Sophia Todd

COMM 1000- R04

Professor Kamin

12 April 2021

Gossip Girl on Consumerism: Analysis of Dominant and Oppositional Fan Readings

Abstract:

Gossip Girl, a television show about the lives of wealthy teenagers, encodes messages of consumerism by weaving it into its plot and characters. While many fans of the show have accepted its message, which manifests in their desire to dress like Gossip Girl characters, many fans have rejected consumerism, as evidenced by vids that focus on emotion and intimacy.

Several theories exist in communications to analyze the ways that media impacts audiences. One such theory is Stuart Hall’s Encoding and Decoding model of communication, which theorizes specifically about the way that media messages are transmitted from senders to receivers. Hall argues that direct transmission from sender to receiver does not exist; in other words, receivers do not ‘decode’ the exact message that senders ‘encode.’ Because media messages reflect culture they can be, and oftentimes are, received differently than the way they were intended. While some audiences may accept the intended message, called a dominant reading, others may reject the encoded message, called an oppositional reading. Fans of Gossip Girl, an American television show about wealthy teenagers living in New York’s Upper East Side, provide an example of Hall’s emphasis on indirect transmission because its audience has adopted both a dominant and oppositional reading. Gossip Girl’s encoded message of consumerism, amplified by its costumes and emphasis on the teenage body, has been accepted by many fans who attempt to imitate the characters’ clothing and lifestyle. In contrast, other fan communities have rejected the show’s focus on consumerism; instead, they reimagine the show to focus less on the characters’ bodies and more on their emotions and personalities.

Gossip Girl, based on the book series by Cecily von Ziegesar and developed for television by Stephanie Savage and Josh Schwartz, aired on The CW from 2007 until 2012 (“Gossip Girl”). While the show received low ratings from its target audience of viewers aged 18-34, its space on network television was saved by high ratings from teenage girls, whose ages parallel the characters’. By the end of its first season, Gossip Girl was the top-rated television show among teenagers, with an average rating of 2.6 (Marsi). Following the first season, the CW shifted its target audience to be younger. The show is narrated by Gossip Girl, an anonymous website that chronicles the dramatic lives of a group of privileged Upper East Side teenagers as they dodge scandal. The characters’ lives are dominated by the drama that arises out of their desire for popularity, reputation, and perfect appearance. Wealth is equally as important because it comes with opportunities and connections whereas lacking wealth is affectively social suicide on the Upper East Side. The show’s normalization of extreme wealth and perfect reputation informs the characters’ personalities and relationships with each other and helps to lay the foundation for encoded messages surrounding capitalism and consumerism.

Gossip Girl’s costumes are central to its plot and character development. Eric Daman, the show’s costume coordinator, designed the characters’ outfits so that their clothes would enhance their personality. The main protagonists, Blair Waldorf, played by Leighton Meester, and Serena van der Woodsen, played by Blake Lively, are prime examples. Blair’s uptight and driven personality is reflected in her sophisticated style as she layers on “brooches, pearls, scarves, shrilly colorful blazers, and patent leather pumps' ' (La Ferla). In contrast, Serena’s bohemian clothing amplifies her relaxed demeanor. Each character’s fashion is heavily influenced by their personality, making the clothes that they wear a piece of their identity. Thus, it promotes the use of the “female body as a brand,” meaning that the clothes they wear and buy are a crucial part of their individuality. The show encodes the message that buying and consuming is positive and necessary (Burwell 307).

In addition to the characters’ costumes, the plot also contributes to the encoded message of consumerism and capitalism. Most of the characters in the show are at the forefront of businesses even though they are still in high school. For example, many of the plotlines involving Chuck Bass, Blair’s love interest, surround the Empire, the hotel that he owns. In the third season specifically, Chuck struggles to keep his business thriving amidst sexual harassment allegations and greedy older family members who want control over the hotel. To revitalize bookings, Chuck opens a club and holds a grand opening, despite not being of legal drinking age. Blair, who acquired her mother’s fashion design company, works with Chuck to host fashion shows at the hotel, which she invites influential critics to in an effort to boost the business’ popularity. While business careers are a normal part of many television shows, the absurdity of Blair and Chuck’s young ages make their business endeavors more noticeable. While viewers might expect them to worry about mundane high school drama, the characters are focused on strategic business moves and entrepreneurship. By presenting its characters as enviable, Gossip Girl suggests that their interests and actions are just as impressive as their outfits and reputation. Thus, Gossip Girl encodes capitalist messages such as wealth accumulation and competition that are amplified because the characters taking part in those activities are unlikely to be able to in real life, though do so with ease.

Consumerism is also a large component of many Gossip Girl relationships. Blair and Serena, whose friendship is rooted in jealousy and competition, often use consumerism to reconcile. For example, in the pilot episode, Blair and Serena are reunited after Serena leaves her boarding school abroad and arrives back in New York City. Blair, having ruled over the Upper East Side’s social scene in Sabrina’s absence, is unhappy to see her. After tense interactions and calculated moves against each other, the girls eventually reconcile a few episodes later and go on a shopping spree together where they buy matching outfits and prance around the city (Burwell 306). The first few episodes set up the cyclical nature of their relationship as they fight and then makeup over material goods. Gossip Girl encodes the message that consumption is good by suggesting that shopping can fix problems and make people happy.

During its time on network television, Gossip Girl’s live audience hovered around 2.4 million people, earning the show a low rank on television viewership charts (Hampp). However, the show’s multi-platform viewing strategy helped it to maintain its relevance. Gossip Girl’s extensive web content included the fictional Gossip Girl blog, interactive photos and maps of New York City, music videos of songs from the soundtrack, behind the scenes videos and interviews, cell phone ringtones and wallpaper, and an interface that fans can use to not only create their own Gossip Girl blogs but also interact with other fans of the show (Bonomo 1). Additionally, a feature allowed fans to click on a character’s clothing to find out where they could purchase it. While it was on television, much of the internet space occupied by the Gossip Girl fandom was created and monitored by the production company itself, pushing the show into the mainstream despite its low ratings. Thus, Gossip Girl became a “manufactured cult text” because it acquired a large, devoted fan base while still maintaining network control (Bonomo 2). In some instances, such as the introduction of a feature that allowed fans to click on a character’s outfit for product details, their attempt at promoting consumption was obvious. While fans were allowed to have their own opinions and readings of the show, their uninfluenced interactions with the material and with other fans were limited because The CW occupied much of the fandom’s online space. However, after Gossip Girl was canceled in 2012 and streaming platforms such as Netflix and HBO Max began offering the show, its extensive web content disappeared, making way for more extensive and unmonitored interaction between fans.

Many young girls have decoded Gossip Girl’s dominant reading by imitating the characters’ pro-consumerist behaviors. Interviews with fans surrounding the show’s influence on their lives found that they eagerly mimic the characters’ fashion sense and desire to acquire clothing, which fuels the consumerist messages in the show. Fans were found to be more impacted by their favorite character’s fashion choices, rather than the show’s costumes as a whole. For example, one fan who identified with Blair indicated that she adopted Blair’s signature headband. Similarly, a fan who identified with Serena had begun wearing boots after she wore them in several episodes (Romeo 17). A study conducted in Lebanon with similar findings noted that most Gossip Girl fans do not live as glamorously as the characters do. However, fans admitted that their attempt to adopt the trends worn by Serena and Blair had motivated them to spend more time and money shopping for their exact or similar pieces (Abi-Khalil & Mady 87). Like Serena and Blair modeled for them in the show, fans who identify with the dominant reading have found joy in shopping and the consumption of clothing. Blair’s and Serena’s status as role models encompasses their entire brand, from their personalities to the products they buy. Thus, this group of fans has also accepted the idea that consumption and identity are linked. While this group of fans did not explicitly say that they were pro-consumerism, their adoption of typical Gossip Girl behaviors indicates that they have readily accepted product consumption.

In contrast, other fans have rejected Gossip Girl’s emphasis on consumerism and instead adopted an oppositional reading of the show. Instead, they focus solely on the characters’ personalities and emotions in their reimagination of the show’s plotlines using fanvids. Fanvids, or simply vids, are fan videos composed of spliced show clips that have been reorganized and set to background music to suggest a new narrative is taking place. In Gossip Girl fanvids, vidders typically zoom in on full-body clips of the characters so that only their facial expressions are visible. Further, vidders compliment their unique video montages with songs, often sad ones, that highlight the emotions of the characters. In doing so, vidders ignore the “fashionable body of teen TV” opting instead for “emotional excess” (Burwell 13). In other words, while the show itself uses teenage bodies to frame material goods, vidders exclude bodies and therefore consumption, entirely. Instead, vidders embrace the emotional depth and personality traits of each character as an individual. Some vidders have further pushed back on the characters’ idealized beauty and bodies by disfiguring them using video editing software.

Not only do vidders focus on the individual, but they also use slash vids to bring depth to their favorite characters and relationships. Slash and femslash vids adopt the same structure as vids do, though they focus specifically on imagined relationships between two male or two female characters. They represent a subcommunity of vidders who reject the heteronormative lens that media often adopts. Many slash vidders have used Blair and Serena as the subjects of their femslash vids by using close ups of both their faces and their bodies to redefine their friendship as romantic. While slash vidders do make use of clips that focus on bodies, they are typically zoomed in and unclothed to emphasize physical intimacy between characters. Blair and Serena’s friendship specifically departs from their oftentimes shallow connection over shopping and clothes and focuses more on the idea of “pleasure, possibility, and hope” within in a same-sex relationship (316). Rather than use the body as a vehicle for consumerism, as the dominant reading gravitates towards, vidders’ oppositional readings reimagine the body as a vessel for intimate connection.

Gossip Girl’s encoded message of consumerism has been decoded differently by different members of the show’s fandom. Some fans have decoded the show’s dominant reading, which suggests that product consumption is a positive piece of individual identity and style. This is evidenced by fans’ eagerness to purchase the clothing worn by the Gossip Girl characters they look up to and identify with. In contrast, vidders have decoded an oppositional reading, meaning they have rejected the show’s emphasis on consumerism by instead focusing on emotional depth and intimacy removed from product. The show and its fans provide an example of Hall’s encoding and decoding model, and thus can be used to better understand the way that media messages are transmitted from senders to receivers.

Works Cited

Burwell, C. (2014). You know you love me. Feminist Media Studies, 15(2), 306-323. doi:10.1080/14680777.2014.919335

Ferla, R. (2008, July 08). Forget gossip, girl; the buzz is about the clothes. Retrieved April 13, 2021, from https://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/08/fashion/08gossip.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Gossip girl. (2007, September 19). Retrieved April 13, 2021, from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0397442/

Hampp, A. (2009). OMFG! A show with few TV viewers is still a hit. Advertising Age, 80(18).

Marsi, Steve. “A Look At Gossip Girl Ratings, Viewers.” TV Fanatic, 2007, www.tvfanatic.com/2007/10/a-look-at-gossip-girl-ratings-viewers/.

Romeo, M. (2009). Television Study: “Gossip Girl” and Its Affects on Viewer’s Fashion. The McMaster Journal of Communication, 5(1), 13-25.

Tamara, A., & Christy, M. (2016). Gossip girl setting fashion trends: Lebanese young viewers identification with media characters. Journal of Media and Communication Studies, 8(8), 83-89. doi:10.5897/jmcs2016.0531