Journal 7- Evaluation

I chose to evaluate The Jersey Shore because it is a show I scratch my head at day after day and I wonder how it became successful. I find the characters behavior to be inappropriate for the MTV viewers watching but that is not as pressing as the lack of meaningful and intellectual content. These cast members deserve no sort of worship or praise, and they exemplify everything that Americans are hated for in the world. Yet parties are emulated after the show, nicknames and catchphrases are part of pop culture and the show continues to earn more ratings! The criteria I will be judging The Jersey Shore on will be a show that is watched by and as an influence on the youth, because this is where I see Jersey Shore failing the worst. I will show how next to other shows on MTV such as Real World or Gossip Girl, where even some characters have some moral boundaries and decent characters for kids to look up to, unlike any JS characters. The next piece will be how actions are handled and the consequences to poor decisions. Normal people, or even people on other reality shows, cannot avoid the consequences of bad decision making like the Jersey Shore cast does. The cast itself needs to be compared to other reality shows because they are not the sort of characters that your children should be modeling themselves after. Similar to the consequence piece, this final piece judges the general behavior of the cast; the lifestyle on the Jersey Shore revolves around drunken and lustful mischief and barely any work or strain (one bad night is followed by a night of more drinking and completely forgetting what happened the night prior). I am going to avoid the racial issues that have made the show hotly debated how it portrays Italian Americans.