Is Twerking Really the Issue Here?

I don't want to go on too long about this because I'm not sure it deserves that much time. However, Miley Cyrus's "twerking" at the VMAs is grabbing a lot of attention while other guilty parties remain largely in the shadows: Robin Thicke and all the bad boys who think swagger is cool.

Thicke's summer hit "Blurred Lines" is gaining a lot of positive traction and is arguably launching his career. In a recent Rolling Stone article Thicke was interviewed as saying as much. 

Rolling Stone gave Thicke's most recent album three and a half stars. Rob Tannenbaum writes, "Thicke is the handsome son of a TV star, but he never incites resentment, because he always seems to be an amiable Joe who's in on the joke of stardom - the George Clooney of the club jam. In an era when Chris Brown remains a sex symbol for many people, his ability to be casual and gentlemanly while also boasting about the size of his rhymes-with-Thicke is nearly a miracle."

Not only is this unfair to Chris Brown, but this just doesn't ring true.  As an audience member, I resent Robin Thicke's attitude toward women as exemplified in "Blurred Lines."  I resent the video that depicts women as nothing more than sexual beings who need to be undomesticated and liberated. Clearly undomesticated, or liberated in this context means crawling around topless on all fours. That to me communicates something else entirely. And this gentlemanly manner Tannenbaum refers to is an absolute fallacy. What, might I ask, is gentlemanly about boasting about the size of your dick? Is Tannenbaum stating that because Thicke didn't hit his girlfriend, but merely had "Robin Thicke has a big dick" scrawled on a wall behind him in larger-than-life letters in his music video, this exemplifies his casual and gentlemanly manner? Misogeny is misogeny. There are no gradations. This is not a miracle. It's a debacle. 

What probably irks me most about the Miley Cyrus, Robin Thicke performance at the VMAs is that her behavior is deemed unacceptable, while Thicke's is viewed as understandable. How else is one to interpret the silence? I don't defend Cyrus's actions. And the more I read about her treatment of the women of color sharing the stage with her, the angrier I get about what she did and what the industry does to perpetuate this type of behavior. But this isn't the first time a woman has been part of a controversial routine and been blamed as the sole perpetrator.

Who could forget the 2004 Super Bowl performance involving Janet Jackson's "nipple slip," as it was termed in the press. How quickly people became blind to the other player in that scenario. Jackson was eviscerated, as if it was all her doing. Let's be clear on this. It was never a "nipple slip." Justin Timberlake ripped off Janet Jackson's clothing. It doesn't matter who coreographed the move. To the naked eye, Timberlake looked like the agressor. So why did Jackson get all the blame? 

I get that musicians want to push the limits. It's deemed sexy to do so.  Different can be intoxicating. I think Miley Cyrus probably felt this way during her performance. But Robin Thicke is old enough to know better. If he's "in on the joke of stardom" maybe he can help us better understand the punchline. From here it just looks ugly.  

In the Wake of Elysium, Remembering District 9

Fiction at its best is allegorical, in that it harks back to something that feels familiar to us and holds some universal truth. This is the inherent beauty of science fiction. If done right, it allows us to clearly see the challenges we, as a human race, face. Think 1984 and Brave New World. Unfortunately, thanks to bad movie directors--you know who you are--who sacrifice story for a conglomeration of bad acting, overblown special effects, and the use of computer graphics for well, the sake of computer graphics, science fiction has developed a somewhat checkered past. We reached a point in the 90's when technology gave us the opportunity to share what, previously only our imaginations could conceive. This was a great thing for movies like Toy Story--the first CGI animated feature film that led us happily to The Incredibles--and a bad thing for movies like all three Star Wars prequels (Sorry, Lucas fans. They stink.).

No matter. Now we have films like District 9.

Set in modern-day Johannesburg, this film, directed and written by Neill Blomkamp (South African born), and Terri Tatchell, tells a story that feels all too familiar to us.

Blomkamp employs a documentary-style technique, opening with simulated news footage to set the scene. Through initial interviews, correspondents and Johannesburg locals reveal the story of District 9, a slum where alien refugees are trapped and exploited.

One of the things that makes this movie so great is that it makes us take a good, hard look at ourselves. What lies at the film's emotional center is the story of human nature. The frightened, ignorant, vengeful, jealous, angry, selfish side of human nature that leads us to advertently or inadvertently cause harm to ourselves and everything around us. We don't need to look very far back in our history to find evidence of this. What may first come to mind, due to the film's location, is 1960s apartheid, but there are countless other atrocities that race through one's mind as the plot unfolds. What I found myself hoping for, amidst all of the darkness this movie presents, and there is a lot of it, was the light.

We get a glimmer of it in the deeply flawed but likable character Wikus Van De Merwe who seems to be the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time. As we watch Wikus make his way though this story, moving closer and closer to the side of the story's victims, we cringe over and over each time he falls due to his ignorance, his selfishness, and his vengefulness. This is where the writing really does its job because we hope against hope that Wikus will do the right thing.

Special effects in this film do what they're supposed to do. They serve to help tell a story that could not be told otherwise.

I don't think I'd be spoiling it for moviegoers to say that the ending is satisfying and the ride--at times almost too intense to take--is well worth the ticket price.

We can thank Peter Jackson for his involvement in this film. Without him, this movie may slipped off the radar. Here's hoping the success this movie has the potential to generate will lead to more great storytelling at the box office.