Miley Cyrus twerking at the MTV video awards last year has been worked over long dead coals at this point. But I continue to hear charges of racism levied towards her, which I find troubling. Some people seemed to feel that Miley twerking is an appropriation of black culture. Setting aside my belief that it is impossible (and probably racist) to assign cultural commonalities to an entire ethnic population, I think it is fair to say that Miley didn’t invent twerking.
But yes, she appropriated it.
And though I can’t say the artistry of her performance was to my liking, I have no problem at all with her dance moves or her borrowing a cultural affectation for her own performance.
Culture and ideas are designed to spread. Venus and Serena Williams excelling at Tennis (or Tiger Woods, golf) were important indicators of cultural movement beyond traditional populations. Eminem’s success as a rapper amongst kids of all colors demonstrated that skin tone wasn’t a barrier to rap success. And Justin Timberlake…well, everyone seems to love Justin.
The point is that culture *should* be appropriated, reshaped and spit back out. We Americans are experts at exporting culture. We are experts at marketing ourselves - call it hype or whatever, it might be our most powerful tool. And as a marketer I appreciate the sophistication of developing a piece of content that I know will resonate widely and deeply with a target audience. In many ways the job of a marketer is to find interesting ways to spread an idea.
And this is where the terrorists come in. I don’t draw the comparison lightly. Extremists have waged a war on the western way of life and they are willing to use violence to make their point. And we’ve taken the bait, seeking out terrorist leaders and soldiers and destroying them - fighting this war on their terms.
The problem is that the real war on terror is one of ideas and, yes, culture. Fundamentalists everywhere want to deny any way of life but their own. But you can’t win a war on extremism with violence, because many extremists are willing to die for their cause.
The only way to win is through the spread of culture. For people of all shades to appropriate cultural ideas and reshape them into their own. It might sound self-serving as this is what I do for a living, but I think the war on terror is won through better marketing. Better storytelling. And the free spread of ideas and culture.
So the point of this post isn’t really that white people need to be twerking. It’s a pretty silly cultural phenomenon. But they shouldn’t be shamed for doing so, and no ethnic group should prohibit others from borrowing cultural ideas and expressions. What we should be doing is focusing on the open spread of culture and ideas. That's a marketing campaign I can get behind.
