Miley, Robin And The Double-Edged Danger Of MTV VMA Outrage

Thirty-somethings aren't supposed to be outrageous anymore, which is why MTV has always seemed like the real world (pun intended) version of Logan's Run, that '70s sci-fi film where everyone is killed upon turning 30.

(Not counting Madonna, of course, who received a lifetime pass after her wedding dress stunt at the original MTV Video Music Awards set the standard for VMA outrage.)

And yet last year's 30th anniversary VMAs somehow managed to be its most outrageous yet. There we were, half-watching, still bored by Lady Gaga's opening shtick, when Billy Ray's daughter waltzes on stage wearing a teddy bear teddy to perform her song-of-the-year contender "We Can't Stop."

But then instead of leaving the stage, she tore off her barely there outfit to reveal and even less there one and strutted over to Robin Thicke who was performing his own song-of-the-year contender "Blurred Lines."

Now these mash-up performers are as old as, well, the term "mash-up," and are used not because they usually deliver better performances but because, I guess, two famous people are always better than one famous person.

This time, however, it paid off -- for Miley and MTV, anyway. Not so much for Robin Thicke.

As Miley proceeded to twerk all over the Beetlejuice-bedecked R&B singer, as practiced in rehearsal, the Internet melted down -- at one point the foam finger-assisted performance was generating 306,000 tweets per minute and had 26.5-million people chatting about it on Facebook.

It was the perfect storm of American anxieties -- a sexually aggressive young woman doing a racially charged dance to shake off her Disney pop princess purity while bumping and grinding up against the poster boy for rape culture.

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However "rapey" one might consider Thicke's hit song, it unquestionably treats women as subservient ('you know you want it") and passive ("Just let me liberate you") -- neither of which are adjectives that apply to Miss Cyrus.

The following days were marked by countless thinkpieces proclaiming Miley a racist or feminist and Robin as a creep or, well, that was most everyone's takeaway. He confirmed it days later when he threw Miley under the bus by claiming to Oprah herself : "I'm the twerkee!" This was the beginning of his end.

Fast forward a year and Miley has an acclaimed world tour under her belt, an NBC concert special, an MTV documentary and even a bizarre short-film she made with Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne, not to mention breaking a few YouTube records and hosting and performing on Saturday Night Live.

Robin Thicke, on the other hand, was left by his wife (with some citing the pubic embarrassment of the VMAs as the last straw) and then by his fans, after his follow-up album sold historically low numbers, including somewhere below 54 copies in Australia and a mere 550 copies in Canada.

The twerk heard 'round the world did as it was intended -- as Miley later admitted, "Madonna's done it, Britney has done it, anyone that's performed on the VMAs, you know? You're always going to make people talk. You might as well make them talk for like two weeks rather than two seconds."

But once you get them talking, you might not like what they say. Just ask Britney, who powered through her python performance of "Slave For U" in 2001 but later downward spiralled through "Gimme More" in 2007.

As the 31st annual MYTV VMAs prepares to get under way on Sunday night, performers might pay mind that aiming for a Miley bump might still net you a Robin bomb. For if last year proved anything it's that manufacturing controversy as a marketing technique is risky because it's impossible to tell what might catch fire and what will simply burn to the ground.