In the first part of the 20th century modernist contrarians established a counter-music, an antithesis to classical genres. Populist dancers announced, “Who needs ballroom formality?” But again, how do you oppose that opposition, without a reactionary, full-circle return to formalism?
The advisers of Miley Cyrus should have a problem in that the 20-year-old ignoramus is not a Paris showgirl in the Folies Trévise of the 1870s, not an Impressionist artist in 1890, not a Ziegfeld Girl circa 1910, not a poet of the Great War, not a Depression-era novelist, and most surely not a blues singer in 1940 — all defiant in arguing that in turbulent times genres, rules, protocols in the arts, literature, and popular expression were confining, hypocritical, and fossilized (as if it is more difficult and challenging to write a poem without iambic pentameter, rhyme, or poetic diction).
Miley Cyrus, to the extent she was intent on anything other than making more money and headlines, seemed to be trying to rebel against the rebellion, most likely Madonna and her own knockoff insurgent, Lady Gaga. But given that both of them have appeared on stage nine-tenths nude, routinely simulated sex in front of millions, and adopted symbols and sets designed to gross out Middle America, how do you go beyond their uncouthness? Higher platform shoes? More videos of public nudity? Two foam fingers?
For going “beyond” — not singing more mellifluously, dancing more adroitly, or energizing the crowd more enthusiastically — is now the point. In Petronius Arbiter’s first-century novel, The Satyricon, the fatter and more repugnant is Trimalchio, and the more loudly he passes wind, burps, mangles mythology, and invokes scatology, the more he thinks that he appeals to his bored dinner guests. In terms of repugnance, Miley Cyrus was the anorexic and mobile version of Jabba the Hutt.
She has neither the training nor the discipline to go formal retro. She surely was not going to appear in her vinyl bikini, put on ballet shoes, and do a bit from Swan Lake(now that would be shocking). Nor was she going to offer “O mio babbino caro” from Puccini’s opera Gianni Schicchi, waving her huge foam finger in Mitch Miller sing-along fashion. That too these days would be shocking.
It used to be that artists --whatever the medium---underwent training and a kind of apprenticeship that acquainted them with the techniques and forms of their predecessors. They became engaged in an ongoing cultural conversation that not only guaranteed familiarity with the contributions of past artists, but very likely training in their techniques even if they improvised, varied or abandoned them in furthering their own style.
I do think the ultimate rebellion will be a return to formalism, to training, to expertise, to accomplishment rather than nihilistic, naked and disgustingly formless rebellion.
In a parallel fashion, I think we are going to see continued growing interest among young people in traditional liturgy and difficult, demanding forms of Christianity. I see it in the young people who attend our Anglican Use Catholic services. Young men in their 20s who wear ties and vests to church; one wears a fedora and a trenchcoat, the other has a long frockcoat and do they ever look handsome and trendy. They love the classical Christian writers, the deep philosophical questions and real literature.
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