By Amalia Theocharidou,
As we enter the Fall season and more and more people start spending more time at home, binge-watching a series in the coziness of their home, it’s time for everyone to step aside and make room for the Queen of the pop culture. Hello Upper East siders, welcome Gossip Girl. With the craziness of the plot, the impossible events, and the glamour of the elite Manhattan group, Gossip Girl lures you into another world of wealth, betrayal, and conspiracy.
The series starts with the arrival of Serena, the former queen of one of the most prestigeous schools in New York, as well as the daughter of Lily van der Woodsen, a wealthy business woman. Serena has been off town after a huge scandal on her name broke out, in order to let it subside. But after she decides to make her return, things get more complicated… But let’s get things from the start…
The Constance Billard-St. Jude’s School serves as the elite private school that only the offsprings of the top families in New York get to attend. The place is characterized by its snobbish and ruthless students, along with one more thing. The Gossip Girl blog. Anonymous and hidden behind a screen, Gossip Girl is a silent watcher and an exposer of the darkest secrets of the students and their families. Each time something is discovered, Gossip Girl makes a rather sharp post about it, managing to become the terror of the high society. It comes to destroy the solitude and the supposedly friendly environment in between the bonded group. But these so-called friends don’t have anything to hide. Or do they..?
Besides Serena’s comeback, Gossip Girl has to deal with a new hot arrival at the school. Dan Humphrey isn’t your typical rich boy. Instead, he’s not rich at all. Coming from a rural environment, Dan earns a place in Constance, along with his ambitious sister Jenny, but he’s far from socializing. Self-characterized as an outcast, Dan isn’t interested at all in the glamorous environment. In fact, he’s disgusted by the hypocricy and the corruption he notices around him. The obvious social distance isn’t helping him at all as well. Starting at Constance, he needs to face multiple challenges, one of them being Blair Waldorf, or Queen B, a posh, high-society girl, who cares about maintaining the status she’s worked so much for.
Blair’s plans on stabilizing her place as the school’s lead has been upturned not only by Dan’s revolutionary nature but as well as the return of her best friend, Serena. But why’s that and the two best friends are in a literal warzone? As the plot unravels, we get to discover events from the past of the characters, and the reasons why we’re brought to the point we are now. In behind balls, gowns and closed doors, Gossip Girl transmits us to the world of conspiracy, letting us find out how corrupted a seemingly perfect and wealthy life is, but also trying to unmask the true Gossip Girl, hiding behind the blog.
Gossip Girl, by the time it premiered, raised outstanding backlash from the viewers, who characterized it as impossible to watch, an ode to debauched life, absolutely inappropriate for teenagers, as it highlights how money, alcohol and all that kind of urges get you where you want. But, it’s rather the opposite. Through this world of “whoever has, gets”, th show only pinpoints how, besides having it all, non of the leads is truly happy. Due to this backlash, one can observe a marketing miracle within the genius team of the series. After gathering all the above-stated negative comments, they created different kind of posters with it, placing them all around America. Posters like, “Protect your kids from the menance“, “This new plague will take over us“, managed to gain the interest of millions of viewers, making Gossip Girl one of the most successful shows of all time.
Let yourself get emerged in the world of fashion and sparkle, conspiracy and secrets. And until the next time, XOXO, Gossip Girl.
