Up@dawn 2.0

Saturday, March 3, 2012

"30 Rock" and Philosophy (Sec. 11/ Post 3)


As I have now talked about Kenneth the Page, I would like to now move on to Jenna.

Jenna is one of the stars of TGS and is very caught up in her fame and celebrity. Everything she does is for her own personal gain and she very rarely think of others.



In this scene (from the one episode that they did completely on live television), Jenna is freaking out because Tracy has pulled a stunt where he got more publicity than her, and if he does it again, in order to pull the focus back onto herself, Jenna will "slip a nip" and garner all the attention.

It is very apparent that her personal mantra is "I'll do it, but only for the attention." Now where this stems from is a complete fascination or even obsession over fame and just enjoying her life as being famous. She only does anything if she's getting some sort of personal enjoyment from it. For instance, her current boyfriend on the show is a transvestite Jenna Maroney impersonator named Paul. The whole reason she is dating him in the first place is because she gets pleasure from the fact that she is basically in a relationship with herself.

Jenna only lives for pleasing herself, and if something doesn't go her way:


It becomes quite apparent to me that Jenna Maroney is quite the hedonist.

But not just any kind of hedonist!

Merriam-Webster defines egoistic hedonism as the ethical theory that achieving one's own happiness is the proper goal of all conduct.

In my humble opinion, this defines Jenna to a T. Now, I was going to somehow apply epicureanism to Jenna, but with further research on the matter, I discovered that epicureanism "considers an imperturbable emotional calm the highest good... and intellectual pleasures superior to transient sensualism." (also from Merriam-Webster)

Now, I know that throughout this semester we have not really talked of hedonism that much, but I feel that it is important to bring it up because it is a legitimate school of thought and understanding its ins and outs is really quite fascinating to me, and quite obviously the writers on 30 Rock, as they have characterized Jenna as such an extreme hedonist.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.