Cultural representation of Italians in the media. Looking at the MTV Essay

Cultural representation of Italians in the media. Looking at the MTV series Jersey Shore - Essay Example Alternatively, they are momma’s boys. They all have names like Pauly and Joey, and eat spaghetti every night. Of course, this is not the case – Italians are just as nuanced as anybody else. Some may fit the stereotype, and most probably do not. Nonetheless, the cultural portrayals of Italians have been largely negative, and there is no place where this is more evident than the television show Jersey Shore. The show is based upon 10 Italian-Americans living in a house on the Jersey Shore in the first season, and Miami Beach in the second season, and centers around the exploits of the â€Å"Guidos† and â€Å"Guidettes† in the house. The girls are high maintenance, crass, vain and drunk. The boys are perpetually tanned, with blow-out hair, muscular, crass, vain and drunk. They all hook up with random people, and say cuss words every other word. They are all apparently low class, and, with the exception of one of the boys, uneducated. In short, the show takes every negative stereotype of the Italian American and adds a few more. And, unfortunately for the Italian Americans in society, the show is a huge hit. Basic Concepts – Collective Identity, Culture and Cultural Sociology To understand why Jersey Shore is so offensive to Italian-Americans, one must understand the basics of culture, identity and ethnic identity. These are all basic concepts that ties in why television shows that feature stereotypes are harmful to targeted groups. The first concept that needs to be understood is that of culture, as television shows, such as Jersey Shore would be considered to be a part of our popular culture. Culture refers to the way that individuals make sense of their world, and a way to individuals to find meaning (Cushman, 1996, p. 7). Events that occur in the individual’s world are thus interpreted through the culture of the individual, and this is one way that individuals understand the modern world. The social world is what provid es the basis for an individual’s culture, specifically the concrete experiences experienced by this individual. Culture is reflexive, in that people make culture, and culture makes the individual. This is how both individual and collective identities are formed. (Cushman, 1996, p. 7). A person’s life is shaped by culture because culture imposes inherent patterns that are formed by communal life, logic and narrative, and discourse and language. In this way, culture forms the self, as the growth of the self is dependent upon external images and social bonds (Bruner, 1990, p. 42). The internal thoughts, feelings and states of consciousness that an individual has is externalized and shared by concrete representations of culture and are formed into cultural objects, which includes television programs (Cushman, 1996, p. 90). Moreover, culture helps frame the individual’s experiences and acts, because these are realized by the individual when he or she participates in culture’s symbolic systems (Bruner, 1990, p. 33). Culture is how individual meaning becomes communal and public (Bruner, 1990, p. 34). Moreover, there is proof that television series, among other cultural objects, impact the culture because culture is learned, not innate. This was shown by the studies done by Eisenhart (1995). Eisenhart set out to find out what aspects of a given culture influences individuals, and why this would be so (Eisenhart, 1995, p. 4). Eisenhart posited that there would be different ways of transmitting