It’s well known that much of the appeal of the original Gossip Girl stems from a place of unattainability. Most watchers will never be able to emulate the level of wealth and influence that the main characters were born into. The characters are unabashedly conniving, backstabbing, and ambitious to a fault. They never shirk the fact that they are born into a life infinitely easier than many of their peers. You’re not supposed to like them, but they tend to be redeeming enough to draw you in (or maybe just me). When it was announced that a reboot was going to be made, I was cautiously optimistic. I decided to watch the first two episodes of both the classic and the reboot and weigh in on whether or not the spirit of gossip girl can ever truly be replicated.
My initial reaction to the new Gossip Girl is that it is a show I would love if it was not tied to the original. Something crucial to the very core of the show just feels like it is absent, despite the fact that the show objectively is entertaining and more diverse than the previous iteration. I am a die hard fan of the old version, and it was always for reasons I could not quite pin down until I finally bit the bullet and watched the new one. The original has an unmistakable sense of unabashed participation in all the things about capitalism and generational wealth that critics of capitalism hate. However, somehow their unapologetic nature makes the show utterly intoxicating. I have always hated the guilty rich, especially in the context of generational wealth.
This concept of the very soul of a piece of media can be analyzed in the concept of an aura. The concept of an aura as it relates to reproduction of media is attributed to Walter Benjamin. The aura is the emotional aspect of media as opposed to the actual physical media itself. This is the aspect in which the new GG falls short in my opinion, since the aura of this new show is completely different. The old GG was a show you could not look away from, one that enthralled you with the excessive drama of high school for these teens. The new show, with its focus on inclusion, influencers, and respectability feels like it's simply trying too hard.
In an era of increasing political polarization, a shrinking middle class, and the rise of influencers, it makes perfect sense to me why the feelings evoked from the new GG are so different from that of the original: times have changed, and our perception of the filthy rich have changed as well. The shrinking middle class and high profile conversations about what welfare should look like is a vast change from the context of the original GG. When Gossip Girl was first released (2007), the country was still reeling from the worldwide unrest of the 2000s, but had not yet gone through the financial crisis of 2008. Viewers wanted something they could strive for, something to emulate. However, given the lavish lifestyles of the teens in GG, this obviously was not something that the American Dream could accomplish. Thus, the characters had to be unlikeable, and play into stereotypes of the filthy rich. Viewers got to live vicariously, but also distance themselves from the lives shown on screen.
Compared to now, the understanding of the context and translation to plot in the new iteration simply falls flat. On paper, the reboot should have done well: Y2K is in, performative activism is both at an all time high and highly criticized, and influencers are an increasingly hot topic. The reboot’s inclusion of people of color should be a plus for me, but it feels pandering, and does not seem to fully flesh out the point of the show: the characters are not supposed to feel relatable. Moreover, categorizing the mainly non white main characters as part of the nouveau riche subgenre of the upper class feeds into more stereotypes than it disrupts. Not to mention the whole baby daddy drama that just so happens to coincide with the two women of color in the show. Poor taste. You’re supposed to like these characters, which makes the show feel awkward and unrealistic.
Further, with a lens of neo-marxism to guide us, the issues I felt with the show take on a much clearer image. Everything is tied back to capitalism in the neo-marxist lens, which makes analysis of the original much more nuanced. The characters are meant to be morally gray, and their redeeming characteristics change and grow with them. This allows for a much more nuanced perspective of generational wealth and what it means as the generations continue. Contrarily, the neo-marxist analysis of the reboot is hazier. Wealth is shirked in a way unlike the original. The term guilty rich certainly comes to mind. To me, this makes any critique of the characters less salient, since they are written to be less complex and morally gray than those in the previous version.
In summary: not every show needs to serve the same purpose. I love Gossip Girl for what it was: trashy, enthralling, and mildly disgusting. Trying to make Gossip Girl woke ruins the very critiques that were so well woven into the show in the first place.
Bibliography
Benjamin, W., & Underwood, J. A. (2008). The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. Penguin Books.
Kellner, D. (2007). Cultural theory: Classical and contemporary positions. Sage.
I love the original Gossip Girl so much and could not agree more with your blog post! The writers of the new Gossip Girl are trying very hard to be inclusive, attainable to their audience, and modern while also trying to pay homage to the original. For example, the original Gossip Girl starts with Serena, the main character, on a train in a beige/tan leather jacket while the remake starts with the teacher on a train in a very similar beige/tan leather jacket. Due to this one scene I thought that the new Gossip Girl was going to be very similar to the original, but then I kept watching. In this remake I think that the writers should have implemented Adorno and Horkheimer's ideologies. One way they could’ve done this is through standardization. If you can sell it once you can sell it again. Especially being released during the summer of 2020, after the pandemic, a time when people were craving a sense of normalcy and nostalgia and even a sense of fantasy. Giving viewers an entirely new Gossip Girl experience was not what I or my friends whom I watched with expected or wanted. Another idea from Adorno and Horkheimer’s writing that I wish the writers would have followed is the idea that the content produced is just meeting consumer needs. What we needed as consumers were these filthy rich kids that could run around New York with devious plans and no consequences, not these “guilty rich” teens.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading your piece, it was very well done! I’ve never seen the original or reboot versions of Gossip Girl for the exact reasons you listed. I could not get past the morally ambiguous and snotty characters long enough to find them endearing. However, I agree that creating a revamp of old cult classics is always risky. One aspect of a reboot that you didn’t mention in your post but I think applies well is the idea of camp. The original Gossip Girl may have been camp in an authentic way due to the overthetop lifestyles of the characters. However, the reboot was made knowing the cult following the original show created. This may have created a show that was inauthentically camp. When something tries too hard to be camp, it often fails. This can explain why the soul of the show seems to be missing from the reboot in addition to the lack of aura. The idea of aura has come up in my regular life so much since we have covered this topic in class. Not only is an aura relevant to museum art like we discussed in class, but also to social movements, and cult classics. It makes perfect sense that a remake of a popular television show lacks the aura of the original. This would explain why people get excited to watch the same Christmas movies with their families every year – the aura of the viewing experience makes the movie enjoyable year after year. I chose the same prompt for my blog post and found it interesting how differently we both answered the same question. I mostly analyzed how the media and pop culture of the times influenced each version, while you focused more on the overall vibe and feeling of the original show and how it was missing from the reboot.
Delete-Chloe Greenstein