"The New Yorker" On MTV's "Jersey Shore"

I've never watched the MTV reality show Jersey Shore, which premiered last month. But because it's attained a certain kind of general notoriety, I certainly know "of" it. The current issue of The New Yorker has a review of the show. You can probably predict, without reading a sentence, exactly what The New Yorker's take will be on a reality show about muscle bound 20-somethings from a "scruffy resort town" in New Jersey. ("Unless the show manages to make us feel as though we were anthropologists secretly observing a new tribe through a break in the trees, it hasn’t done its job. MTV has succeeded on that score.")

But this review is interesting nonetheless, in a "culture clash" sort of way, including an unnecessarily polysyllabic, existential analysis of the meaning of one kid's nickname ("The Situation"), that reads like they're handling the task disdainfully, almost with tweezers. ("Mike has synecdochically enlarged that concept to denote his entire being.") You can read it HERE.