Overthinking the Jersey Shore Academic Conference
Perusing the schedule for the recent Jersey Shore Academic Conference at the University of Chicago, a strange thought hit me: I worried that I didn’t know enough about the theories of French philosopher Michel Foucault to be able to really understand a series of talks about Jersey Shore. I should probably point out at this point that the Jersey Shore Academic Conference is a symposium covering what Gawker calls the most important sociological experiment of our time, not a symposium actually put on by the cast and/or crew of Jersey Shore. DJ Pauly D did not present any papers; Ronnie and Sammi didn’t oversee any lectures. I was on a panel with my colleagues Genevieve Koski and Marah Eakin, but I was primarily attending the conference as a fan.
My fears were not unfounded: My head swam throughout a panel on morality and ethics” that dealt extensively with the theories of Foucault. A paper by an undergraduate named Ellie Marshall from McGill University titled “Foucault’s Going To The Jersey Shore, Bitch!” captured the half-winking, half-ironic, half-embarrassed, and altogether self-conscious tone of a conference with a deep appreciation of its own inherent ridiculousness.
But is an academic conference devoted to Jersey Shore really all that ridiculous? As the titles of panels and presentations attest, the show is a powder keg of issues irresistible to academics and pointy-headed types: gender, ethnicity, morality, class, economics, hypocrisy, sexuality, and perpetually shifting notions of reality and authenticity. On one level, Jersey Shore is a show about nothing more than crude stereotypes getting liquored up and fucking. On another level, it’s a show about everything. The Jersey Shore Academic Conference embraced the latter notion. It finds in one of the more loudly ridiculed corners of pop culture a microcosm for the crazy modern world we inhabit, and the way we process it.
The Jersey Shore Academic Conference was willed into existence largely through the enthusiasm, energy, and indomitable drive of a University of Chicago undergraduate named David Showalter. In his opening remarks, Showalter argued that while many in academia might view the cast of Jersey Shore as exotic “others,” they have more in common with members of the academy than either party might imagine.
For starters, the cast of Jersey Shore and the speakers, panelists, and spectators at the Jersey Shore Academic Conference both spend a great deal of time and effort thinking long and hard about Jersey Shore. The show and the reality-television aesthetic have transformed the cast of Jersey Shore and many of their reality-television peers into accidental but aggressive deconstructionists keen to analyze and unpack every aspect of their lives. Reality television has made their fragile, fame-warped psyches into funhouse mirrors that reflect their existences and the existences of their housemates back to them in countless warped, distorted fashions.
The titles of the panels at the Jersey Shore Academic Conference gave a sense of the project’s impressive scope and breadth. There were panels on everything from “The Construction Of Guido Identity” to “Labor And Economics” to “Affect, Honor, And Desire,” as well as talks ranging from “The Monetization Of Being: Reputational Labor, Brand Culture, And Why Jersey Shore Does, And Does Not, Matter” to “Guidosexuality.”
For the first panel of the morning, I chose “Morality And Ethics.” The first presenter, a professor from University of Nebraska-Lincoln named Ari Kohen, got off to a relatively dry, academic start to his presentation, “Platonic Justice And Jersey Shore,” but an exhilarating rush of life entered the room the moment the presentation shifted from the lofty ideals espoused by Plato to the less lofty exploits of the gang over at Seaside Heights. Kohen’s presentation concerned Plato’s ideas about what we owe our friends and society as a whole, and how that relates to the infamous anonymous letter of Jersey Shore’s second season (you know, the one about Ronnie motorboating Jell-O shot girls), but like the rest of the conference, it was ultimately an excuse for smart people to talk about something the world largely considers dumb. Kohen just happened to be doing so using ideas incomprehensible to most Jersey Shore fans.
There was an elegant dance at play at the Jersey Shore Academic Conference between heady academic jargon that repelled with its sneering impenetrability and subject matter that attracted with its vulgar, lurid appeal. That tension between high and low culture defined the conference. It was dedicated to the proposition that it was possible to be both a serious intellectual and a Jersey Shore super-fan, that thinking long and hard about seeming ephemera added, rather than detracted from the experience of consuming what appears to be pop-culture junk food.
The next presenter was Marshall, who had interned on Jersey Shore and was able to litter her presentation with personal asides. I had a curiously bifurcated response to her talk. I admired the lofty ideas being expressed, but I got a frission of excitement whenever the talk went from the theoretical to the dishy. She’d interned at the very place of magic and wonder we were all obsessed with! She breathed that rarified air!
As engaging as Marshall’s presentation was, I was nevertheless relieved by the utter lack of both pretension and academic jargon found in Gawker writer Brian Moylan’s presentation, “‘You’re Not Even Italian’: Stereotype, Authenticity, And The Warped Reality Of Jersey Shore.” It was like getting a really fun substitute teacher in place of a stern autocrat.
Moylan’s presentation discussed stereotypes in reality television, beginning with Lance Loud of An American Family on through to the battling roomies of The Real World and, ultimately, Jersey Shore. Moylan contends entertainingly and persuasively that The Real World tried to mold its characters into stereotypes that never quite fit, lending the show an innate air of inauthenticity. Jersey Shore, in sharp contrast, chose people who didn’t just fit a stereotype: They embraced it to the point where it becomes self-parodying, consequently theatrical, and as inauthentic as the stereotypes of The Real World. Where most of the presenters at the Jersey Shore presented fun ideas in serious, academic ways, Moylan did the opposite, smuggling cerebral notions into a fun, joke-and-gag-filled presentation.
I ended the evening at a panel called “Gender Roles And Sexual Norms” that discussed, among other things, how Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino calling Angelina a “dirty little hamster” upon discovering one of her used tampons, reflects historical concepts of the “monstrous feminine” in horror literature. I had to leave early, but it was a testament to how unexpectedly interesting the conference turned out to be—I wished I was able to attend more panels and listen to more presentations.
Before I attended and participated in the Jersey Shore Academic Conference, my enthusiasm for the show was fading, but my interest in it was renewed by a conference that finds a deep, dense, complex world to explore in a seeming pop-culture trifle. The Jersey Shore conference was devoted to obsessive, intense, highly informed analysis and commentary about something most people find utterly unworthy of thought, let alone intense or rigorous intellectual contemplation. There’s a phrase for that outside the Jersey Shore Academic Conference: It’s called The Internet, or more specifically, The A.V Club.
At the end of the Jersey Shore Academic Conference, the question wasn’t, “Are we thinking about Jersey Shore too much?” It was, “Dude, are we thinking about Jersey Shore enough?” An academic conference about the Jersey Shore Academic Conference would be taking the whole thing a little too far, though.
