“Well at least I’m not from New Jersey where you have douche bags that walk around with spiked hair, fake tans and popped collars” -Josh Parkins, Media Study MFA Candidate (raised in Kansas City, MO)
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And it was on this note of random bickering in our the Media Study Graduate Studio that my friend Josh reminded me that MTV’s controversial new series Jersey Shore was bowing tonight. I’ve never been an MTV fan, but the station serves it’s purpose (as Sumner Redstone called it in his book “it has the power to be the voice of a generation”). Ionically enough isn’t really Music Television.
Regarding the new show Jersey Shore - first off, it is awful. It falls into the so bad, it might be good - but good for whom? At a certain point you feel bad, but these people rise to a new level of self centered douche bag, leading to behavior that they write off as being acceptable because they’re young. Sure they are - but I get the sense that the cast members will not be changed by this summer, aside from their new found celebrity. They of coarse will on the final episode cry about leaving and talk about how this summer changed me, then right back into the slutty, high risk patterns you had before you came to Seaside.
While I was never a fan of The Real World, but that show offered up diversity - here the show contains all Italian American cast members, which call each other ‘guido’ and ‘guidette’. This outraged the likes of UNICO - according to New Jersey’s statewide paper The Star Ledger, it’s president “objected to the generous use of the term “guido,” both by MTV’s promotional gurus and the cast members themselves”.
Unlike my pal Josh Parkins, mentioned above - who I don’t think has been to the fine state that brought the world Bruce Springsteen - these stereotypes are all too real. This is a closed society: as one of the girls states Sammi Sweetheart states “if your not a guido then get the fuck out of my face.” She’s like a white girl that only dates black guys.
The show is cold to me, I think because it lacks a perspective while not exactly taking the Cinema Verite high road. This is a fantasy setting, no The Real World. Granted, The Real World, was not all that real either: maybe college is remotely like that, but probably not.
The new show replicates this formula: strangers live together, hook up - there is little diversity that leads to conflicts as in the earlier show - nobody here is gay or has HIV (yet anyway). There is hope for real drama in the form of a positive STD or pregnancy test after random drunk post club sexual encounters Skin Cancerous girls or juice heads. A sure fire risk factor is that “Jenny Jwwan” hooks up with (after promising the same day to not cheat on her boyfriend), he apparently has a Prince Albert (thankfully not shown). (Wait, one character ends up with Pink Eye!)
Further evidence this isn’t The Real World is the environment they’re in: Seaside Heights while sleazy isn’t cheap - if memory serves me a concrete-walled flee bag motel in the high of August goes for the same day rate the Ritz Carlton in a civilized city, and they may not even provide you with fresh towels daily. Therefore these kids, most likely rich kids anyway are living an experience that the middle class can afford once in a while (then again isn’t that most TV shows).
Most to be fair to my home state are imports, including the most obnoxious and narcissistic cast member Mike “The Situation” (“The Situation” is the name for his abs). He goes so far over the top it’s amazing anyone could take him seriously, but drunken slutty girls like that I suppose, and he’s in it to have a good time.
The show is anything but a good time, granted if the whole season just showed the fist pumping, techno-throbing club scene it would essentially be a 200 minute vodka commercial. The drama seems rather natural although clearly performed, it’s the type of drama that you’d laugh at if you were also drunk, but pathetic to watch play out sober. MTV has essentially given a series of obnoxious people their own platform - one even confesses she’s starved for attention, Nicole “Snookie”.
As part of the trade off for an amazing house the group is required to work at a T-shirt shop on the boardwalk (the house is on the street, around back), prime, million dollar property even in a shit hole like Seaside Heights. The most sympathetic I think and prone to corruption is Vinny, a 21 year old from Staten Island who until he starts fist pumping seems the relatable.
So who is this show for? Following Facebook a few friends seem to be watching it, or at least seem aware of it (for my friends in Buffalo it seems like a non-event, then again why watch dumb, boring, tan people have fun when you could go out and have fun on a Thursday night). Here in lies the paradox of the show: it’s not very fun, it’s characters are self centered and not terribly amusing unless in satire. Should we feel bad for these morons? Probably not, they seem to be doing something right, even if it’s staged, but I think this culture as I said is a closed culture, I could go on the D-ball, start tanning, get my hair permed, buy an Ed Hardy t-shirt, ect and it probably wouldn’t really matter.
These characters are mostly young (one I learn from the Star Ledger, Mike “The Situation” is 27 - perhaps a little too old for this shit, one hopes he brings home a 15 year old girl from a club who got in with a fake ID and finds himself in jail). A more interesting show would be cops - how do you regulate this environment with people that aren’t terribly bright for starts, high on ecstasy, drunk and full of roid rage?
With characters claiming “I’m hot, I’m natural” and the like, it’s great that they have confidence (some of the girls aren’t in fact that hot, they’re tan beyond any reasonable measure and have beer guts which flop out of their tight Ed Hardy shirts), but it’s off putting. And just when your thinking that you get the argument about “being a hater” - a morons defense for what could be legit criticism.
Am I hater for this show? Yes and no, I watched it as a sociological experiment hoping to learn something, instead I came to the conclusion that this aspect of American Life (one that would make for a boring ass version of This American Life) is a closed, close-knit community. Everyone in it might know Mike “The Situation” (as he claims) but to those outside of this booze, fake fan, and jacked up subculture he’s unknown.
The drama is forced, based on hormonal interactions, girls calling each other slut, fighting over men, ect. The most curious line of the evening was uttered by Angelina, a girl from Staten Island who leaves her boyfriend for the summer to come to Jersey (poor guy for dating such a stupid girl) - I can’t be sure but I think she said “if a girl’s being a slut - she should be abused.”
And there’s the line that should piss people off more than anything else. Granted girls who call other girls sluts are often times sluts themselves, it’s the “takes one to know one” defense, and I don’t feel sorry for anybody. Her comment though has broader and more disturbing implications, like Precious which Lee Daniels is criticized for showing what some call a “poverty porn” - the Jersey Shore shows what happens when dumb people get drunk and don’t pair up with whom they wished they would.
I’d say the drama is unnessisary, a creation of editing, pop music, and bad performances, the cast members are fully aware of the camera and are performing for it, almost shoving it our faces (after all I’m watching this in the middle of winter in Buffalo).
Yes, they have the right to go have fun, party and hook up - people do these things, as a result I’m thinking of opening a Plato’s Retreat (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uX_YJP0YaGs ) franchise at Seaside, complete with heated swimming pool and that great disco beat*.
(*Plato’s Retreat was an infamous Swingers Club that existed in the late 70’s - just right after AIDS hit, as chronicled in American Swing, a documentary so disturbing it made me want to become a priest, and spawned my idea for a Zac Effron/Ben Affleck road trip comedy called You Were Conceived at Plato’s Retreat)
If I’m cynical about the show it’s because the show itself is cynical about it’s subject. It brings back memories that only exist in Seaside Heights (I haven’t been back since 2003). Perhaps I’m being too rough on it, the show most certainly is crap - where one town becomes like Plato’s Retreat, it tracks a culture of material excess - this is why other countries hate us.
Being a closed society, based sadly mostly in Italian American Communities and areas with night life districts, I don’t think it’ll catch on and these roles will be emulated because these characters are so self-centered they are nearly impossible to identify with or like beyond the surface. Sure they may be attractive, but they speak their own language (I didn’t count the amount of times “vibing out” was spoken) and that creates a disconnect between mainstream viewers and those that fit this stereotype. It’s a stereotype they are glad to live, and live it up they should. If Snookie wants to marry a “tan juice head” as she fantasizes about then she gets what she deserves, and if she’s a slut...well you know what Angelina says she deserves.
(Update: 12/28 - a few weeks after writing this post I received an e-mail from Dave, whose website recalls the memories I had growing up and going to Seaside, with a lot of current information and history, it's the side that MTV isn't showing: http://www.discoverseasideheights.com/about )
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