Marxist Gossip Girl

“Gossip Girl here, your one and only source into the scandalous lives of Manhattan's elite” 

- Opening voiceover to the 2007 Pilot of Gossip Girl by the anonymous blogger and titular character

Art by Chloe Ho

Growing up watching The CW’s Gossip Girl from my 700-square-foot downtown East Village apartment was like watching a show in a different language, the uptown depicted was a different world. The characters–high-school heirs and heiresses of the Upper East Side– lived in my same borough yet were pure fantasy. Sheer thought of the existence of this Upper Manhattan teen scared me. Sterility, ease, and luxury in my cramped, dirty borough was perverse and grotesque in its removal from my reality. Scenes of an episode were filmed in the synagogue next-door to my building, yet the glamor was from another planet–and I thought it ironic they turned a religious building into the city’s hottest club. 

Based on a book series by Cecily von Ziegesar, some ghostwritten, (are ghostwriters a form of Gossip Girl?), the show was a montage of twee headbands, Strokes songs and Manhattan rich kid fantasy. Popular omniscient blog “Gossip Girl” haunts the characters through flip-phone text-blasts of each other’s dirty secrets. Brooklyn foil Dan Humphrey, (spoiler)– revealed to be Gossip Girl– lives in a gigantic Dumbo loft, is “poor” in comparison, scholarship kid at their elite private school. Back then, the uber-wealthy depicted onscreen bereft of genuine class-consciousness, wasn’t too repulsive to watch. Perhaps that’s why the 2021 HBO reboot was cancelled yet the books are getting a 2026 addition by von Zeigesar– the gaudiness made palatable in word. 

Class– the most important hidden character—moves the plot, motivates the characters, and seduces us within its New York City context, where it also plays an unspoken role. The show satirizes the absurdity of the rich, yet offers a whimsical escape into their lives. Amongst many celebrity guest-stars, pre-politician Ivanka Trump–self-confessed superfan–and Jared Kushner appear in an episode attending a party for the New York Observer– a publication Kushner, neither writer nor journalist, owned at the time. Were they aware they were technically being parodied as New York City’s dynastic rich? Kristen Bell, the voice of Gossip Girl, read Donald Trump’s tweets in the iconic delivery on Late Night with Seth Meyers, quoting Bell– “They do sound like things that were written on the show.” The handling of the Epstein Files– an exposé of New York elite in which Donald Trump is a main character– also disturbingly mirrors the pettiness of Gossip Girl posts, both ultimately leaving the highest players on the hierarchy of power intact. 

When Gossip Girl is finally revealed as Dan, fans declared it writer’s room sacrilege. I argue differently. Dan was the spying writer of the 2000s blogosphere–before image-based social media reigned, the gossip blog was the noughties writer’s spare-time. Aren’t writers the biggest gossips?– (in multiple instances I have been gossiped about on writer’s blogs.) Although he’s bisexual in the books, Dan is a straight man digitally cross-dressing, switching into a bitchy girl persona to channel his sordid, at times contemptuous observations. Continuing the show’s vague gesturing towards real politics, the (allegedly)“working-class” character being the critic of the elite does, in fact, recall an actual history of the underclass harnessing written power over high society by stealthily exposing their secrets.

“The Upper East Side was like something from Fitzgerald or Thackeray. 

…If I wasn't born into this world– maybe I could write myself into it.” 

- Dan’s monologue revealing he’s Gossip Girl

Stella Gleitsman

Art by Chloe Ho