President of Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, NC. He is a Contributing Editor of Preaching
Sometimes I think the late Neil Postman is the prophet for out time. After reading about the Miley Cyrus photo fiasco, I am convinced of this.
If you have a pre-teen daughter, you know that Miley is the star of "Hannah Montana," the hugely popular Disney television series. This 15-year-old is the singing-acting-dancing daughter of country music singer Billy Ray Cyrus. "Hannah Montana" and Disney have crafted the image of this young lady as a safe role model for little girls.
Even if you don't have a pre-teen daughter, by now, you know all about the Annie Leibovitz photographs in the May issue of
Vanity Fair. The photographs depict this 15-year-old girl in semi-nude poses with clearly lewd overtones. Today's
Wall Street Journal put it like this:
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"The photo—showing Miley draped in a sheet, back bared, hair tousled, with a come-hither smile—upset countless parents who immediately grasped the photo's essential vulgarity."
Of course this doesn't shock us anymore. The reason? We have come to expect this. In fact, we have come to demand it. The April 30 edition of
USA Today ran an article on the phases of Madonna's career showing her in various provocative outfits. Today’s styles worn by young women have been influenced by her and others.
In other words, the Miley Cyrus photo fiasco is simply the symptom of a sick society. This sickness will lead to sadness, in Miley's life and in ours as a society. This is the heart-breaking part of it all:
the alluring fashion styles, aimed at making young girls look like seductresses, is robbing these little girls of their innocent childhoods and promoting a culture of sensuality that will unleash further sexual perversion in our already sex-saturated society.And here is where Neil Postman comes in. The late Professor of Communications at New York University wrote numerous books that are worthy of reading, but one in particular is important for this story. In
The Disappearance of Childhood Postman saw the erosion of morals in the dress of little girls as an indication that our society as a whole is not taking care of our own children. He wrote that our image-based society is drunk on sensuality and the cameras have turned on our children robbing them of childhood.
What is ironic about his insights, given this Miley Cyrus story and her relationship to Disney, is that Postman reflected on how Walt Disney protected the innocent childhood that post-Reformation, Western Christianity produced. Martin Luther and the Guttenberg printing press brought a new emphasis on the Word. (Previously there existed a culture of illiteracy, where images were the popular means of communication.)
Postman posits that childhood, as we knew it under the old Disney model, was essentially a childhood of protected innocence that Jesus taught. In a day when children were thought of as insignificant, our Lord taught: