Gossip Girl – Comments And Confessions Inspired By. (Part I)

** Have work assignment, will brb

“All that glitters is not gold…” – Merchant of Venice, 1599

N-ot a judgmental vitriol of the sometime-acclaimed tv series which nonetheless deserves to be flamed, but some observations and caveats that got completely overshadowed by too much attention to the decadent lifestyle – while the similarly popular book series is said to diverge from the screen version, both have been criticised for having themes unsuitable for the teen audience originally intended. Cast members – the professional actors playing the parts – have described how working on the 6-season series was eventually so de-sensitising to committed relationships that “Everyone was doing it (hooking up casually), even the ‘adults’…” 

The problem with that however, is that in avoiding it altogether we miss out (I couldn’t find a “cleaner” version anywhere near as powerful and so I really bemoan the excessive rubbish that distracts from the messages – so many entertainment writers feel they have to include a lot of steamy affairs into their work just to get it to sell, and they end up selling their talent short – they didn’t need that stuff, it doesn’t detract from the broader picture)…

The Gossip Girl series covers the privileged lives of teens enrolled in upscale Manhattan prep schools, their struggles to prove themselves, sometimes to themselves, gain attention from wealthy-but-dysfunctional parents, fight self-hate and destructive behaviour…. all festering beneath the glamorous socialite events, competition for Ivy League places, liberally decorated with branded consumer items, magnified by the anonymous blogger using the Gossip Girl pseudonym. (The fictitious Manhattan prep schools in the show btw, are modelled after the real life Spence School, among others.)

What is often missed is that the non-socialite kids become painfully aware of what they don’t have (money, family status), while unable to see what they do have (“real” parent(s) who are trying their best to parent and provide) ….. and this proves their most spectacular undoing. Ultimately they hurt themselves and their families more, create more damage, than the (already) messed-up privileged kids who eventually fight their way back to a “normalcy” they were not fortunate enough to have in their childhood.

This is one big reason I decided to blog it – because of the cautionary tale that gets completely overwhelmed by the wild parties and eye candy and juicy scandal distracting from the fact many of the rich kids in the show have overachieving Type A parents who turn out to be extremely self-centred or just plain dysfunctional. It’s very easy to see the rich kids simply as “spoiled”, but as it becomes clear what mess they grew up in, can you blame them? Yet the main thing everyone sees is…. the money. Rich kids get spoiled, become dysfunctional? Insert Schadenfreude <sheepish> It’s actually amazing how the trials and tribulations they endure turn them into better people than their parents.

Also in an amazing twist, you suddenly realise the average income family kids develop a huge chip on their shoulder. They become so hungry to afford the same lifestyle they see the privileged kids in that it corrupts them, affecting their initially mature and sound judgment. The most attentive and dedicated parent in the show also gets seriously burned by his kids, eventually also becoming corrupted. Corruption of the best is the heartbreaking worst.

Gossip Girl “herself” is one of the students, intelligent and wily, blogging anonymously and sowing huge discord, feeding on the equally anonymous “tips” sent in by fellow students about each other. Anonymity absolving accountability, she fuels all kinds of “cheap shots” and back-biting between the kids and their family members, posting all the dirty, often unsubstantiated laundry online. She also uses a mix of technology and manipulation (ever seen a teen without a cellphone? It’s like in The Matrix, where any of the “plugged in public” can be used by the System to be an “Agent” – or encouraged to take cellphone pics for you to spy on your subject) to flesh out her stories, entertain, stalk. In other words, in a horrible but no less creative way, she creates 1 + 1 = 10 billion.

This has sat in my drafts folder for really, really long – because for all the fact I have 7 ear piercings, 2 tattoos, a glass of wine most nights and due to 3 mergers have “lived” in at least 6 different dealing rooms of various sizes (going through that many makes you less interested in selling your soul because it crystallises the extent to which you are your job for maybe a few decades – but who you are, you are for the rest of your life and you need to live with that), some of them rife with some serious hard partying – at one place my “final interview” was during a company “team building” where I watched one of the very senior Sales bosses whose team I would be sourcing investment products for take to the dance floor while his team slipped folded dollar bills in his waist band….. yet I still do not believe in promiscuity and still believe in saving something for marriage. (That position’s been in my older posts for a long time, just hasn’t come up in awhile.)

Sigh. That’s not easy to talk about on an English blog in HK full of stealth readers who prefer to email because they don’t know who else is reading. Y-eah and I’m writing perpetually without a pseudonym, way to freak me out even more guys. The difference between an anonymous blog and owning everything you sign your name to. But I vowed that if I ever drew attention to Gossip Girl, horribly de-sensitising to promiscuity and substance abuse that it is, I would also disclose this other stuff about myself.

I was in at least a few places where it was really not cool to not “loosen up, let go,” but still not everyone completely loses themselves in parties. In every single place there were still people who were NOT hard partiers – but sometimes it took awhile to find them, it’s not like they have neon signs above their screens or wear big hats. Meantime the excessive party people, by definition as well, are just SUPERLOUD.

(And proud! Thank You, People Who Decide What’s On TV. Thank you, Kardashians. And can I include Deadpool – SO much wit, SUCH humour and then….. Splat. Brains flying everywhere. How. Inconsiderate. Now I can’t….. bring the kids, or watch it and still eat… watermelon.) I don’t know why what we watch “has” to more often than not be that way – think about it, if it really were in real life, then why would the actors  in Gossip Girl observe that playing the parts altered their behaviour? Nothing to alter right, if even in showbiz everyone was like this… Ryan Reynolds, who plays Deadpool, has also said the X scenes are very uncomfortable, completely unenjoyable….. and still they have to put all this stuff in, ensuring there is a big market who are going to miss it.

Newsflash, producers: Grownups watch a movie once… Twice. Little kids watch Trolls and Disney Princesses ten freaking billion times)

Anyway per my “pledge,” for ever mentioning Gossip Girl, here’s not allowing yourself to get into situations that you will regret: 

I’ve mentioned before that as a young adult (NOT a kid ok, any kids find this – without a fully developed (ie grownup) liver, alcohol is poison to your system even in small quantities) I put some effort into “practicing” ordering alcoholic drinks with friends I could trust, so I would not someday find myself in an embarrassing situation during work entertaining. But this once happened to me:

One evening at after-work drinks in my 20s, I couldn’t get through a half glass of wine. Now, I drink a full glass of red wine (resveratrol!) most nights, and at “practice” I would not even feel 2 consecutive Vodka shots at all (btw an average adult female liver can take only 2 drinks tops before you start to do damage to yourself even if you don’t yet feel it – d’you like sports? Go check how many professional athletes are super anal about what goes in their bodies…) Google will tell you a standard glass of wine is about 12% alcohol, a standard Vodka about 40%. That night however, I looked at my still half-full glass of Shiraz – far less than what I knew my limit to be – and couldn’t understand why I could barely keep my eyes open. My point is this – STOP. Someday you’re having grownup drinks somewhere, even if you have no idea like I did, why I felt that way – stop and go home. This is what happened to me next –

I could walk to the taxi stand, but I was getting more and more drowsy. The guy I knew loosely through work, based in Taiwan and just in town for a few days, had followed me into my cab and was kind of holding on to my shoulders with one arm and pushing my head into my chest with his other huge hand. He seemed to not want me to look up, and so I tried harder to see what it was he might not want me to see. That’s when I saw the cab driver’s eyes in the rear view mirror.

That cabbie kept wordlessly looking into our backseat and, in my drowsy state, it became a bit of a game. Stopping at traffic lights. Shop windows, street lamps lighting the rearview mirror of the taxi. Is he going to look in the mirror again? Yes. There are his eyes. Next light? Again. And again. I got more alert. As we approached my building, the guy began to ask if he could come up. I have never let relative strangers up ok, especially not males. Because I remembered that, rather than any conscious decision when my eyelids were still not completely behaving, I kept saying no, as clearly as I could. The moment I lurched out of the taxi, the cabbie sped off with him still inside.
 All the idiot things cabbies do, that was one good idiot thing 😀

For real though, it took me very long to figure that there really could’ve been something other than wine in my drink that night. I always snack on the desk, especially if I know I will be drinking, so I have no idea how so little wine nearly knocked me out after all my “careful practice”… I remember briefly considering downing the rest of my drink as I got up from the table, just out of habit – I don’t like to waste and drinks in nice places cost a lot – but that time, thank goodness I wasted it 🙂 Just stop and walk away.
You may not get a second chance.

Not getting drunk or giving back rubs as the “sweet young thing” on some desks was not cool when I was a 20-something hungry newbie. I mean, they don’t ask every girl, but if they ask you, I guess you’re supposed to be flattered (that in itself is another problem). I also remember one senior who was a Harvard alum telling me “if everyone else was doing it maybe (I) should too”, because other girls “who had total i-banker instincts” – his exact words – would. The term “i-banker” (investment banker) was also supposed to be really cool in those days. But I don’t remember ever regretting not doing those things. Feeling intimidated – sure. Scared of what it might cost me at work – absolutely. But not sorry. (Did more breakfast runs! Tea breaks! For a time I carried dozens of Penang Char Koay Teow packets back with me from CNY leave – the good stuff, from the real old retired uncle hawkers… all packed up carefully.) Now I look back, I don’t think not doing the back rub kinda stuff really cost me either – so I’m really glad I didn’t cave to fit in. You do not need to, you can always offer to do something else you are comfortable with that is closer to who you are.

(Apparently who I am is carrying in big loads of lard-fried CKT that pong up the entire dealing room.. Um.. Well also when one senior Forex Sales’ fish died while he was on Compliance leave (he kept a live blue fighting fish named “Fishy” under his screen for “stress release” – SERIOUSLY) I replaced it with a purple one. And then I gushed about the most Fabulous New Colour Enhancing Fish Food I found.) He said it was convincing, but he knew if I was lying I would not let him gush about it to other colleagues and that was how he called my bluff – by turning to gush about it to another team head.

OK so now I can Gossip Girl. If you’re gonna watch it, read my post above (and the next time anyone wants to bitch about my personal blog which I don’t publicise, remember that I sign my name and own everything I say.)

The unrealistically good-looking and privileged teens start out with pretty stereotypical characters, only to be tried and tested through growing pains, deep-seated insecurities, and family scandal.

And now, BIG FAT SPOILERS…

From left-to-right:

1) Nate Archibald – His finance manager dad, married to socialite mum from uppity family and struggling for credibility, goes to jail for embezzlement while the mum then struggles with her fall from grace among the socialites (but WHO wants to be friends with people like this in the first place???), resulting in Nate camping out in the family’s re-possessed home and, hungry to succeed, desperate not to end up like his dad, eventually builds a celebrity tabloid and news website and agency intended to rival Gossip Girl’s. Then he hires Serena…

2) Serena Van Der Woodsen – sweet, trusting, irresponsible uber-popular wild child who gets drunk and high a lot. Her perpetual escapades and the fact one of the big reasons she is popular is for getting drunk and high make it look like wild partying until you can’t remember who or where you are is just supercool. Go back up and read what I wrote earlier. Then read on and look for what happens to her next…

Her tabloid escapades are later revealed to be a desperate attempt at getting the attention of her high-flying selfish-disguised-as-well-meaning surgeon dad (who does things like elaborately fake her mum’s illness in order to keep his wife with him after he cheats).

Serena’s lack of sound judgment (well if you’re perpetually intoxicated it’s harder to have all your marbles) leads to some horrible choices – at one point she throws herself at one of her high school teachers, and though he remains professional and refuses her no matter what she says, it still destroys his career and sends him to prison. 

(That particular story might be fiction, but one of my close friends told me a few weeks ago about a real one she is aware of in an upscale school (maybe UK not HK, the family shuttles between at least the two countries regularly, and I didn’t ask specifically) – 16 year old boy formally charged with molest by his girlfriend’s sister. Years later when the case is now on hand, he is still struggling because it’s permanently on his record as a sex offender, even after it comes to light now, that the two sisters were horribly competitive with one another and the one who brought the charges only did it because she was jealous her sister had a boyfriend. “It wasn’t even like she was interested in the boy,” my friend says. And yes all of them were strong students academically. I don’t think those grades they worked so hard for matter right now. Also, lemme ask you this: Which sounds worse – “perjurer” or “acquitted sex offender” (which is the best he can hope for)?

As for Serena – think she got away with (albeit mostly unwittingly) ruining her former teacher’s life? His family seeks revenge by befriending her-of-the-unsound-judgement (in other words – wasn’t very difficult), spiking her drinks, and convincing her own family she needs to be forcibly committed into rehab.

When she recovers, Serena with “new clarity” eventually becomes the new “Gossip Girl” anonymous blogger on the block, shutting herself away until her original High School friends figure it out and stage an intervention.

3) Chuck Bass – rich-of-the-richest kids and sole heir to a hoteling fortune…. Who initially appears to be content buying whatever he needs – including strippers – until it is revealed the one thing he strives for is credibility and approval from his hotel empire-building dad – he aggressively and legitimately works to build successful business ventures, desperate to earn his dad’s love and approval…. until his dad verbally demolishes him and strips him of his inheritance for being too “soft” when he fails to professionally end the girl he loves (Blair Waldorf).

4) Blair Waldorf – high-achieving Queen Bee of the Mean Girls. Despite coming from money, and being surrounded by all the irresponsible partying, she has conservative ideals re drinking and promiscuity, initially saving herself for the childhood sweetheart she intends to marry…. until he cheats on her with a very drunk Serena who, upon waking up, is horrified and flees NYC for about a year with no explanation.

A top student who loves scheming to get what she wants – coveted Ivy league spot, honour roll, social status – she starts off incredibly manipulative and bitchy, but ultimately falls for Chuck Bass, eventually becoming selfless and also proving a better-than-expected friend to her fiercest rival-in-popularity, Serena.

Blair and Chuck’s on-off relationship-partnership-friendship eventually stands the test of some devastating life incidents, mistakes, and personality hang-ups brought upon by their dysfunctional parents. It’s inspiring in a most back-handed way, if you see the horrible things their relationship crawls back from, the forgiveness, the recovery from destructive behaviour and self-hate to eventually become married adults themselves.  

5) Dan Humphrey – Down-to-earth studious “good guy” from loving-though-single-parent family, who turns out to be the worst self-righteous character. He has the one thing none of the rich kids have – a “real” dad focussed on raising him and his sister right.

(Dad Rufus Humphrey is a former rockstar, struggling to expand his art gallery, having nonetheless managed to supplement Dan’s scholarship grant and send both kids to the elite prep schools he believes will give them the best college opportunities and future.)

Dan starts off the most “normal” one, struggling to fit in with the wealthy kids who can afford way more stuff than he can – including on dates, getting good grades, working part time jobs and calling the rich kids out on their irresponsible ways with his native wit and strength of character….. until his drive and ambition to catch up socially and financially inspires him to write a “tell-all” satire around the social and familial dysfunction of the rich kids, including those who have come to accept and befriend him. The book causes some of the other characters real pain and humiliation, and becomes a best-seller on the back of this.

After his success (his dad having weighed in on the fact he sold his friends out to get there) Dan tells his dad he would certainly not have wanted to end up like him, no high-flying career, big load of money or status. Rufus also reads in the book what his son really thinks of him. (OMG)

So yes there’s a part II…

ps: A-and, someone asked me what my second tattoo is. That didn’t take long 🙂