This talk considers two icons linked to New Jersey, both of whom rose to national fame during periods of post-industrial economic crisis: Bruce Springsteen in the mid-1970s and Nicole Polizzi— aka Snooki from MTV’s “Jersey Shore”— in 2009. Each of these two commodified personas embodies a different phase in the evolving construction of New Jersey’s position in the national cultural imaginary. Drawing on Gayatri Spivak’s 1985 essay on surplus value and David Harvey’s approach to cultural geography, I chart the transition of New Jersey’s public image from Bruce Springsteen in the mid-1970s to Snooki after 2008, framing the shift as a direct result of the outward spread of financial capitalism radiating from New York City. I argue that Springsteen’s enduring status as beloved national icon is built on an identity perceived by the public as “authentic,” which comes from a performed connection with the Garden State’s industrial, working-class past. The much-maligned Snooki’s rise to national fame as a caricature of millennial tourist culture and conspicuous consumption reflects the state’s broader shift away from local industrial production and toward a financial economy based in the endless, transnational circulation of capital for the sole purpose of generating more capital. Both Springsteen and Snooki construct their identities as performers through their bodies: Springsteen has always embodied a rugged masculinity associated with manual labor, while Snooki tans to the extreme and takes great care with her hair, nails, and makeup, habits often associated with a life of leisure. But even as they have highly individualized approaches, coping with— and subverting— the alienation of physical bodies from one another under the working and living conditions of late capitalism is a theme of both Springsteen’s music and Snooki’s antics on Jersey Shore. Each icon represents a different set of coping and subversion mechanisms that are grounded directly in their shared historical and geographical context: economic crises in New Jersey.
About the presenterAnna E. Waltman
Anna Waltman is a PhD student in English and American Literature at UMass Amherst, where she also earned her MA (2012). She holds a BA with honors (2008) from Goucher College, with a double-major in Political Science and English with a Literature Concentration. Anna’s research maps the politics of American poetry across the late twentieth century; her approach is grounded directly in labor history and draws on a number of Marxist and neo-Marxist critical methods. Anna’s additional research interests include working class studies, recovery poetics, popular culture, and post/colonial and anti-imperialist feminist theory. A dedicated unionist, she is presently serving her second term as co-chair of the UMass Amherst Graduate Employee Organization, a loud and proud collective bargaining unit of United Auto Workers Local 2322.