“MTV gets this,” insisted Ellie Marshall, a McGill undergraduate with the distinction of having interned for the show’s executive producer, making her the only conference participant with hands-on experience. One of the slides in her presentation was titled “Bodily Discipline: Foucault + Snooki = BFF.” After she showed a clip of Snooki getting arrested on the beach during Season 3 while onlookers gawked at her celebrity misbehavior, Ms. Marshall argued that it was the audience that was being arrested and rendered docile, not Snooki.

Atle Mikkola Kjosen, a graduate student at the University of Western Ontario, suggested that the show upends Marx’s proposition that the optimal worker is a regulated worker, one who’s allowed to rest. “Jersey Shore” labor is 24-hour labor, both on and off camera, and the show improves in proportion to the toll that ruthless schedule takes on the protagonists.

But this is true of many other reality shows, like “Survivor” and “Big Brother” (to say nothing of the day-to-day living of traditional celebrities, always on public display). “Jersey Shore” stars are not traditional laborers, and the show, which claims to be a documentary, does not treat them as such. Of all the MTV docusoaps, it’s actually done the worst job of pretending its stars are still average folks, shepherding them to new locales (Miami and Florence, Italy) both to avoid hometown fame and to take advantage of notoriety.