Hasn’t Cyrus’ real persona been “squeaky clean kid who tries to push boundaries”? There was the “I just had sex” pictures at 14… I think… 15, maybe. There was the “I love weed” phase. Now there’s this tough girl stuff. There was always the Disney side but there was also always the “I hate this squeaky clean stuff” side.
Oh, and when was Will Smith ever “Hood”? The man grew up middle class and would have gone on to a fancy college if he didn’t discover music and acting.
We have no idea what her real persona is, since we know her through her art. What you’re describing is just a persona, almost certainly not her real one, though it may or may not be closer to who she really is than what she’s doing now.
I disagree. Appropriation has the connotation of “theft” to it. A poseur is someone who basically “goes somewhere” he is not welcomed, but cultural appropriation implies you’ve taken something that doesn’t belong to you.
Agreed. “Poseur” equates to “inauthentic”: presenting oneself as a type of person without actually being that type of person.
“Cultural appropriation” goes beyond playing at being a goth/emo/hipster/thug/preppy/whatever; it connotes that the person can’t authentically embrace the culture in question, and thus has stolen it.
Christina Aguilera did the same thing a few years ago in the not safe for work Dirrty. It was just as awkward and Furry filled, and as far as I can tell Aguilera never revisited the theme. Then again Madonna was all over the place musically and we bought her ever-shifting style as innovative. But I can’t really put my finger on why I view Madonna’s experiments as edgy and Miley’s as inauthentic. Maybe it’s the posse of fawning twerkers that ruin it for me. I feel like most observers would laugh at the ex Disney star’s attempt to jiggle her non existent booty. And the song is just dreadful. Remember when she covered Dolly’s Jolene? She can sing, she just chose not to on this one.
Have any of you watched the video? Seriously, put the keyboard down and watch the darn video before you start spouting off.
I’m an still cringing. The video was embarrassing, because she was dressed in costume and using a culture as props, with absolutely no hint of self-awareness. It’s as embarrassing as me making a video where I pranced around a bunch of Jewish bankers while they schemed.
This particular video wasn’t like a white suburban kid playing the blues. It’s like a white suburban kid peppering his conversation with “Hey homie G Wazzzup, N-r?” And frankly, that’s pretty much the effect this sort of thing has. I’ve got some teenage relatives that can’t figure out why it’s not cool to fill their conversation with exaggerated pseudo-gangster talk. They are going to embarrass themselves real hard when they get to college and are actually around black people.
Please tell me this is in the pipeline.
This particular video wasn’t like a Black urban kid playing classical. It’s like a Black urban kid peppering his conversation with “Good morning sir, how are you?” And frankly, that’s pretty much the effect this sort of thing has. I’ve got some teenage relatives that can’t figure out why it’s not cool to fill their conversation with exaggerated preppie talk. They are going to embarrass themselves real hard when they get to college and are actually around White people.
Yeah, that’s not racist at all.
Aside from the casual use of nigger, what is wrong with how they speak? What if that’s the vernacular of their social circle? A very large number of “white suburban kids” listen to hip-hop and rap, where that kind of vernacular is common. Are they supposed to speak differently than the language they commonly hear and is commonly reinforced by the things they participate in (social circle, music, movies, etc.)? You’re like a Spaniard who lives in the North of Spain traveling to the South and going, “Wow, this is embarrassing Spanish.” It is markedly different, but it’s not less valid because it’s not the same. They’re all just trying to speak.
It may make you cringe, but I don’t see why that should be a damnation.
It’s hard to prove that someone is speaking as they are because they just super duper want to “sound black” or if that is genuinely how the words flow from their minds.
A better metaphor would be upper class black kids deciding to dress like a character out of My Name is Earl and greeting each other with “Howdy, Reb. How’s the meth lab?”
Poor black people are just cooler than poor white people.
Why would that be better? Is a poor Black person adopting preppie culture somehow not cultural appropriation?
Or is this another case of where Black people can’t be racist, as the author of the article claims?
OK, then picture a bunch of poor black kids going to school in ascots and riding boots and greeting each other with “Fine day, old sport! I do say it is a lovely day on the greens.”
Like my previous examples, they’d get laughed out of town when they get to college.
It’s the difference between the transgender person who puts on a dress and heads to work, the drag queen who wears a thoughtful exaggeration of certain types of femininity, and the frat boy who goes to party in smeared lipstick and grotesquely exaggerated balloon breasts and spends the whole evening saying “Hey look I’ve got tiiiiiiiiiits!! Who wants to touch my titties? Aren’t I a hot little bitch?”
One is being a woman, one is commentary on gender expectations, and one is mocking femininity to get attention.
You answer your questions yourself. If Ms. Cyrus doesn’t want to come off as a poseur, she needs to do more work than she did. She’s absolutely allowed to reinvent herself as a different sort of artist, but if she wants people to take that reinvention seriously, it needs to consist of more than playing dress up.
We all know that Camden County seceded from both the Union and the Confederacy.
Miley Cyrus wasn’t raised in black culture to any extent at all that I know of.
Will Smith, and every other black person in the US (with some exceptions of course, don’t take the generalization literally), was raised in white culture to a great extent. You basically can’t live in the US or Europe without being raised in white culture, even as you are also raised in your own subculture.
This is why Miley Cyrus comes off as posing here, while Will Smith does not.
I think we can all agree that Miley is posing. But who cares? Cultural appropriation and posing are not synonymous. I think cultural appropriation as a general concept is fairly neutral in that it can be positive or negative. How annoyed do Native Americans get with the New Age movements adoption of their symbols and aspects of their spiritual beliefs? On the flip side I doubt there’s many people in the western world who would get annoyed at seeing a Chinese wedding where the bride and groom are dressed in traditional western clothing.
At the very least I think we can all agree that no white person should wear dread locks or cornrows. Seriously, if Bo Derek can’t make cornrows work then no white person can.
This black woman has no problem with white folks sporting braids or cornrows. Seems to me white folk sometimes go overboard with the cultural gate-keeping stuff.
I actually think Miley’s baby thug persona looks like cool. I’m digging the hair. Perhaps she’s positioning herself to be a cross-over act for the new generation-fusing country and hip-hop into an interesting meld of sounds that will make everyone scream. I’m not going to be buying any concert tickets, but I’m not really thinking kids really care who is singing at them as long as the beat is good. All the “cultural appropriation” stuff is for the old fuddy-duddies who aren’t into Miley anyway.
Miley probably is poseur. But I don’t know what kind of secret life she lives. Maybe she regularly hangs out at the stripper club with rapper friends. It’s possible. So I’m not going to judge.
Does anyone hear listen to Robin Thicke? He’s another rich white kid of famous parentage, but somehow he escapes the “poseur” label. So it can be done.
Even when they look really, really bad?
Oh, my issue with them has nothing to do with cultural appropriation and everything to do with aesthetic taste. I have yet to see a white person make those particular hair styles look good whereas plenty of black people rock the look just fine. I’m no gatekeeper.
