I watched Gossip Girl for the first time recently and it momentarily took over my life. I found myself unable to look away and aimlessly searching for some intellectual justification for my interest. As a contemporary viewer, primed by ubiquitous satirical content about rich people behaving badly, I looked for class commentary. What I found was scattered, inconsistent ideology.
The aesthetics of luxury and excess—showy designer clothes, lavish galas, spontaneous international vacations on private jets etc.—immediately register for me as satire. But while the show is driven by over-exaggeration, it toes the line between satire and aspiration, both mocking and romanticizing ~the scandalous lives of Manhattan’s elite~. Unsurprisingly, soap and scandal power the show rather than a coherent message, which allows for broad appeal across ideological lines and leaves room for various dominant and oppositional readings. It is worth noting that the show premiered months before the Great Recession, which depending on your reading may have made its social critique more scathing or its glamorization of wealth more tone deaf.
My own negotiated readings goes as follows. The show is about fascination with celebrity. Gossip Girl, the blog that narrates the show, facilitates this obsession. Whether readers engage earnestly or ironically with the blog and whether they send in tips out of idolization or derision for the Upper East Siders, the proliferation of this content and its solidification of the characters’ icon statuses legitimizes their elite position. As much as these characters decry the exploitative and corruptive nature of the blog, they rely on it to take down their enemies and advance their interests. And outsiders use it as a means of gaining access to an exclusive world.
My own relationship with Gossip Girl (the show) mirrors the characters’ relationships with Gossip Girl (the blog). Ideologically, I hate the characters and everything they stand for, but my affect keeps me emotionally invested in their lives even as they manipulate and exploit. The show has the potential to interrogate class structure. For example, one character constantly grapples with his outsider status, even as he becomes increasingly insider-y, moving from the slums (read: a spacious Brooklyn loft) to a penthouse in the Upper East Side. The native Upper East Siders understand their inherited wealth as deserved and protect their elite statuses by policing the line between insiders and everyone else. Although the show is rife with material for social commentary, I find myself rooting for the morally bankrupt characters who illustrate the need for critique rather than engaging in the critique myself.
I can’t help but return to one of my all time favorite shows, Veronica Mars, which coincidentally stars the voice of Gossip Girl, Kristen Bell, as a teenage girl who doubles as a vigilante detective. The 2004 series delivers more precise and effective class commentary than Gossip Girl. It constructs its ideology through its aesthetics and inventive use of genre conventions. Blending film noir and teen drama (e.g. using voiceover narration which is staple of both genres), it creates a prevailing sense of injustice, cynicism, and disorder while granting access to the interior life of a girl navigating her social life, grappling with trauma, and figuring out her identity. As the hard-boiled detective/teenage protagonist, Veronica operates outside and between social worlds, revealing connections between wealth, power, and sexual violence. Unsurprisingly, Gossip Girl aired for six seasons and Veronica Mars was canceled after three due to low ratings.
2 replies on “XOXO Gossip Girl”
I’ll admit, I’ve probably watched Gossip Girl, from the moment of Serena’s appearance in Grand Central Station to the reveal of who Gossip Girl was throughout the six seasons, about three times. Each and every time I had a similar negotiated reading to you. My own obsession with what I despise about the show, similar to Dan Humphrey’s character, kept me hooked. Take Jenny Humphrey, Dan’s little sister, for example – her obsession with the “scandalous lives of Manhattan’s elite” led to her own downfall. The characters that the majority of viewers can closely relate to, those that live in the “slums” of Brooklyn, at one point or another become corrupted by the unattainable lives of their peers. Not only is the show a piece of satire poking fun at the rich as you mentioned, but it pokes fun at the viewers themselves who become entrapped in the lives of the luxurious.
– Florence Basile
When I started writing this response I attempted to do it in the style of a Gossip Girl blog post but I think I lack her wit. I must admit, that I have seen Gossip Girl three times in full, the last time was this past fall. I share your negotiated reading of the show, both horrified by the characters’ actions and still intrigued by their lives enough to keep watching. I have also grappled with whether or not it is critique/satire for a long time.
Although existing in a very different genre, I’ve long held the same question about Glee.
Glee, like Gossip Girl, contains some strikingly offensive moments but is also not satire. I have a loose theory that both of these shows started as satires, but as they gained popularity, they kept the provocative stuff and stopped the cultural commentary. There’s also the aspect that some of their teen fanbases don’t really view them as satire and I don’t think that concerned the shows’ producers considering the ratings. All that being said, I will probably continue to rewatch some Glee. Particularly Santana and Mercedes’ “Rumor Has It/Someone Like You” mash-up (linked below).
https://youtu.be/d3BjcKq5w2A?si=bYmYi2bmlt6lcUBO