Tuesday, January 12, 2010
New Jersey's Beach Bums. It's Sub Culture of Guidos and Guidettes

MTV has done  away with its The Real World's  halfhearted nods to diversity and focus unapologetically on a narrow slice of humanity meant to yield maximum vulgarity and slapstick.

Editorial: New Jersey's Beach Bums
Philadelphia Inquirer; Tuesday, January. 12, 2010 
Philadelphia may have resolved the public-relations disaster known as Parking Wars - a cable series showcasing the city's overzealous parking enforcers - with a time-tested strategy: waiting for something even more embarrassing to come out of New Jersey.
That something has arrived in the inglorious form of MTV's Jersey Shore, which traces the exploits of what one can only hope is an unrepresentative sample of the state's coastal fauna. The bureaucratic cruelties of the Philadelphia Parking Authority are forgettable compared with the outright degeneracy on display here.
Jersey Shore is based on the durable formula of MTV's archetypal reality show, The Real World: several young, preferably maladjusted people are put up in a house and filmed incessantly as they waste each other's time, and ours. The genius of the Jersey Shore  update is to do away with The Real World's  halfhearted nods to diversity and focus unapologetically on a narrow slice of humanity meant to yield maximum vulgarity and slapstick.
The featured "subculture" - as MTV generously calls it - comprises a carefully toned, extravagantly gelled, and carcinogenically tanned bunch recreating in the distinctly unscenic Shore town of Seaside Heights. Besides intoxication and unplanned parenthood, the cast seems constantly on the verge of violence. One member, "Snooki," has taken a blow to the face on camera - twice. Snooki is small and female, by the way, and not the only housemate known by an enigmatic nickname; others include "J-WOWW" and "The Situation."
The situation at hand is so squalid that even the participants aren't completely oblivious to it. They refer to their own temporary address, for example, as "Sleazeside." In one episode, the hulking Ronnie angrily leaves costar Sammi on the boardwalk after her trash talk propels him into a fight with a stranger. Sammi later complains that Ronnie left her "in the middle of the Sleaze" - yielding a poignant double-meaning.
The proudly Italian American housemates also refer to themselves as "Guidos" and "Guidettes," which helped prompt one of several official sanctions recently leveled at the show. State Sen. Joseph Vitale (D., Middlesex) and the rest of the Legislature's Italian American caucus urged its cancellation on civic-minded grounds. Vitale also asked the state labor department to investigate the production's "employment and wage practices, as well as the tax status of the 'Shore Store' where cast members supposedly worked while filming."
The Ocean County Prosecutor's Office, meanwhile, is investigating Ronnie for assault. And even the borough of Seaside Heights has made a valiant attempt to distance itself from the show, saying its stars "are certainly not indicative of the majority of those who visit and enjoy the Jersey Shore."
It must be said that part of the show's appeal is that it does reflect a small piece of Jersey Shore reality - one that most of us would rather gawk at than participate in... New Jersey's leaders deserve credit for at least trying to protect the state's image, despite its obvious flaws. Snooki, who has been seen starting a fight and then lamenting that her face was "f-d up again," would appreciate the effort.

http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/20100112_
Editorial__New_Jersey_s_beach_bums.html
 
 

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