The Modern Anti-Hero

The modern day anti-hero is in our midst, upon the TV screen: Jersey Shore's Angelina "Jolie" Pivarnick.

But Knuttel, one might say, how could this possibly be?

It's quite simple, really.

First off, no one on the program displays true heroic qualities. None of them have any explicit virtue or anything like that. They may display "jerk with a heart of gold" qualities, but that rarely ever extends beyond their "family" or anyone else allowed within their group. This too extends to Angelina.

So what does she do that makes her heroic, in an anti-hero kind of way?

She remains (or at least remained).

She was an early departure on the first season, leaving the rest of the cast to bond without her. Sure, she did an annoying thing or two (notably cock blocking Mike and Pauly D in an extremely obvious way), but the whole cast annoys each other really. They're all immature, annoying assholes. It's what they do.

So why then does Angelina get outcast as such? Sure, she wasn't there for the first season, but that didn't stop the cast from accepting other second season people, such as her friend Jose.

Week in and week out she continuously took shit from the rest of the cast. She slowly worked at gaining their trust, only to have it taken back in a quarter of the time for something usually trivial, something any other cast member would be just as likely to do -- in the hot tub with Vinny's uncle hitting the ball into Snooki's face could easily be an accident, especially with someone who would probably not be very athletic or coordinated, something that Snooki could have very easily done to Angelina (except she would've brushed it off as nothing and no one would have left the hot tub terribly upset).

Among other things held against her was Vinny taking offense to Angelina saying that JWoww is talking about how drunk Pauly is, saying it like, "she's talking shit," when it's closer to, "she's talking a matter of factly, with little inflection of criticism." This of course leads to a fight. Later after a long dispute between her and Vinny, they end up drunkenly sleeping together. Vinny later states this act as doing it so he has something against her. Let me say that again, Vinny slept with Angelina so he could later hold it against her. How evil is that? Anyways, this comes within a day of Angelina saying she slept with Jose, when she didn't, leading to the later vitriolic accusation of sluttery -- you slept with two dudes under 24 hours. Nevermind the fact that MVP (Mike, Vinny, and Pauly) are either aspiring to or successfully doing this with their respective opposite gender the entire Miami stay.

And then the hammer comes down on her in the form of Mike, formalizing his anger against her and urging every second for her exit. JWoww offers advice to just stay and deal with it, Mike is an asshole, but the damage is done. The pressure is too great, as Mike is a forceful asshole who believes his opinions are synonymous with those of the rest of the house, and besides the advice, she gets no support.

The impetus behind the final argument is a misplaced menstrual pad, though I suspect it was moved by MTV's cameramen or staff. While I believe she is a sloppy and dirty person, I have a hard time believing someone would purposely do something like that -- leaving the alternate hypothesis to be something accidental, like as if she threw it at the trash can, it failed to make it in, and she didn't look back (which is still very dirty). Either way she had deniability.

In any case, her only true crime is being herself. She refused to submit in a culture of misogyny. Simply look at the relatively subdued personalities of the other female cast members, as well as the very one sided accusations of slutty behavior (Mike, for instance, is never criticized for sleeping with many women, rather sleeping with ugly women).

In summary: she is ostracized mainly for not fitting in, and takes abuse from the other house mates on a daily basis for doing this. For refusing to be someone besides herself (when all options are rather morally neutral at best), she is the modern anti-hero. At the very least, she carries the hero's burden. She doesn't want to simply be another guidette, she wants to be Angelina the guidette, and for this she should be commended.

-- Knuttel