Who's Shore?

  Over the last week in class we have talked about reality television as it connected with our readings of the lottery, hunger games and Gablers article. I agree with Gabler and believe that reality television has resulted in a culture of voyeurs. I think that we play a very important part as the viewers and fans in the reality of these shows. This causes us to influence the “games” be played themselves in a way. As Gabler says, “what makes reality so darn entertaining?”

  The Jersey Shore is a highly popular reality television show that is usually always being talked about around me. Personally I do not like to watch shows like that but I still hear about it all the time. I did however watch an episode (season 4 episode 9) for this post so I will elaborate on what happened. Basically, there are eight main stars of the show that all have these nicknames that the are called by. The people are The Situation, Jwoww, Snooki, Pauly D, Ronnie, Sammi, Vinny and Deena. This episode takes place in Italy and starts out after a night partying at a club. Snooki gets mad at Jwoww for not comforting her because of a fight they had the night before. After that, some drama takes place when Snooki and her boyfriend get in a fight because he leaves. After that they talk on the phone and “take a break”. Later, they all decide to turn the house into a night club and party in the house. After that The Situation tries to hit on Snooki, but does not work because she feels like none of the guys “have her back”. The show ends with Snooki getting in bed with Vinny and Deena failing at getting in bed with Pauly D. 

  Personally, I do not like watching these types of shows because I feel that all the stars are always just being fake. These stars just like to put on a show for the audience to feed into. In a way we influence these stars to act certain ways and do certain things because they know what their audience (us) wants to see. Although, I can see how a majority of people find these types of shows alluring because if you put the whole “being fake” thing aside, these shows could be kind of interesting to watch. Also, people like these shows because once a week the show is live, so they know it is not edited like the rest of the television they see. I believe that our roles as the viewers and fans play a huge part in these types of shows. I think that our roles as the viewers and fans are to buy into everything the people on these shows do, wear and say. I think if we did not watch these shows and were not interested in them, they would not even exist.