Situational Overkill: Hype, Backlash, and Jersey Shore
“My number one rule is you don’t fall in love at the Jersey Shore”
But we did. We all did. And now we’re reconciling.
Jersey Shore premiered on MTV on December 3rd, 2009. For the following 9 weeks, we all fell in love at the Jersey Shore. Each week the show had a party element to it, and people gathered with each other to watch it. It was mass viewing at its best; people could come together to have a good time, and not have to struggle to grasp the meaning of what was happening. Everyone understood how crazy the show was, and most people loved it. If it were 1992, things would have been different. The show would have taken a while to gain traction, and it would have gathered a cult following of diehard fans that wouldn’t miss it for the world. The stars of the show would have stayed relatively unknown, and they could have gone on to continue to make the show and make their loyal fans happy. Not one person on The Real World was ever even a fraction of the celebrity that the Jersey Shore cast has become. Unfortunately, it was 2009, and things heated up faster than The Situation suggesting that Snooki ‘had some rolls’.
In the generation we live in, things don’t build up slowly, with very few exceptions. They skyrocket instantly, or they never really gain traction. Within the first few weeks of Jersey Shore, the cast had been on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Jay Leno’s 10 o’clock show and countless awards shows. By the time that the holidays rolled around, there were really only two topics of conversation at parties: Tiger Woods and Jersey Shore. I talked about beating up the beat with people more than anything else for a whole month. GTL hadn’t been established yet, so we didn’t go there. But every other little reference was talked about over and over again. I’ll remember the 2009 holidays for family, friends, grenades, hippos and smushing (Ronnie’s term for sex). For at least a few weeks, the show was ours; everyone who watched it had a coolness factor that others didn’t have. We were in an exclusive club. By the time New Year’s Eve rolled around, the show had exploded into a phenomenon. Michael Cera was given the Guido Look by the cast for promos for his movie. The cast was co-hosting MTV’s coverage of the ball dropping in Times Square. The overkill had begun.
In the coming months, the first season of the show came to an end. We were introduced to GTL, The Situation’s routine of gym, tanning and laundry each day. We learned about Single J-Woww and the gorillas and juiceheads on the beach. My go-to declaration of victory became “That’s one shot, kid!” But, in due time, the season ended, and we were left without the show itself, but with the greasy remains that spread themselves out over the pop culture world. The cast continued to yuk it up with Jay Leno, every talk show had members on, and New Jersey jokes were everywhere. Bobby Moynihan played a parody of Snooki on Saturday Night Live, and Ellen Degeneres made Jersey Shore references on American Idol, the least cult-y show in the history of TV. Slowly, the initial fans started to lose interest, since they were only getting the watered down version of each character without the actual show. Plus, a huge part of what made the show great was how it was edited and put together. One of the best jokes from the whole season was when Snooki was describing a guy that she had decided that she was in love with, and had potential with. As she finally said his name, it was revealed to the audience that she had completely gotten his name wrong, and it was something different altogether. Those kinds of moments couldn’t happen on talk shows. After a while, everyone needed Jersey Shore to go away for a few months, in the same vein as eating only fast food for two weeks. After all, how much bad food can you eat in a row without a break? It may taste really good, but after awhile you’ll just want a salad. We all needed some vegetables to counter the fried fat that was Jersey Shore, but it wasn’t being given to us. It was constantly being forced down our throats. It was announced that the cast was going to Miami for the second season, and it seemed to be a sell-out move. When the 2nd season was set to begin on July 29th, I wasn’t even sure if I would watch it. It had come to that.
But, fortunately, things turned around. As filming of the second season started, the talk show appearances died down. The talk from all sources about the show gradually wilted. The housewives and 70-year-old men started to eliminate Snooki, guidette, and every other Jersey Shore-ism from their vocabularies. Now, as commercials promoting the new season have kicked up, I’m as excited as ever. Snooki announced that she didn’t want to cheat on her boyfriend, but “Put a bottle of So-co in front of me and who knows what’ll happen”. Pauly D announced that “We’re living in a GFA, a Grenade Free America”. The Situation talked about wearing his “shirt before the shirt”, meaning that he’ll put his going-out shirt on later. I forgot how much I missed these people, for brilliant moments like these. How could these ever be replaced? Finally, MTV showed a video of the whole cast beating up the beat and dancing in a packed Miami club to Enrique Iglesias’ I Like It, arguably the catchiest song of the summer. With that, I was in. Done. Let’s do it. But there are still questions about what we witnessed.
The fact of the matter is that as long as we have hundreds of channels on our TV, limitless websites to promote shows, and the ability to use Youtube at our fingertips, overexposure will be a part of life. Whatever the next show is that becomes an overnight sensation will face the same problems. Let’s just deal with that matter, and get over it. More importantly, what does the backlash and then the backlash to the backlash say about us? Why are we so influenced by the media that our perceptions of something can so radically be changed by something we can’t control? By mid-April, if I never saw The Situation and Vinny again, it would have been too soon. (Sidebar: It would be unjust to do an entire Jersey Shore column without once mentioning and giving ample props to Vinny, the one cast member that seems to be smarter than it all. He seems like a bright guy who just happens to live in this culture. His jokes were on a totally different level than the other cast mates throughout the first season, and it’s clear how much more intelligent he is than everyone else. Thought that needed to be said.) So how can I go from being madly in love with a show to being tired of it to hating it and then going back to loving it, without the show even being on the air? I actually felt bad for MTV at one point as this was going on. All they did was produce an enjoyable show; they didn’t ask for all the hype that made everyone tired of it. The problem is within. We all decided to judge Jersey Shore for what was happening with it on other TV shows. If we had only judged it based on the episodes of the show, we would have still loved it. If John Krasinski has a lame appearance on Leno, I’m not going to start hating The Office because of it. It’s a totally separate entity. The same must be applied to Jersey Shore if the show is going to have any sort of lasting impact. The show is what matters. The hype around it is all just noise trying to drown out its actual voice. I know that I’m making this goofy, stupid show to be much more than it actually is, but even if it were a great work of art, the fact would remain the same. Judge the product, not the hype. As we go into season 2, the show will have to address this pressing topic: How will these people’s lives change now that they’re famous? I can only hope that we find out not from Jay Leno and Billy Bush, but from The Situation, Snooki, J-Woww, Vinny, Pauly D, Ronnie and Sammi Sweetheart, our voices of truth.
The Situation, Snooki, J-Woww, Vinny, Pauly D, Ronnie and Sammi Sweetheart. Voices of truth. God help us all.
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