I watch “Jersey Shore.”
There I said it, and I’m not ashamed of it. I have watched this misfit group of Italian-Americans on MTV for the past four seasons. I was there when they all met for the first time, and I watched with joy as the cast started to meld together (especially after Angelina’s departure). I watched with bated breath as the Shore crew struggled to adjust to Miami’s climate and culture. And now I set aside an hour every Thursday evening to watch Deena and Snookie’s classic fish-out-of-water escapades in Italy.
By now, many reading this article will consider me an idiot for even indulging in these sophomoric half-hour blocks. And honestly, I cannot defend the intellectual integrity of a show that is often forced to implement subtitles to make sense out of its main character’s garbled attempts at grasping the English language. But what I can say about “Jersey Shore” is that it keeps me sane.
We live in a scary world. There are wars headlining our nightly news, frightening diseases threaten to overrun our overly-medicated immune systems, and it seems like almost daily Kim Jong-Il comes up with some unintentionally funny threat to the safety of the world.
Our modern society leaves no room for the old security blanket of reassurances that “everything will be O.K.” because for someone in the world it will not be okay. Every day, someone’s life is negatively affected by the scourges of our world (famine, murders, fighting, etc.) and due to the advent of modern communication advancements, we all hear about it and see it happen in nearly real-time. It is a depressing cycle. It seems like every day we walk to class, sit for several hours learning about the tragedies of literature, our past or our futures, walk home and see a car crash on our way, turn on our computer to read reports of unrest in the Middle East, then watch the local news to see a recap of the wreck we saw five hours earlier. It’s a barrage of negativity.
When I get bogged down in these funks of reality’s bleakness, I turn to “Jersey Shore” for relief. It is with this over-the-top faux-reality that I find something to smile about. I doubt J-Woww has any idea who Muammar Gaddafi is, or that the Situation could correctly identify Libya, or even any African nation, on a map. And that’s perfectly O.K. with me.
The cast members of “Jersey Shore” are a lot of things. They are annoying, drunk, excessive, womanizing and drunk (I realize I said that twice, but that is the state they seemingly spend the most time in). But their saving grace is that they do not try to be anything outside of themselves. They are not on MTV in the hopes of becoming the next influential philosophe, or a hopeful politician. They are on MTV because they want money and they want to have a good time. Two goals they accomplish easily.
I realize that holding up “Jersey Shore” as a final bastion of sanity is confusing to some, and disagreeable to an even larger section of people, and that’s O.K. I’m not trying to shove the product-placement laden agenda of MTV down anyone’s throat. That would not solve anything. But rather, I implore everyone to find something like “Jersey Shore” for the own sake of levity and balance. Without “Jersey Shore” in my life, I would become too bogged down in the harshness of the world around me (which is not to say that the world is only harsh, but it sure has its moments). And to me, nothing would be worse than that fate. Life without levity is just agony.
“Jersey Shore” is not a smart television show, to be quite honest it is more than likely a terrible show — it perpetuates stereotypes, degrades the seriousness of illnesses like alcoholism, and allows for the enforcement of not only improper but embarrassing behavior — but it is my terrible show. It is not terrible because of its intellectual content, but its lack thereof. But by being terrible and lacking any actual sense of current events or the shape of the world, it helps to avoid the sometimes terrible nature of our existence. Without these people and their shenanigans, my life would have less joy in it, and for that, I am happy that MTV found these (for better or for worse) unforgettable people.
— Preston Peeden is a junior in history. He can be reached at [email protected].
