Marcel Winatschek

Ron Jeremy Rides the Wrecking Ball, As Is His Right

Ron Jeremy swinging naked on a wrecking ball is either the best or worst possible response to Miley Cyrus’s video, depending entirely on how much you needed that image in your life. I didn’t know I needed it. I was wrong.

Jeremy has spent four decades as the human embodiment of a specific American id—hairy, grinning, undeniable, impossible to embarrass. Over two thousand adult films and somehow also a recurring figure in mainstream pop culture, the kind of person who turns up at horror movies and awards shows and parody covers as though his entire career has been one long elaborate joke that he alone understood from the start.

The Miley moment he’s parodying already felt like a parody of itself—the serious-face nudity, the sledgehammer, the howling vulnerability of a former Disney property trying to announce itself as something rawer. Watching Jeremy replicate it is less a mockery than a completion. Miley was reaching for something transgressive. Jeremy has been living in that territory since before she was born. He doesn’t need the wrecking ball to say anything. He just gets on and swings.