Cultural Anthropology: Mini Ethnography Paper

UC Berkeley California Italian Studies

Title “Guido” Culture: The Destabilization of Italian-American Identity on Jersey Shore

Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1m95s09q

Journal California Italian Studies, 4(2)

Author Troyani, Sara

Publication Date 2013 Peer reviewed

eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California

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“Guido” Culture: The Destabilization of Italian-American Identity

on Jersey Shore

Sara Troyani

Italian-American leaders oppose MTV’s Jersey Shore (2009-2012) on the basis that the reality

television series, which chronicles the lives of eight young Italian-American men and women

housemates who self-identify as “Guidos” and “Guidettes,” promotes ethnic stereotyping. While

the term “Guido” has long been considered an ethnic slur against urban working -class Italian

Americans in the Northeastern United States, the generationally pejorative word has been

embraced by many younger Americans of Italian heritage. Like the cast of Jersey Shore, they use

it to recognize practitioners of Guido style who skillfully craft their identities in response to

mass-media representations of Italian-American culture. 1 Nonetheless, numerous prominent

Italian Americans worry that Jersey Shore might encourage viewers to conflate Italian

Americans with the Guidos they see on television. Robert Allegrini, public relations director for

the National Italian American Foundation (NIAF), which promotes Italian-American culture and

heritage through educational youth programs, expressed concern that viewers might “make a

direct connection between ‘[G]uido culture’ and Italian-American identity.” 2 In a letter to

Philippe P. Dauman, the president and CEO of MTV Networks’ parent company Viacom,

written on behalf of both the Italian American Legislative Caucus and the New Jersey Italian and

Italian American Heritage Commission, New Jersey State Senator Joseph F. Vitale explains that

“[t]he problem lies in the fact that, for the audiences that Jersey Shore is being marketed to, the

overly-muscled, overly-tan caricatures of long-held ethnic stereotypes highlighted on the show

may form the basis of ethnic generalizations that do a disservice to Italian Americans

everywhere.” 3 Viewers may feel encouraged to equate Italian Americans with Guido stereotypes

because, as Santina A. Haemmerle, president of the world’s largest and longest -established

Italian-American organization, the National Commission for Social Justice (CSJ) of the Order

Sons of Italy in America, has noted, the series portrays Italian Americans in terms of Guido

culture while ignoring the many historic achievements of the broader Italian-American

community. 4 Hence there have arisen concerns that Jersey Shore might compel viewers to reduce

Italian-American identity to Guido and Guidette subculture tout court.

In order to illustrate the potentially discriminatory effects of the series, Italian-American

advocates, like Andrè DiMino, then-president of UNICO National, the largest Italian-American

service organization, have characterized the program as the latest in a long and regrettable

1 Sociologist Donald Tricarico compares the appropriation of “Guido” by young Italian Americans to the use of the

N-word by African Americans and the term “queer” by members of the radical gay community. Quoted in Caryn

Brooks, “Italian Americans and the G Word: Embrace or Reject?” Time U.S., December 12, 2009,

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1947338,00.html, accessed September 1, 2013. 2 Robert, Allegrini, “Letter to Philippe Dauman,” November 24, 2009,

https://www.niaf.org/public_policy/images/niaf_letter_viacom-jerseyshore11-09.pdf, accessed September 1, 2013. 3 Ibid.

4 Santina A. Haemmerle,” Letter to Judith McGrath,” November 13, 2009,

http://www.osia.org/documents/CSJPresidentReportandLetters2010.pdf, accessed September 1, 2013.

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history of media portrayals promoting stereotypes of Italian Americans. 5 In a joint conference

held at the Seaside Heights Community Center, in Seaside Heights, New Jersey, on January 30,

2010, for leaders of Italian-American groups and politicians from the state of New Jersey,

entitled “the Summit on the Shore”—and abbreviated according to the letters of the Morse code

distress signal SOS—, in which attendees discussed their reactions to the program and sought

support in managing the possibly harmful effects of Jersey Shore, DiMino compared the

depiction of Italian Americans in the series with the reductive representations featured on

television programs like Who’s the Boss, The Sopranos, and, more recently, Desperate

Housewives. Like these shows, he argued, Jersey Shore circulates stereotypes of Italian-

American culture.

Nevertheless, what distinguishes the depiction of Italian-American identity on Jersey

Shore and merits further consideration are the ways in which its stereotyping of Italian

Americans may assume a didactic function and support the idea of a more fluid and dynamic

Italian-American culture. Jersey Shore disrupts the notion of a unitary and stable Italian-

American culture by illustrating that the Italian American identity of the cast is not fixed or

established, but rather, resembling the late-capitalist youth identities discussed by Rattansi and

Phoenix, “always in process, always in a relative state of formation.” 6 As for all of these groups,

any apparent closure regarding Guido identity is “provisional and conditional in a literal sense,

that is conditioned by and within specific social contexts, for example, particular peer groups in

specific locales.” 7 In fact, the superficial presentation of Italian-American culture on the show

never appears antithetical to an underlying Italian-American identity. On the contrary, Jersey

Shore deploys reductive representations of Italian Americans in ways that denaturalize Italian-

American culture and question the possibility of the existence of an authentic Italian -American

identity in the first place. An investigation of the asserted rather than assigned qualities of Guido

culture cannot account for the power that some Italian Americans invest in what they experience

as primordial Italian-American ethnicity. However, given the public outcry against Jersey Shore

by leaders of Italian-American organizations engaged in anti-defamation critiques, a

circumstantialist approach is necessary to illustrate ways in which the program debunks

essentialist assumptions of Guido culture. 8 Drawing on theories of gender performance as well as

Italian cultural and media studies, I argue that the portrayal of Italian-American culture on Jersey

Shore may be read productively to destabilize the apparent fixity of Italian-American identity. I

do not wish to suggest that the Jersey Shore cast dramatize their identities because they are

Italian American. Rather, I contend that their performance of Guido identity is what enables the

5 Fred L. Gardaphé (From Wiseguys to Wise Men: The Gangster and Italian American Masculinities [New York:

Routledge, 2006], xii) dates the first protests of media co-optations of Italian American heritage to 1930. At that

time, New York City’s Italian American mayor, Fiorello La Guardia, wrote a letter objecting to the representation of

Italian Americans as mobsters in Mervyn LeRoy’s 1931 gangster film Little Caesar. The first organized protests

against media depictions of Italian Americans by Italian-American associations began in the wake of Mario Puzo’s 1969 Mafia novel The Godfather and its cinematic adaptations. 6 Ali Rattansi and Ann Phoenix, “Rethinking Youth Identities: Modernist and Postmodernist Frameworks,” in Youth,

Citizenship and Social Change in a European Context, eds. John Bynner, Lynne Chisholm, and Andy Furlong,

(Aldershot: Ashgate, 1997), 129. 7 Ibid.

8 For an exploration of changing academic and popular understandings of ethnic identities as fixed and/or fluid in

terms of primordialist and circumstantialist paradigms, see Stephen Cornell and Douglas Hartmann, Ethnicity and

Race: Making Identities in a Changing World, 2 nd

ed. (Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge Press, 2007), 41-74.

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housemates, irrespective of heritage, to cast themselves as exemplars of Italian-American

culture. 9

Jersey Shore undermines the stability of Italian-American identity by conflating it with

Guido and Guidette culture and defining the latter in terms of practices and attributes that are

available for appropriation. According to cast member Michael “The Situation” Sorrentino,

“Guido” refers to “a good-looking, smooth, well-dressed Italian;” Ronnie Ortiz-Magro defines

the term as “a guy that always looks prettier than his girlfriend;” for Paul “DJ Pauly D”

DelVecchio, it means “a lifestyle” built around “family, friends, tanning, gel;” Sammi

“Sweetheart” Giancola uses the label “Guidette” to specify “somebody who knows how to club it

up, takes really good care of themselves, has pretty hair, cakes on makeup, tan skin (sic), wears

the hottest heels—pretty much, they know how to own it and rock it.” 10

None of these traits are

shown to occur naturally. DelVecchio achieves his tan with a tanning bed. Giancola explains the

key to her “pretty hair” is never to leave home without her clip-in, hair-lengthening extensions.

And Sorrentino offers a primer instructing viewers on ways the Guido look may be achieved.

According to Sorrentino, “GTL,” short for gym, tan, and laundry, are the three practices that, as

Vinny Guadagnino says, “make the Guidos.” 11

The words and actions of the housemates

illustrate that their Italian-American subculture is the result of a collective representation that is

not given in origin but rather the result of a dramatized ideal. Guidos, while not necessarily born,

may nevertheless be made.

Like the performance of female identity, as explored by Joan Riviere in her seminal essay

“Womanliness as a Masquerade,” the representation of Italian-American identity on Jersey Shore

operates as a form of cultural masquerade. Riviere describes the way in which professionally

successful women may wear womanliness as a mask in order to “avert anxiety and the

retribution feared from men.” 12

After reflecting on the possibility of an essential femininity

beyond the mask of womanliness (“The reader may now ask how I define womanliness or where

I draw the line between genuine womanliness and the ‘masquerade’”), Riviere concludes that

there is no such difference: “whether radical or superficial, they are the same thing.” 13

Her work

suggests that femininity is open to appropriation, “a mask that may be worn or removed.” 14

Riviere’s study led scholars to argue that if sex-role behavior can be achieved by the opposite

sex, it may also be adopted—rather than inherited—by members of the same sex. 15

The portrayal

of Guido and Guidette culture on Jersey Shore suggests the similarly imitative and contingent

nature of Italian-American identity.

Jersey Shore demonstrates that non-Italian Americans may masquerade as Guidos and

Guidettes, which is surprising in light of previous studies on ethnic identity and Guido culture.

Sociologists Stephen Cornell and Douglas Hartmann explain that “[w]hen groups and

9 Beverley Skeggs and Helen Woods, Reality Television: Performance, Audience, and Value (New York: Routledge,

2012), 2-3 and 9, suggest that performativity may be a useful concept for understanding the mediated self-

performance through which all reality television participants, sometimes dubbed “person-characters,” engage their

bodies, gestures, and language in order to produce themselves as dramatic representations. 10

“A New Family,” Jersey Shore, MTV Networks, December 3, 2009. 11

“Boardwalk Blowups,” Jersey Shore, MTV Networks, January 7, 2010. 12

Joan Riviere, “Womanliness as a Masquerade,” The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 10, no. 3-4 (1929):

303. 13

Ibid., 306. 14

Mary Ann Doane, “Film and the Masquerade: Theorizing the Female Spectator,” Screen 23, no. 3-4 (1982): 81. 15

See Esther Newton, Mother Camp: Female Impersonators in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

1979), 103 and Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge,

1990), 107.

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circumstances construct an ethnic or racial identity, that identity is often claimed to have some

set of primordial moorings—an anchor in blood ties, common provenance, or the physical links

of race. […] [E]thnicities tend to be rooted in the kinship metaphor, expressed through reference

to common ancestry or origin.” 16

Guido culture has traditionally been understood in terms of the Italian heritage of its

exemplars. For Donald Tricarico, “Guido” designates “a youth subculture [that] is explicitly

defined in terms of nationality background” and “distinguished [from other White youth

subcultures] by the ethnic Italian ancestry of its actors or proponents.” 17

Fred L. Gardaphé

interprets the term as “the way a number of Americans of Italian descent have chosen to identify

themselves as being Italian American.” 18

However, of the Guidos and Guidettes on Jersey Shore

neither Jenni “JWoww” Farley nor Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi claim Italian ancestry. Farley is of

Spanish and Irish descent. Polizzi, whose birth parents are Chilean, is half Italian through

adoption.

Confronted with the revelation that some of the most notorious housemates are not of

Italian heritage, and therefore not naturally reflective of Italian Americans, Italian-American

organizations have remained largely silent. Consequently, the anxiety of Italian-American groups

surrounding the Italian-Americanness of the cast members does not appear entirely motivated by

a desire to eradicate slanderous portrayals of Italian Americans. Representatives of the news

media who have publically addressed the mixed ancestry of the housemates appear most

surprised at the fact that non-Italian Americans could pass so convincingly as to be mistaken for

Italian Americans. Correspondingly, their focus is on the extent to which viewers may feel they

have been misled. Evann Gastaldo, who broke the story for web-native news site Newser.com,

advises readers, “Get ready for your world to be rocked, because everything you thought you

knew is wrong.” 19

An equivalent report on the CNN Entertainment Blog compares learning that

Farley and Polizzi are not Italian to having “just been told that the earth is not quite as round as

previously thought.” 20

Farley’s revelations are unsettling, if not earth shattering, because they

imply that being a Guido or Guidette does not depend on one’s heritage. It is rather, as she

explains during an appearance on the Fox News program The Strategy Room, echoing

DelVecchio’s remarks on Jersey Shore, a matter of “lifestyle.” Some Italian Americans may

aspire to live as Guidos or Guidettes. However, Guidos and Guidettes are not necessarily Italian

American. The dubious Italian heritage of cast members suggests that if non-Italian Americans

can adopt seemingly Italian-American Guido and Guidette characteristics and behaviors, these

characteristics may also be achieved—rather than inherited—by Italian Americans.

Jersey Shore exemplifies the construction of an Italian-American Guido when special

guest and Italian-Canadian actor Michael Cera, who visits with the housemates while on a

publicity tour to promote a new film, receives a Guido makeover. After discussing his Italian

heritage and learning that Cera’s father was born in Sicily, the cast members decide it would be

16

Cornell and Hartmann, Ethnicity and Race, 93. 17

Donald Tricarico, “Guido: Fashioning an Italian-American Youth Style,” Journal of Ethnic Studies 19, no. 1 (1991): 42. 18

Fred L. Gardaphé, “Dialogue and Debate, Not Denigration and Dismissal,” in Guido: Italian/American Youth and

Identity Politics, eds. Letizia Airos and Ottorino Cappelli (New York: Bordighera Press, 2011), 46. 19

Evann Gastaldo, “Jersey Shore Guidettes Aren’t Italian,” Newser.com. February 17, 2010,

http://www.newser.com/story/81085/jersey-shore-Guidettes-arent-italian.html, accessed September 1, 2013. 20

CNN, “Jersey Shore’s J-WOWW: Snooki and I aren’t Italian,” CNN Entertainment Blog, February 17, 2010,

http://marquee.blogs.cnn.com/2010/02/17/jersey-shores-j-woww-snooki-and-i-arent-italian, accessed September 1,

2013.

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entertaining to give Cera a Guido identity. They teach Cera their signature dance move and sign

of approval (the fist pump), use hair gel and a dryer to blow out his hairstyle, dress Cera in an

undersized Ed Hardy-brand T-shirt and apply fake tanner to darken his pale complexion. After

this exercise, DelVecchio proclaims, “Yo, we just turned this guy into a Guido!” 21

The

metamorphosis is complete after a hot-tub baptism. Cera joins the cast in a rooftop soaking pool

where they christen him with a Guido nickname: “The Ceranation.” His transformation into a

Guido confirms that, like the non-Italian-American housemates, Americans of Italian ancestry

may similarly adopt their Guido identities.

Like Cera, a majority of the housemates claims Italian descent. As a result, Jersey Shore

creates multiple instances for viewers to consider the implications of a constructed Italian -

American identity when it is performed by heritage members of the Italian-American

community. Whereas cast members Farley and Polizzi do not assert Italian ancestry, the enacting

of Italian-Americanness by the other housemates seems uncanny given their Italian extraction.

Like female stars who trade upon exaggerated representations of femininity, a practice that film

and gender studies scholar Pamela Robertson refers to as “feminist camp,” Cera and the Italian

American housemates impersonate the Italian Americans they already seem to be. 22

Their

depiction of Guido culture operates as an Italian-American equivalent to what theater and

performance expert Rebecca Schneider has termed an “Irigarayan ‘double gesture’” in reference

to feminist representations of womanliness as “paradoxically essentialist and constructivist at

once.” 23

Jersey Shore enables an analogous exploration of Italian-American identity as “a

discursive construct [in addition to] an embodied, historically located object.” 24

Resembling the

gender parody or “double mimesis” that film and media studies scholar Mary Ann Doa ne

describes in reference to women who flaunt femininity, the putting on of Italian-American

identities on Jersey Shore subverts the idea that an essential Italian-American culture exists prior

to its representation. 25

The camp portrayal of Italian-American culture on Jersey Shore reveals

the absence of a stable Italian-American identity behind the Guido and Guidette masquerade.

The exteriority of the Guido and Guidette lifestyle depicted on Jersey Shore recalls

attributes of what sociologist Herbert J. Gans, in his study of mid-twentieth-century working-

class Italian Americans living in Boston’s West End, identified as “peer group society.” 26

Like

performers who thrive in front of an audience, Gans argued, members of peer group societies are

21

“Michael Cera Gets a Guido Makeover,” Jersey Shore, MTV Networks, January 8, 2010. 22

Pamela Robertson, Guilty Pleasures: Feminist Camp from Mae West to Madonna (Durham: Duke University

Press, 1996), 9. 23

Rebecca Schneider, The Explicit Body in Performance (New York: Routledge, 1997), 36. 24

Geraldine Harris, Staging Femininities: Performance and Performativity (Manchester: Manchester University

Press, 1999), 19. 25

Mary Ann Doane, The Desire to Desire: the Woman’s Film of the 1940s (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,

1987), 181. 26

Responses to Gans’ study demonstrate that while there are traits that have (rightly or wrongly) come to be associated with Italian Americans, it is possible to identify with Italian-American culture regardless of personal

ancestry. On this subject, see Thomas J. Ferraro, Feeling Italian: The Art of Ethnicity in America (New York: New

York University Press, 2005); the contemporary attraction of both Italian-American and non-Italian-American youth

to Guido subculture may result from what Tricarico has described as the increasingly positive valuation of Italian

heritage by Americans at large. Tricarico contends that the greater parity of third-generation Italian Americans with

their core American peers weakened the basis for ethnic distinctions based on national origins (“In a New Light:

Italian-American Ethnicity in the Mainstream,” in The Ethnic Enigma: The Salience of Ethnicity for European-

Origin Groups, ed. Peter Kivisto [Philadelphia: Balch Institute Press, 1989], 24-46).

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characterized by their desire for display. 27

The cast of Jersey Shore may be identified according

to the traits of peer group societies in three important ways. First, like members of peer group

societies who value appearance and accessories as extensions of themselves, th e housemates are

preoccupied with their image: Giancola will not be seen without her hair extensions; DelVecchio

refuses to leave home without having first spent a minimum of twenty -five minutes to style his

hair; and Ortiz-Magro preens and applies lip gloss throughout the series. Another element that

characterizes peer group societies, according to Gans’ definition, is the subordination of

individual identities to that of the group. The group is perceived as an extension of the

individual. Challenges to individuals are interpreted as threats to the collective. On Jersey Shore,

when one housemate is attacked, others respond as though personally provoked. For instance, in

the second episode of the first season, DelVecchio punches a stranger at a bar for havin g shoved

Guadagnino. DelVecchio recalls the incident: “One of the clowns push[ed] Vinny, and I fucking

snapped!” 28

In Season 4, Polizzi exacts similar retribution on behalf of Cortese. Polizzi recounts

her reaction to a woman in a Florence bar who intentionally spilled her drink on Cortese as

follows: “I’m just like: don’t fuck with my bitch. If you fuck with Deena, I will cut you . […] I

need to stick up for my girl. So I jump in and I just go apeshit, you know? Like a squirrel

monkey.” 29

Polizzi avenges personal attacks against other Guidos and Guidettes instinctively,

likening her response on Cortese’s behalf to (what she imagines to be) the defensive practices of

simian tribes.

Finally, Gans’s work suggests, in peer group societies, an insult regarding the appearance

of one group member is interpreted as a collective slight. When Polizzi is accused of being

overweight, Farley initiates a fistfight in Polizzi’s defense. Asked to rationalize what happened,

Farley explains that the target of her attack “called Snookers fat, and that, like, triggered me.” 30

The spontaneous and seemingly involuntary responses of DelVecchio, Polizzi, and Farley, who

act on behalf of other Guidos and Guidettes as if they are defending themselves, demonstrates

that, like members of other peer group societies, individual housemates on the show attribute

their identities to the group as a whole.

The style in which Jersey Shore is filmed further implicates the cast in practices driven

by a need for external validation. Many of the housemates reflect on their actions while speaking

into a “confession cam.” This standard trope of reality television is a camera located in a room

that the housemates enter individually. There, they speak while gazing directly into the camera,

creating the impression of a direct address to the viewing public. The cast members use their

confessional appearances to recount their impressions of past events and express remorse for

personal wrongdoings. As the name of the cinematic device suggests, use of the confess ion cam

positions cast members as penitents seeking absolution and viewers, who are on the receiving

end of their confessions, as judges authorized to assess and forgive the housemates’

transgressions. The confessional sequences are a discursive sign that, like members of other peer

group societies, the housemates depend on external factors for validation and a corresponding

sense of personal identity.

The superficial representation of Italian-American culture appears intentionally

choreographed by select members of the Jersey Shore cast. During the sixth episode of the fourth

27

Herbert J. Gans, The Urban Villagers: Group and Class in the Life of Italian-Americans (New York: The Free

Press, 1962), 163. 28

“The Tanned Triangle,” Jersey Shore, MTV Networks, December 3, 2009. 29

“Fist Pump, Push-Ups, Chapstick,” Jersey Shore, MTV Networks, September 8, 2011. 30

“Just Another Day at the Shore,” Jersey Shore, MTV Networks, December 31, 2009.

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season, for example, Guadagnino and DelVecchio, who self-identify with Guido culture, adopt

what they refer to as “ultimate-Guido” personas and call themselves “Louie” and “Joey.” 31

Guadagnino and DelVecchio improvise their alter egos from a repertoire of Guido and mafioso

characteristics. Whereas Guadagnino and DelVecchio practice GTL, Louie and Joey engage in

FPC, which stands for fist pump, push-ups, and ChapStick. Wearing tracksuits and headbands,

the iconic, standard-issue uniform of lower-ranking members of criminal organizations in their

Hollywood manifestations, Guadagnino and DelVecchio acknowledge the historical portrayal of

Italian Americans as mafiosi. Like the costumes that Gardaphé argues enable director Martin

Scorsese to distinguish his Italian-American gangsters from the rest of society, 32

Guadagnino and

DelVecchio’s clothing demonstrates that dress is a similarly indispensable element for

fashioning Guido identity.

Guadagnino and DelVecchio’s ironic autobiographical Guido satire reveals the knowing

complicity of at least some participants in Guido culture who may be “active agents in the

making and remaking of their [Guido] identities.” 33

While Jersey Shore depicts “ultimate

Guidos,” for instance, it never represents “ultimate Guidettes.” Portraying ultimate Guidos

enables men in the series to distance themselves from their Guido personas. In the absence of a

hyperbolic Guidette equivalent, the women housemates appear more closely linked with the

Guidette image and less autonomous with respect to the representation of Guido culture.

Guadagnino and DelVecchio’s ultimate-Guido transformation suggests that, like their ultimate-

Guido personas, at least male Guidos may adopt their original Guido identities.

Parodies of the housemates on other media outlets speak to the comprehensive fabrication

of Guido culture in the series. Bobby Moynihan’s widely disseminated impression of Polizzi on

the Weekend Update segment of Saturday Night Live, for instance, plays up Polizzi’s trademark

tan and signature hairstyle, the “poof,” as well as her search for the perfect Guido “juice head”

boyfriend. Moynihan’s appropriation of the most remarkable elements of Polizzi’s style and

ongoing motivation highlights the manufactured quality of Polizzi’s Guidette persona. In another

well-known representation of the cast members, from the late-night comedy program Jimmy

Kimmel Live, comedian Kimmel underscores the artificiality of Guido culture by setting guests

Polizzi, DelVecchio, and Sorrentino in a staged scene from a Christmas pageant. The naturalistic

desert backdrop contrasts with the faux tans and conspicuously muscled forms of the

housemates, underscoring the artifice involved in their representation of Italian-American

identity.

A final parody depends upon the ambivalent potential for signification coded in

Sorrentino’s nickname. Sorrentino is known for compulsively exercising his abdominal muscles

as part of his personal quest “to look like Rambo with his shirt off.” His toned midriff, which he

refers to as “The Situation,” has become, largely at his own urging, a synecdoche for Sorrentino

himself. In a popular YouTube cartoon in which Sorrentino makes a guest appearance on the

show of CNN host and political analyst Wolf Blitzer, Sorrentino’s nickname confuses Blitzer,

who remains uninitiated into the nicknaming practices popularized on Jersey Shore, i.e., the fact

that receiving a Guido moniker may be the last step in assuming a Guido identity. Bli tzer and

31

The term “Joey” is sometimes understood to be a second-generation synonym for Guido. See Tricarico, “Guidos

on MTV: Tangled up in the Feedback Loop,” in Guido: Italian/American Youth and Identity Politics, eds. Letizia

Airos and Ottorino Cappelli (New York: Bordighera Press. 2011), 109. 32

Gardaphé, “Dialogue and Debate,” 77. 33

Cornell and Hartmann, Ethnicity and Race, 87. On the use of satirical irony in ethnic autobiographies, see Michael

M. J. Fischer, “Ethnicity and the Post-Modern Arts of Memory,” in Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of

Ethnography, eds. James Clifford and George E. Marcus (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 194-233.

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Sorrentino talk past one another as Sorrentino speaks about himself while Blitzer believes he is

participating in a conversation about his own news program, The Situation Room. The focus on

Sorrentino’s muscular figure highlights the fact that the defining feature of his Guido persona is

an acquired characteristic, underscoring the connotative nature of traits that might otherwise

seem inherent in Guido culture. Parodies of the housemates illustrate that what is necessary for

the cast members of Jersey Shore to be recognizable as Guidos and Guidettes is a crude set of

attributes that are not inborn traits of Italian Americans.

Numerous cinematic references on Jersey Shore demonstrate that the Guido identities of

the housemates are predicated on exteriority. For instance, the cast members frequently fashion

their Guido personas from filmic representations of Italian Americans as mafiosi. Like

contemporary practitioners of “hip-wop,” a style of (traditionally African American) rap music

that has been appropriated by Italian Americans, the Guidos and Guidettes on the series forge

their identities from the image of the Italian American gangster. Similar to the hip-wop artists

studied by Joseph Sciorra, relying on the figure of the mafioso enables Guidos and Guidettes on

Jersey Shore to develop and express an identity grounded in tropes that have come to be

associated with Italian American culture. 34

Like Italian American movie gangsters, the housemates use the word “rat” to designate

informers and other members of their community whom they perceive to betray the interests of

the group. 35

On Jersey Shore, Sorrentino and DelVecchio agree that Guadagnino “talks about

[Sorrentino] behind [his] back, like a rat.” 36

Guadagnino’s corresponding punishment is to have

smelly cheese hidden under his bed by Sorrentino and DelVecchio because “rats eat cheese.” 37

Sorrentino and DelVecchio also use the expression against Pivarnick, whom they call a “white

rat” to draw attention to the fact that her pale skin betrays the Guido and Guidette identity of the

tanning-obsessed housemates. 38

Polizzi redeploys the nickname to argue that Pivarnick does not

belong among the other members of the cast. “You don’t deserve to be here, Angelina . [. . .]

You’re a fucking white rat and you’re fucking pale and you’re nasty.” 39

In refusing to engage in

the tanning practice that characterizes the larger Guido community with which she identifies

herself, Pivarnick fails to play her role in the housemates’ collective enactment of Guido culture.

The performance of guidità on Jersey Shore resembles displays of bella figura during the Italian

ritual of the passeggiata or evening stroll in which successful cultural representation is “seen as

an indicator of moral character. […] Good performance is interpreted as a sign of integrity and

bad performance is seen as an indicator of dishonesty or disrespect for the community.” 40

34

Joseph Sciorra, “The Mediascape of Hip-Wop: Alterity and Authenticity in Italian American Rap,” in Global

Media, Culture, and Identity: Theory, Cases, and Approaches, eds. Rohit Chopra and Radhika Gajjala (New York:

Routledge, 2011), 33-51. 35

The term is explicitly linked with Italian American mafiosi in cinematic works like Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974

film The Godfather: Part II (dir. Francis Ford Coppola, Paramount, 2005) in which the Godfather, Michael

Corleone (Al Pacino), disowns and then disposes of older brother Fredo Corleone (John Cazale), who objects to

being sent off to “take care of some Mickey Mouse nightclub,” for thoughtlessly ratting out Michael’s location to

would-be hit men; and Martin Scorsese’s 1990 film Goodfellas (Warner Bros.), in which veteran mafioso Jimmy Conway (Robert De Niro) advises newcomer Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) that one key to success as a wiseguy is “never

[to] rat on your friends.” 36

“One Shot,” Jersey Shore, MTV Networks, January 14, 2010. 37

Ibid. 38

“Goin’ South,” Jersey Shore, MTV Network, July 29, 2010. 39

Ibid. 40

Giovanna P. Del Negro, The Passeggiata and Popular Culture in an Italian Town: Folklore and the Performance

of Modernity (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2004), 61-62.

9

According to Polizzi, for whom aesthetic display seems tied to broader cultural values,

Pivarnick’s appearance reflects poorly on the entire Shore cast. Polizzi’s comments also suggest

gender divisions that may characterize Guido culture. Like Pivarnick, Guadagnino seldom

appears to go tanning. However, he receives no negative attention from the housemates as a

result. In this case, Guidettes seem to bear a greater responsibility with respect to the aesthetic

performance of Guido identity. The detour through cinematic codes that identify Guadagnino

and Pivarnick as traitors and betrayers of Guido and Guidette identity frames the housemates

who would rectify their transgressions as characters from movies.

Once aligned with film personalities, housemates may react to a given set of

circumstances in a manner befitting their cinematic doubles. Websites like jerseyshoreslang.com

track the use of phrases the cast members borrow from movies. The site redefines the

terminology according to its deployment in Jersey Shore. For instance, it categorizes the epithet

“Stage 5 Clinger,” which DelVecchio employs to describe a young woman who pursues him

throughout most of the first season, as “a chick who, after hangin[g] out with her once and

diggin[g] her, you keep running into on the boardwalk when you are macking on [(hitting on)]

other chicks. She might even go so far as to make you a [T -]shirt to remember her by, and call

your house repeatedly after she told you she wouldn’t.” The expression does not originate with

DelVecchio, however. Rather, like many of the phrases the male cast members use to disparage

the women they date, it can be traced to David Dobkin’s 2005 movie Wedding Crashers. In this

film, Vince Vaughn’s character, Jeremy Grey, hopes to avoid Isla Fisher’s sexually predatory

character, Gloria Cleary, who is accused of having formed an especially strong bond with Grey

as the result of her sexual inexperience. When he realizes Cleary is homing in on his location,

Grey exclaims “I got to get outta here, pronto. I got a stage five clinger —stage five, virgin,

clinger.” 41

After identifying with Grey, DelVecchio associates the woman pursuing him with

Cleary. Like Grey, DelVecchio works to evade his Cleary-equivalent. The intertextuality of

Jersey Shore suggests that the Guido and Guidette identities it depicts precede their

representation on the series. The fact that the meaning of the texts and contexts that codify Jersey

Shore is so often influenced by other works calls into question the idea that an underlying Italian -

American identity can exist prior to representations in which the performance of Italian -

American culture enacted by the cast of Jersey Shore seems always already expected.

In addition to the cinematic texts referenced in the series, many of the settings featured on

Jersey Shore operate in a similarly discursive fashion to project an Italian-American identity

onto the housemates. Like the urban Italian-American neighborhoods that feature prominently in

hip-wop music videos and certify hip-wop performers as legitimate representatives of Italian-

American culture, 42

Italian-American geographic citations on Jersey Shore operate to ground

Italian-American identity in specific locations. The series characterizes Seaside Heights, where a

majority of the program takes place, as an Italian-American territory. Residential neighborhoods

in Seaside Heights are shown to contain garage doors painted the colors of the Italian flag, and

the establishing shots omit most businesses that do not bear nominal relationships to Italian -

American culture. As a result, Jersey Shore codes Seaside Heights, and other New Jersey

locations such as Toms River, Neptune, and Atlantic City, and by extension, the larger state of

New Jersey, as Italian American. Living in New Jersey enables the Guido and Guidette

housemates to negotiate their place in a regionalist subculture whose imperatives of authenticity

41

Wedding Crashers, dir. David Dobkin, New Line Cinema, 2006. 42

Sciorra, “The Mediascape of Hip-Wop,” 41.

10

are tied to residence in a long-standing home of many members of the minority Italian-American

community.

The mise-en-scène of their home in Seaside Heights also links the housemates with

Italian-American identity. The residence is decorated with Italian-American icons, such as green,

white, and red tricolor decals and posters featuring Italian-American movie-actor Al Pacino. As

these examples suggest, settings on the show often signify Italian-American identity in relation

to films with Italian-American themes, for instance when the housemates are seen aboard a yacht

named the “Forgetabowdit,” a nautical play-on-words (the forward end of a boat is called a

“bow”) based on a line frequently repeated by mafiosi in Mike Newell’s 1997 movie Donnie

Brasco. In this example, an Italian-American text codes a setting in which the cast members,

through association with the subject matter of the film, may be read as Italian American.

Not only does Jersey Shore provide viewers with examples that the location of the cast

members—not the housemates themselves—is what often supplies their apparent Italian-

American identities; it also demonstrates that the core definition of the cast members is

threatened by suggestions that they are not from the state of New Jersey, which Jersey Shore

represents as a central site of Italian-American culture. Although merely two of the original cast

members, Sorrentino and Giancola, have lived most of their lives in New Jersey, almost all of the

housemates react defensively to comments that link them with other settings. Throughout the

first season, DelVecchio and Polizzi become angry with fellow bar patrons and strollers along

the boardwalk who reproach the housemates by urging them to return to New York (DelVecchio

is from Johnston, Rhode Island, but Polizzi was raised in Poughkeepsie, New York). When a

heckler correctly identifies Ortiz-Magro, who is from the Bronx, as a native of New York (after

first guessing that Ortiz-Magro is maybe from Manhattan or Brooklyn, he yells for him to “go

home to Staten Island!”), Ortiz-Magro responds with a reflexive punch that lands him in jail for

assault. 43

The housemates also use place-based labels as slurs against one another. The fact that

few of the cast members grew up in New Jersey furnishes ammunition with which to disparage

one another during disagreements. When the housemates learn that Pivarnick, who is from New

York, will rejoin the cast for a second season after departing midway through Season 1, they

ridicule her as “Staten Island Angelina.” 44

In retribution for her having called his on-again off-

again girlfriend Giancola a bitch, Ortiz-Magro tells Polizzi “you’re a fucking loser from

Poughkeepsie.” 45

Disambiguating the insult, Giancola adds: “You were fake as fuck.” 46

The

cultural credibility of the cast members depends upon their location in spaces coded as Italian

American.

Given the environmentally contingent nature of Guido and Guidette culture, departures

from Italian-American territories threaten to undermine the Guido and Guidette identities of the

cast. The second and fourth seasons of Jersey Shore take place in Miami, Florida, and Florence,

Italy. The alternate locations enabled the cast to escape the cold Northeastern winters that

corresponded with filming. During Season 2, an existentialist episode entitled “Not So Shore”

witnesses the housemates’ grappling with a search for meaning in the face of boredom, personal

uncertainty, and disorienting homesickness in Florida.

43 “Boardwalk Blowups,” January 7, 2010. 44 “Goin’ South,” July 29, 2010. 45

“Back to the Shore,” Jersey Shore, MTV Networks, January 6, 2011. 46

Ibid.

11

These feelings are compounded in Season 4, when the cast relocates to Florence and

learns that many of the practices that constitute its Guido and Guidette Italian-American culture,

in particular frequent gym exercise and tanning, are difficult to replicate in Italy and are often

incompatible with Italian society. A self-diagnosed “tanorexic,” DelVecchio laments, “we’re

losing our tan; we ain’t been to the gym.” 47

He calls these “Guido and Guidette problems,” and

confesses, “I’m embarrassed to leave the house this pale.” 48

Cortese, concerned about

maintaining her acrylic nails, a grooming practice not popular in Italy at this time, echoes the

sentiment: “I have no nails on, we’re so pale, I’m all fucked up.” 49

Polizzi’s wellbeing is similarly compromised as the result of moving to Italy. In the ninth

episode of the season, she not only regrets the inability to practice the attributes she identifies

with Guido and Guidette culture, she also explains that if only she were able to replicate them, in

particular visiting Karma, a club the cast frequents in Seaside Heights, then she might be able t o

cure the depression she is experiencing after a (temporary) breakup with her boyfriend Jionni

LaValle. After LaValle leaves her in Florence, Polizzi says, “This isn’t me. I can’t be in Italy

anymore. I need to get nails done (sic), and I need to shop, and get fucking Jersey attire, and I

just need to go to Karma. I swear to God, if I went to Karma tonight, I would feel fine.” 50

In

order to curb her depression, Polizzi puts on her “best Jersey outfit” and, with the help of

DelVecchio, who has his Italian-flag-emblazoned DJ equipment with him in Italy, recreates club

Karma in their Florence apartment. Rather than the return of her love object, what makes Polizzi

feel like “herself” is the recreated landscape where the practices associated with Guido and

Guidette culture are possible. To remedy Polizzi’s depression, it is necessary to remediate her

displacement from New Jersey.

The double meaning of the title of the tenth episode of Season 4 symbolizes the location -

contingent wellbeing of the entire cast. “Situation Problems,” as the episode is called, signifies

both the loss of Sorrentino’s trademark abs, because the distance of his gym in Florence makes

frequent workouts less feasible, and also the extent to which the Italian rather than Italian -

American setting in which the housemates are located frustrates the maintenance of their Guido

and Guidette lifestyles. The decadence that the cast members experience in Florida and Italy, a

symptom of their departure from New Jersey, confirms that their Guido identiti es are the

products of Italian-American environments.

The stereotyping of Italian Americans on Jersey Shore suggests that Italian-American

culture is not necessarily the product of Italian Americans; it may be constructed through

reference to texts and contexts that enable the cast to be coded and read as symbols of Italian-

American identity. The fact that few of the housemates who call themselves Guidos and

Guidettes claim full Italian heritage, coupled with on-show tutorials and transformations of

Italian-Canadian actor Michael Cera and the Italian-American cast members into Guido and

ultimate-Guido personalities, demonstrates that even those with Italian ancestry may

nevertheless adopt, rather than inherit, their Guido attributes.

On Jersey Shore, Guido culture is the result of constant negotiations. It is the contingent

product of continuing interactions between given representations of Italian Americans, as

understood by members of the Italian-American community as well as cultural outsiders, and the

actions of the Guido and Guidette housemates. Similar to some forms of Italian -American

47

“Hurricane Situation,” Jersey Shore, MTV Networks, January 5, 2012. 48

“Situation Problems,” Jersey Shore, MTV Networks, October 13, 2011. 49

Ibid. 50

“Three Men and a Snooki,” Jersey Shore, MTV Networks, September 29, 2011.

12

performance art in relation to Italian-American culture, the staging of ultimate-Guido identity on

Jersey Shore exposes the socially constructed nature of practices and attributes associated with

Guido culture and offers grounds for questioning assumptions undergirding absolute notions of

Italian-American identity. 51

The masquerade of Guido culture by both non-Italian Americans and heritage members

of the Italian-American community suggests that Italian-American identity is open to

appropriation by actors with the savvy to emulate the stylistic and behavioral cues associated

with Italian-American culture. The apparent Italian-Americanness of the Guido and Guidette

housemates—precisely what is so troubling for Italian-American leaders about the series—is not

based on essential traits. Instead, Jersey Shore demonstrates that, as with all peer-group societies,

the Italian-American culture of the cast is predicated on exteriority. This is illustrated when the

housemates depend upon such variables as cinematic codes and environmental factors to define

their Italian-American identity.

Symbols of Italian-American culture, which operate as metonymic supports for the

Italian-American identity of the housemates and enable viewers to identify the Guidos and

Guidettes on the series with Italian-American ethnicity, point to the logical fallacy inherent in

notions of a stable and contained Italian-American identity. Viewer (mis)recognition of the

Shore cast as Italian American is shown to result from semiotic displacement onto de -centering

symbols that are necessarily external to the cultural ethos that they signify. While the portrayal of

Italian Americans as Guidos and Guidettes on Jersey Shore may encourage MTV viewers to

understand Italian Americans in terms of reductive stereotypes, the construction of Guido culture

on the series can also be useful for undermining stable definitions of Italian-American identity.

As the history of migration and outsider status become increasingly distant memories for

a majority of Italian Americans, we may be nearing a point, as Ferraro suggests, when most

Italian Americans make sense of their heritage primarily through media representations. 52

It

remains to be seen what role the conspicuous performance of Guido stereotypes in programs like

Jersey Shore will play in ongoing formations of Italian-American culture.

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Filmography

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Goodfellas. Dir. Martin Scorsese. Warner Bros., 1990.

Wedding Crashers. Dir. David Dobkin. New Line Cinema, 2006.