How many people can you think of that completely own a word? Meaning, when you say that word, you will think of that person, even if you’re not trying to. It has to be a normal non-invented word in common parlance, so not something like “Newspeak” or “Orc.” I don’t mean a name, like how anybody named Adolf makes you think of Hitler or Winston makes you think of Churchill.
I bring this up because I know that whenever I hear the word “situation” for the foreseeable future, possibly for the rest of my life, I will think of a self-obsessed former fitness center manager who allegedly fake tans every day and who will apparently make 5 million dollars this year.
In the first season of Jersey Shore, The Situation injected himself into every plotline, relentlessly insistent that every woman he met would be immediately entranced by his “situation” (abs). His arrogance was appalling, his bravado almost sickening at first. This is how the man became famous.
But, if you’ve watched every episode of both seasons of Jersey Shore (which I have, and will never be ashamed to admit), you may have noticed something remarkable about Michael Sorrentino: he has actually almost receded into the background! Now the most famous (well, him or Snooki) and presumably best-paid of the cast, he has settled down to the point that a) I actually count on him to provide some of the wisest cast-member perspective on what’s going on in the house and b) At this moment (26 minutes into the most recent episode, because I paused it to write this situation), he is probably the first or second LEAST controversial character in the house! Either him or Pauly D.
Sorry, I seem to have fallen into the weird Jersey Shore convention of unnecessarily appending the terms “in the house” or “right now” or both to every sentence. Angelina sounds like an unimaginative early 90s rapper. We get it, you’re in the house.
Back to the Situation situation. If Sorrentino is not a complete idiot and arrogant beyond reason (and I don’t think he is), and if these were the qualities which made him a breakout star (which I believe they are), they mean something troubling and truly amazing to consider in a vacuum: A young man with apparently mediocre prospects transformed himself into a bombastic caricature of assholeishness for a period of a few months, and as a direct result of this transformation is now 1) a recognizable celebrity, 2) a millionaire, and 3) in ownership of a noun. But the key difference between the Situation and Snooki, the second most famous Jersey Shore cast member/character (not coincidentally, the two whose absurd nicknames stuck…someone should write about why and how Situation and Snooki worked as names while Sweetheart and J-WOWW did not. Notice how nobody calls her J-WOWW anymore? I would like to figure this out). Long parenthetical. I’m awful with those. Restarting sentence.
The key difference between the Situation and Snooki is that Snooki has not largely abandoned her original caricatured identity, which says to me that either Snooki is not as intelligent as the Situation or that she is in fact that person. Maybe she is, since there’s that ridiculous story of her public intoxication and her screaming “I’m Snooki! You can’t do this to me!” or something like that. But the Situation milked his persona for all it was worth, and now is able, against all odds, to actually settle in as a (relatively) nice guy! Amazing.
I don’t really have a point here, except to say that when you saw the title of this post, I bet you knew immediately that I was going to talk about Jersey Shore and Michael Sorrentino in particular. And that’s an unbelievable testament to his power.
