what’s my age again?

Gossip Girl originally ran from 2007 to 2012, developing a cult following within this time that has preceded the quality of the show and the political-correctness of it, with critics such as Van Damme, Bareket and Kelly using the fan-favourite to illustrate gender inequalities within television shows from the early 2000’s. This series of inequalities was what I chose to base my third year dissertation on, paying particular attention to Gossip Girl and One Tree Hill to discuss the ways in which female characters were overly sexualised and objectified by showrunners and writers. With the former show now getting rebooted for a new generation, this essay shall look at whether a revival will fall victim to the issues it’s ancestor posed, or whether the new series shall put to rights the problems it’s predecessor posed. In addition, Gossip Girl is getting a reboot — due to be released in 2021, the new series will be set in the same universe as the original series and certainly pay homage to the original characters, and will be concerned with how teenagers in the 2010’s/2020’s deal with and react to Gossip Girl herself, when they have been brought up with a much more intense focus on the internet. Showrunner Schwartz states that “there was something really interesting about the idea that we are all Gossip Girl now, in our own way, that we are all purveyors of our own social media surveillance state and how that has evolved and how that has mutated and morphed and telling that through a new generation of Upper East Side high school kids,” (Schwartz, 2019) thus implying that the new series will be focused more on the fact that for these teens, having grown up with technology and the internet and mobile phones, surely Gossip Girl is an outdated mode of conversation? With Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat, it’s a lot easier to report someone doing something a bit untoward independently, than to snap a photo and send it to a local blog for them to report instead? This essay shall look at one way the original series failed to provide accurate representation and instead encourage an unhealthy and negative attitude towards women, and what the reboot will hopefully rectify. A follow-up essay shall look in more depth at the lack of queer and POC representation within the first series and how the reboot is currently looking as though it will have fixed this issue, with a far more representational cast.

A main issue I focused on as part of my dissertation was the disproportional ages of the actors and actresses in the show. Blake Lively and Ed Westwick, who played Serena Van Der Woodsen and Chuck Bass, respectively, were 20 years old when the first season was filmed. This meant that they were 20 year old’s playing 15/16 year old’s, thus portraying underage teenagers as older, more experienced concepts. While it is sometimes made clear that these characters are younger, illustrated by the focus on them applying for college and dealing with school exams, the fact that the actors look so significantly older allows the viewer to forget, at least momentarily, that they are indeed supposed to be portraying teenagers. Such an attitude is encouraged later in the first season, when Blair Waldford (Leighton Meester) loses her virginity in the back of a limo to Chuck, who was just opened his first club — a boudoir/burlesque themed venue named Victor Victrola. The absurdity of this scenario is downplayed by the fact that these actors look to the audience to be old enough to be acting this way — downing champagne, spending time at clubs — but at the end of the day, Blair is just 17 during this encounter.

In addition, Serena is known as a ‘party-girl’ known to be partial to drugs and drink, as illustrated when she travels to Europe at the start of season 3, when she is photographed in tabloids. Her ‘wild-child’ persona is fitting with Blake Lively’s physical appearance, but not so fitting with Serena’s characterisation; she’s a 17 year old girl, trying to get herself into college. The choice to cast Blake Lively in this role was no accident; shows like Gossip Girl have more of an allure when the characters are easily sexualised, so casting someone of age removes the worry of being accused of anything untoward. Somehow, Serena is also posited as the ‘girl-next-door’, as I discussed in my prior essay. While being overtly sexualised, Serena is also held to higher standards than characters that are more obviously promiscuous because she is seen as a golden girl, or as someone who is innocent and motivated by romance rather than lust. The casting of Blake Lively as this innocent, doe-eyed girl is purposeful, what with her blonde hair and naïve expressions. While she is a character who is sexually experienced and sexually driven when it comes to her relationships with various men throughout the series, she is consistently viewed as innocent in the encounters she is part of. It’s almost as though these encounters are happening to her, rather than with her as a willing participant. This isn’t yet an issue of consent, however, and more about the way Serena is positioned as everyone’s dream woman; while, yes, she is sexy and sexual, she is also innocent and desirable because of this. In a completely backwards way, her sexuality is the thing that makes her desirable, because it is linked to her innocence. This wouldn’t have been possible without the casting of Blake Lively in this role, because her specific features, appearance and acting allow Serena to be characterised in this manner.

One thing I hope will be rectified in the Gossip Girl reboot is this discrepancy. I am hopeful that the series, scheduled to be released sometime in 2021, will do a better job at casting aptly aged stars in suitably aged roles. For example, rumoured to be starring as the new lead, Emily Alyn Lind is just 18 and playing one of the high-schoolers, which initially filled me with optimism as to producers making better decisions. However, Thomas Doherty, Zion Moreno and Jason Gotay are three other actors and actresses starring as characters the same age as Alyn Lind’s, yet are 25, 28 and 31, respectively. This fills me with less hope, as it is easy to predict that these characters are going to be overly sexualised and characterised to seem older than they truly are. Casting a 28 year old woman in the role of a 17 year old is an interesting decision seeing as one is an adult and the other is an underage child, yet the audience is supposed to suspend belief and imagine that this older looking woman is still in school? So while I am still holding out hope that these characters will be provided storylines and relationships suitable and believable for their age group, I am doubtful that producers and showrunners will be as strict with this rule as I would be.