Jersey Shore: The Situation Gets Out of Hand
There is much hatred for the eight guidos on Jersey Shore, the most important sociological experiment of our time, but even people who love the guidos and even the guidos themselves hate The Situation. He is the black sheep of the black sheep, and he will be his own destruction.
But before we can get to the turning tide against against our alpha male, we need to discuss a few things. First Snooki is "working things out" with her man, the awful Jionni, who I sort of hate. At least this time he was honest and told her that he was hurt that she went all Captain Ahab on Vinny's Moby Dick but that he still loved her and would try to work through it. That was sweet. We need to know all this because they're going to be together in Seaside for season five (foreshadowing!) so it's best to set up the dynamic now.
Alright, let us discuss the vocabulary of the guido.
- Communion Suits: The term for what a guido wears to the club when it's not his standard garb of a busy T-shirt, a pair of baggy jeans, and sneakers. The name doesn't come from what they wore to their first communion, which is the first time any of them were forced to dress up. They are so convinced that they will have sexual congress with a woman—or communion—in this uniform that they named it after the act.
- Blanco Beach Bar: One of the many strangely named clubs in Florence, Blanco Beach Bar does have bars and it does have white people, but it does not have a beach. It pretends it does, however. So strange.
- Mom Mode: This is a behavioral pattern found in the guidette who thinks that she needs to care for the randier, sloppier guidettes in her little tribe. She wants to keep them from exposing their breasts and vaginas while dancing in the club. But, due to the parenting most of them received, they stay attentive for about 15 minutes before getting fed up and wandering off to get drunk and hit on guys, just look good old mom.
- Mangia: This is the word that our Jersey guidos yell at the Italians when they want to incite them to fight. Basically, it's the only word in Italian any of them know, so they just yell it at the top of their lungs so that the Italians will understand them. They they make chomping noises like saying they are going to eat their opponents is intimidating. It's not.
Now the we can decipher their ramblings, let's take a look at just why everyone hates The Situation.
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The thing about The Situation's path from alpha dog to house villain is that it can't be traced to one incident, but rather a pattern of behavior that the guidos are sick of. Mostly it's because he is, in psychological terms, a dick. Yes, The Situation is a dick. He's always stirring up drama for no reason, causing fights, showing off his empty bravado, stealing other guys' girls, being a slob, and insulting everyone. The thing is the lower he sinks in their estimation, the more he tries to get back on top, but he does this by belitting them, and the more he belittles them, the more and more he shrinks.
Here he is in a fight with Deena, who he confronted because he said she doesn't clean. She was hungover (at 6pm, which is always a dangerous proposition) so her throwing a spatula at him was probably a harsher reaction than the situation (ha!) really deserved. But no one defends Sitch. No one tells her to calm down. They're all just like "Yeah, he's a dick." DJ Paulie Disgusting and Vinny didn't even tell him that they just cleaned their hair clippers with his toothbrush before he used it (gross!), why are they going to say anything now about Deena?
Later at dinner, Vinny mentions that when they're back in Seaside, he wants to have his room with DJ Paulie Double Bed and it starts a fight. Our tribe is now having fights about things that haven't even happened yet—they are officially in a long-term relationship. The gist of the fight isn't really about Vinny's room though, it's about the fact that no one wants to room with Sitch, so if Vinny and DJ Paulie Doubled Up won't do it, then someone else has to bite the bullet.
Oh, sad, sad Situation. Later in the club, he starts another kerfuffle (his third in this little hour-long dispatch) and when he goes to fight the guy, he realizes that no one has has back. That's when he goes home alone, to mope and wallow. He comforts himself by saying that he's the villain because no one else will be. The Situation is so insecure that he always needs to overstate his purpose in order to make himself feel better. He's not a villain, he's just a dick. The house does not need a villain or a dick, and if you don't change, they're going to drum you out of the house, multimillion dollar contract or no. So, how about treating everyone like human beings and stop being such a selfish, immature jerk who always feels the need to prove his tentative and ever-slipping dominance? Just a thought.
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It's not just the people in the house that hate The Situation, it seems like it's all of Italy. OK, in fairness, it seems like all of the guidos are equally hated by the denizens of their host country. The Italian public got a chance to see our subject's initial experiments right before they were relocated to Italy, and, well, they don't think this is as sociologically important as the rest of us do. In fact, they find our subjects to be quite disgraceful, and they're attacking them in public.
Most of the guidos would just shrug off their haters (unless they are getting physical). They're used to being called names and ridiculed by the mainstream, and this is no different. However, The Situation's ego is so fragile that he can't take the insults and the hurt he feels turns itself around into rage and he lashes out at the public for exposing his many, many faults. It's a complicated inversion, further complicated by the fact that he only lashes out when he knows that his crew and bouncers are around from keeping him from really getting in a fight. As we saw before, he'd rather bash his skull into a wall then have an actual fight.
This instance at Toice (which is pronounced "twice" which is also, I imagine, how many times Sitch has convinced a woman to pee on him sexually) is interesting in the way it went down. The guidos are basically stranded on the banquettes by an angry mob. This would never happen in Seaside because all the other guidos there won't attack them just for being who they are. Sure they'll throw a punch if one of the crew gets out of line, but they won't just hate them because of their looks, clothes, and behavior. That did happen in Miami, but there it was disorganized. Usually it was one loudmouth shouting insults and maybe trying to start a little rumble on his own.
Due to their propensity for soccer games and large mass rumbles, Italians have one up on their American counterparts. They immediately see another group of men, a rival team if you will, and band together to banish them. They start chanting a slogan, just as they would cheering their local heroes on the field, or, more likely, jeering their opponents. The bouncers know that this mass of men acting with a singularity is incredibly dangerous and, of course, side with the mob and remove the guidos from the club, eliminating the danger.
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After their incident with the villagers carrying torches and pitchforks at Toice (which is, I imagine, the number of the number of times Vinny has convinced DJ Paulie Dick to bottom) everyone decides to go home. Well, except for Deena and Snooki, who have been drinking since dancing on the bar at a restaurant at 11am. They go to Central Park—the club, not the place with the horse-drawn carriages and Scandinavian tourists—where they are also harassed.
OK, I don't care who you are or where you are, but if there are two girls dancing in a bunch of men make a circle around them and start making unwanted advances, that's scary. That's just something bad waiting to happen. It's really one pinball machine away from The Accused, so Snooki and Deena were right to get the hell out of there.
They go to the bar, but even the staff of the club has it out for them, and one of the bartenders, unprovoked, throws ice at them. What a dick move. Is this guy Le Situazione or something? Snooki has the proper reaction and she pushes down the bottles of alcohol lining his bar, leaving some of them broken on the floor and some just clanging around, spilling their juices all over his feet. They are immediately scooped up like a pair of meatballs about to be put into a hoagie and shown the door. But at least they got their revenge. I'm not for wonton public destruction (which is wrecking Chinese noodles where everyone can see) but this guy had it coming.
But the girls didn't go home and go to bed. Fueled by a vodka and vitriol cocktail they stay up all night, splashing in the hot tub, smoking on the porch, and generally annoying their housemates. Then they decide to dress like hookers at 7am and hit the town again, finding the only brunch venue open that will serve them booze. They sit down for a very intellectual conversation where Snooki says, "We're living our lives right now." And Deena responded, "I'm dying," and immediately planted her forehead loudly on the table, sound asleep. Snooki stroked her hair and tried to figure out how many cocktails she could have before she was too sloppy to carry Deena home.
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But Deena was so happy with her head there on that table because she got to spend the whole day with her true love, Snooki. Yes, as we have established, Deena is a lesbian. That's why she's always making out with girls and convincing young American tourinista (is that what you call a fashionable girl on vacation?) to do the Jersey Turnpike on her at restaurants at 11 in the morning, much to the chagrin of her parents. The strange thing with Deena's lesbianism is that, while the house knows what she likes, she doesn't want to admit it to them. In a strange sort of overcompensation, She keeps talking about how much she misses penis. The always understanding Sammi says, "Well, you've had vagina!" trying to tease the truth out of her, but Deena doesn't bite. She just shrugs it off and changes the subject.
How else is she going to convince everyone that she is straight? By having sex with a man! But not just any man, one of their roommates! Then everyone will see just how straight she is. She has once again focused on DJ Paulie Deliberate as her target to "do sex." A keen commenter implored me to look at the way Deena says this. It's not "have sex," it's "do sex," like it's some kind of chore or something. Like it's an activity that is inflicted upon her against her will.
DJ Paulie Disgusted has no interest in hooking up with Deena. It has nothing to do with how she looks. We've seen him hook up with way nastier girls in the past. He doesn't care that she's sitting there on the floor looking like a tarted up Strega Nona. What he minds is that she is not authentic. He doesn't want to smoosh with a lesbian. I mean, that's just natural. It has been scientifically proven that the worst blowjobs are the ones that are given by people whose heart isn't in it. No matter how good of a fuck Deena says she is, DJ Paulie Discerning knows better.
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While Deena is actually a lesbian pretending to be straight, DJ Paulie DP and Vinny are straight guys pretending to be gay. They say that they're in love, and I don't doubt it. These two are best friends in the same way that JWOWW and Snooki are, hanging out with each other, having wacky escapades, and backing each other in fights. They say that they have a bromance and that they "get it in" too.
This is, of course, bullshit. We know that guidos don't fuck people that they're really in love with. They only want to have sex with completely inconsequential people they pick up in bars. Therefore, the fact that Vinny and DJ Paulie Duplicitous are actually in love proves that they aren't sexually involved with each other. But, if they were, it would make sense that Vinny was the bottom. There's no way DJ Paulie is taking all that D.
The funniest thing about this exchange is that we learn that Deena and Snooki both want to watch. Deena wants to see because she hopes that there are other homosexuals in her midst, so that she too might be able to come out of the closet. Snooki wants to see it because she thinks it would be a turn on to see two guys going at it. Just as she makes out with other girls to turn on guys, she thinks that seeing two guys doing the same thing would turn her on. I don't know if it would, but it would certainly turn me on.
Though the thought of them doing it makes her horny, Snooki leaves the room disappointed, and Vinny and DJPD turn off the lights and they wait in their individual beds pretending to sleep as they listen to the rest of the house settle into stillness. They lie there, listening to the springs creak in each other's beds as they shift around, wating. When everything is finally still and the house completely quiet except for the sound of Ronnie's very audible slumber, Vinny gets out of his bed and heads for the patio, ducking his head through the little door and entering out into the night, glaring up at the little square of sky above the courtyard dancing with a million little spots of light like a disco ball twirling in an empty nigthclub. He hears a noise and turns around.
He catches DJ Paulie Discrete stepping out and Vinny gives an involuntary smile and bows his head a little bit, like he's embarrassed to keep watching. Paulie walks up until he's just inches away. "Hey," he says. "Hey," Vinny says, taking a step forward, his cocked index finger brushing up against Paulie's knuckles. Paulie takes a look over his shoulder, his blowout whizzing right past Vinny's face and almost making prickly contact. He whips his head back around and plants his lips firmly on Vinny's, who pushes back at him. It's a strong embrace, a masculine conjuction. They press their bodies together, kissing hard, each wanting to be the aggressor—their chests rubbing and lips twisting, their jeans rubbing together at their ever hardening crotches. Finally Paulie gets the upper hand and pushes his body forward as Vinny bends a bit backward to accommodate him, never breaking contact. Paulie lifts him up into the air and takes a few steps forward. Vinny's feet aren't even touching the ground as he looks down at his lover and lets out a little smile. He's so happy to be there, with someone who understands him. Someone just like him. Someone whose love is just his. This is their intimacy, their privacy. The one thing they don't share.
Paulie puts Vinny down on the couch and gets between his legs, kissing him once again. Paulie assumes the assertive position, though they're both still clothed. Vinny reaches through his legs and pulls Paulie closer by his belt buckle, and then slides his hand down over the warm, coarse denim. He brings both hands up near Paulie's ears and moves to brush his hands backward across his scull. But Paulie intercepts, removing one of his hands and moving in closer to Vinny's ear. He bites the lobe firmly but playfully, pulling on it before he releases and whispers, "Don't touch the hair, bro."