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BY DAVID SHOWALTER

COMMENTARY

On October 28, the University of Chicago will host the UChicago Conference on Jersey Shore Studies, a first-of-its-kind academic gathering that will examine the landmark MTV reality television program “Jersey Shore.” As the conference’s organizer, I have been asked many times why it could possibly be worthwhile to study such a show. It’s a good question, and one that deserves a thorough answer.

Odds are, you aren’t one of the nearly nine million Americans who watched the third and most recent season of “Jersey Shore.” But perhaps you’ve been informed of the cast’s re-appropriation of the pejorative term “Guido” as a stylistic ideal, their bacchanalian revelry and seven-figure paychecks, or that a young woman calling herself ‘Snooki’ was punched in the face by a man in the show’s first season. Or maybe you’ve seen the Situation (another cast member—his nickname refers metonymically to both his person and his abdominal muscles) on “Dancing with the Stars,” caught Ronnie’s commercial for the weight-loss supplement Xenedrine on late-night TV, or watched Snooki compete in a pro wrestling match. You might even have come across some of the books, workout DVDs, protein-infused vodkas, tanning products, and gaudy jewelry that bear the names of the show’s stars.

From this outpouring of media attention, commercial revenue, and multimedia marketing, it is clear that “Jersey Shore” is a genuine cultural phenomenon. Since its modest debut in December of 2009, it has become the biggest show in MTV’s 30-year history and the bane of Italian-American organizations, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and prophets of American moral decline alike. But far from merely celebrating the vapid excesses of youthful irresponsibility, “Jersey Shore” has much to teach us—or rather contains much to be uncovered—about how we live, laugh, communicate, and think about our world today.

For anyone who has watched reality television in the past, the structure of “Jersey Shore” will seem familiar: eight strangers between the ages of 21 and 30 share a luxuriously appointed and continuously surveilled summer house, indulging in the local nightlife, hooking up and breaking up, and confronting the myriad challenges that face any cohabitants. In these details, “Jersey Shore” is an heir of venerable reality TV franchises like “The Real World” and “Big Brother,” and the minutiae of episodes of “Jersey Shore” generally follow the patterns crafted by these forebears: romantic and sexual relationships develop between roommates, some members of the house are ostracized, savage insults are traded, copious amounts of liquor are consumed, and yet at the end of the experience the housemates express a unique and almost familial bond with one another.

From these potentially tired premises, the cast and producers of “Jersey Shore” have crafted a surprisingly thick narrative text, overflowing with intriguing and evocative scenes that tackle many pressing issues of contemporary life. Subjects as diverse as the construction of racial and ethnic identity; the contemporary meaning of gender equality and the proper distribution of gendered forms of love, labor, and loyalty; the psychological effects of celebrity, surveillance, and social exclusion; and the convoluted and often parodic mise-en-scene of the show itself are all explored on camera by the cast, with invariably fascinating results.

Leaving aside the richness of the show’s dialogue, “Jersey Shore” remains a supremely important cultural artifact. MTV has gone to great lengths to market the show as a quasi-documentary, as though it had uncovered a previously pristine subculture and simply recorded its practices and rituals for public appraisal. For this reason, “Jersey Shore” proves especially useful for attempts to explicate the "reality" of reality television, and to ask pertinent questions about the literal lenses through which we observe much of our world. The disjuncture between the commercial product that is “Jersey Shore” and the lived experiences of its subjects has become especially pronounced as the show approaches its fourth and fifth seasons, and these complications should provoke analysis of the cast’s peculiar sort of fame and the increasing symbiosis between their onscreen roles and offscreen lives.

The stars of “Jersey Shore” are important not because they are superlative or even representative members of any class, ideology, ethnic group, youth culture, or geographic region. Rather, their success—and the specific nature of that success: the economic, aesthetic, sociological, and discursive conditions under which they have achieved fame and fortune—sheds a great deal of light on the state of contemporary television, media, culture, and society. Their visibility is a testament to the dominance of reality television, while the show’s future spin-offs, ancillary products (including Snooki’s bizarrely engrossing novel, A Shore Thing), and innumerable endorsement deals are indicative of the intricacy of the current media landscape. It is for all of these reasons and many more that I have organized the UChicago Conference on Jersey Shore Studies.

Of course, reality television is not the only popular art form meriting thoughtful consideration. The pop music, big budget films, primetime TV, and other mass media that we encounter on a daily basis play a significant and often underappreciated role in the constitution of our culture. This claim is by no means novel, but it bears repeating. It is sometimes difficult to maintain a thoughtful perspective on the pop culture of the present, especially when that culture contains vulgar language or unpleasant images. But we can only benefit from being more attentive to the media we consume and the ways in which we consume it. So please, watch “Jersey Shore” and come to the conference. You might learn something from a Guido after all.

Listen to a podcast with David Showalter.

The UChicago Conference on Jersey Shore Studies will be accepting paper proposals until August 1. To submit a paper for consideration, please send a 500 to 600 word abstract to David Showalter at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . You can also follow the conference on Facebook and on Twitter.

David Showalter was born and raised in Stillwater, Oklahoma and is currently a fourth-year in the Tutorial Studies program at the University of Chicago. His academic interests include crime and punishment, popular culture, and 20th century philosophy.

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