All posts tagged clique

Spotted: 10 Reasons You Should Watch Gossip Girl

By REBECCA, April 27, 2012

Gossip Girl

Okay, so I came super late to Gossip Girl. Yeah, I had a friend or two who watched it. And I knew what it was, sure: a superficial show about a bunch of privileged kids with nothing better to do than talk about each other and swap lip gloss colors. Right? Right! And yet, so very, very WRONG! I stand before you humbled by the power. The power of Gossip Girl.

So, I have compiled the following list of reasons you should watch Gossip Girl if, like me, you have either a.) operated under the assumption that it wasn’t worth your time, or b.) have had it on your list and just needed a little shove into the upper East Side.

Or, for those of you who were on it from go, maybe this list will remind you that, oh, look, global climate change likely has us in for a hellish summer—what better way to spend it than inside with air conditioning, a frozen cocktail, and Gossip Girl?

Without further ado, here are 10 Reasons You Should Watch Gossip Girl!

Veronica Mars Kristen Bell1. Kristen Bell. I wouldn’t necessarily say that everything is better with Kristen Bell’s presence. Nope, I just double-checked on IMDb and I can confirm: Everything Is Better With the Presence of Kristen Bell. It’s like, actually, all the times when I thought to myself, “self, this show Gossip Girl is probably crap,” myself should have said, “shutup, RP-G—it has Kristen Bell in it.” Even though she’s only voice-over, she manages to seem like she knows everything and yet could be anyone. That, my friends, is talent.

[Sidebar: once, my friend A— tricked me into seeing Forgetting Sarah Marshall (ok, she didn't trick me; I was writing my dissertation and she basically had me at "want to go to the mov—"). When we got there and I realized that it was a romantic comedy in which I was going to have to watch people be laughed at for humiliating themselves I was un-pleased. However! Within like 14 seconds of Kristen Bell coming on camera, I was laughing. (Well, and then there was that thing with the puppet musical of Dracula that just slayed me.)]

Sugar Cookies xoxo

Image: Whipped Bake Shop, Philadelphia

2. Relatedly, the signoff “xoxo, Gossip Girl.” This is one of the most addictive and delightful inventions of the information age. The “xoxo, —” provides an email salutation that is simultaneously warm and suggests a shared cultural milieu,  but isn’t overly intimate and can always be explained away as a GG citation were the recipient to feel it intrusively intimate. Besides, Kristen Bell’s snarkly little “you know you love me. Xoxo, Gossip Girl” is about the best ending to a tv episode ever. It works no matter what the state of the cliffhanger. Because we do love her!

3. Incestuousness. Among the core cast, that is. I love when even the cast photos make it clear that a show is going to have all the cast members sleep together.

Gossip Girl Queer as Folk The L Word 90210

America's Next Top Model

Hmm.

Seriously, though, sometimes it’s infuriating to see a show where the couple combos just keep flip-flopping: it’s like, what, show, do you not have the budget for a new character—go to a coffee shop and meet someone. But in Gossip Girl, with the familial expectations of marriage, the incredible elitism, and the suspicion of people being after them for their money, the inter-relating actually makes sense. And it’s kind of cool to see a model of how a small group of people can be friendly after dating, rather than the character having to leave the show.

Blair Waldorf

Image credit: Colormecourtney.com

4. Fashion, of course. Unlike many teen shows where fashion isn’t mentioned and the designer clothes, coiffed hair, and high heels are supposed to just be naturally occurring, in Gossip Girl fashion is talked about, aspired to, and expected. This is so much more realistic (narratively), and it actually acknowledges the time, money, and effort that it takes to look put together, much less stylish. My particular favorites in the fashion department are Blair and her school cronies. Blair’s gowns are stunning, and her school clothes (dictatorially echoed on her ladies in waiting) are like British school boy uniform + Godard waif + Marie Antoinette + money.

Gossip Girl Blair Waldorf Gossip Girl Serena Van der Woodsen Blair Waldorf

5. Champagne. It’s as effervescent as the nightlife and as fizzy as the fashion. The folks of Gossip Girl remind us that it doesn’t have to be New Year’s Eve or a wedding to pop the cork on some bubbly. And, especially with summer coming, Gossip Girl has inspired me to pair my YA with a bit of the Brut, thank you very much. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must go get a bellini.

6. What I called the Random Appeal Factor in my list of 10 Reasons You Should Be Watching Make It Or Break It.  I’ll just be honest. I’m really not the intended audience of Gossip Girl. I mean, I’m like the anti-Gossip Girl. But I LOVE it. And then one night my sister was hanging out, and we were all, what should we watch while sipping whiskey, petting the cat, and brainstorming how to topple capitalism? Well, Gossip Girl, obviously. I was in the middle of season 2, and I just popped it on, telling my sister we’d change it if she didn’t like it. By three minutes in, she was like, “wait, pause it and tell me EVERYTHING about EVERYONE.” And I did. And then she kept calling me after work and after hanging out with her friends, all, “oh, yeah, hey, um, I’ve got like 48 minutes before my next thing—you wanna watch an episode of Gossip Girl?” Yes. Yes, I do.

7. Blair. Sure, it’s “Serena” that gets whispered in the opening credits; sure, it’s Serena’s return that whips the upper East Side into a tizzy in the first episode; sure, dudes seem to find her irresistible. But who cares about Serena when the HILARIOUS Blair Waldorf is in a scene? Oh, Blair, you are so crazy. You’re insecure, entitled, uncompromising, spiteful, vindictive, petty, and dictatorial. And HILARIOUS.

I have discussed my love for monomaniacal characters here and here, and Blair definitely makes the list. And that’s why I actually love her; because despite her many, many horrible qualities, she is a hella hard worker who goes after what she wants and is willing to appear ridiculous to get it. And, as Chuck remarks to Blair, “you don’t get nearly enough credit for your wit.”

8. Chuck. Chuck Bass. Chuck Basstard. Mother Chucker. Speaking of monomaniacs with extremely questionable ethics! Ok, Chuck, I hated you in the beginning of the show because I have a soul and you treat women like disposable party favors. And yet, despite finding every element of your politics despicable, with each passing 42 minutes I found myself more and more delighted by you. Dude, you are fucked up. And hilarious, ambitious, smart, and resourceful. Plus, you can say things that would sound ridiculous coming from any other character/actor. (In response to why he should be chosen for a position: “Because I’m Chuck Bass.”) Chuck Bass, you diabolical, screwed-up fiend.

Chuck Bass Evil Genius

9. Chuck and Blair! If you look up “synergy” in the dictionary, you will find the equation “Chuck+Blair.” Okay, you won’t; you will find something like “the interaction of elements that when combined produce a total effect that is greater than the sum of the individual elements” (dictionary.com). Or, as George Orwell would put it, 2+2=5. These two superpowers are each formidable on their own. But whenever they join forces, it’s seismic. Their scenes are far and away the best written scenes on the show, and it’s worth the price of admission just to see them glower at each other, admire their own and each other’s craftiness, and dress impeccably.

[slight spoiler for Season 1:]

“Blair: Do you . . . ‘like’ me?
Chuck: Define like.
Blair: You have got to be kidding me.
Chuck: How do you think I feel? I can’t sleep! I feel sick, like there’s something in my stomach . . . fluttering.
[disgusted]
Blair: Butterflies? Oh no, no, no, no no.
[horrified]
This is not happening!
Chuck Bass: Believe me no one is more surprised or ashamed than I am.
Blair Waldorf: Chuck, you know that I adore all of God’s creatures and the metaphors that they inspire, but those butterflies have got to be murdered”

Image: January Jones Prints on etsy

10. Scheming, Plotting, and General Mischief Making via Gossip Girl. Okay, so ordinarily, I’m not a fan of lying and scheming on shows—it so often feels like the writers couldn’t create drama without a convenient “misunderstanding” that leads to plotting, etc. But, in Gossip Girl, the scheming seems so much a part of the characters and the world they’ve been raised in that it all makes sense (we even see how Upper-East-Side-itis can be contagious . . .). Despite all their money and connections, there is so little that these teenagers have control over in their worlds that they seem to crave the tiny pops of control that they get when they reveal something via Gossip Girl or use it to punish someone else, even if they know they’re inviting retribution.

Image: Blue Ribbon General Store

These people use Gossip Girl to measure their social cachet, perpetrate retribution on one another via truth and lies alike, and air confessions and grievances. And they variously describe Gossip Girl as ally and threat. As Gossip Girl points out at one point, though, it is only through the very active participation of each person who sends tips to Gossip Girl or acts in accordance with her tips that she has any power to destroy their lives or tell their secrets. As my sister astutely pointed out: even though they would be better off if they simply didn’t play the game, it’s like a very well-orchestrated self-destruction that they all participate in because they believe momentary notoriety and the upper-hand are the only forms of capital they have.

And so, the scheming, lying, vicious truth-telling, innocent acts caught on camera from the wrong angle, incidents of omission, and flat out manipulation creates drama, yes, but it’s a dynamic and dangerous drama, even when it’s based on lies and misunderstandings.

So, there you have it. Have I missed your favorite (or most hated) thing about Gossip Girl? Your favorite Chuck- or Blair-ism? Let me know in the comments!

18 Comments
by Rebecca on April 27, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in TV
Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by Rebecca on April 27, 2012

http://crunchingsandmunchings.wordpress.com/2012/04/27/spotted-10-reasons-you-should-watch-gossip-girl/

Re-read: The Secret Diaries Trilogy by Janice Harrell (and an elephant in the room)

Scholastic, 1994

By REBECCA, April 16, 2012

Secret Diaries Janice HarrellSecret Diaries Janice HarrellSecret Diaries Janice Harrell



characters:

Joanna: new girl in town, she is falling hard for Penn and the rest of his clique . . . but what are they hiding?

Laurie: has disappeared! Once Tessa’s best friend, now no one can find her . . .

Penn: handsome and wealthy, Penn holds the group together, but money can’t solve everything

Tessa: physics guru and gourmand, Tessa welcomes Joanna warmly

Stephen: Tessa’s boyfriend, he wants to get his grades up so he can follow Tessa to Princeton

Casey: computer whiz, misogynist, and all-around egomaniac, is Casey simply unpleasant or downright dangerous?

Cabin in the Woods Joss Whedonhook

When you’re new in town and you start dating a guy who is charming, handsome, and has use of a cabin in the woods, it can mean only one thing: obviously he and his friends are involved in something creepy and/or sordid. Ah, l’amour!

worldview

Joanna Rigsby has moved to town in her senior year to live with her workaholic father. On her first day at her new school she sees Penn, Tessa, and Stephen and is drawn to them and their friendship. As Joanna starts hanging out with Penn and his friends, though, she senses a strange undercurrent to their interactions. Her new friends seem secretive, they let horrible Casey order them around, they’re unusually concerned with the weather, and they seem to change the subject when she walks up unannounced, saying terribly unsubtle things like “what were we just talking about? Ah, yes, the —,” which, of course, no one ever says. Little by little, as we learn from the diary that Joanna keeps, Joanna begins to wonder if her new friends were involved in Laurie’s disappearance . . . or death.

But, but, but, there’s a cabin to spend the weekends in!

I actually think that the cabin thing is what originally sold me on this series. I read it when I was 13 or so, so driving up to your parent’s cabin with your friends, cooking, studying, taking walks in the woods—this all seemed mature and magical to me. And it still does.

“After dinner we gathered around the hearth . . . Casey stretched out full length on the couch, crunching a cookie. Stephen was sunk into one overstuffed chair, a leg hooked over one arm. Tessa sat on the other, a stainless-steel bowl in her lap, snapping green beans. I sat cross-legged, leaning against the couch, writing. Penn lay on his stomach, propped up with his arms, watching the flames as if hypnotized.

My pen hesitated. ‘I wish we could stay here forever,’ I said.

‘What?’ Tessa’s cheeks dimpled. ‘And give up our big ambitions?’

‘What’s your big ambition?’ I asked?

‘Well, first Princeton . . . And then I want to write cookbooks, become famous, and have wonderful children and give brilliant dinner parties where major world issues are settled between the chocolate mousse and the coffee!’

‘I have got to get into Princeton.’ Stephen gritted his teeth” (Temptation, 124-5).

Chocolate MousseThe Secret Diaries books are chock full of intimate, rainy scenes of friends studying in bakeries and libraries, friends cooking at the cabin, friends playing board games and talking about college applications. For this alone the series is a fun read. And, frankly, almost everyone will see through the mystery element pretty quickly–far quicker than Joanna, although she does figure it out at the end of book one.

what was the book’s intention? did it live up to that intention?

Even if Janice Harrell is no John le Carré, the series does a good job of showing how when the friends try to cover up the mess they’ve made they just dig themselves deeper. The characters’ motivations are solid and there are very few moments where you want to throttle anyone for making stupid decisions. You know who I do want to throttle, though: Casey. I want to enroll Casey in some kind of torturous psychological study as punishment for being one of the many things wrong with the world. Much of the story hinges on Casey’s ability to extort favors and get away with terrible behavior based on his threats to expose his friends, and that was painful to read, if dramatic.

Tom Riddle Diary Harry Potter

Tom Riddle's Diary

Joanna’s diary entries are, predictably, stupid and purple, which is surprising because her character is terse and undramatic. Indeed, Joanna is not the main draw here. Penn is kind and charming, but it’s Tessa and Stephen that I always wanted to be friends with. They’re a twin couple: attractive brunettes with shaggy hair and baggy clothes who you imagine rolling around and cuddling like puppies instead of making out. They are the best-developed characters, with quirks, hobbies, and multi-dimensional desires. Plus, Tessa loves to cook, so I always used to hope that we could convince Penn to turn the cabin into a destination restaurant and Tessa and I could run the kitchen. P.S., when I first read these, I (for some now inexplicable reason) thought Stephen was pronounced Stefan because of the “ph,” which is a name I like. Then at some point in the third book, I think, someone calls him “Steve” and it totally devastated me.

personal disclosure

Secret History Donna TarttBut let’s get to the elephant in the room: The Secret Diaries is a young adult, slightly-changed version of Donna Tartt’s magnificent novel, The Secret History, published in 1992. In The Secret History, Richard Papen moves from California to Hampden College in isolated Vermont (a fictionalized Bennington, where Tartt went to college and wrote the book) and is immediately fascinated by a clique of four friends: intimidatingly smart Henry, cultured Francis, buffoonish Bunny, and the twins, Charles and Camilla, all of whom study the classics with the most exclusive professor at Hampden. The prologue of The Secret History opens with Bunny’s death, and then the novel narrates the path to his death and its aftermath.

I won’t go into super-specific detail because it won’t be interesting to anyone who hasn’t read both. But I will say: if it were simply the basic plot structure, I would chalk it up to independent invention. There are, however, details in The Secret Diaries that seem so close to those in The Secret History that one almost wonders if they are homages. To give but one example: in The Secret History, Charles and Camilla are twins; in The Secret Diaries Joanna first says of Stephen and Tessa, “there was a boy-girl pair who looked so much alike I thought at first maybe they were brother and sister, but then I spotted them kissing one morning in a dark stairwell” (Temptation, 10-11). A totally unnecessary similarity, right?

Anyway, details like this seem like precisely the kind of thing that I would shy away from if I was writing a series that was the exact same plot as a book published two years before. So, basically, I’m curious what the deal with this is. While there are  a few instances of The Secret Diaries being misrecognized as The Secret History and one comment on a Donna Tartt fansite, I can’t find any mention of there being litigation over it or anything. So, anyone out there who has read both, I’d love to hear your thoughts: am I crazy, or are they the same story?

readalikes

Secret History Donna Tartt

The Secret History (1992) by Donna Tartt, of course. As I said, one of my favorites, it’s not generally called YA, but it certainly could be.

I Know What You Did Last Summer Lois Duncan

I Know What You Did Last Summer (1973) by Lois Duncan. A group of friends cover up a major mistake in an attempt to get on with their lives. But, as the blurb for this classic teen-whoopsie thriller says, some secrets just won’t stay buried! I never saw the Jennifer Love Hewitt/Sarah Michelle Gellar movie, but the book totally freaked me out as a kid.

Divine Economy of Salvation Priscila Uppal

The Divine Economy of Salvation (2002) by Priscila Uppal. Boarding school, secret society, clique, rites of initiation . . . you do the math.

Procured from: bought used, long ago

12 Comments
by Rebecca on April 16, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Book Review, My Home Library
Tagged , , , , , ,

Posted by Rebecca on April 16, 2012

http://crunchingsandmunchings.wordpress.com/2012/04/16/re-read-the-secret-diaries-trilogy-by-janice-harrell-and-an-elephant-in-the-room/

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