We’ve become more interested in the response than in the event that occasioned it. The emanations from the Miley performance very soon overtook the performance itself, and they were stranger and more interesting.

Sasha Weiss on reactions to Miley.

All this time, we wondered what the guy in Edvard Munch's The Scream was reacting to. Munch saw all of this coming long before this year's VMA's.