Gossip Girl 2.0 is upon us. I am scared.
There will be: zero slut shaming and zero privilege porn, apparently.
It’s all hot rich people who are aware of their privilege…apparently
There will be: questionable, garishly trendy schoolgirl streetwear fashion. Somewhat consistent with its iconic predecessor I suppose, albeit wayyyy less iconic and awesome. I am definitely biased but I honestly hate all of these outfits with a burning passion. Eric Daman, you’re a mad man.
There will be: Evan Mock being very hot.
There will be: Soft porn
There will be: Tavi Gevinson (yes, Tavi Gevinson) wearing a bad, budget iteration of Serena’s pilot outfit…for some reason. Good for her I guess.
I don’t wanna be asshole, cause I haven’t seen it yet…but how potentially boring.
Now, I am not against a show wanting to be more diverse in its cast and more socially responsible for its young, impressionable audience. We don’t need characters pulling Chuck Bass bullshit in order for things to be entertaining in 2021. In fact, I’m more than happy for them leave out sexual assaults which never get condemned (like in the original GG pilot. Shudder.)
However, I will say, I never enjoyed a Gossip Girl character because they were a good person. The few characters in Gossip Girl who prided themselves on being righteous and good, like Rufus and Dan were the most insufferable to watch.
I love Gossip Girl because it was very shit. I love how ridiculous everything was. It was problematicâ„¢ as fuck but it wasn’t trying to make any moral statements. It presented rich people as beautiful, rude and obnoxious, and ironically, they were lonely and unfulfilled 99% of the time. For me to feel entertained by Gossip Girl I needed the characters to rattle around in their insular rich-person bubbles, completely oblivious to the struggles of the real outside world.
OG GG wasn’t entirely escapist and tactless, though. It often showed its middle class characters struggling to insert themselves into the lifestyles of the rich and completely losing themselves in the process, which more than implied that the rich characters were unwelcoming, poisonous, even. There was also just generally quite a lot of emotion in that show – don’t laugh, I’ll die on this hill. I don’t even think it’s just the nostalgia talking. As much as I hate Dan Humphrey, Dan and Serena’s relationship in season 1 was really quite warming and lovely and their breakup at Lily and Bart’s wedding still kinda devastates me. Blair and Chuck’s will-they-won’t-they had me in a suffocating choke hold in primary school and I’m still obsessed with their damaged, evil little relationship to this day. From season 2 onwards Leighton Meester and Ed Westwick carried GG on their backs with acting skills that were superior to the content itself.
(When I say Gossip Girl fell off after season 1, I mean it. I can tolerate up to season 4-ish before I start to feel depressed about the glaring decline in original ideas and writing quality. I’ll give season 5 one thing though, Dan and Blair were so revolting as a couple that it made me really fucking angry – anger is a strong emotion, and Gossip Girl made me feel it deeply.)
Moving away from the OG GG, It is very strange to see the trashy, flawed phenomenon about rich, snobby teenagers that literally defined me as a preteen being remade by HBO and aggressively marketed as woke. I enjoy the casting from what I’ve seen so far, but new GG has got the same creators as the original. I’m afraid it will be all optics, zero follow through, pandering to empty notions of diversity and progressiveness instead of presenting actual socially meaningful conversations about classism, racism and homophobia. The woke marketing is so odd to me, because I don’t think anyone really desired a socially aware Gossip Girl remake. The OG GG is already very dated and personally, I think its way too far gone to be beaten into social submission without losing its entire identity as a show/brand. Overall it has me thinking: do we watch Gossip Girl to be moralised at? I certainly don’t, and I don’t know why anyone would.
Surely it will be very difficult for GG 2.0 to replicate the essence of the OG. How will they create the same level of guilty pleasure, the same delicious shallow, mindless fantasy and addictive bitchiness that we know and love from the original if it spends its time calling out rich people’s delusions of grandeur. Like how do you keep the twisted charm of OG GG if the rich out of touch folks are not allowed behave in their true rich and out of touch ways?
Conversely, the way young modern audiences read too much into dumb light hearted shows is not lost on me at all. We expect way too much from most TV shows. For example, Emily in Paris is undeniably a shit show and a shitshow, but I never for a second thought it was trying to give us social commentary and realism. It was purely a distraction. A frivolous, cringey, escapist romp, obsessed with bolstering the bad decisions of its silly white American protagonist (and loaded with heaps of weird bigotry toward French people). I agree with most of the criticism, it really didn’t deserve an Emmy, but I also feel like we need to stop holding light, mediocre shows to standards they never set out to meet in the first place. Plus, award shows have kinda been rigged forever. There’s always a walking disaster of a show that slips into the awards season and wins, despite competing against way more creative, thought provoking ground breaking shows.
I feel that you have to understand the rules before you can skilfully break them. I am forever betrayed by the GG 2.0 cast admitting they don’t even know anything about their OG GG, their literal source material. Starring in GG 2.0 but not having watched OG GG is not a flex at all. If it was too problematic for them, they should have at least hate-watched the original so they know what they’re trying to subvert.
Anyway…I’m struggling to see where new Gossip Girl fits into the current teen drama landscape. Is it meant to be woke and gritty or escapist and dumb? If they do miraculously manage to find a sweet spot in the middle, I will be pretty fucking impressed.
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In light of Gossip Girl 2.0 being the subject of negative press, here’s OG GG’s magnificent marketing that capitalised on outraged reviews from conservative media. Pure genius.
Yes I do have a copy of the large Chuck Bass advert on the wall in my bedroom.
Teen Drama Bitch 