Miley Cyrus Makes People Stupid; Diane Martel Is A Genius

Miley Cyrus is the focus of so much of the chatter around the Internet, social media, and television, that she was the subject of 10 million searches on Google Trends on Sunday, which has to be a record, and produced some obvious carryover activity.

Miley Cyrus’ 2013 MTV Video Music Awards performance pushed her over Syria in terms of search intensity, as the Google Trends chart below shows.

Today is Tuesday, and Miley Cyrus dominates Twitter Trends, again. Forget other issues. Forget the US Open. Forget Syria. On Twitter, Good Morning America, and everyone else, still wants to talk about Miley Cyrus.

The whole deal’s got me so mad, I made this video rant…

I’m firmly convinced that every time Miley Cyrus’ does something in the way of sexy dancing, either in concert, on television, or in a video, she makes people stupid, and to her benefit.

This time, Ms. Cyrus collaborated with video director Diane Martel to make the vid for We Can’t Stop, and the MTV Video Music Awards performance. And get this: Diane Martel is the same person who directed Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines video that got folks so upset.

See a pattern here, or are you too blinded by your dislike for Miley Cyrus?

If you want to see the mastermind’s eye behind the Miley Cyrus controversy, take a walk over to Diane Martel’s website. There, you will see many of the same sexy images and references to large stuffed animals that populated the We Can’t Stop performance on Sunday at the VMAs.

If you want to figure out what makes Ms. Martel creatively tick, read the Grantland article by Eric Ducker, but let me break it down for you: Diane Martel has figured out that the best music videos use American Culture against itself.

In other words, Diane Martel’s videos take our basic American issues with sex, the stuff of our puritanical ethic, and the new 21st Century neurotic reactions regarding male / female sexual roles, and throws them right in our face.

What comes out of that – accusations of racism via Miley Cyrus’ twerking – is all collateral damage – part of the greater objective of gaining attention by collectively pissing us off using a kind of Rorschach test of our sensibilities. And we can’t stop talking about it.

And I love Diane Martel.

In the Grantland work, Martel said “I’ve been thinking about music videos, marketing, and the Internet for a while. I want to make videos that sell records. This is my main focus right now, not to make videos that express my own obsessions, but to make videos that move units.”

In all, it’s fun to read the Grantland article because in his questions, Eric Ducker reflects America’s insecurities in so many ways, but its necessary to draw out what Diane Martel was thinking. But it’s not necessary to get too deep, although it’s easy to do. The bottom line is both Miley Cyrus and Robin Thicke wanted to make videos that got people talking about them, and she did that.

Martel put her own issues aside to make something that you can’t stop thinking about and talking about because it bugs you. And the talking about Robin Thicke burns him into your brain, and at about the same place where Miley Cyrus lives. You talk about them, buzz is created, and records are sold.

What’s most hilarious is that each successive generation seems to want to think its more sophisticated and analytical than the last one – just plain smarter. Diane Martel, Miley Cyrus and Robin Thicke remind us that, at the end of the day, we’re all still just animals.

Gotcha!