httpss://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juSrk9VUkUU
On a youth-focused awards show that is as effectively have on the huge living room image box as in bite-size pictures and videos on Instagram, Vine, Twitter and Snapchat, Ms. Cyrus is a model host, as well as a harbinger of cultural collisions and supply strategies yet to come.
From the conclusion of the night, when Ms. Cyrus performed a new song about self-authorization, backed by the Flaming Lips and dancing drag queens, she was not practically the most memorable part of the evening’s services.
Wasn’t Ms. Cyrus supposed to be having all the fun? She was flamboyant and awkward, preening in excessive, shimmering outfits that reflected the psychedelia of the GIF-and-Instagram-affected artwork that filled the show’s interstitial bits.
Photo Old criticisms that Ms. Cyrus too readily puts on and takes off signifiers of blackness weren’t likely to be quelled by her outfit alternatives, which comprised dreadlocks in two distinct colours, nor by the instant she called Snoop Dogg “My real mammy,” a word with offensive connotations that she either didn’t know about or did not care to understand about.
A day or two before the show, Ms. Cyrus said some impolitic things about Nicki Minaj and race in an interview with The New York Times.
Ms. Minaj won Best Hip Hop Video, and she closed her speech with a challenge to Ms. Cyrus, who she called “This bitch who had a lot to say about me last week in the press.”
Ms. Swift presented Mr. West with his Video Vanguard award, a minute of circle-closing from their uneasy encounter in 2009.