Jersey Shore and the Fan Club

The Jersey Shore Reality TV show has taken the television waves and blogosphere by storm. Facebook and all sorts of other media outlets have all been talking about the new show.  Whether its people who love the show, or absolutely despise it, one thing is for sure; viewers are hooked to this MTV stroke of genius. I got curious and logged into my Facebook account to search “Jersey Shore.” I found that this show has a devoted Fan club on Facebook with 4,362,542 “Likes” on their page!  As our textbook states in Henry Jenkins essay, “One becomes a ‘fan’ not by being a regular viewer of a particular program but by translating that viewing into some kind of cultural activity, but sharing feelings and thoughts about the program content with friends, by joining ‘community’ of other fans who share common interests. For fans, consumption naturally sparks production, reading generates writing, until the terms seem logically inseparable.” I couldn't agree to any sort of "poaching" as de Certeau characterized a certain type of reading for Jersey Shore.  After looking through some fan discussion forums for Jersey Shore, I discovered that people find a connection with these greased up, too tanned Italian-Americans. Some are finding interest in dressing and putting the Snooki “poof” on their heads to resemble their favorite Jersey character. Just like how Trekkies imitated and still imitate their favorite character on that show, this new reality TV show seems to be meaningless, yet still attracting young adults. Could it be because it’s just popular to do that? Or is there something about this group of people their fans relate to? There are many discussion forums I Googled to see how popular this show is, and there seems to be countless number is pages for their millions of fans to discuss.  The problem I’m having is that it’s not something intellectual they’re talking about, but it’s simple and something they feel they can relate to, such as relationships between the characters, the meaning of friendship, or just simply getting the pleasure of hating someone on TV who’s not acting, but portraying their REAL personality.  Here are some discussions and comments posted by fans of “Jersey Shore” that I came across. This is what people are really saying and thinking about this show:

• We watched it last night. I am from the Jersey Shore, and I, nor anyone I know, acts, dresses, or thinks like that. I thought being a "guido" was a bad thing - these people are proud of it??

• My favorite line last night was from one of the girls. She felt like she was "above" selling t-shirts, because "I'm a bartender, I do great things." Yeah like giving people Cirrhosis of the liver!!!! What a MORON!!

• That Snooki girl was so pathetic it was sad. She just sat there waiting for someone to pay attention to her, and when they didn't, she threatened to go home. I KNEW she wouldn't leave, it was just a last attempt to get some attention. Then she brought that guy home from the club and he pukes all over the place - that was disgusting! Then she tells everyone "He’s my friend, leave him alone" OMG - you just met this guy 30 seconds ago!

• And the nickname thing - I haven't had a nickname since 8th grade, but when each one of them walked in, they all asked what their nickname was, like everyone has one....

• I heard that the Italian American council (or something like that) was trying to get the show off the air because it shows Italians in such a bad way. Though I think they are 100% right, I REALLY hope they don't get it off the air - its my new favorite show!!! LOL

Work Cited for Comments: http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=2345152

Merchants of Cool and "Jersey Shore"

After viewing the documentary “Merchants of Cool,” I must say that I’m impressed with the research that has been done, and I would have to agree that pretty much the same concept of targeting teens has been going on for years. It may be unethical, but I think it was a brilliant idea for the advertising industry. The video basically explains how marketing and advertising industries target teens, the largest market available with the most expendable income. Some of the methods are a bit odd, and it seems that the trendsetters are being targeted and exploited. The documentary focuses mostly on MTV and Sprite, two partners in one of the largest marketing campaigns in the world. MTV has maintained a very important role on the influence of yesterday and today’s generations. When it came to advertising, MTV went to great lengths to grasp the attention of teenagers, who in turn, had the attention of their parents. By grasping these teenagers attention, MTV has been able to grow and introduce new trends throughout the years by incorporating advertising into everything they do , including music videos, sponsoring concerts and events, and most importantly to me, their reality TV. Targeting teens through such a large campaign has its consequences, though. As the video pointed out, there is a certain amount of “feedback” occurring with media and teens, where researchers find the small trends, make them big, convince bands to sell out, then let the trends die. Jersey Shore is one of many reality TV shows that have gotten teenagers hooked because apparently some want to be like them. Teenagers like to party, granted. But on the hit reality show “Jersey Shore” these groups of Italian-Americans are paid to do nothing but party and create drama. With partying comes drinking, mistakes, and confusion. Its bad enough Jersey Shore gives the illusion to young girls that drinking and dancing on bars is the way to go. I think that pop culture has come a long way now, however, I feel it’s always been consistent. The point is that teens are the generation who are somewhat coming out of their innocence, discovering their identity, wanting to party hard, and have every possible experience they can. With “Jersey Shore” I think that MTV has teens watching this show telling them that hey, you’re wanna know what partying hard is? Watch this! MTV is telling teenage girls out there with this show that you’re not the only ones with complex relationship issues, these guys on Jersey Shore have complications in their love life too! All in all, I think that selling to teens through the media has become pretty easy. You see it on TV, you wanna buy it and be it..

Jersey Shore and Subculture

Youth subcultures have always fascinated the mainstream. If reality TV had existed back in the 1950s and ’60s in the days of greasers, teddy boys, mods, rockers, hippies and skinheads, surely some enterprising someone would have pointed a camera at those crazy kids with their curious fashion. 

We did get peeks via films starring James Dean and Marlon Brando, which were praised for their realism and decried for ruining impressionable youth. Kind of like Jersey Shore. The breakout MTV series, although on a new shore, since its cast has become infamous tabloid fixtures, gave us a glimpse of the strange and little-seen subculture of Urban Italians. It wasn’t an anthropological documentary, per se, just an MTV camera crew following a bunch of young, sexed-up, worked-out and super-tanned Italianish-Americans with the greatest set of nicknames in the history of nicknaming (Snooki, JWoww and The Situation are justification alone for the show’s existence). Here is definitely a reality television subculture, and the networks seem to exploit them. As it states in the textbook, “ As we have seen, the way in which subcultures are represented in the media makes them both more and less exotic than they actually are” (p 357).  I feel that even though this type of subculture as exposed on Jersey Shore, it has elements about looking a certain way as the guys and gals do on this show. Really buff, greasy black hair, too tan, and that accent. It seems to be a trend in to look, speak, and act this way in order to be considered part of the Guido culture. So, why do these folks have big muscles? I’ll tell you, even though you already know, because if they had to rely on their wit and intellect, they probably wouldn’t receive half as much attention that this show and these people are getting. But you know what’s scarier? These folks aren’t acting at all; they’re actually being themselves. Since we enjoy this type of programming so much, why not overload us with as many reality shows that we can tolerate? This has also caused another subculture. These are the ones that don’t understand the subculture and fail to realize what the allure to these types of shows is, they prefer to go out and live instead of watch others do that. However, there will always be viewers, such as myself, who will glue themselves to a reality TV series like Jersey Shore and ponder upon how such subcultures became part of popular culture.  

Reality as a Spectacle

As I read in Debord’s essay, “Commodity as a Spectacle,” #42 caught my attention. “The spectacle is the moment when the commodity has attained the total occupation of social life” (p 111). What I took from this is that entertainment and reality television has taken a toll on most of our lives where we can’t even sit through commercial breaks. So, lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the link between commoditization and convenience.  Hulu and the DVR enable me to watch a TV show pretty much whenever I want to.  This works well for me when I want to watch reality TV like Jersey Shore and Real Housewives of New Jersey.  The added benefit is there are limited commercial breaks and if I get bored I can fast forward to the scenes that interest me and then throw the episode away like a discarded Kleenex. It makes me feel as though I can skip a show without feeling like I missed anything major.
Another example of the effect of commoditization of entertainment can be seen in the spread of Redbox Kiosks and the correlation in the downturn of DVD sales.  At over thousands of kiosks in the US, you can rent a movie for as little as a $1.  The amount of movies available at the theatre, cable, on demand, via the internet, and on DVD add difficultly to the idea of shelling out $10 to own the DVD or even more to see the movie in the theater.

A lot of people have been poo-pooing the very short seasons and the pre-packaged timeline of Lost (we all know when the series ends).  But I’ve found the added anticipation of having to wait for the season to begin combined with the fact the show is ending after this season has made it that much easier to make a weekly event of watching the show with my friends.  Going back to the DVRs and Hulu, these companies who make these kinds of products or websites to be able to watch your favorite reality TV show without any commercials are “all sold labor of a society which globally becomes the total commodity for which the cycle must be continued” (p 111).  

Fetishism/Reality TV

In Marx's critique of political economy, commodity fetishism denotes the mystification of human relations said to arise out of the growth of market trade, when social relationships between people are expressed as, mediated by and transformed into, objectified relationships between things—that is commodities and money. Commodity fetishism is not unique to capitalist societies, since commodity trade has occurred in one way or another for thousands of years; but in Marx's opinion, commodity fetishism became pervasive especially in capitalist society, because this kind of society is based almost totally on the "production of commodities by means of commodities". That means that market relationships influence almost everything that people do, something which was not the case in pre-capitalist societies, where commerce was much more restricted. Reality TV represents, among other things, the triumph of the market, the notion that everyone as well as everything has its price and that people will do pretty much anything for money.  Real Housewives of New Jersey will let cameras into their personal lives and even their children’s lives for the sake of fame and money. To me, no matter how much they talk on their reunion shows that their families are “as thick as sleeves” (Caroline Manzo on Real Housewives of New Jersey), they wouldn’t do it if they weren’t getting any money out of this. I’ve seen t-shirts being sold stating things like “Real Housewives of Bedrock” which is from the Flinstones cartoon show advertising the two wives on that cartoon show as something that could be seen as a reality tv product.  As the book states, “It is is only by being exchanged that the products of labour acquires, as values, one uniform social status, distinct form their varied forms of existence as objects of utility” (p 90-91). Reality TV enjoys an unusual labor situation in which participants line up in their thousands in an attempt to work for free, with only a slim chance of a monetary reward. This expenditure on the producers' part amounts to only a fraction of the income which  the shows generate: even Survivor's grand prize of $1 million is what the network recoups in about one minute of advertising. Meanwhile, there is no need to pay professional writers, actors, or many other forms of support staff. Reality TV series are also fairly low-risk. However, there wouldn’t be so much hype and high ratings if it wasn’t for people who “bought” into these shows. 

The Masses and Cultural Industry in Reality TV

As described in our textbook, the term masses is a very “complex word in social description.” We can use this term to describe the majority of the people, by the people, and for the people. These “working-class” or ordinary people have been drawn into the reality television world by default. I feel the masses are what brought reality television to life rather than producers or agents looking for weird, awkward, angry, and bold people to be put in one room to see how long they can tolerate each other.  However reality television began, slowly we start paying attention to shows such as, Jersey Shore, The Bachelor, and Real Housewives of New York. How many times have you sat down in front of your TV? Set and start flipping channels to only come across a show like The Bad Girls Club on Oxygen and watch how a bunch of angry, neglected, insecure, oppressed in some ways (in my eyes), and boy crazy young women put in a beautiful house with no form of technology and only each other to keep themselves company? Absurd, right? You wouldn’t watch that kind of garbage, correct? Well, I found myself saying the same thing while watching a whole season of it! It’s amazing how the “common people” are ashamed and blown away at how much stupidity and anger a person is displaying on TV for us to watch; yet, we watch it!! I believe ordinary people may watch such shows in order to either get away from their own “reality” and ponder upon how much they now appreciate their life rather than being on national television making a fool of themselves. Others focus on ordinary people engaging in common activities such as dating or home redecorating. In both instances, viewers are given the chance to compare and contrast their own lives with those of the shows' protagonists.  The resulting experience is a complexly constructed and highly individualized. That viewers may be drawn by the chance to mentally "test" their behavior against that of the actual participants contrasts with the common criticism of reality TV viewers as passive voyeurs. The terms “mass deception” and “social control” seems to most accurately describe the ideas and theories that Adorno earnestly prescribe. Adorno re-iterated the understanding of the culture industry by suggesting that a dominant ideology has surfaced socially due to the capitalist movement, which has transformed “art” into a business and commercialized product.  While watching shows such as, The Real Housewives of New Jersey, in between the shows the network advertises the clothing, jewelry, and accessories that we see the “The Real Housewives” wear during the show. These networks have their own websites, and every time someone visits their page, they make tons of money. Let alone the merchandise, if you even wanted to blog on their webpage for free, they are still finding ways to make profit out of our opinions and thoughts about the show, which are meaningless and all the industry sees are dollar signs.   

Money and Fame

 Reality television is a genre of television programming in which the fortunes of "real life" people, as opposed to actors or fictional characters, are followed. I must reveal that I am a Reality T.V. junkie and I watch and keep up with shows, such as The Real Housewives of New Jersey, Atlanta, and Orange County, along with Jersey Shore, Jerseylicious, and sappy makeover shows. I don’t necessarily sit and have time to watch television; however, when I do it’s usually reality t.v. There are several reasons that reality television has become part of popular culture today. The two that I will focus on are the concepts of money and instant fame. 

The first catalyst for reality television being popular today is money. Today’s shows offer huge sums of money to people who do not necessarily possess the career skills that would make them a productive enough member of society to amass such wealth through honest work. Simplified, dumb people get lots of cash. Now, some shows do in fact have, at least at first, a pseudo-intellectual premise. Who Wants to Be A Millionaire, for example, offered up to a million dollars to people answering a set of questions. The questions, however, differed from related shows in that they were usually trivia oriented. Also, the audience was involved, as well as calling a friend and so on, which added to the drama aspect. The lighting, music, and editing all were contrived to produce the maximum possible suspense surrounding.  The promise of money and the vicarious joy at someone winning lots of money, or more commonly spectacularly losing said money, is what draws millions of viewers.

The second reason I believe reality television has become popular today is that of instant fame. Reality television takes ordinary people, sets them up in extraordinary situations on a world stage with other similarly commonplace individuals, and makes them the focus of a nation’s attention on, for example, an hour every Tuesday. Obviously the majority of the population has no chance of ever being picked as a participant for the show itself, but again the concept of vicarious living kicks in and the audience is hooked. The members of the show are satisfactorily every-day individuals for fans to willfully suspend their disbelief.  That’s what keeps thousands of twenty year olds auditioning every year for a chance to participate in MTV’s The Real World, which offers no monetary reward. The message of reality television is that ordinary people can become so important that millions will watch them.  The secret thrill of many of those viewers is the thought that perhaps next time, the new celebrity might be them.