Let’s discuss the vast kingdom of YouTube celebrity that Jenna Marbles has created with her satirical vlogging. By describing this genre as satirical vlogging, I mean that each of her videos are technically in vlog (video blog) format and they always depict Jenna’s hilarious and satirical view on an specific aspect of contemporary life.
Jenna typically vlogs about humorous, gender-related subjects. Examples of her work include: “How To Trick People Into Thinking You’re Good Looking,” “How Girls Take a Shower,” “What a Girl’s Makeup Means,” “How Girls Get Dressed,” “How Guys Get Dressed,” etc. Most of her videos, minus the occasional few every so often, follow the same form. She greets her millions of viewers and then presents a narrative in which she addresses what the topic for the week’s vlog will be and goes into detail explaining why she has chosen this focus. She then launches into the subject of the video. Usually the videos follow a sort of bulleted format, meaning that Jenna lists points she wants to make relating to the topic at hand in a storytelling, sequential style. She always concludes the video by reminding her viewers to subscribe to her channel, like her page, visit her other pages (official website, Facebook fan site etc.,) and to tune back in next week because she posts new vlogs every Wednesday. Usually her wrap up is her sitting in her bed with her two dogs which I find interesting because it makes her appear more down-to-earth, relatable, and appealing (I wonder if she does this on purpose?) Although Jenna is a professional YouTuber, her production style is still amateur in most respects. She’s stated that she uses iMovie to edit her vlogs so there is editing that goes into producing the videos but they are still only shot using the Photobooth app on her MacBook. Her camera technique is almost always direct address to the camera, which creates a sort of friendship between Jenna and her viewers because her videos are set up to look like a candid conversation between a pair of peers.
Jenna Marbles’s videos are extremely contemporary, and with her satirical voice she mocks many aspects of modern media life. She often makes fun of the way girls watch TV and eventually even produced two vlogs entitled, “How Girls Watch TV” and “How Guys Watch TV.” Jenna also mentions society’s reliance on social media and technology in a number of her videos by emphasizing through satire just how addicted humans are to today’s forms of media and communication. Obviously she is the maker of all of her own videos which make her motives pretty visible to viewers. In her video “Draw My Life,” she asserts that her sole focus in vlogging is to make people laugh and to make people happy. I believe this was certainly her intent in the beginning of her YouTube career as I cannot imagine she ever envisioned just how much success she would accumulate. However, now that she has a fan following I think it would be fair to assume that her motives are slightly commercial as well. She is definitely making money off of her subscriptions and advertisement deals. In fact, her videos have made her so famous that she is now somewhat of an internet celebrity and gets paid for appearances at clubs and on talk shows etc. This solidifies the fact that a portion of her motives are monetarily-focused because in order for her to keep intaking revenue via her vlogging, she needs to continue to produce funny videos to stay relevant in the proper spaces.
Although one would not initially assume that Jenna Marbles’s vlogs carry much culturally-symbolic weight, I think it close-minded to dismiss them altogether as they do indeed offer a great deal of social commentary relevant to our time. The video of Jenna’s that I want to focus on most specifically as an artifact of my generation’s contemporary history is her most famous one, “How To Trick People Into Thinking You’re Good Looking.” The video has an enormous amount of significance in relevance to a wider cultural expression, especially the ideas of a popular sensibility and cultural statement-story. The first detail of this vlog that I want to discuss is how it represents the horrifyingly vast focus on physical appearance in today’s culture. So much emphasis is placed on looks that nowadays, more valuable traits (such as innovation talent, intelligence, creativity, etc.) are occasionally presented as less important than beauty. “How To Trick People Into Thinking You’re Good Looking” presents this narrative in a highly satirical way. The rawness of Jenna’s in-your-face honesty is hilarious. She openly admits and vividly describes all of the drastic measures she takes to “fool” people into believing she’s attractive, even though she readily admits she is just an “ugly f*ck.” If modern society wasn’t so focused on ideals of beauty and attractiveness, then Jenna (and millions like her, including myself) wouldn’t have to feel the need to dye her hair, go tanning, and slather on pounds of greasy makeup to feel comfortable in her own skin and accepted by her peers. Do you think believe society perpetuates the way in which Jenna feels that she must cake on makeup and other beauty accessories that make her look like a totally different person than she does naturally?
Secondly, Jenna’s vernacular in the video presents an interesting view of current culture. She swears freely and talks in such an unintelligent way that she appears not only funny, but also down-to-earth. Why is this? Why do we need people to dumb themselves down to feel like they are approachable? Instead of making colloquial talk the norm, more emphasis should be put on vocabulary and intelligent diction so that the verbal presentation of knowledge is the norm. A third important narrative subtly occurs in this vlog of Jenna’s as well. This dialogue relates to the crisis that hundreds of thousands of young post-grads face upon attempting to enter the professional world. In the video, Jenna is listing a number of things she likes to do before going off to work to “dance in her underwear,” one of them being crying over her master’s degree. She is then shown holding her framed master’s degree from Boston University and pretending to cry. Although presented with a humorous tone, Jenna is hitting a very serious topic here: today’s lack of employment opportunity for college graduates. Jenna herself went to Boston University, a more than respectable institution, for both her undergraduate and graduate schooling. After receiving her master’s degree, she is still working at a tanning salon and as a dancer at a club/bar. This is terrifying! A woman of fine education like herself should not have to be adopting part-time jobs into a (temporary) full-time career. The job market is intimidatingly competitive for young professionals like myself and Jenna openly cites how depressing and discouraging it is to put yourself through the stresses of paying for college just to enter the dismal world of unemployment (or less than satisfactory employment.)
The discussion that occurs in “How To Trick People Into Thinking You’re Good Looking” certainly reflects a cultural statement-story because it is one of the most talked-about subjects in contemporary society, and Jenna Marbles addresses it in the best way she knows how: through satirical vlogging. Due to this constant satirical tone, the pleasure that I and viewers like myself get from her videos is definitely one related to humor. Almost all of Jenna’s videos are hilarious and relatable. She covers topics that relate to issues such as gender and objectification in society but without employing an overbearing tone. For example, in her video “Things Girls Lie About,” Jenna points out a number of common white lies that females tell. Most of these lies related to physical appearance, such as: “I work out like six times a week,” “These are my real lashes. No I don’t wear fake lashes!” “Yeah this is my natural hair. I take so many vitamins,” “No I don’t use self tanner. I never go tanning,” and “I never eat junk food!” Although Jenna is presenting these statements in a funny way, she is simultaneously highlighting the enormous pressure that is put on the objectification of female beauty in society today.
In “Things Guys Lie About,” the focus seems to be on the idea of masculinity in society and the male’s need to appear ‘manly.’ Jenna subtly illuminates this issue in a funny and light tone as always: “Yeah I bench like 500 pounds,” “I’ve never been tanning,” “Dude I’ve hooked up with like 87 girls,” and “I only wear magnum condoms. Regular ones just like don’t fit me.” Again, this video is hilarious and relatable, but it still is able to shed light on the trend in today’s culture for men to act overly-masculine to compensate for society making them feel as if any sign of femininity is a form of weakness.
She maintains her humorous voice throughout each of her many videos and is able to successfully reach her target demographic from identifying and understanding what her viewers want to watch and hear. As I discussed earlier, Jenna has stated that her main drive in life is to make people laugh from watching her videos and she most certainly succeeds creating this pleasure while subtly identifying societal issues relevant to people of our generation.
YouTube: A Pop-Culture Powerhouse 