Another art-house auteur often inspired by Los Angeles
April 6, 2020 1:53 PM   Subscribe

"Were it not for David Lynch,” he told the magazine, “Miley would never have been Hannah Montana.” It is among the most beautiful and sublimely odd sentences ever uttered by a country singer discussing a video of his Disney star child ripping a bong.
posted by chappell, ambrose (11 comments total) 9 users marked this as a favorite
 
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posted by hank at 2:14 PM on April 6, 2020 [1 favorite]


As a warning to anyone else who's feeling kind of on-edge this April 2020: there is a jumpscare at the end of the page. It's a topical jumpscare but I still could've done without it, these days.

Anyway, the piece itself is excellent, and has got me thinking more about Billy Ray Cyrus' weltanschauung then I had expected to think today.
posted by ZaphodB at 2:28 PM on April 6, 2020 [4 favorites]


As a warning to anyone else who's feeling kind of on-edge this April 2020: there is a jumpscare at the end of the page. It's a topical jumpscare but I still could've done without it, these days.

Specifically, there is a "link" at the very end of the text that causes something to happen when you roll over it with your mouse. You can read the article just fine without triggering it.
posted by sideshow at 3:03 PM on April 6, 2020 [1 favorite]


That was silly.
posted by amtho at 3:12 PM on April 6, 2020


What father wouldn't be proud to see his daughter shack up with Wayne Coyne?
posted by thelonius at 3:41 PM on April 6, 2020 [3 favorites]


The article is about Billy Ray Cyrus as mediated by his character Gene the poolman, his seeming conflicts of faith and the competing possibilities suggested by Lynch's characters and Billy Ray's faith and how that all is mixed, as the author of the piece sees it.

The problem is in this sentence, "He was getting divorced, at odds with his record company, and watching helplessly as his daughter dutifully performed the “former child star” phase of her career." and the pull quote which renders Miley as being merely the result of Billy Ray's choices and less someone with full agency acting to fulfill her own interests.

This is a not uncommon refrain. Young women celebrities are often denied full agency by making their decisions a reflection on their fathers or by suggesting those choices were the result of improper upbringing at some juncture even if the parents or father isn't referenced by name. The "child stardom" leads to bad behavior model. This lets the rest of us off the hook, all those who want to see those former child stars slip up and show some skin and those who want to read about every detail of the stars lives with as much "scandalous" information as can be found. These young women are morally condemned for the very thing the public wants from them while being entirely aware of the duplicity of much of their audience in wanting scandals in order to be entertained in their judging and attentions.

Miley, like many other young women celebrities, has shown remarkable assurance in her actions, more perhaps than even the rest of her select group of peers, and the choices she's made seem to reflect an understanding of the position she holds to the audience as she appears to purposefully deflect moral judgments by a kind of transparency by refusing to be shamed by the lack of privacy or by attempts to hide her actions as if potentially damning. Miley doesn't give a shit what people think. Neither does Grimes, or Kristin Stewart, among many other young women who watched how Britney Spears among far more other women, were treated and won't allow themselves to be treated the same way. These women surely have self doubt, anger, embarrassments, and fears like we all do, but they won't give in to the public that demands their humiliation by reclassifying the concept of privacy to fit what they can control and denying others the opportunity to take from them their sense of self by illicit means or duplicitous values.

I'm disappointed the article allowed for the kind of reframing that places Miley's life as accessory to Billy Ray's. Billy Ray may feel unhappy about the choices Miley has made, but that's purely on him, not her. No woman's life exists just to comment on a man's choices and the article should have better handled that element, but then again would there even be a Billy Ray article, or would anyone care about it, if it wasn't for Miley having achieved far more fame?
posted by gusottertrout at 11:56 PM on April 6, 2020 [11 favorites]


"Cyrus offers a direct line from Lynch to Satan, another art-house auteur often inspired by Los Angeles."

"Satan, an art-house auteur inspired by Los Angeles."

Hmm.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 12:53 AM on April 7, 2020 [1 favorite]


I keep wanting to rewatch Mulholland Drive, just to experience the movie again, but the pain of that final scene keeps me from doing so. The ridiculousness, surreality and pathos of that scene make it the most frightening and moving thing I've ever seen at the movies. And it would not be nearly so were it not for the part of the movie that started life as a TV pilot. The one part creates the other part in a way that would not have happened had the whole project been birthed from Lynch's imagination in one unit.
posted by jabah at 7:50 AM on April 7, 2020 [2 favorites]


These young women are morally condemned for the very thing the public wants from them

To be fair, that's the only way to guarantee a bountiful corn harvest.
posted by flabdablet at 9:35 AM on April 7, 2020 [3 favorites]


great article.

One of my peeves these days is when people say "I hate this timeline". Well, let me indite myself and by chiming in and saying, "I hate the timeline that seems to insist we must now warn people of all impending jump scares. I get it. Some folks really do seem to need it. But what's next, my inner hyperbolic libertarian asks, a warning that there's a punchline coming at the end of something that doesn't at first appear to be a joke? This is the death of surprise, I fear. And we do need surprise. Even in dangerous times."

Anyway, loved the read. Mulholland Drive is one of those movies that's long been percolating through me, exciting and inviting my imagination. Always happy to discover a fellow traveler.
posted by philip-random at 9:55 AM on April 7, 2020


"The ridiculousness, surreality and pathos of that scene make it the most frightening and moving thing I've ever seen at the movies."

I feel exactly the same. It haunts me.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 5:48 PM on April 7, 2020


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