My Distant Cousin Vinny: The Philosophy of 'Jersey Shore'

When I was young, my family would spend the summer in Long Beach Island (LBI), a half-mile-wide tourist haven in Ocean County, New Jersey. My memories of LBI are of miniature golf, of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream cones, and of long walks along the sand with my parents. Consider this along with—though my Irish name does its best to obfuscate it—my Sicilian heritage, and I’m perhaps as entitled as anyone to be offended by MTV’s “Jersey Shore.” But I’m not. I’m addicted.

“Jersey Shore” follows four male and four female cast members over the course of one summer in Seaside Heights, a popular vacation destination forty-five minutes from my fond vacations to LBI. The housemates, who range in age from 21 to 28, boast artificial tans, breasts, and hair; the men are alarmingly muscled and the women are alarmingly under-clothed. They proudly self-identify as “guidos” and “guidettes”—terms considered ethnic slurs by outraged Italian anti-defamation groups.

In fact, it’s hard to find an organization that hasn’t publicly condemned “Jersey Shore.” Among the dissenting ranks are parents, anti-domestic violence activists, and actual residents of the Jersey Shore. Even dermatologists have criticized the show, warning against the excessive tanning it promotes.

But here’s the thing: I genuinely like these people. I genuinely want Sammi and Ronnie to stay together. I genuinely hope JWoww gets rid of the questionable blonde streaks in her hair. The show’s creators have distilled something profound, because the cast’s lifestyle—vain, venereal, and violent—contains all our primal urges at a high concentration. Something halfway between a mirror and a nihilist manifesto, “Jersey Shore” presents us with the twenty-something human condition, reduced to its simplest form.

Vinny aptly summarizes the daily routine of the male housemates as “GTL”—an acronym for gym, tanning, and laundry. The “Jersey Shore” nightlife is its own exacting ritual of meaninglessness: drink, inexplicably get into a fight, and try to hook up with a stranger. Think Vladimir and Estragon at risk for serious liver damage.

The cast members do earn their keep by “working,” peddling T-shirts at a boardwalk store owned by their landlord. Beyond that, little mention is made of any professional goals or aspirations. Angelina’s explanation of her job is an unintentional punchline (“I’m a bartender,” she tells us, “I do, like, you know, great things.”), and the larger objective of Pauly’s DJ gigs is to entice female club-goers. They’re not on the short list for Career Day.

In a sense, “Jersey Shore” adheres to the formula first established by “The Real World” almost twenty years ago: eight housemates, ubiquitous cameras, copious alcohol. A drunk 22-year-old is a drunk 22-year-old is a drunk 22-year-old. Yet “The Real World” maintains the pretense of—the pun is inevitable—realism, casting such a predictably diverse group of people that they become their demographic archetypes. Each of the eight housemates fulfills a different quota, constituting a cross section of relatable youth culture. On the recent premiere of “The Real World: D.C.,” the first housemates to move in predicted the arrival of the “hot black guy” and the “gay guy” (the latter never came, but two of the cast proved to be bisexual).

By contrast, on “Jersey Shore,” the producers subtly pit themselves against their subjects. Their very objective is to showcase a lifestyle completely foreign to the viewer. Footage is mercilessly (and brilliantly) edited for punchlines, and great pains are taken to highlight the cast’s frequent malapropisms. The effect of this is to invite us to view the housemates not as reflections of ourselves, but as something entirely different.

For many of us—the college-educated, the pale, the deeply neurotic—each episode of “Jersey Shore” is an ideological vacation. Its appeal lies in the consummately indulgent philosophy it espouses. You can’t spell “guido” without “id.” For every hour the rest of us will spend working overtime at the office, they’ll spend another on the dance floor.

It’s certainly tempting to say their lives are wasted, meaningless—but so, to some extent, are everyone’s. We’re shown the end product of this lifestyle when several of the cast’s parents, who openly endorse their children’s behavior, come to visit the house. If they’re the “after” to the housemates’ “before,” they’re not doing so bad—they’re mostly the same, if more sun-damaged, and they seem as content as their kids.

If I’m honest with myself, I’m a little jealous. The housemates on “Jersey Shore” embrace the vapidity of their lifestyles wholeheartedly, as if there were no other option. I have more self-doubt in one finger than Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino has in his entire body, including—lest we forget—his infamous six-pack.

It’s not that we should abandon our responsibilities, crank up the house music, and flee to the boardwalks of South Jersey, but there’s a lesson here to be learned—life is short, but not too short for another shot of Jager.

—Columnist Molly O. Fitzpatrick can be reached at fitzpat@fas.harvard.edu.