MTV causes mixed feelings among vacationers at the Shore, but garnered high ratings during its first season.
“Guidos” and “Guidettes” have stormed MTV and surprisingly gained lots of popularity along the way. As the reality television show “Jersey Shore” came to a close, millions of viewers all over were devastated to lose the entertaining cast of seven fist-pumping Italian-Americans.
Even though the show has been well-received by many, there has been lots of controversy surrounding the show even with rumors of ending the “Jersey Shore” mid-season.
When the reality show hit, following seven Italian-Americans who were spending their summer tanning (in a salon of course), getting blowouts at the salon, and boozing at the clubs, it appeared to be just another one of those ridiculous reality shows that MTV decided to create like “Date My Mom” or “Parental Control.” After giving the show a chance, fans emerged doubling the ratings from the premiere on Dec. 3 to 2.5 million viewers, according to People magazine.
Even with all of the fans, there were many who believed these cast members were stereotyping Italian-Americans with offensive words like “guido.”
Caryn Brook wrote in TIME magazine about the use of the word stating, “Most people on the east coast easily recognize the word as a slur against Italian-American men of a certain class and swagger — and there was MTV just letting it rip.”
Domino’s even dropped its advertisements for the show because they were so offended by the use of the term “guido.”
This all a bit ridiculous. Yeah, the show may not be the most educational, enlightening program to watch, but it’s entertaining and hilarious. The cast-members are so absurd that the show is difficult to turn off. It’s pretty hard to take Mike who calls himself “the Situation” seriously, so instead of getting offended I think people just need to laugh a little.
Kiersten Bartlein ’12 stated, “They don’t mean it in an anti-Italian way. They just look stupid with their blowouts.” It is clear that offended viewers need to relax and realize that MTV’s not trying to offend the Italians out there, but instead to entertain viewers with people like Snooki and Pauly D.
So lay back, relax, and enjoy some quality reality TV or just change the channel, but let’s not make a big deal out of nothing.
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