Please, hear me out. My wife has been watching Gossip Girl on Netflix, and while she's admitted it was a guilty pleasure, we have both found ourselves enjoying it.
Basically, it chronicles the lives and times of a handful of young 'Manhattan elite', through the assistance of a website called Gossip Girl, which receives anonymous texts about the sightings and rumors of these people. It even has a map that shows where the 'it' people were last spotted in the city.
Stay with me...
Now, basically all of them are horrible people, who have absolutely zero communication skills and even less of a desire to be forthcoming with vital information.
Wait, don't leave yet...
As much as I dislike the high-fashion, old money 'genre' that this show is, what I DO like is the way the plots intertwine, unravel and reravel. Whenever new information is discovered, alliances switch, motivations change and suddenly everyone sets out to get whatever it is they want, using everyone and everything they know as tool in their own game.
Again, I know these are terrible, obnoxious, self-centered people, but I am impressed that the writers can keep track of so many plot threads and keep them all spinning throughout an episode, a season, and sometimes multiple seasons.
So, yes, I unashamedly watch Gossip Girl, not to cheer on the characters or to learn valuable life-lessons, but for some of the same reasons that Pirates of the Caribbean, or Lost are so engaging--though the latter have MUCH more interesting genres.
There. I've said my peace. Feel free to judge...
Like a Guy Ritchie film?
ReplyDeleteExactly... though GG is definitely no Snatch.
DeleteI heard there was some Snatch in there, but I digress... How does the influence of the self-centered nature of the "social elite" affect the younger already self centered peeps who watch it in your opinion?
ReplyDeleteThis is Matt, as if you didn't know from the first line.
Nice, Matt...
DeleteLike any other drama movie or t.v. show that has flawed heroes or antiheroes, I would hope that people can tell the difference. As far as the young middle-schoolers for example that watch the show, I also hope that they see how all the scheming destroys relationships, complicates life, and hurts people physically and emotionally.
Of course, there is often a Full-House-style make up every three to five episodes between 'friends', but some pains are even brought up multiple seasons later, because the betrayals are rarely forgotten.
The show is campy enough for adults to notice that it's almost spoofy in some ways, while still maintaining it's internal drama. It seems like the creators meant for it to be more light-hearted than the average soap opera. Bottom line, it's not really for kids, but that doesn't mean they won't watch it, obviously, or that it's not marketed for them to do so.
Ideally the difficulties of the lifestyle portrayed in the show will speak for themselves. Luckily, there isn't a whole in there about the fashion, or money, or all the things that may attract young people (or even older ones) to that life. There is, however, quite a bit of sex, which also usually severely complicates lives and relationships, and a lot of times comes off as a bad idea for the character from the viewer's perspective... or at least mine.
GG is far from wholesome, but it's possible that its portrayal of the 'Manhattan Elite' seen in it will also be far from desirable to any younger viewers.