Why Gossip Girls is Not Just For the Shallow
In the television world, there seems always to be room for the high school drama of the times.
Gossip Girls is the latest.
Speckled with reality, but usually drenched with fantasy, well-groomed adolescents graze on outlandish meals in SoHo and hang out in hotel rooms filled with high definition TV's.
Though it is nothing short of tawdry and materialistic, it is not just a show for the shallow.
Airing weekly and available in HD on the CW, Gossip Girls is an up-close and personal (if vagrantly unrealistic) look into lives too fabulous to conceive of.
However, week after week viewers return to their TV's to try.
The series attempts to further glamorize a set of New Yorkers whose real-life lives are probably amply glorious enough.
Especially for people who have lived in New York, watching Gossip Girls becomes an invitation into the Upper East Side world, which you have imagined existed, but never was yours to experience.
Moreover, for all of the unreality of the show, it is half the draw.
Like so many series of the rich and famous, as well as our celebrity obsessed media, we have become accustomed to gaze with wanderlust at those beyond the reach of our satellite TV.
Half envy, half opiate, we watch with equal parts self-criticism ("Why don't look that good at 7am?") and placated contentedness ("Everything is so pretty there.
") Each character offers us a blend of the majorly contrived and the sufficiently believable.
For example, in a recent episode Vanessa (whose character is supposed to be Brooklyn personified) prattles off a list of old cinema stars leaving her sweet, rich, guilt-ridden boyfriend Nathan to confess that he fears they have nothing in common.
Nothing.
"I like watching sports on ESPN, I have never even read the Age of Innocence.
" And like that the world of actual adolescence is slightly revealed.
In relationships differences as slight as loving sports or loving old cinema has the potential to separate you, in a heartbeat.
The writers' traditional lists of characters (the mean girl, the pretty one, the artsy one, the handsome one, the loner, and so on) are infused with enough moments of humanity that watching is always tantalizing.
Though we want to believe that no one is as combed and primped as Blair, what if there were? Would they be our friends? Would they mean to us? Gossip Girls lets us watch her every ringlet, from the safety of our living room.
She may spew her meanness of her plebeians, but she cannot reach through the satellite TV and get us, which is part of why we love her.
The distance between brings her elegance and sparkle to our very living room, but not her belittlingly sense of entitlement.
Whether it be Serena or Jenny, Dan or Chuck Bass, we can imagine that there are people enough like these characters that Gossip Girls takes on a twisted documental spirit.
Of course the characters speak it quippy verbiage, much too witty for the average teen...
but with New York as the backdrop, we can just look at the buildings if we get bored with the dialogue.
Browse your local satellite TV guide to see when Gossip Girls airs in your region, and enjoy what one New York based magazines calls, the greatest show of our time.
Gossip Girls is the latest.
Speckled with reality, but usually drenched with fantasy, well-groomed adolescents graze on outlandish meals in SoHo and hang out in hotel rooms filled with high definition TV's.
Though it is nothing short of tawdry and materialistic, it is not just a show for the shallow.
Airing weekly and available in HD on the CW, Gossip Girls is an up-close and personal (if vagrantly unrealistic) look into lives too fabulous to conceive of.
However, week after week viewers return to their TV's to try.
The series attempts to further glamorize a set of New Yorkers whose real-life lives are probably amply glorious enough.
Especially for people who have lived in New York, watching Gossip Girls becomes an invitation into the Upper East Side world, which you have imagined existed, but never was yours to experience.
Moreover, for all of the unreality of the show, it is half the draw.
Like so many series of the rich and famous, as well as our celebrity obsessed media, we have become accustomed to gaze with wanderlust at those beyond the reach of our satellite TV.
Half envy, half opiate, we watch with equal parts self-criticism ("Why don't look that good at 7am?") and placated contentedness ("Everything is so pretty there.
") Each character offers us a blend of the majorly contrived and the sufficiently believable.
For example, in a recent episode Vanessa (whose character is supposed to be Brooklyn personified) prattles off a list of old cinema stars leaving her sweet, rich, guilt-ridden boyfriend Nathan to confess that he fears they have nothing in common.
Nothing.
"I like watching sports on ESPN, I have never even read the Age of Innocence.
" And like that the world of actual adolescence is slightly revealed.
In relationships differences as slight as loving sports or loving old cinema has the potential to separate you, in a heartbeat.
The writers' traditional lists of characters (the mean girl, the pretty one, the artsy one, the handsome one, the loner, and so on) are infused with enough moments of humanity that watching is always tantalizing.
Though we want to believe that no one is as combed and primped as Blair, what if there were? Would they be our friends? Would they mean to us? Gossip Girls lets us watch her every ringlet, from the safety of our living room.
She may spew her meanness of her plebeians, but she cannot reach through the satellite TV and get us, which is part of why we love her.
The distance between brings her elegance and sparkle to our very living room, but not her belittlingly sense of entitlement.
Whether it be Serena or Jenny, Dan or Chuck Bass, we can imagine that there are people enough like these characters that Gossip Girls takes on a twisted documental spirit.
Of course the characters speak it quippy verbiage, much too witty for the average teen...
but with New York as the backdrop, we can just look at the buildings if we get bored with the dialogue.
Browse your local satellite TV guide to see when Gossip Girls airs in your region, and enjoy what one New York based magazines calls, the greatest show of our time.
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