“Our ability to take any pleasure, or even interest, in shows like this—in which participants are depicted as energetic but essentially aimless, oblivious of their own deficits, and delusional about their attractiveness and their importance in the world—hinges not on our ability to identify with them but on our ability to distinguish ourselves from them. Unless the show manages to make us feel as though we were anthropologists secretly observing a new tribe through a break in the trees, it hasn’t done its job. MTV has succeeded on that score; it can give itself a pat on the back for enabling viewers to feel superior to at least eight other people.”—Nancy Franklin, “
On Television: Jersey Jetsam; MTV Goes to the Beach,”
The New Yorker, January 18, 2010
“I’m watching your favorite show,” my oldest brother told me recently.
I’ve fallen out of the habit of watching primetime TV, so I tried to imagine what show my brother might think kept me glued to the boob tube. “What,
Jeopardy?” I asked.
Not even close. “Try
Jersey Shore,” he answered.
I had heard rumblings in my neck of the woods here in northern New Jersey that Italian-Americans were complaining that this reality show perpetuated stereotypes, but I had never watched a second of this, so I had to ask my brother which cable station ran it. (Answer: MTV, for those of you who, like myself, are abysmally oblivious to this contribution to American culture.)
Now, let it be said that my brother was, as he is predisposed to do, pulling my leg about my cultural tastes. Moreover, though he only makes it into New Jersey on visits nowadays, he’s had slightly more than a quarter century of experience with Jerseyites from growing up here, and he’s continued to run across more than his share.
Living in a place for a long time should, by rights, make you less susceptible to racial and ethnic myths, including the pernicious ones plaguing Italian-Americans about organized crime. From that standpoint, I don’t think Italian-American protest groups are being overly sensitive about what MTV is conveying about them.
From encounters in other regions over the years, I’ve learned how much impressions of the state where I’ve lived virtually my whole life are formed by TV, the movies, and other forms of popular culture.
Early in college, my shorthand description of my hometown as the place where John Travolta also hailed from met with some incredulity.
That man can move
on the dance floor, the bemused expressions of other students said.
What happened to you?
(On the plus side: Travolta’s Tony Manero in
Saturday Night Fever might have been able to move, but he was a little on the inarticulate side, liable at any moment to lapse into “Youse.” No Demosthenes myself, I was credited, by default, with slightly more facility with the Mother Tongue.)
A few years later, Bruce Springsteen made it cool to be from the state again, though I’m afraid his songs conveyed to outsiders the impression that I lived in a tight triangle bounded by the New Jersey Shore, highways, and oil refineries.
Though “Born to Run” never became, as some advocates wanted, our “unofficial anthem,” it did foster the notion that New Jersey was nicknamed the Refinery State rather than the Garden State. Even this, however, turned out to be a comparatively positive impression compared with a show that made a far more powerful impact before the turn of the millennium.
About a half dozen years ago, during a writer’s workshop in Minneapolis, I offered, in a mass group introduction, details on where I came from. “Oh,
Jersey,” one of my fellow students exclaimed, as if an inner light bulb had lit up (though not enough to illumine the idea that “New” belonged to the state’s title). “The
Sopranos State.”
I smiled but groaned a little inside. Why couldn’t I have come from a state with a more positive image? At least Minnesota had Mary Tyler Moore, America’s Seventies Sweetheart, tossing her cap ebulliently into the air in her show’s opening credits. (And if anybody ever came close to forgetting, TV Land now reminds them with a statue capturing the immortal moment in downtown Minneapolis' Nicollet Mall.)
Everybody remembers warm, wonderful Mary hugging, for no apparent reason other than that she
was Mary and Love Was All Around, every person in the newsroom. Unfortunately, I’m afraid that the most vivid scene involving Tony Soprano concerned the psychologically conflicted mobster whacking a former associate-turned-informant out in a field while taking his beloved daughter Meadow on that inevitable parental rite, the automotive circuit of colleges.
I’m sure the reality-show denizens of
Jersey Shore wouldn’t mind whacking Nancy Franklin, television critic of
The New Yorker—but first they’d have to
hear about
The New Yorker. From what I gather from her review, the show’s stars/participants (many of whom proudly if inexplicably proclaim they are “Guidos”) spend an inordinate amount of time chug-a-lugging, belching, and hitting (and hitting on) on each other.
One of these “stars”—I’m half-tempted to call him “specimen”—is Mike, the individual in the photo accompanying this post. I’ve long wanted to provide faithful female readers of this blog with some beefcake, and I suppose this Staten Island guy fits the bill. (You’ll notice from the washboard abs that the only thing he shares with the CEO of this blog is a first name.)
Still, ladies, if you are captivated by this male who cheerfully goes by the nickname “The Situation” (because said abs immediately create "situations" when women accompanied by boyfriends catch a glimpse of him), you might have to put up with—shall we call it a slight
vacancy in the ol’ cranium?
Well, I’ve gotta go now. Watching this show is contagious, so it’s time for me to crush a beer can against my forehead. If I’m anything like the guys on this show, there’s no possibility whatsoever of any interior damage occurring.
