So everyone’s talking about Jersey Shore, the new MTV reality show that follows eight 20-something self-proclaimed “guidos” as they spend their summer on the shore, getting drunk and fighting and hooking up and all that other stuff reality TV producers salivate at (and viewers seem to enjoy). I’m guilty as all the rest who haven’t been able to look away, drawn to the horrendous tans and really uncomfortable euphemisms for sex (that one guy? who talks about “pounding it out” and “getting creepy”? really???). But I missed the end of the first episode where clips from the rest of the season were shown. No worries, over the next few days, everyone and their mother had seen the clip of Snookie (real name Nicole) getting punched hard in the face at close range.  And lots of people thought it was HILARIOUS. This charmer declared that “the countdown to Snookie getting punched in the face is on!” and added:

I literally have to take sleep medicine now before I go to bed now just so I can relax and not think about how excited I am for it. Because I’m telling you right now this is destined to go down as one of the greatest moments in the history of television. Like 20 years from now people are going to be talking about where they were when JFK got assisinated and Snookie got smashed in the face.

Nice. So, what’s a tv network to do when all of a sudden footage they shot of a woman getting hit in the face has become humorous fodder for every jackass on the internet? Well, first they can decide to air the episode as planned, but add a PSA about violence against women to the end of the show. Still feeling a little guilty? OK, let’s just cut the footage out all together (but still air the PSA, to show that we really care).

I suppose that I’m happy MTV pulled the footage, if only to deprive people the “glory” of savoring a woman get hit on their television (not that it really matters when the gif is already all over the internet). But they’ve got to be kidding if they want us to believe they were surprised that people took the clip “out of context” and instead of finding it “extremely disturbing,” folks found it funny. MTV, and every other producer of reality television, make money by building shows around people the audience can laugh at/vilify. Sure, sometimes there are those “characters” we all root for, but the genre is objectively exploitative and cruel, from the montages of folks who can’t sing but audition for American Idol anyway, to the sad women of Rock of Love/Tough Love/whatever VH1 is doing this month to make women look pathetic. And Jersey Shore is, in some ways, the epitome of this mean-spiritedness. Here’s a group of kids who are portrayed as ridiculous, lacking all self-awareness, completely vain and out of touch with the rest of the world, and—at least for the girls—whiny and annoying. For the first two episodes, Snookie is shown getting drunk and whining for attention, literally shoving her tongue in the mouths of the guys in the house. Oh, she also fellates a pickle as everyone chuckles about how ridiculous she is cause she’s wearing a hat that says something about wanting to be a porn-star. So MTV clearly, CLEARLY sets her up to be an annoying joke. The kind of person about whom you would say in casual conversation to your friends, (unless you’re super self-aware about making comments like these which most people aren’t but still don’t actually mean it), “man that girl needs a slap in the face.” And then she DOES get hit in the face and you’re SURPRISED that people are amused? Really? It reminds me of that uncomfortable moment when a woman who was mocked repeatedly on American Idol killed herself and for about two minutes we all said “oh jeez, maybe we shouldn’t keep publicly embarrassing folks, cause they might be sort of unstable, and also it’s not very nice.”  And then we moved on.

So, MTV, don’t be surprised that a lot of people STILL think it’s funny when women are abused. Don’t be surprised when you set folks up to be laughed at and then folks laugh at them. Looooong, hard look in the mirror time: your viewers live in a media culture that you’ve created. Their responses to what you put in front of them should never surprise you. In fact, I’m pretty sure you pay people to figure that shit out.

In unrelated (and more important) news, Nancy at Where is Your Line points to yesterday’s CNN piece about campus sexual assault. CNN uses the CPI report we’ve previously praised to frame the issue, but Nancy makes an excellent point about the story, which is true of the vast majority of media that resulted from the CPI report: nowhere in the article does it say anything about primary prevention. By all means, the procedural issues discussed in the CNN piece are incredibly important—they make up a large part of the campus sexual assault policies that are SAFER’s focus. But why, in all of this coverage, is no one talking about WHO is raping college women? And WHY they persist in doing so? And HOW to make them stop? Even if these stories aren’t exactly blaming the victim, they’re not blaming the rapist either, at least not explicitly. Sexual assault is going to happen, so every school should have a strong policy in place to properly respond. But wouldn’t it be great if we could also try and making sexual assault happen less often? And wouldn’t the best way to do that be to make the (potential) assailant understand why it’s a problem, and how they can prevent themselves from becoming part of that problem? Isn’t that sort of…logical?

So, I leave you with this selection from SAFER’s “What Makes a Better Sexual Assault Policy.”

Prevention and Education: Policies should include meaningful efforts at education of students in the dynamics of sexual assault, the effects it has on survivors, and the many factors that allow it to continue. They should focus on preventing violence by perpetrators and engaging the whole school community in a stand against sexual violence. They should not blame victims, focus on women’s behavior, or repeat rape myths. These efforts should challenge sexism, homophobia, racism and other oppressions rather than reinforcing or ignoring them.