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.

So what is a poor multimillionaire celebrity to do in the age of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan, when slumming has become passé and the audience has become post-decadent? Just say, “And you idiots are paying for this”?