Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Snooki Asks the French: Do you have Guidettes: Yes - they reply - They are Called Sluts!!!!!
Not only is "Jersey Shore" giving Italian Americans, and New Jersey a bad name, but all around the world "The Ugly American" is resurging.
America's New Icons
Newsweek; by Joshua Alston; July 22, 2010
... Snooki, of last year's surprise television smash/cultural lightning rod Jersey Shore, is an ultra-petite, trash-talking, artificially caramelized girl of summer-the ideal centerfold for a girlie magazine produced by and for the Lollipop Guild. She ignited a phenomenon as part of the Jersey cast and without question has the highest profile of the bunch, thanks in part to a horrific incident in one episode, when she found herself on the receiving end of a male gym teacher's haymaker. (after smacking him) Snooki has made a nice career of misbehaving and perpetuating guido stereotypes...She was even hired to do red-carpet interviews at this year's Grammy Awards. 'Do you have guidos in France??' she asked Phoenix, a rock band from Versailles. She had to explain the term, and when she told the band that 'guidas' were girls like her, guitarist Laurent Brancowitz responded, Ah, we have guidas. We call them "cagoles" -Cagole loosely translates to "slut",
Despite how uniquely American her appeal seems to be, France is probably the only place where Snooki wouldn't feel right at home; production companies have flirted with the idea of creating versions of Jersey with Americans of Israeli, Iranian, and Korean heritage. ...This spring MTV premiered the American version in more than 30 countries, including the Netherlands, Portugal, and Japan....At home Snooki and her born-to-be-wild housemates sparked a debate about how Italian-Americans are portrayed (to say nothing of the conversation about basic decency), but now that they've gone abroad, there'ss a larger question to be asked. What do shows like Jersey Shore say to other countries about what it means to be an American? It's one thing to have Snooki as a guilty pleasure, but how is she doing as an ambassador?
TV and movies have long been our electronic face around the world...so it's reasonable to assume that Jersey may be cementing the opinion of Yankees as loutish layabouts who inspire envy, rage, or some combination thereof.The thing about exporting this stuff and showing it out of context, says Syracuse University professor Robert Thompson, is that there are a lot of people from other countries who everything they know about the United States is what they've seen on TV. Just like the only thing I know about the mating habits of marsupials I learned on TV....
..This year there are some 320 reality shows on the air worldwide, compared with four in 2000. The world's curriculum for learning about other countries is (reflected)...in Reality shows...
The first Jersey copycat is also in the works: K-Town, which will be set in Los Angeles?s Koreatown but clearly has its sights on Asian markets around the world.
(Jersey's secret) ...sounds simple enough, but the ideas are antithetical to what had been done in reality television before. Don't choose the housemates based on..... (diversity) choose them based on how alike they are,... Don't challenge stereotypes; reinforce them. Don't put the house in a random bustling city or bar-riddled college town; put it in a more subtle pleasure den like Seaside Heights, N.J.....
What happened next, though, was somewhat predictable. Snooki and her castmates... out-outraged the reality stars who came before them with more self-absorption, public drunkenness, bar brawls, and ill-advised hookups than your average guilty pleasure. Three Italian-American groups demanded that MTV pull Jersey Shore. You can't really blame them. We all know it's not PC to laugh at and look down on someone who is disadvantaged or somehow different. But it's human nature, and the crude cast of the show gives viewers license to indulge in a little class pornography. People don't watch these shows to engage with them in a genuine way. They watch so they can look down on those people who make these unfortunate choices, says Thompson. "I call it Masterpiece Stupidity."..
In Italy, Jersey has surprisingly been received warmly, though with the same derisive posture some of its American fans have. There was bad buzz initially-real Italians were defensive, given the noise coming from Italian-Americans. But once it premiered, they saw its characters as overtanned, oversexed stereotypes not of them, but of what becomes of Italians when they move to the ("degenerative" US ) . The show has gained a cult following among the 25-to-40 demographic of Italians who find the representation of their American "cousins" one of the funniest programs on television. When Jersey Shore went on location in Venice, the cast was hounded by young Italians who shouted catchphrases from the program in broken English, and hundreds of locals auditioned for parts as extras. Rumors are already swirling that the show will be filmed in Florence and Palermo next season....
A thornier discussion is how shows like Jersey are seen in less-hospitable environs, such as the Middle East... Now that Americans are aware of the potential consequences of having a bad reputation abroad, it's not unreasonable to wonder which of our indelible images?see:"Snooki, punch" are giving all of us a black eye. ... American media have a powerful effect on perceptions of the country in the world, ...
"I think countries are much happier to consume trashy American media than they are to watch films produced honestly about themselves by others," she says. I think the world is used to Jersey Shore and The Hills. They laugh about it and say, "Wow, the U.S. has a lot of problems."...
...There's something sad about how The Situation refers to his chief priorities by the abbreviation "GTL," which stands for "gym, tan, laundry." It shows that a lifestyle framed as fun and carefree is really just an endless, quotidian cycle of maintenance tasks. As much as Jersey Shore has the potential to highlight Western culture's excesses and moral failings, it has just as much potential to show how much freedom must ultimately be forfeited in the interest of doing whatever makes you happy.
This very conversation?about how American media, our biggest export, shapes international perceptions of us....
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/07/22/america-s-new-icons.html
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