I agree with Elona’s post in which she proved that can be seen as a social benefit. All the points were proven with fair and intelligent answers. While reading her blog, it made me realize how ironic Jersey Shore really is however. I mean, I do believe that MTV realizes the irony and likes poke fun at it while the cast members may not fully be aware yet the degree to which these people rate on the hypocrisy scale is nauseating. As mentioned, “guidos” and “guidettes” are typically people of Italian decent now living in North America, (though not all the cast members are…Jwoww I’m talking to you). Historically, Italians are Catholics which many of the people on the show claim to be by way of their large crucifix chains and religious iconographic tattoos, yet they go prowling on a nightly basis for girls who are willing to sleep with them after knowing them for about an hour and intoxicated. Numerous times has one character, Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino taken girls back to the house and when they said they would not like to engage in any sexual activity he literally threw them out.
Finding someone of a similar background to be in a relationship (or lack of judging by their track record) is also important to these characters. “Snooki” often talks about how she would like to find an “Italian juicehead”. One would think this would be because she would share the same tradition and culture as someone raised in a similar way, yet what it mostly comes down to is looks and style.
Finally, the cast of the show like to engage in a tradition called “Sunday dinner” where, yep, you guessed it all of them come together, cook dinner and sit down to a nice "family dinner”. While they claim to be close and have dinner together on the most sacred of days the other days of the week the guys and more recently the girls of the show can be seen getting into physical altercations with one another, bad mouthing the members of the cast they don’t like and stealing one another’s sexual prospects.
I’m not Italian yet something tells me that these factors have nothing to do with having said cultural background. It’s a shame that the cast of the show associate themselves so closely with this heritage when the two have really nothing in common.
It is most assuredly true that it is far worse to be a self-proclaimed Catholic (or any other form of Christian) while living in a way opposed to Christianity than it is to be openly non-Christian in beliefs but righteous in behaviour. The former way of life is hypocrisy while the latter way of life is honesty. Yet for some Christians, such as those in the tradition of Lutheranism, and represented most extremely by Jack Chick, it is unnecessary to live according to Christian principles; only faith in Jesus’ death, resurrection, and the salvation brought about by the resurrection is necessary for one to have one’s sins forgiven and thus avoid the fires of hell.
ReplyDeleteAlthough such a position is relatively popular in the United States, this borderline antinomianism does not make for good popular culture. Generally, the popular perception of Christ is of one who urged people to “love ye one another”, not of one who insisted that belief in him was the only thing that was necessary for salvation. Thus, many appearances of Christian themes in popular culture focus on forgiveness and general right conduct or on punishment of who sin in their deeds. However, this should not occlude the fact that there are other ways to be Christian with theological support, even if they are not necessarily Catholic in origin.
Thus, while it may indeed be hypocritical for the cast of Jersey Shore to claim to be Catholic even though they behave in non-Catholic ways, they can legitimately claim to be Christian if they are theologically knowledgeable enough. They could justify their wild and immoral behaviour with reference to salvation through faith alone rather than through works, becoming in essence some form of Lutheran. Alternatively, they could declare themselves Ranters or some other sect of radical antinomialists. But this would require them to be both willing to learn about the intricacies of Christian theologies and willing to give up their Italian Catholic religious heritage. Given their obsession with partying, both reasons seem too intellectually challenging for them.
Michael Macrae