CAST OF CHARACTERS
Adam, a 26-year-old poet in training at the famous Iowa Writers' Workshop
Vinny, a young philosopher and humorist
Pauly D, a DJ and GTL-er
Snooki, a likeable underdog figure
The Situation, a lover of women
Ronnie & Sammi, a couple
JWOWW, a close companion of Snooki
SETTING
United States of America, August 2010
THE SET UP
Adam finds himself, to his surprise, addicted to the MTV "reality" television show Jersey Shore. Scampering to your computer screen—in broad daylight, in twilight, in midnight—he vies, acrobatically, for your attention...
Introduction
I will be writing about my personal relationship with the characters on Jersey Shore.
I am writing about these characters because I like them, and because they remain human in spite or maybe even because of their participating in late capitalism.
In this sense Jersey Shore is the forefront of the anti-capitalist struggle.
This is to say, they are the forefront of the struggle in me. Because they infect me with the spirit of capital, which I grew up on, which feels like a good addiction. I am interested in what these characters do to my body.
I am writing about these characters because I like them, and because they remain human in spite or maybe even because of their participating in late capitalism.
In this sense Jersey Shore is the forefront of the anti-capitalist struggle.
This is to say, they are the forefront of the struggle in me. Because they infect me with the spirit of capital, which I grew up on, which feels like a good addiction. I am interested in what these characters do to my body.
Some Definitions Of Capital
To accumulate and hold on to. Finance capital; cultural capital.
The characters on Jersey Shore are examples of people infected by capital.
I, and you, and me; we are all infected by capital.
The characters on Jersey Shore are examples of people infected by capital.
I, and you, and me; we are all infected by capital.
Eyebrows
Vinny reminds me of my student Ruben. I like him. They both do this thing with their eyebrows.
Product
I am composed of all the hair products I've ever used,
of the hair products I remember.
It is my childhood I remember, when I see you.
You hide in the corners of shelves;
you bring me back to myself.
When I am lost, I become rooted in you,
Pert Plus Shampoo.
And when I watch television, I am even more rooted.
I grew up on you. You remind me that I am human.
Jersey Shore makes me feel, in my chest and in my body, like I am human.
Product 2
What happens when, as people, we identify with (have our identity made up by) products?
If they are commodities, manufactured by large corporations, and if we do not know the labor practices of these corporations (the materials they use, how they secure them, what kinds of wages and benefits their workers receive), if we do not understand them...
then our identity is as much theirs as it is ours.
Then again, I can't say that Pauly isn't Pauly.
Cause even with your silly name,
(made by MTV, it is, your name!)
and your desire to look mas-cu-lain,
(those muscles and hookups all over your brain!)
and your sameness to others (again & again!)
I now know you, and know that you are different,
more than even your product you are different.
Because you sigh and desire to be good like the others,
in your particular way you sigh and give way to the others.
You are like a boy.
In your hair we find the answer to you,
but if we ask ourselves we know it's not the hair that makes it you
it's something single that you do.
It's the who that Pauly learns
and can't undo.
But Pauly, D.ear,
they have you!! through and through.
(Feel free to include that me inside of you.)
Because even with me, there's my Klean Kanteen
(which when representing me, my students drew)
that I carry and advertise for unintentionally,
like you I carry around commodities
and am no better.
Lest you think I am better than you,
I am no better.
If they are commodities, manufactured by large corporations, and if we do not know the labor practices of these corporations (the materials they use, how they secure them, what kinds of wages and benefits their workers receive), if we do not understand them...
then our identity is as much theirs as it is ours.
Then again, I can't say that Pauly isn't Pauly.
Cause even with your silly name,
(made by MTV, it is, your name!)
and your desire to look mas-cu-lain,
(those muscles and hookups all over your brain!)
and your sameness to others (again & again!)
I now know you, and know that you are different,
more than even your product you are different.
Because you sigh and desire to be good like the others,
in your particular way you sigh and give way to the others.
You are like a boy.
In your hair we find the answer to you,
but if we ask ourselves we know it's not the hair that makes it you
it's something single that you do.
It's the who that Pauly learns
and can't undo.
But Pauly, D.ear,
they have you!! through and through.
(Feel free to include that me inside of you.)
Because even with me, there's my Klean Kanteen
(which when representing me, my students drew)
that I carry and advertise for unintentionally,
like you I carry around commodities
and am no better.
Lest you think I am better than you,
I am no better.
Snooki
I am in love with Snooki.
She is loud; the underdog; short and full-figured; and I am a sucker for the Snooki in any leftist or capitalist woman.
I want to change her, to reach in and grab the capital up out of her.
But I also want her to take advantage of me when she is drunk,
to lay in beds with dozy drinks
and bend each other over sinks.
O I would be a kinky queer for Miss Snooki Dear
letting her bend me over the sink!
That is the relation I have with capital.
We take turns: I wield
and am wielded,
and I know that I am sick!
I keep coming back to capital, because it is nice
to hold on to things.
Because we die, and I want to hold on to things.
She is loud; the underdog; short and full-figured; and I am a sucker for the Snooki in any leftist or capitalist woman.
I want to change her, to reach in and grab the capital up out of her.
But I also want her to take advantage of me when she is drunk,
to lay in beds with dozy drinks
and bend each other over sinks.
O I would be a kinky queer for Miss Snooki Dear
letting her bend me over the sink!
That is the relation I have with capital.
We take turns: I wield
and am wielded,
and I know that I am sick!
I keep coming back to capital, because it is nice
to hold on to things.
Because we die, and I want to hold on to things.
Snooki 2
I want to hold on to Snooki; in my bed I lay thinking of her and how I can conspire the universe to deliver us together.
I want to buy things for her
to be bossed by her
doted by her
and hire a maid together in our fancy home.
I want to eat ice cream and never have to worry.
I like to drink,
maybe I will drink again.
I am a lion in my loins, Snooki,
You make me not care that I am a poet. This is a fantasy,
something I barely write,
and yet it is true that you enter my body in this way, momentarily,
that you make me want to drink and fuck and spend
all day with you. Tho
surely, in Iowa,
I pass you everyday and we do not even see each other.
You are everywhere,
in the tans and sunglasses and makeup they buy
(in the guy I am, and the making them buy)
(or it's no one at all who's making us buy)
...
You are everywhere and I am with you.
Snooki 3
I am interested in the way you infect me,
in the way you connect with something I am fighting deep within me.
I remember, in college, "hooking up"
(I am not so old that I can condemn you,
it is not in my interest to condemn you.)
and I remember doing worse than that....
(I am not so young that I can excuse you, or go along with you,
for it is me and you who are destroying the world within you.)
O it is indirect, my love,
but we are destroying our world, it is true.
MTV is destroying our world,
but only as an emanation of capital.
MTV is a juggernaut of capital,
one of many juggernauts...
Do not confuse the vessel with the disease!
Though MTV produces culture,
destroys culture (takes up market space, pushing out other cultures),
produces young people
and destroys them.
It does not destroy people,
only the people within people,
replacing it with its own version of people.
Is this still people?
Of course it is still people!
It is the creation of new people.
in the way you connect with something I am fighting deep within me.
I remember, in college, "hooking up"
(I am not so old that I can condemn you,
it is not in my interest to condemn you.)
and I remember doing worse than that....
(I am not so young that I can excuse you, or go along with you,
for it is me and you who are destroying the world within you.)
O it is indirect, my love,
but we are destroying our world, it is true.
MTV is destroying our world,
but only as an emanation of capital.
MTV is a juggernaut of capital,
one of many juggernauts...
Do not confuse the vessel with the disease!
Though MTV produces culture,
destroys culture (takes up market space, pushing out other cultures),
produces young people
and destroys them.
It does not destroy people,
only the people within people,
replacing it with its own version of people.
Is this still people?
Of course it is still people!
It is the creation of new people.
Haters
Here is a poem I wrote last spring. I did not know the show, yet; I did not know the people. I was very judgmental!
it was a perfect coup
nothing happened
the girl on Jersey Shore was drunk and eating ham
the artists were commenting on her on facebook
we were having fun
the world changes in a different oven
he's left the page
did you hear the page left him?
so a new idea walks into the room
"I feel as an activist I need to know how these systems work, what their justifications are, but then I find myself using their language"
what if there is another infection
the horizon landed burnt
"I like it because it's almost slipped into my drink, as opposed to being slapped across my face like some ideology"
"but it's more like ideology to be slipped into your drink"
today we bombed homes
*
*
*
it was a perfect coup
nothing happened
the girl on Jersey Shore was drunk and eating ham
the artists were commenting on her on facebook
we were having fun
the world changes in a different oven
he's left the page
did you hear the page left him?
so a new idea walks into the room
"I feel as an activist I need to know how these systems work, what their justifications are, but then I find myself using their language"
what if there is another infection
the horizon landed burnt
"I like it because it's almost slipped into my drink, as opposed to being slapped across my face like some ideology"
"but it's more like ideology to be slipped into your drink"
today we bombed homes
*
*
*
Haters 2
Don't hate the player, hate the game!
(I hate the game; I love you Pauly)
You do you, I do me.
(I will do me; I will do me...)
It's unrealistic to make things change...
(I hate the game; I love you Pauly)
You do you, I do me.
(I will do me; I will do me...)
It's unrealistic to make things change...
The Situation
Many people blame Jersey Shore for capitalism,
that people have turned material into people.
They protest (too much!):
Where did culture go? O woe is me!! This junk
is terrible.
The implication is that they, standing on the outside, are better than these fools on Jersey Shore
but I say to you cultured people: these fools are better friends to me
than you will ever be.
I wear their bare feet in the junk
and know that there is love & stuff
inside our spider sac
of capital...
It is a warm and glowing womb — my childhood —
they dance & fistpump all night recreating it.
Surely these are our cultural producers,
and we should thank them
for being entirely constituted by capital,
for, Neo-like, taking it on
& still remaining human.
Mike, are you not the situation
of our own egoistic hopes, and fears
and logic?
You try accumulating girls
like your high employers pile up capital,
a capital which is based and created on you
and creates you. You produce new
human men in turn. You are an avatar
of masculinity! The gym, the tan, the laundry
of my radical, unsentimental dreams:
Mike — I enter you
and fray upon your seams.
When you break into pieces
(all pixelated in stock quotes and in prices)
like Mr. Anderson,
missing me in one place, you find me in another.
How can you be sure that I am not capital?
That this voice, as it seeks to intercede
&, through its rhythms, enter & destroy you
is not a new frontier of capital?
And in English, too!
Surely these words are a form of capital.
Post In Which The Author Dances
Okay, time for me to dance
in my generation's way to do:
when optimism rears its legs
I don't think I am far from you.
Reader, when you start a piece about something,
it always turns to something else.
I believe, you and me, we have resistance in us,
that being hosts to the virus
has made us unimaginably strong...
(we do not realize it, but we are strong
and imaginative...)
Our antibodies are our bodies.
We use them in love,
in dancing, and in food,
to stand in front of tanks and hotel lobbies.
Surely, our bodies know what is happening.
in my generation's way to do:
when optimism rears its legs
I don't think I am far from you.
Reader, when you start a piece about something,
it always turns to something else.
I believe, you and me, we have resistance in us,
that being hosts to the virus
has made us unimaginably strong...
(we do not realize it, but we are strong
and imaginative...)
Our antibodies are our bodies.
We use them in love,
in dancing, and in food,
to stand in front of tanks and hotel lobbies.
Surely, our bodies know what is happening.
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