Tag Archives: pornography

Guest Post! A Pornography Fan’s Review Of Miley Cyrus’ Performance At Video Music Awards

Welcome List of X!  Today my guest blogger will be talking to us about Miley Cyrus and porn.  For some reason he thought a porn related post would work here.  I can’t imagine why, what with the many, many posts on that literary masterpiece 50 Shades of Grey.  Anyhoo, with no further ado, here is a unique perspective on the latest Mileygate.  Read on, then go check out his hilarious blog.

Lately, there has been a lot of noise surrounding Miley Cyrus’ performance at the Video Music Awards. It was called “pornographic”, “perverted”, “disgusting”, “pornographic”, “distasteful”, “objectionable”, and once again, “pornographic”. (This was the most common epithet by far.)  Let me begin by making it clear that I enjoy porn as much as the next guy, and just as any guy, I consider myself a porn expert. (However, since the next guy is probably too busy enjoying it at the moment, I shall be writing this review myself).  So, when I first heard Ms’ Cyrus’ VMA performance being described as “pornographic”, I was immediately intrigued.  My hopes were sky-high after I had seen a few choice photos of the performance.

However, once I actually watched the video, I was extremely disappointed.  The disappointment was somewhat mitigated due to the fact that I watched the video clip with the sound off, partly because of Ms. Cyrus’ singing, and partly because reviewing pornography requires complete silence to be able to concentrate on the object at hand, as well as to be able to hear if someone is about to walk in on you. To many males, pornography is an art form, and for many of us, it’s the only art form we recognize.  Messing with the standards of our favorite art form is something we porn fans simply don’t take lightly.  

To be fair, Ms. Cyrus had done a very good job demeaning herself, which is often a necessary part of the art, and I have to commend her effort and her obvious enthusiasm. But her performance lacked purpose, focus, charisma, and understanding of the unspoken porn boundaries – unspoken because of the silence.  It had all the markings of amateur porn, without actually coming close to being porn. 

Let’s start with the visual appearance.

Ms. Cyrus’ tongue, which kept falling out of her mouth, gave an impression that she’s being chocked by an invisible hand; her hair style looked as though she just fought a losing battle against a lawnmower; and her movements appeared to be more erratic than erotic.  (Of course, that last part might have been caused by the illegible handwriting of Ms. Cyrus’ choreographer).  In all, Ms. Cyrus’ performance served not to remind of the pleasures of sex, but rather seemed to remind of danger of doing drugs. At times, Ms. Cyrus’ movements were so quick that the outline of her figure was becoming blurred, and I couldn’t agree more with Robin Thicke, a fellow porn fan who once famously said, “I hate these blurred lines”.  (If you had watched a video a few times, you might have noticed Mr. Thicke featured in the same video, performing from behind of Ms. Cyrus.) 

Miley Cyrus, pretending to mate with a male zebra.

Miley Cyrus, pretending to mate with a male zebra.

And what was Ms. Cyrus trying to say by playing with a giant foam finger?  Doesn’t she know that the art standards require using only hard objects (such as poles, microphones, etc.) as props in the performance, because soft prop objects often instill a feeling of insecurity in the male audience?  Especially when these props are also patently oversized and can cause foam finger envy in the more impressionable audience members.  It only takes a couple of minutes to research that on the Internet; a few hours if you are a guy.  

The choreographer has apparently also failed to explain that "The Glove" should not be taken literally either.

The choreographer has apparently also failed to explain that “The Glove” should not be taken literally either.

Finally, the tongue.  Yes, I can’t help coming back to the tongue again – but only because said tongue made no less than 20 scene-stealing cameo appearances during the few minutes of the video (which still felt like an eternity). If the dangling tongue was supposed to be Ms. Cyrus’ impression of a female dog in heat, Ms Cyrus’ choreographer should have made it clear to her client that the “dog in heat” move isn’t meant to be a representation of a dog that literally feels hot and sticks out her tongue to cool down. Apparently, choreography and euphemisms just don’t go together well.

My disappointment reached the highest point when, a few minutes into the clip, I found myself looking forward to Robin Thicke’s appearances, so that I didn’t have to subject myself to Ms. Cyrus’ pathetic attempts at being an amateur porn star.  There were no words in my vocabulary to describe what I was seeing, which made me appreciate the made-up word “twerking” that was used to describe Ms. Cyrus’ dance.  Even given my normally chilly attitude towards the teenage slang terms, “twerking” was surprisingly appropriate as a description of what I was seeing.  This bastard of a word paints a vivid picture of what was happening on the stage.  It wasn’t dancing, or porn, it was nothing but “twerking”, with Ms. Cyrus occasionally drifting into twerking off. 

Ms. Cyrus’ dance made me feel dizzy, but did not make me feel anything else.  It seemed as though her pitiful performance was sufficient to make blood leave my brain but not enough to arrive where it should have, if Ms. Cyrus’ performance was indeed as pornographic as many have claimed.  The only thing her performance was able to arise was the ire of the parents groups, and while it’s often an unfortunate by-product of porn, it’s not the kind of arousal any aspiring porn star should be aiming for.

In summary, if Miley Cyrus is considering entering a career in doing porn, I would strongly advise her to keep her day job, whatever it’s supposed to be.

Libraries are for Porn?

Come on, Anne, lighten up!
Since we’re still in Banned Books Week, I’m going to continue to gripe about censorship.  I won’t expand on book censorship.  Well, maybe just a little.  Here’s a list from the ALA website of some of the most ridiculous reasons given for banning books.
    1. “Encourages children to break dishes so they won’t have to dry them.” ( A Light in the Attic, by Shel Silverstien)
    2. “It caused a wave of rapes.” ( Arabian Nights, or Thousand and One Nights, anonymous)
    3. “If there is a possibility that something might be controversial, then why not eliminate it?” ( Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, by Dee Brown)
    4. “Tarzan was ‘living in sin’ with Jane.” ( Tarzan, by Edgar Rice Burroughs)
    5. “It is a real ‘downer.’” ( Diary of Anne Frank, by Anne Frank)
    6. “The basket carried by Little Red Riding Hood contained a bottle of wine, which condones the use of alcohol.” ( Little Red Riding Hood, by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm K. Grimm)
    7. “One bunny is white and the other is black and this ‘brainwashes’ readers into accepting miscegenation.” ( The Rabbit’s Wedding, by Garth Williams)
    8. “A female dog is called a bitch.” ( My Friend Flicka, by Mary O’Hara)
    9. “An unofficial version of the story of Noah’s Ark will confuse children.” ( Many Waters, by Madeleine C. L’Engle)

If you think no one would really suggest banning a book for such a stupid reason, you clearly have too much faith in the human race.

 

Demon Worship 101 is HARD

 

But as I said, there’s more to censorship in libraries than just books.  Now libraries, in keeping with the times, have computers with Internet access.  For those on the quest for naughty stuff – to protect others from, of course – the Internet is a real treasure trove of opportunity.  It’s also a heck of a lot faster than trying to go through line after line of Harry Potter looking for the part where Harry, Ron, and Hermione perform that Satanic devil worshipping ritual for a school project.  Those little scamps!

 

 

But back to the Internet.  Many people are  understandably concerned about what their children might find on an average Internet search.  I mean, it should be safe to look up, say, bears (don’t).  Or possibly kittens (again, don’t).  Or maybe plushies (for the love of God, do not do this.)  Since even these seemingly innocent words could lead to all sorts of nightmares for years to come, clearly someone needs to sanitize this Internet thing.  But what can we do?  Maybe some sort of a filter, that lets only the pure and wholesome stuff out, but keeps the bad stuff in – you know, like bloodletting in the Middle Ages.

 

THAT’s the White House???

As it turns out, filtering is just as effective as bleeding out the “bad” blood in medieval patients.  Sure, kids are protected from seeing a woman’s bare breasts.  They are also prevented from seeing information on breast cancer, breast feeding, the breast stroke, and chicken breasts.  Yes, you can change up programs to specifically allow these terms, but after a while, this becomes a full time job.  People on the Internet may be scummy, but they’re clever.  A good way to get more traffic to their sites is to name it something totally innocuous, like say the White House (well, okay, maybe not totally innocuous).  Be sure to look up whitehouse.gov, or else you are NOT going to see the Oval Office.  At least not the one you’d like to see.

Not only are there problems with specifically keeping children from seeing the wrong thing (if you think using teddy bears as search query instead of just bears is gonna solve things, think again), these filters are usually set up on all library computers.  That means that adults must also be filtered from looking at information that, as adults, they ought to be able to access.  No, they shouldn’t be looking at porn in a public place, but there are plenty of things that are not obscene that they could be blocked from.  Taking the filters off for certain people doesn’t solve anything, because if you are researching, you don’t know what’s out there.  Therefore, you don’t know if you need the filter removed or not.  And if you do ask for it to be removed, will people assume you’re a pervert?  Many patrons would probably prefer not to take that chance.

Why would librarians use filters?  Many are forced to, thanks to CIPA, the Child Internet Protection Act, designed by our government with the best of intentions (which if you remember paves the road to hell).  If they want government funds to help pay for a computer lab, and many poorer libraries have no other way to fund one, then they have to agree to filter.  So then even those who would not want to use them otherwise are faced with a difficult choice – deny their patrons or deny their patron’s first amendment rights?  Not an easy choice.

 

This child has been online a bit too long . . .

What’s the answer?  I think it’s rather obvious myself.  Libraries do not act in loco parentis (in place of parents).  Parents should monitor their children’s Internet use, in my opinion, just as they should monitor what their children read.  They have every right to keep their children from certain books or websites, but they do NOT have the right to keep MY children or me from these same books and websites.  We all want to protect our kids, but this should not come at the expense of the rights of others.  It is, ultimately, our responsibility to parent our own kids in the best way we know how.  If filtering your computer is your choice, that’s fine.  But just remember – our kids have grown up with computers.  So filtering, in many cases, is about as effective on kids as your average child proof container.  I wish everyone good luck.

And hey – didn’t I WARN you not to look those words up?