I think it’s really important to remember that when asked in a 2009 interview to name a Jay Z song, Miley Cyrus drew a blank. She was talking about her hit ‘Party in the USA’. If I was asked to summarise the spirit of ‘Party in the USA’ , I’d say: ‘We are all the same in America because we all love Britney Spears and Jay Z, so come with me and dance in front of the flag.’ Cyrus is probably ready to leave ‘Party in the USA’ behind, but I’m bringing it back.
“Honestly, I picked that song because I needed something to go with my clothing line”, said Miley Cyrus, mysteriously. Four years later, she’s doing a super enthusiastic job of restyling herself as some kind of countercultural icon. I’ve read some great articles about the significance of the star of Disney’s Hannah Montana looking for cred by using black bodies and black style, at a time when being young and black in America is demonstrably quite dangerous.
While Cyrus obviously didn’t write ‘We Can’t Stop’, I read that she asked her producers to find her “something that feels black”. She’s clearly been planning this for a while. I’d describe the video for ‘We Can’t Stop’ as odious, racist bullshit, but it’s also fascinating and I have watched it at least twenty times. What does it mean when Miley Cyrus, a woman who, as Dodai Stewart points out, has never not been rich, mines black culture like some kind of horrible colonial industrialist for things to use to make her look cool?
In the opening shot of the video, Miley uses comically oversized scissors to snip an electronic tag off her ankle. This light-hearted attempt to associate Cyrus with some kind of criminality is kind of hilarious if you think about how no matter how many DUIs Miley Cyrus gets, she’ll never go to prison for more than 30 days.
While the sexual and other shenanigans in the video were obviously intended to shock and upset, the weird thing to me is that ‘We Can’t Stop’ is run through with some kind of ultra-libertarianism that’s as conventional and American as ‘Party in the USA’. Like this bit:
It’s our party we can do what we want to
It’s our house we can love who we want to
It’s our song we can sing if we want to
It’s my mouth I can say what I want to
It’s my property, and I’ll protect it with as much force as I want to
Just joking- that last line was by me. Firstly, I’d like to say that nothing says ‘Fuck the man’ like twenty seconds of product placement, or like a whites-only sex party in an enormous empty mansion. What, did your rlly famous dad go away for the weekend and leave you with a load of booze, a doll dressed as yourself, and a man who eats money?
As well as sounding a whole lot like Billie Piper’s ‘Because We Want To’, I think this refrain evokes a world wherein a super rich, white pop star can do whatever she wants without consequences. Like ‘Party in the USA’, the song tries to suggest commonality between the singer and the listener; but this commonality is based on coke and sex, and having the beautiful freedom to do whatever you want.
Dodai Stewart observes: “In the video, Miley is seen with her “friends”: Mostly skinny white boys and girls who appear to be models. But in a few scenes, she’s seen twerking with three black women. Are they also her friends? Or is she just hoping for street cred?”
I don’t think these women are supposed to be read as Cyrus’s friends. Like the money-eating guy, they are there to signify something about Miley Cyrus.
This is very dehumanising
This use of black people as props and signifiers in culture by white people is as old as dirt. There’s a special kind of tokenism in all kinds of movies, especially teen movies, where a main character has a black friend who does nothing but appear alongside them, make them look good, support them, and help them make important decisions for themselves. The kinds of things that humanise and encourage identification with white characters, like being alone in a scene, having an emotional life, having something of consequence happen to them, are not granted to the black friend. The result is something that looks like representation, but is the opposite- it creates a blank, who aids in the representation of someone else.
I bet you can think of a lot of examples of this, but my favourite is in the film Step Up, in which the horrible death of Gage’s friend Skinny is a turning point in the plot, pushing Gage to commit to performing in a dance recital. So at least Skinny didn’t die for nothing.
Actually no he died for nothing.
This is what the black actors and dancers in ‘We Can’t Stop’ were hired for: to aid in the representation of Miley Cyrus as edgy, changed, adult, and ‘black’.
I really don’t enjoy criticising women. Miley Cyrus is in the difficult position of being a former child star, lumbered with uncool teenage fans. It has historically been the case that the only way for female child stars to transition into adult stardom is with some Spring Breakers-style mayhem, and she’s clearly going all in.
While a large number of female child stars have made this transition through sexual transgression, I think that a lot of the shock value of ‘We Can’t Stop’ is intended to stem from both sexual and racial transgression. This is possibly what I find most troubling about the video: I think that many of the black people, especially the black women, in the video are to be read as lower-class, unseemly, and highly sexual, and Miley’s association with them is intended as a form of transgression in itself. And that is really racist.
Here are a few things I enjoyed reading about Miley Cyrus:
‘Let’s Get Ratchet! Check Your Privilege at the Door’ by Sesali Bowen
‘Miley Cyrus Needs to Take an African-American Studies Class’ by Wilbert L. Cooper
‘Miley Cyrus Wants Something That “Feels Black” by Tracy Clayton
