Award shows probably meant something once. I’m sure there was a time when society gave a shit about who won Best Album or who was named Best New Artist. But this was probably around the same time the Little League World Series, shag carpet and 8-track tapes mattered, too. Those days are long gone.
You shouldn’t really have an opinion on the MTV Video Music Awards once you’re 15 years old and safely out of the tween market. By that age, one should be aware of how things really work: wrestling isn’t real, you need a job to buy nice things, and TV is scripted. Yes, I said TV. Just about everything you see on the screen is supposed to happen that way.
I’ve worked in TV, I’ve seen how the sausage gets made. When someone appears on Letterman, they’ve gone through rounds of pre-interviews so Dave knows what questions to ask. When the crew of Duck Dynasty gets into some comic adventure, it’s because they’re supposed to. And when Miley Cyrus got up on stage and started twerking, it’s because she was supposed to.
It’s been about a week since she – as Young MC might say – busted a move on national TV and the story has made the usual rounds. Just about every news outlet expressed some level of shock and Vulture called it a minstrel show. But the main takeaway is how damn phoney the whole thing was.
The whole performance was blatantly fake, a transparent attempt to make the VMA’s matter. It was scripted down to the smallest detail: think it’s a coincidence Cyrus segued her song into the creepy fantasy of “Blurred Lines”? And how about the foam finger or flesh-toned underwear: think ol’ Cyrus slipped one past security?
Or, put another way, think security at the VMA’s is so light that anyone can slip on stage. Like, say, Kanye West?
How quickly we all forget. Only four years ago West stormed on to the VMA stage, interrupting Swift’s victory speech, to announce that “Single Ladies” had the best video of all time (to be fair: I assume West isn’t familiar with Jan Terri). Then, too, was the predictable chorus of outrage. I remember one friend who was pissed off, thinking Swift had her big moment in the spotlight torn away. Funny how that turned out: West is as famous as ever and Taylor.
Like that, the whole controversy is much ado over nothing. One can read into it as much as they like, but the event was staged and designed to be controversial. It was meant to make the flyover states care about the VMA’s by getting upset. In so many words, they trolled you instead of having some good musical acts on show.
The VMA’s want you to get outraged. They want you to tweet and use the official hashtag. They want you to read about it in Star, In Touch, and all the other usual suspects. They want you to pay attention. This is the unpopular kid in school eating crap so people will pay attention. And the more people who do means they can sell ads for more cash next August. It’d be sad if it wasn’t so cynically transparent. Like Rihanna, we should be bored by the whole spectacle.