A Twerk of Art

If you live somewhere polite and classy, not bothering to take much notice of the rum goings-on by starlets, you may well have missed this performance which occurred at the MTV Awards last weekend...

No, sorry, I'm at a loss to explain this...

Right then, the 'gentleman' on the left (apparently wearing Beetlejuice's suit) is Robin Thicke and the young lady entreating him to play leapfrog is Miley Cyrus.  The focus of the moral outrage the morning after was the erstwhile Miss Cyrus, who managed to break the fabric of civilisation with a routine involving teddy bears, cultural appropriation, a lot of tongue poking and something called 'twerking'.  I naturally thought of Rossetti.

Miley and her Bears.  Before she pulled her swimsuit off.  And twerked Mr Thicke.

I'm not kidding when I said I thought of Rossetti (not least because we all know he would have loved a good twerk).  When it came down to it, within the hubbub that surrounded Miley's performance there seemed to be two main charges against her.  Firstly, she was guilty of super-sexualising her presentation and secondly, that she greedily misappropriated aspects of another culture.

Oh, before I go on, 'Twerking' is a sort of dancing where you bend about.  The word is possibly a portmanteau of 'twist' and 'jerk'.  It has cultural significance which are lost by the time it reaches the masses, I must admit, because really in this context, it seems to merely signify extrovert libidinal urges.  You heard me.  Anyway, talking of urges...

Bocca Baciata (1859) D G Rossetti

During the 1850s, Rossetti produced watercoloured maidens, chaste kisses and honour.  His Medieval ladies tied pennants onto spears and everyone attempted to keep themselves under control.  Then he found oil and Fanny Cornforth and look what happened.  Suddenly, it's a cavalcade of snogging and more and the woman comes out fresh as the moon.  It's a very convenient mantra for Rossetti to chant, but this is revolutionary, even by today's standards.  Apparently the phrase used for the disapproval of a woman who displays her sexuality a little more freely than we're comfortable is 'slut-shaming'. One thing I read over and over after Miley's performance was the mourning wail for Miley's lost youth.  Miss Cyrus rose to stardom as the pop-starlet Hannah Montana in a Disney series.  She was fresh-faced, virginal and wholesome. Yes, she may have gotten into some scrapes, but she emerged with a song in her heart and her clothing on.  What her reinvention has done is to completely reverse that.  Her video for 'We Can't Stop' shows an orgy of partying and free sexuality in which Miley participates and emerges defiant.  She wants to show that she is grown up, and what do grown ups do?  They don't obey rules and they take their pants off. A lot.

Miley twerks a lady, because that's what grown-ups do.
Just out of shot is Mrs Walker having a sit down with a book,
which is also what grown-ups do.

Maybe there is a cross-over between publicly shedding a youthful persona and using sex as a method of expression.  As a child, sexuality is the most baffling part of adulthood, something readily seen but not understood.  As soon as we are old enough we rush to embrace that part of life, maybe as a public statement that we have indeed grown up.  With all that allure to be adult and autonomous, comes the chance for others to make money.  Hence the monotonous regularity that child stars get sexy.  Miley isn't the first, she won't be the last and to be honest, she wasn't doing anything that we haven't seen before.  While people may all be horrified, outraged and disgusted by a 20 year old woman pretending to fondle herself with a giant foam finger, she certainly got publicity and probably sold a lot of records.  Sex sells.  Queue Rossetti in 1860s...

Venus Verticordia (1865) D G Rossetti

Ruskin found this picture as vulgar and disturbing as many critics found Miss Cyrus.  One commentator described it as the lust of the flesh that never perishes.  Not love, not beauty, but raw, naked sexy-sex and as Miley say, we can't stop.  It's compelling, it's all too human, and it sells.  Look at it this way, you don't have to buy it.  Vote with your money, that would stop it.  It's done for your amusement, so if you aren't amused, don't buy it.  Enough painters in the past had to cover up nudey bits in order to make their money.  If we really find Miley dancing around in a fur swimsuit to be too much then switch over and don't buy her record.  She probably wouldn't do it then.

To be honest, the sexy-sex bit of the performance was not as shocking as a few people seemed to declare it.  No-one was struck dead by God, really, let's not forget it was a lady pretending to do stuff whilst wearing a gianty foam finger.  Rather more disturbing was the fact that Miley 'borrowed' rather heavily from another culture, or rather paraded a lot of nasty cultural stereotypes about to declare something 'cool' about her.

Miley and a friend.  Oh dear.

 Part of the song refers to her 'home girl with the big butt'. In her performance, Miley pretended to lick, bite and smack one of the dancers on the behind.  I think that was the point when people wished she would stop.  Part of Miley's 'growing up' has been to become what is euphemistically referred to as Urban, as displayed on this charming garment...

Miley does a 'selfie' in the mirror

By Urban we mean stereotypical Black American, let's not pretend.  That entails, according to Miley's tshirt, sex, drugs and rap.  She smacked the ladies arse because that lady is all about sex.  She refers to waiting in line for the toilet in order to do 'a line'.  She struts and apes the stance of Rappers.  She is all about the sex and who is more about the sex than Black Americans?  Apparently.  (This was news to me as I grew up with the Cosby Show and therefore my tshirt would say 'Jumpers, Nice Parents, & Trying Hard at School.') Is she alone in her assumption that other cultures are all about sex?  Rossetti, anything to say?

The Blue Bower (1865) D G Rossetti

How tame it all looks, but if you think about it by appropriating Japonism and placing a woman in the context you are playing with notions of Geisha.  Although the role of a Geisha is far more complex than sex (as is 'twerking'), that is what it gets boiled down to.  The excitement of a woman who is sexual ready, willing and able is a powerful thing because it goes against the other extreme, that women are none of those things.  Both are nonsense and women have written copious amounts on our frustration of being told we are one and should be the other.

The Beloved D G Rossetti

The addition of other cultures implies that as Caucasians we are devoid of sexuality, which is insulting, and so we have to drag in some people of a darker hue because they are all about sex, also really insulting.  It also speaks of an insecurity, a boredom with the culture you have been born into.  When Rossetti painted the black boy at the front of the picture, in addition to the black and the gypsy bridesmaids, he was short-handing the eroticism of the passage from Song of Solomon that the painting is based on.  He shared the racial stereotyping of his contemporaries but supported the North in the American Civil War, for which he was mocked by his friends.  His use of the figures is to do with a cultural currency which translates into actual currency without looking any deeper.

Gwen Stefani and Love, Angel, Music and Baby, her Harajuku Girls

It's hard to talk about cultural appropriation as a vaguely middle-class, white, first-world woman because I'm guessing I do it.  It's culturally ingrained for us to borrow from others and it comes from a good and bad place.  On one hand, we are genuinely interested in other cultures.  Other people are fascinating.  It emanates from the same place as our love of the past and is just part of being human.  We are interested in other humans because we are all the same, even when we seem completely different.  When Gwen Stefani based her 2004 album Love, Angel, Music, Baby on her fascination with Harajuku (street fashion and culture in Tokyo), she no doubt made a lot of money (no pun intended).  She received a lot of criticism for cultural theft but I was left with the feeling that she truly did love the culture.  Her appropriation, although fiscally rewarding, came from a place of interest, not just cynical money-picking.  Also, she reflected  Japanese street fashion that evolved from borrowing fashion from the West and changing it to reflect their own tastes.  Maybe that feels different because it comes from a place of sharing.

On the other hand, Culture-picking is used for amusement, to say how funny others are, belittling and patronising and using cultural objects and attitudes deeply inappropriately.  We also misuse things to reaffirm our prejudice.  Some of us use other cultures for monetary gain.  Then it gets really offensive.  A tshirt that sums up even a tiny aspect of another culture as 'Sex, Drugs and Rap' is disturbing because it glamorizes something that harms whilst book-ending it with two big stereotypes.

But then how about this...?

Yes, you know this one.

As a woman with a history of mental health issues, how do I feel about Millais' Ophelia?  It could be argued that it utterly glamorizes something that is not pretty and makes it look cool.  This is a picture of a woman killing herself because she has a mental illness.  Isn't it beautiful?

Sorry for the rambling, but the more I think about cultural appropriation, the bigger the problem is.  I have been told that my style of dress and behaviour is deeply offensive.  Whilst I do not waggle my bottom against random men while playing at being 'Gangsta', I do wear a circle skirt, net petticoats and am known for my enthusiasm for baking.  I was informed I was playing at being oppressed, and could not possibly appreciate how much I would hate actually being a 1950s housewife.  Now that may be true but I did not for a moment consider how borrowing from the past could be the same as borrowing from a modern culture (albeit a stereotype of one).  When the Pre-Raphaelites reached back to embrace Medievalism did they really know what they were doing, or was it because it suited an aesthetic?  William Morris wished to recreate the handcrafting of belongings, just like the good old days, but for our ancestors work tended to be hard and cut short by limb-loss and death.

I have no answers for all of this.  I would be interested to hear what you have to say and if you would like to see some of the modern things I refer to, here are some links:

If you want to see Miley Cyrus and Robin Thicke's performance at the VMA Awards, here it is.  Have a sit down and a stiff drink, you'll be fine.

If you want to see Miley's We Can't Stop video, here it is. Again, a stiff drink will sort it out.

For Gwen Stefani's Alice in Wonderland inspired, Harajuku anthem What You Waiting For? look here.