rarer in Tolstoy's day than in ours, between such traditional identifiers as these and the revolutionary and utopian ones that so often produce a sense of liberation from the ordinary constraints of everyday reality but leave a man, as Tolstoy finds out to his cost, with nothing between him and the universe save for his self-chosen "ideals." But the love of mankind turns out here, as it so often does in real life, to be but a poor exchange for the love of the flesh-and-blood people to whom we are bound by ties of what used to be called nature. "I've never met ‘mankind,' " says Tolstoy's young disciple, Valentin Bulgakov (James McAvoy), to Vladimir Chertkov (Paul Giamatti), the most militant of the Tolstoyans, by way of explaining his newly discovered love for someone he has met, the lovely Masha (Kerry Condon). But as he is a revolutionary by temperament, we may doubt whether his relationship with her marks the formation of a new family or merely another way of projecting onto the universe, as Miley Cyrus does, a private affection as an existential affirmation.

I suspect that the organic ties of blood and belief and nationality are not what they once were partly on account of the suspicion of a lingering tincture of racism or fascism or ethnocentrism or religious bigotry about them. But as answers to the question of "Who I am," they still seem to most of us to be superior to those involving either our behavior in the bedroom or the utopian ideals with which they so often come in conflict. This is not so, however, in the media and movie culture that seems to become ever more influential in our lives. That's why Joe Winston decided to make a movie documentary out of Thomas Frank's book What's the Matter with Kansas? This movie purports to explain "How conservatives won the heart of America," yet it consists of almost nothing but portraits of two families of Kansan conservatives.

Mr. Winston has some fun with these people, and especially with their religious beliefs -- one family goes to visit the "Creation Museum" in Kentucky -- and their lost investments in a now-bankrupt Kansas theme park, Wild West World. But these things are unlikely to be as shocking to the vast majority of Americans who won't see this movie as they are to the small number of those who will. After a while it began to appear to me that the filmmakers meant to suggest that the ties of parental and filial love, of religion and duty and family and community, were themselves the reason for the disordered universe, as they see it, represented by conservative dominance in Kansas. Mr. Frank himself appears on film to tell the story of radicalism and populism in the Kansas of a hundred years ago and says, in effect, "look on this picture, and on this."

What's wrong, he asks, with a world in which the currents of history -- lately appearing to the media in all their glory of onward-rushing inevitability in connection with President Obama's health insurance "reform" -- appear to run so backward? Well, maybe the problem is with the historicist model, inherited from Marx, that regards social and political progress according to, well, "progressive" canons as fixed and immutable, the true psychic reality of the race just as the self shorn of its organic ties to family and community is the true psychic reality of the individual. But for those who see "who we are" more in terms of obligation than desire, both kinds of progressive aspiration are likely to appear dangerously utopian. We're the ones who remember that "utopia" means "no place" in Greek.

About the Author

James Bowman, our movie and culture critic, is a resident scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He is the author of Honor: A History and Media Madness: The Corruption of Our Political Culture, both published by Encounter Books.

Letter to the Editor View all comments (38) | Leave a comment

Jeremiah| 5.15.10 @ 4:21PM

Well, in Miley's we can ascribe the self-absorbed inanity to the normal self-absorbed inanity of adolescence, which most of us go through for at least a little time. Time was, the writers at a major magazine would give an ironic, amused and slightly indulgent take on such a teen's breathless naievete and pomposity.

A few decades back most of us outgrew adolescence and were utterly embarassed to find evidence in our old letters or journals of the banalities we once mistook for sublime enlightenment. Now it seems permanent adolescence is the desired state. It's pretty easy - just emote a lot, don't study much and demand that those who do study give the same weight to your emotings as to the considered judgment of those who have worked with discipline to attain....considered judgment.

A pretty good argument can be made that the entire left-wing movement is just a case of extended adolescence. It offends me to call them liberals because actual liberalism has a solid intellectual foundation, while modern leftism is all sentimental mist and vapors.

I am afraid that by the time the grownups are called in to clean up the messes of the adolescent tribe running things this time we are likely to have a genuine catastrophe on our hands.

Alert1201| 5.25.10 @ 7:50AM

I remember watching a MTV special with the Police back in their heyday. The interviewer was back stage with them after a concert. While he was talking to Sting the other two band members (sorry, too lazy to Google their names) were doing stupid stuff with a fruit/veggie plate like putting orange wedges between their teeth and lips, sticking celery sticks up their noises and making antennas out of cucumber slices - real funny stuff. While all this was going in the back ground Sting said something to the reporter along the lines of, "The great thing about being a rock star is that you never have to grow-up" That has become the mantra of liberalism, "We never have to grow up and we expect others to care for us and pay for our youthful indiscretions."

A. Brooks| 5.26.10 @ 12:01AM

Cyrus looks like a whore

mfan2| 9.13.11 @ 12:56PM

Your mother and your daughter are whores, you whoreson.

Charles Jackson| 5.25.10 @ 7:01AM

Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga and Lindsay Lohan are poster girls for the coarsening of our culture.

1FreeMan| 5.25.10 @ 10:50AM

It is so funny. I wouldn't let these twit-teens change the papers in a hamster cage. Lohan was so pretty, now she is a drugged-sexed-up mess. Way past recovery. Miley C., lost in her own self admiration, is looking for meaning in life and now thinks it is another person. When that romance fails do ya think she will discover faith or just another "dude"? If they live long enough, the drugs and lifestyle kills them early, if they live long enough maybe they will mature and find their faith. Long way to go.

But then... we have been hoping the liberals find their faith for a long time too and look what they delivered: their man-God: "The One", the ObamaMessiah. Shocker.... well, not really.

Sam| 5.25.10 @ 3:10PM

Why blame Miley for the actions of an overzealous press? We should be blaming the press for making headlines about such trivial things and blame ourselves for buying into it.

Melvin| 5.25.10 @ 7:38AM

Hmm Little Miss "Achey Breaky Heart" comes of age. I guess a better description of La Cyrus should be, "Little Miss know-it-all," as well as the other self-asborbed, "Mom I want a boob job for graduation" teenagers out there.
"I'm called a slut because I revealing clothing." Oh the righteous indignation personified by this Disney manufactured street walker.
Ms. Cyrus's fake indignation goes well with the Marketing plan because, it means that if people are calling Ms. Cyrus a seventeen year old trollop which means they are paying attention to her.
Young tween Cryus wannabes will hound their mother's to death to mortgage the house all to get a coveted golden ticket to one of La Cyrus's concerts all befitted with their Miley regalia, right down to their ulta-low slung $300.00 a pair Miley hoochy denims, all with the Disney trademark.
Then mothers of America can't figure out why their tween daughters are sneaking out of the house in the morning dressed like their going to work at the corner at the local middle school.

Alert1201| 5.25.10 @ 8:02AM

Malvin hit the nail on the head, it is ultimately the parents fault that these trollops are making the money they are and having the success they do. If my daughter even mentions the name Moliy Cyrus, Lindsay Lohan or Britney Spears in our house it is a punishable offense. Parents need to clearly spell out to their children that these misfits are unhappy miserable people who through a life time of broken relationships, failed marriages, illegitimate children and other self-induced hardships will never be truly happy.

We should teach our children to pity them, not imitate them.

Jon| 5.25.10 @ 9:42AM

In truth, you were right the first time. The fault of the parents is their desire to ultimately please their children rather than intimately care for them. Ultimacy has become a substitute for honest intimacy, regardless of where one falls on the political or religious spectrum. Christ's command was that we love one another, not find them "meaning."

Dan Hirsch| 5.25.10 @ 8:21AM

I think that Mr. Bowman was wondering why Miss Cyrus's newly-discovered self-understanding was so damn newsworthy to merit the 72 pt. type.

I'd offer a simpler explanation for this question:

If you become your own deity, all of the stuff Mr. Bowman seeks to understand makes perfect sense.

However, humbly recognizing and submitting to a Greater Power tends to keep one's focus on things outside of oneself. Knowing that God made all this world and everything in it does tend to suppress the I-know-everything-and-have-all-the-answers tendency of the current day's liberalism.

Maybe all that church stuff is more important than we make it out to be. Hmmmm.

Dope and Chains| 5.27.10 @ 4:27PM

Even better: "Little Miss Can't Be Wrong," a Spin Doctors hit on short rotation in the weeks just before Ms. Cyrus' birth.

Sam| 5.25.10 @ 3:13PM

A punishable offense for bringing up those names? I thought you said parents need to spell out why these teen celebrities and stars are unhappy?

Darin| 5.25.10 @ 8:26AM

"Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."
- Galatians 6:7

"Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies."
- Proverbs 31:10

Sandra| 5.25.10 @ 9:16AM

And there are people that yet wonder about the prevalence of child porn?
What has been done to this "girl" is nothing less than child abuse, and her parents not only condoned, but sought it out???
Little girls are being "groomed" to be sex toys, not unique and irreplaceable women that will be mothers.
And we wonder about the increased savageness and physical violence of women (and girls in their teens)?

Pecos Pete| 5.25.10 @ 9:57AM

Mr. Bowman has a subscription to the Washington Post? Yech!

astorian| 5.25.10 @ 10:22AM

How odd that anyone would amke a movie of Thomas Frank's book, when Frank's book is based on a silly and demonstrably false assumption: that Kansans invarariably vote for conservative Republicans!

In reality, Kansas regularly elects Democratic governors (often very liberal ones, like Kathleen Sebelius), legislators and Congressmen. Now, Kansas DOES tend to elect Republican Sneators, but even those Senators have been moderates (like Bob Dole) and liberals (like nancy Kassebaum).

The idea that Kansas is a stronghold of the Religious Right is idiotic- which makes both the boo kand the film a waste of time.

Seek| 5.25.10 @ 12:14PM

I fully concur. Any state that would welcome the late Williams S. Burroughs as a resident (he arrived in the early 80s) is hardly a Religious Right stronghold. Go, Jayhawks!

GW| 5.26.10 @ 12:38AM

Rock chalk, indeed. But I disagree Kansas isn't conservative. Sebelius hoodwinked voters into believing she was "moderate" and both Senators are conservatives. 3/4 Representative are conservative Republicans, the other, a Democrat.

FakeEagle| 5.25.10 @ 10:41AM

"For true and righteous are his judgments: for he hath judged the great whore, which did corrupt the earth with her fornication, and hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hand." Rev. 19:2

It's only a matter of time.

KyMouse| 5.25.10 @ 10:43AM

"A few decades back most of us outgrew adolescence and were utterly embarassed to find evidence in our old letters or journals of the banalities we once mistook for sublime enlightenment."

I recently found a diary that I had written when I was going on Miley Cyrus's age. Inside the front cover, I had written a few verses that touched a chord within me, including this from the Fiddler Jones poem in Spoon River Anthology: "And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories. And not a single regret."

Good grief, reading the diary showed me a number of thoughts, words and deeds that I should very much have regretted back then, and later did repent of. But I remember the rock-solid certainty that I had Life all figured out, and am very glad that I finally realized the value of the "old school."

Gary| 5.25.10 @ 12:36PM

The problem today is that it's not just teens acting like fools in public but all ages as seen by the horrid pestilence of "reality" TV where people indulge their narcissitc obsessions. inflated egos, depravities, and generally make fools of themselves. It is most depressing. We all have our sins but to display them with pride is a sign of a sickening society whose on morality is fighting global warming and touting government health care and open borders while private morality involving the family and personal responsibility is forgotten.

KyMouse| 5.25.10 @ 4:11PM

Gary, the consistently top-rated soap opera "The Young and the Restless" has begun a story line in which a spoiled young heiress is doing everything she can, including baring it all, to get offered a reality show deal. She is being portrayed as a narcissistic, greedy, disrespectful-to-her-parents airhead who is being taken advantage of by greedy TV people.

wxcynic| 5.25.10 @ 1:22PM

Persons at or near their twenties are supposed to be idealistic and think they know all the answers. We train them that way. By the time you reach your forties, if you pay attention, your pragmatism kicks in when you realize few, if any, really don't care if you are alive or dead and you need to save yourself. Around your sixties you get some notion of what questions really matter. By eighty you might even have some answers, but no one is listening. Bottom line: shouldn't be a parent until forty, and no teaching until sixty.

SierraBear| 5.25.10 @ 1:26PM

I have a friend who operates a daycare center here in Northern California in an upscale community. Admittedly, her clientele consists of those that are of a predominately left-leaning ideology. She is constantly amazed at the routine display during pick up time at school days end. Children are escorted to their booster seats, provided with their favorite drink and a snack and immediately focus their attention on the DVD du jour supplied for their entertainment.

There is very little exchange relative to how they are, what they learned or anything else concerning genuine familial relations, but rather the children quickly tune out into their own little manufactured existence. Amidst this indulgent suckling, is no small wonder that in their attempts to gain identity as they age, that a Miley is rapidly morphed into a Hannah Lap-Dance-ah such as in the incidence when she was found grinding on Adam Shankman, the 44-year-old openly gay producer of her movie, The Last Song. These young people grow to exhibit the mind of Esau rather than that of Jacob in that they possess more pride and hubris than intellect or common sense.

This seems to be the pathology that is an end result of the dictates of contemporary culture, unfettered an unchecked on the hearts and minds of our impressionable youth. In my estimation, this produces far more followers than leaders which in the end are dangerous and destructive at best

Dennis| 5.25.10 @ 1:29PM

Sounds like another self-absorbed teen, who suddenly knows it all, is headed down the same path of Britney and other "stars"...

Sam| 5.25.10 @ 3:18PM

On some level, I find the amount of teen trashing here pretty hilarious. I'm guessing most of you are from the baby boom generation. Let's remember that your generation spent money they didn't have because they bought the message that " baby boomers deserve it." Baby boomers encouraged the culture of debt and credit abuse that still exists today. So can you all hold off your criticism of the teens until you get your own selves straight?

Kelly | 5.27.10 @ 7:58PM

I agree. I am 31 and feel that my parents generation sent this country on the wrong track. I have great parents, and they did a good job, but it's a lonely world when you can't find anyone else with a decent attitude. It's deperssing having to live with so much superficial, ignorant behavior. What will the next generation be like?

Andrew B| 5.25.10 @ 3:11PM

I was born at the bitter end of the Baby Boom, so I spent the first part of my life living in the Sixties. I used to joke with my friends, however, that, in my house, it was the Eighteen-Sixties.

Somehow, my parents never got the memo that their children were to be admired, catered to and indulged. Perhaps it was because my parents were older than those of my peers, or just because they wouldn't put up with much crap. Whatever it was, I resented it terribly at the time.

Guess what...I thank God and my parents' memory every day for the upbringing I had. It was excellent training for life, and I think I have suffered much less existential angst than many in my generation. I hope and pray that, if she can survive the toadies, enablers and yes-men, Miley Cyrus will live long enough to gain some wisdom and perspective.

Bob G.| 5.25.10 @ 4:27PM

Way to much being made of Cyrus and her attitudes. She's simply taking the next step that all female child stars have to take in this society after their cutesy child star period is over - she's slutting her self up for the cash (see former "Christian" singer Katy Perry). It's purely mercenary. Blame television, particularly MTV.

Jenny Johnston| 5.25.10 @ 5:01PM

I often hold up Miley Cyrus and Lindsey Lohan to my daughter as examples of what not to become.

It seems in both their cases their parents encouraged them to use their sexuality at a very young age to get what they want out of life: fame and fortune. LiLo has become totally dysfunctional and is unable to get an acting job. She is a has-been at age 23. Miley is on the same road. God help them.

jomo2009| 5.25.10 @ 5:44PM

We should've seen this coming when Cyrus and her dad posed for those creepy photos in Vanity Fair a couple of years back.

Marc Jeric| 5.25.10 @ 6:33PM

Teacher unions were legitimized back in the 1960's. Since then they have "educated" three generations of illiterate nincompoops full of self-esteem who talk about personal freedom, social justice, redistribution of wealth, world government, global warming, saving the species, ... Enough, I am choking in disgust. Finally they voted for that revolutionary marxist Abu Hussein al-Nairobi for President.

MTB| 5.25.10 @ 7:20PM

Okay, I admit I did not read the entire article because . . . I COULD NOT CARE LESS what Miley Cyrus thinks! Honestly, who cares?

ellboorhani| 5.27.10 @ 2:11PM

one of my favourite singer, but really i never see his movie. extacly i want it, but i never got it

Darragh| 5.27.10 @ 6:51PM

All 17 year old's are morons, but the difference is that many of us of a certain age had the old world of prescribed morality, understanding of civics and community to balance ourselves against. Often, this included a higher truth, religious or not. We see its value and grace as we age. For today's kids, it's so much harder, victims as they are of the Culture of Me, which is a dead end road.

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mfan2| 9.13.11 @ 1:04PM

Most of you people are crazy. Miley Cyrus has a lot of class. She respects people and treats them very well. She gives about 10% of her money to charity (I stopped counting awhile back at seven million). And she believes that God's greatest commandment is to love one another. I'm down with that. Go Miley!