When teen drama first became prominent in the early 90s, it was almost entirely shows like Dawson’s Creek, set in small town middle America featuring such, by now, well-worn cliches as “I’ve just got to get out of this two horse town…” and whose idea of a male sex symbol was the wholesome, square jawed James Van Der Beek, who, both then and now, basically resembles a slightly camp lumberjack.
But at some point, things changed, pretty dramatically as it happens, and what was once just the niche of the hideously 90s original 90210 became the norm, and nowadays you simply cannot make a teen drama series without setting it in either the Hamptons, Newport Beach or up market Manhattan. The genre it seems, has gone from an attempt at relating to the life of the “average” teenager, to tapping into a kind of escapist dream featuring the sort of lifestyle kids living in Dawson’s esque small town, mid-western America actually want.
Gossip Girl, like its half-siblings Revenge and 90210, is a show about growing up rich. Like Forbes 500 rich. Now, if I was going to make a two penny sociological hypothesis as to why so many teen drama shows have taken this glitz and glamour style format, and believe you me, I am, then I would probably say that with the rise of our consumerist society, and the economy in the shitter, our collective obsession with how much more fun the rich and famous are having than us has become the new form of escapism, similar to the way Sci Fi was really big in the 70s when it looked for all the world like humanity was actually going backwards.
Of course that may all be bollocks, so let’s just talk about the show shall we.
The basic plot of the show is as follows. There’s a blonde girl (Blake Lively) and a brunette girl (Leighton Meester), they’re best friends, attend the same prestigious private school on the Upper East Side and between their families appear to have the same net worth as a mid-sized European country. Before the start of the first season Blondie had moved away to boarding school because she boinked Brunette’s long term boyfriend, with the first episode marking the prodigal BFF’s return to find Brunette seated firmly on the “it” girl throne in her stead. From then on it’s all love triangles, cat fights, scandals and elaborate parties in Midtown hotel ball rooms.
The show’s principal talking point is that it tells the story through an anonymous third person narrator “Gossip Girl” – the author of an online tattle blog a la Perez Hilton styley. Now If I was one of the show’s characters at this point I would probably pout and say something like “narrative innovation, much” in my best “dripping with sarcastic scorn” voice, because it’s a gimmick, that’s all it is. Sure for the first couple of episodes they attempt to keep up the pretense that the narration is entirely compiled from information gathered by Gossip Girl’s enormous spy network, but after a while, asides from it’s occasional use as a lazy plot device, it’s more or less dropped. With some of the information supposedly reaching Gossip Girl’s ears suspending disbelief beyond even Stasi levels of espionage, and what was initially a semi novel form of telling the story just ends up as Kristen Bell playing the standard narrator role with the occasional half arsed “look we’re being current” nod to the social media age.
If there’s one thing Gossip Girl, Revenge and shows of this ilk have taught us, and not that I pertain to know myself, it’s that there’s apparently something positively ghastly about the Yankee Upper Class. The Hamptons types you see portrayed on these shows seem to be little more than a pale imitation of their British, gentry counterparts. There’s an air of Bertie Wooster certainly, but only the faintest sniff buried under layers of Gordon Gekko, J.R Ewing and something which has just the faintest hint of secondary school Maths teacher about it. Think of them like Alan Sugar, pin all the titles on him you want, but underneath he’s still just a jumped up, loud mouthed, Portobello road jellied eel salesman prancing around the House of Lords in a vaguely grotesque impersonation of the noblemen of old, like three children standing on each other shoulders wearing a large overcoat attempting to pass for a man. Maybe I’m being a little harsh on him but hell; fuck it he’s on the telly.
Like all shows about pampered, trust fund teenagers Gossip Girl chooses to portray wealth as something of a poisoned chalice, mostly for the sake of offsetting at least some of the vacuity, and presents you with the plucky, class jumping Humphrey family to root for against what is otherwise initially a cast of gimlet-eyed, Machiavellian vipers as dressed by Abercrombie and Fitch. However, it becomes clear early on that the show is in fact simply gearing up to whack out another favorite teen drama cliche, namely “baddie show’s a softer side adding new depth to their character” starting more or less from a third of the way through the first season.
One such character is Chuck Bass (Ed Westwick) a man whose dress sense is preppy to the point that he makes the snooty fraternity from Animal House look like Fagin’s gang of orphaned pickpockets. Now let me be perfectly clear, Chuck Bass is a legitimate sexual predator, he quite literally attempts to commit two rapes in the first episode alone. Two! Which I was under the impression is considered concerning by anyone’s standards. To my surprise however, this is quickly shrugged off and the viewer is even later encouraged to sympathize with him and his “problems”. You see, attempted rape is fine when Chuck Bass is doing it because he’s the “bad boy womanizer” of the group, and it’s even deemed perfectly understandable when they introduce his parents to the mix because they’re awful people too, what did you expect of him if not a little light raping? After all, it’s their fault he’s so messed up.
I point this out because it’s something of a recurring theme used to encourage you to feel sorry for the shows initially antagonistic characters, but as you can see, something about the logic doesn’t quite wash with me. There is to my mind a very fine line between an explanation and an excuse. For example, the certain proclivities of one Mr. Ed Gein can largely be traced back to an extremely unhealthy relationship with his own mother, and whilst that might go some way to explain it, it certainly does not excuse him making a lampshade out of that poor woman’s face.
I don’t know if you can tell, but I was gearing up to massacre Gossip Girl here. When I began watching it I had certain preconceptions and initially it seemed those preconceptions would be correct and that the show would simply prove a melodramatic, angst ridden tale about the decadent, childish antics of a group of whiny prep schoolers. But then a strange realization hit me about halfway through the third episode. I actually quite like it.
There is no doubt that Gossip Girl is guilty of numerous crimes, but if you surrender yourself to it, you can’t help but be engrossed. Ultimately the show holds no pretenses, it is exactly what it means to be, which is stark, decadent, over dramatic, and with enough claws to make me fear for the safety of my eyeballs, and whilst playing it’s privilege card with a little less charm then it’s west coast adversary, 90210, it makes an effort to weave a consistent critique of the brattish antics of its wealthy, teen cast into the story. Which makes us a lot less guilty about enjoying it, because let’s face it, the brattish antics are really what we came to see. Gossip Girl can also be commended for turning its “teen drama” into virtually Game of Thrones levels of backstabbing and intrigue, an impressive feat by anyone’s standards. In the end you can say this for it, it’s stylish, sexy, infectious and above all, purely unapologetic. It does what it sets out to do and does it very well indeed, and in an era where so many shows try and fail to be something they aren’t, you can’t help but admire it for that.