Is 12-Year-Old's Provocative Dance With Shia LaBeouf 'Pedophilia'?
Australian pop artist Sia publicly apologized this week for her latest music video “Elastic Heart,” after criticism that her use of 12-year-old reality star Maddie Ziegler dancing with actor Shia LaBeouf, 28, was “creepy,” and reminded them of “pedophilia.” But now fans and fellow artists are jumping to Sia’s defense, saying the video’s choreography is art that deserves respect.
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“I anticipated some ‘pedophelia!!!’ cries for this video,” Sia wrote Wednesday night on her website and on Twitter. “All I can say is Maddie and Shia are two of the only actors I felt could play these two warring ‘sia’ self states. I apologize to those who feel triggered by ‘Elastic Heart.’ My intention was to create some emotional content, not to upset anybody.”
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The “Elastic Heart” video stars Ziegler as Sia’s mini-me, dressed just as she was in the singer-songwriter’s video “Chandelier,” which thrust the gifted young dancer into a wider spotlight than the one she held in the Lifetime reality show “Dance Moms.” Ziegler’s outfit consists of a soiled, flesh-colored leotard, and a blond wig shaped just like Sia’s own bob. And the dance she performs has her in an animalistic face-off with a half-naked LaBeouf — the “Transformers” actor who has most recently made headlines for his performance-art projects and red-carpet antics. On Thursday, Ziegler described the concept of the dance in an Elle interview, explaining, “I’m still [a version of] Sia, but I also was being inspired by a wolf. That’s why I was hissing and stuff in the video. We were fighting — in the beginning. I was more the one going at him. By the middle, he was going after me. But at the end… I feel like we sort of become friends.”
Since its Wednesday afternoon release, the video has been widely derided on social media — as being “creepy,” “disgusting,” “disturbing,” “weird and gross” and having a “weird pedophile vibe.” Fellow “Dance Moms” stage mom Cathy Nesbitt-Stein, according to TMZ, called the video “vile,” saying she “nearly threw up” watching what little of it she could bear. “I am flabbergasted Melissa would go to the levels she is going to get her daughter famous,” she said.
But it’s also been defended, hugely, with folks on the other side saying they see nothing sexual whatsoever, calling it “beautiful,” “so simple, yet so full of emotion,” “pure artistry,” and “incredible,” with many noting they were sad that Sia felt she had something to apologize for, and that “Art shouldn’t need trigger warnings.” Salon wrote, “If only they had thought to run an ‘IT’S A METAPHOR’ banner across the bottom of the screen. Would that have been a big enough of a clue?” Adam Lambert tweeted that the video was an “incredibly moving piece of art. It made me think and feel.”
Much of the public discourse, in fact, revolves around the idea of the video as art — whether it can be considered art in the first place, and if deeming it art then elevates it to a status that allows it to be forgiven for anything seen as disturbing or inappropriate.
“If something moves into the realm of art, and is not just for pure titillation, it gives us permission to not feel dirty about it — because then we value it more highly, both in a cultural and financial sense,” Debra Levine, assistant professor of theater at New York University Abu Dhabi, tells Yahoo Parenting. “Is this art? I can’t answer that.”
But it’s certainly worthy of discussion, she says, drawing parallels to various art-world controversies involving images of minors — including Sally Mann’s provocative photos of her young children, the pensive-adolescent paintings of mid-20th-century painter Balthus, and, more recently, the archives of the late artist Larry Rivers, which included topless films of his two adolescent daughters being interviewed by their father about their developing breasts. At least one of the girls, now an adult, said she had felt pressured to participate when she was a child and asked that the works be destroyed.
With that sort of situation in mind, Levine notes, “The question is always on the limits of consent. Can [Ziegler] give consent to something representative of a kind of sexualized experience she may or may not understand?” At the same time, she points out, reality shows like “Dance Moms” and others like it “obliterate that whole idea, because [the notion of consent] is totally ignored on every level.” So once you’ve been on “Dance Moms” “looking like Jonbenet Ramsey,” she wonders, what’s so shocking about dancing with Shia?
Two other points Levine adds to the discussion are, one, the “virtuosity” of the dance “doesn’t necessarily make the video into art — just well-crafted pop culture.” And two, whether it’s art or not or disturbing or not, “People don’t have to watch it. That they do, and then claim to be triggered by it, seems a bit specious to me.”
