Cecily von Zeigesar, the author of the Gossip Girl books, paid no attention to class inequality. Her books looked at the personal lives of New York’s Upper East Side rich girls, simply enjoying the limousines, elegant dining, private schools, and drinking where kids were never ‘carded’ for being underage. It was an elegant world of luxury where the ups and downs of teenage life were blissfully set apart from any limitations imposed by anything so ugly as mere lack of money.
But along came the CW television network and suddenly affluence was a problem. The first season of “Gossip Girl” on television was full of the priggish, self-righteous Dan Humphrey snootily condemning the Upper East Siders as mindless clones and cyborgs. The new show never stopped trying to show that the Brooklyn living Humphreys were hard working, honest, middle class people, while Manhattan’s rich were cold hearted parents, snobbish socialites, and hypocritically hiding their own wrong doing. Would the television audiences hate Lily van der Woodsen for having four marriages, Captain Archibald for his investment fraud, Chuck Bass for being a seducer, or Blair Waldorf for having a diva attitude?
Of course they didn’t. By the second season this Fall, all that class hatred and outer borough, chip on the shoulder stuff has been forgotten. And good riddance. Dan has fallen in love, and broken up a few times, with the richest girl of all, Serena van der Woodsen. His sister Jenny Humphrey is competing with Blair Waldorf to be top girl. And now even Manhattanites don’t consider themselves polluted when they enter the Humphrey loft in Brooklyn – Nate Archibald is actually living there now.
Our conclusion? Television audiences are more shrewd than show producers. Class inequality isn’t what this show is about. Maybe it’s not even, in this the most unequal of cities, what life is about. What we care about is any scene with Blair in it – Leyton Meester is the best actor in the show. It’s about seeing Jenny go from daddy’s girl to wearing so much black eye liner and eye shadow that she looks like a raccoon. And, reading Jacob’s great review of the Visiting Yale episode on televisionwithoutpity.com . Rich or poor, we only sometimes get what we want, and the hardest part is learning what to want. This is what Zeigesar correctly understood. It’s why her books became best sellers. And thank goodness the CW has finally learned this too.
http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/show/gossip_girl/new_haven_can_wait_1.php