The Best Response to Miley Cyrus and Robin Thicke on MTV Sunday

While I did write one myself (The VMAization of America), the best reflection comes from Paul Claudel, via Magnificat Monday, from a meditation of his on the Apostles’ Creed:

We live… in a state of disorder. There has been a corruption of the original order, of the order that charged all things to become visible; there has been a warping of certain wheels, which causes friction throughout the mechanism. The disorder cannot, by definition, be the work of the Creator, because everything that proceeds from him is, by definition, good. Therefore it can only be the work of the free creature, free to choose himself as an end, instead of God who has no end.
Difference, preference … this false preference is the so-called original sin, which is the result of this original difference away from God in which the creature delights, and delights as an end in itself.
The consequence of original sin, by which the finite being chooses himself as end, is the End, either death or separation — separation for the rebel angels forever banned from life, death for man who loses his body, or the essential difference in which he delights.
By his sin, man withdraws from God his body and the service of his body, to which all nature is bound in solidarity. He is no longer “adjusted.” What he robbed while in a state of grace he cannot now restore in a state of sin. God alone can restore God (or God’s work) to himself by a sort of recreation or regeneration.”Fiat,” says the Father, “voluntas mea.” “Fiat voluntas tua,” answers the Son.

In a homily at St. Peter’s Church on Capitol Hill today, a Dominican father talked about our wound so deep that only God’s grace can keep us from sin and holiness as God’s movements in us, transforming us so that we may be singularly focused on Him (allowing us to see with the eyes of His heart and love with His love).

The Cyrus-Thicke Video Music Awards performance was reflective of our modern-day adjustment disorder. One where Sunday-morning-show hosts ask what the difference between men and women is. I found it particularly interesting that last month on The Today Show, in defense of his crass “Blurred Lines,” a summer hit, Thicke called it “great art” and a contribution to a discussion about relations between men and women. He has also credited his wife for the idea for a naked (women only, that is) version of the video.

If people are truly outraged by Sunday night’s performance, perhaps it has served as a cultural wake-up call and maybe Thicke deserves some credit there. But in another interview, Thicke admitted he knew the whole “Blurred Lines” presentation was a sure-fire way to get attention, so people would take his name down. He was right and here we are. That’s what Miley Cyrus was doing, that’s what our shock culture is so often about.

Are we mad as hell yet, or happy to dirty dance (now “twerking,” what Cyrus did to Thicke on national television) our way there?