In late August of this year, the Oxford Dictionary added the informal verb "twerk" to its quarterly update of the English language.
While America didn’t anticipate "the movement" that Miley Cyrus constantly refers to in her new vanity documentary/commercial "Miley: The Movement," she comes across throughout the entire film as being aware of what she’s doing and what the effects of her actions are.
That’s what makes Miley so disconcerting.
Miley’s VMA performance prompted think-pieces, essays, and think-pieces about essays that tried to explain what her "movement" was all about. Further demonstrating that he's the smartest guy in the room, Pharrell explains Miley better than anyone:
Also woven in today’s American fabric: capitalism.
There was nothing viral or spontaneous about Miley’s rollout of "Can’t Stop." Miley tirelessly manipulated her hefty Twitter presence to promote her album, even going so far as to visit Twitter’s headquarters to further her understanding of the medium.
While Miley’s public persona is grating and her arrogance obnoxious, you’re begrudgingly forced to dap her up for her success. She’s a perfectionist, pestering her sound mixer to perfect her voice on stage and tinkering her album packaging on her laptop. I can’t hate on that type of hustle.
Everything for Miley has to be "big" and "a moment," and whether you admit it or not, her decisions are synchronized with the current American psyche.
The lone crack in her armor: the mix-up during her entrance at the VMAs.
Miley was angry because the mix-up wasted her intricately planned entrance that was sure to have spawned hundreds of GIFs if pulled off properly. She was able to recover in time for her performance, where she justified her fusing of hip-hop culture into her Disney Princess persona as "American."
That’s the conundrum "Miley: The Movement" proposes to us. Either Miley is the next evolutionary pop star like her idol and the proto-Miley, Britney Spears, or she’s a Machiavellian mogul who is cynically profiting from America’s sexual mores.
That conundrum wasn’t answered last night.