Jersey Shore reaches Italy
If Italian-Americans were offended by the stereotypes of “The Sopranos” and “Growing Up Gotti”, their anger was as nothing compared to the storm caused by the reality-documentary “Jersey Shore”, which reached Italian TV screens on Monday.
The MTV series follows eight young men and women who spend their summer in and around the town of Seaside Heights on the New Jersey Shore. Angelina “Jolie” Pivarnick, Jenni “JWoww” Farley, Michael “The Situation” Sorrentino, Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi, Paul “DJ Pauly D” Del Vecchio, Ronnie Ortiz-Magro, Sammi “Sweetheart” Giancola and Vinny Guadagno are housemates and spend most of the time partying, topping up their tans and showing off their bodies. They work part-time in a t-shirt store where they must obey the rules and regulations or be evicted from the beach house.
The cast are presented as Italian-Americans but “J-Woww” is Spanish-Irish while “Snooki” is Chilean, though she was adopted by Italian-Americans. Ronnie is half Puerto-Rican. The ethnicity of the cast, plus their behaviour, led to protests and Italian-American Associations called for the removal of the show because it “used ethnic slurs to marginalise and stereotype Italian-Americans”. Snooki, when interviewed by ANSA, admitted that she knows no Italian and has never heard of Dante or Silvio Berlusconi and that statement rather sums up the “culture” of the Jersey Shore protagonists. “Snooki” defends the show by saying that she and her housemates behave as all young Americans do, whatever their ethnicity.
The eight young men and women are, in fact, self-confessed “guidos” and “guidettes”. You don’t know what a “guido”is? Neither did we. An American slang dictionary defines the term as “an Italian-American with well-groomed hair, lots of jewellery and designer jeans”. It adds that the term has come to signify people from other ethnic groups who dress according to stereotypes. The word is never used in this context in Italy and its constant use in the show and in articles about it has caused further offence.
The show has also come under fire from the “real” Jersey Shore community for portraying the area in a negative way, for its “glamourisation” of tanning and for the violent scenes that have been broadcast. MTV’s response was that the show “is not intended for every audience” and “shows just one aspect of youth culture”.
Now audiences in Italy will be able to judge for themselves. Ansa says the characters are “all sex and the gym” while Corriere della Sera’s TV critic calls them “supercafoni” [uncouth boors] with muscles and no brains and dismisses the series as “vulgar”. Not an auspicious beginning.
Do you think MTV should have cancelled the show?
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I love Jersey Shore. I can
I love Jersey Shore. I can stay home, save money, stay sober and live vicariously through them. Without the hangover. I've been married to an Italian-canadian from Toronto for 15 years so am well aware this show does not speak for all Italians. DUh. Maybe they should cancle the news because it depicts all white people as war mongers. Excuse me, freedom fighters. I agree with the poster about the jews. They DO own all the media and DO sway our opinions of the middle east and America DID terrorize those nations for the jews. Do I hate Jews? Nope. Do they hate us? Yep. Deny it all you want, if you're not rich and powerful it doesn't matter what you think of these things anyhow. So agree, disagree, it doesn't matter. Back to the shore, I love em! I know they are not being useful or helpful or showing the best of American kids but give the world some credit! Noone is going to watch this show and think- oh my God, americans suck or Italian Americans suck. If people think this maybe it's because of what your gov does to most countries in the world? The way it treats it's soldiers after they come home from war? Not a silly show on MTV. The world loves Italians. Don't let the show get to you, people are smart enough to see the difference. So god luck in Italy Shoremates! Can't wait!!!
Why? - Are you kidding me?
Why? - Are you kidding me? This is your posting on Jersey Shore reaches Italy?
A load of psycho-babble on the holocaust and Jews in the media? You really need to pull your head out of your a** and take a good look around at the melting pot we call America!
As for JS, it's just another ridiculous display of overblown American "culture", with more "entitled" kids acting like mentally deficient crazies, devoid of any and all sensibility!
Just more fodder for the rest of the veiwing world to throw on our ever-growing fire.
It's an embarrassment!!!
Daiiiiii!!!!!
I live in Sicilia and can tell you that Jersey Shore has had no impact whatsoever. We have reality shows so bad they make JS look like Sheakspeare Theater .
Grande Fratello (Big Brother) is what everyone watches here.
What IS embarrassing - far more than some dumb,staged "reality" show , is that when many " Italian - American" tourists arrive here they fail to have even a slight grasp of geography , are so loud ( screaming in English still doesn't translate) and complain when they cannot find a Dennys for the grand slam breakfast. best of all they want "gravy" . Maybe watched a bit too much Sopranos?
Why?
The average American, of whose daily life TV-watching takes such an unhealthy portion, distinguishes between these fictional situations and reality only with difficulty, if at all. He responds to the televised actions, statements, and attitudes of TV actors much as he does to his own peers in real life. For all too many Americans the real world has been replaced by the false reality of the TV environment, and it is to this false reality that his urge to conform responds. Thus, when a TV scriptwriter expresses approval of some ideas and actions through the TV characters for whom he is writing, and disapproval of others, he exerts a powerful pressure on millions of viewers toward conformity with his own views.
And as it is with TV entertainment, so it is also with the news, whether televised or printed. The insidious thing about this form of thought control is that even when we realize that entertainment or news is biased, the media masters still are able to manipulate most of us. This is because they not only slant what they present, but also they establish tacit boundaries and ground rules for the permissible spectrum of opinion.
As an example, consider the media treatment of Middle East news. Some editors or commentators are slavishly pro-Israel in their every utterance, while others seem nearly neutral. No one, however, dares suggest that the U.S. government is backing the wrong side in the Arab-Jewish conflict, or that 9-11 was a result of that support. Nor does anyone dare suggest that it served Jewish interests, rather than American interests, to send U.S. forces to cripple Iraq, Israel’s principal rival in the Middle East. Thus, a spectrum of permissible opinion, from pro-Israel to nearly neutral, is established.
Another example is the media treatment of racial issues in the United States. Some commentators seem almost dispassionate in reporting news of racial strife, while others are emotionally partisan—with the partisanship always on the non-White side. All of the media spokesmen without exception, however, take the position that “multiculturalism” and racial mixing are here to stay and that they are good things.
Because there are differences in degree, however, most Americans fail to realize that they are being manipulated. Even the citizen who complains about “managed news” falls into the trap of thinking that because he is presented with an apparent spectrum of opinion he can escape the thought controllers’ influence by believing the editor or commentator of his choice. It’s a “heads I win, tails you lose” situation. Every point on the permissible spectrum of public opinion is acceptable to the media masters—and no impermissible fact or viewpoint is allowed any exposure at all, if they can prevent it.
The control of the opinion-molding media is nearly monolithic. All of the controlled media—television, radio, newspapers, magazines, books, motion pictures—speak with a single voice, each reinforcing the other. Despite the appearance of variety, there is no real dissent, no alternative source of facts or ideas accessible to the great mass of people that might allow them to form opinions at odds with those of the media masters. They are presented with a single view of the world—a world in which every voice proclaims the equality of the races, the inerrant nature of the Jewish “Holocaust” tale, the wickedness of attempting to halt the flood of non-White aliens pouring across our borders, the danger of permitting citizens to keep and bear arms, the moral equivalence of all sexual orientations, and the desirability of a “pluralistic,” cosmopolitan society rather than a homogeneous, White one. It is a view of the world designed by the media masters to suit their own ends—and the pressure to conform to that view is overwhelming. People adapt their opinions to it, vote in accord with it, and shape their lives to fit it.
And who are these all-powerful masters of the media?
To a very large extent they are Jews. It isn’t simply a matter of the media being controlled by profit-hungry capitalists, some of whom happen to be Jews. If that were the case, the ethnicity of the media masters would reflect, at least approximately, the ratio of rich Gentiles to rich Jews. Despite a few prominent exceptions, the preponderance of Jews in the media is so overwhelming that we are obliged to assume that it is due to more than mere happenstance.
Oh, I see
To distill your rather wordy and - accurately described by another poster - pseudo-intellectual screed to its essence: you feel that anti-Semites and general racists aren't properly represented in the media....as if that were somehow a bad thing.
Doesn't being a
Doesn't being a pseudo-intellectual ever get tiring?
I think its an amazing show!
I think its an amazing show! So you all can shove it! ASSSSHOLES!
They are embarrassing to
They are embarrassing to Italians and Italian culture. They are low-lives and don't show any class. They call themselves "Italian" but they can't speak a word of it or know anything about the culture and customs of Italy. MTV should cancel this ridiculous show.
Jersey Shore
cancel it - get rid of it - stupid
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