'via Blog this'
Jimmy Kimmel Live sent Miley Cyrus, punk-pop twerker and occasional singer, out disguised a reporter named "Janet" to talk to the man or woman on the street what they thought of this tacky broad, Miley Cyrus. Kimmel, of course, has another on going segment called "Mean Tweets" where famous folks are asked to read the awful things others have written about them. This is a variation on a theme, but it's a smarmy presentation, a cheap laugh. It is, I would hope, the tipping point where audiences have grown weary of Cyrus's self-display and demand that do something worth paying money for.
- Mean Tweets" , where the celebrities themselves read the awful things America and the world says about them, is funny because there is a truly ironic element to it. The ones where the professional actors "get into" the 140 character limit diatribes that castigate them can be subtly funny. It can also humanize them a tad, free of film promotions and internet scandal; I forget who it was, but an actress during a segment read an especially vindictive slight against her and then raised her head afterward, paused for a beat and then said "that's just mean". What was funny here becomes human and reveals that mean things said,no matter who they are directed against, hurt all the same. Miley Cyrus in this bit , though, is just going further in playing her most powerful card in remaining in press, radio, films and social media, which is to be Miley Cyrus, famous for being famous.
- This bit , in effect ( and intent,I suspect) is a mockery of the famously anonymous "man/woman on the street" where there is every sophistication that they are out of the loop, unhip, square, stupid for not being up on Miley or the tacky antics she engages in. "Mean Tweets" at least involves celebrities who are famous for their work over everything else and acts as slight curative for the deluge of celebrity obsessed bile that crowds out a smarter discussion of popular art. Cyrus is becoming like celebrty bile herself, famous for being famously tacky and making her fame the formost part of her public identity. Perhaps she will find another way to remain in the headlines once she stops being percieved as cute in any manner; perhaps she'll go back to work, act, do stage work, write and record songs that can surprise us and makes us thank the lord that the insanity of youth had left her. Something similar happened to Cher when graduated from the relentlessly iirrelevant chains of her Sonny and Cher days and lit out on a film work where she did some memorable work, as in 'Silkwood", "Moonstruck", "Witches of Eastwick","Mask".
- True, her years as respected Hollywood actress were short lived and she re-morphed into a species of professional celebrity shill as she pitched products on cable TV stations, but there is at least a time when she did work even naysayers , or at least a good many of them, had to tip their hats for the fine work done. Not that I really care in the larger scheme of things, but i would hope that if Cyrus ever graduates from being a sideshow freak and makes the transition to the ranks of "working artist" in endeavors intended to be judged on their own terms, that she has a good run and so avoids being a Danny Bonaduchi for all time.
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