The Rumors Are True! Gossip Girl and the Cooptation of the Cult Fan
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Elena Bonomo The Rumors are True! Gossip Girl and the Cooptation of the Cult Fan In September of 2007, when discussing Gossip own blogs, and (f) additional streaming content, Girl (2007–), the newest television show on including video interviews with cast members and the burgeoning network The CW, executive producers and “behind-the-scenes featurettes;” and vice president for marketing and brand strategy (4) mobile content (specifically for users of Verizon Rick Haskins explained: “We’re starting to cross- Wireless), including downloadable ringtones, pollinate different mediums. […] We’re trying videos, character interviews, episode recaps, episode to make all mediums work together.”1 In other previews, character biographies, and wallpapers, as words, the producers of Gossip Girl—like those well as text message alerts from characters on the of Dawson’s Creek (1998-2003), Lost (2004–), and show. Heroes (2006–), among others—have embraced Accordingly, the content of Gossip Girl flows convergence. They have created a transmedia across several media platforms—from serial novel, story. One that, as in the words of Henry Jenkins, to television screen, to computer screen, to mobile “unfolds across multiple media platforms, with device—and thus incorporates multiple media each new text making a distinctive and valuable industries, while anticipating and demanding a contribution to the whole.”2 more active media audience. Here, I will discuss The distinctive and valuable texts of Gossip how Gossip Girl not only appropriates fan practices Girl include: (1) a serial novel, conceptualized once described as “cult” into the “mainstream,” but by the “book packager” 17th Street Productions also distinguishes itself from other texts in this “age (now called Alloy Entertainment) as a transmedia of media convergence” by embedding convergence story and accredited to Cecily von Ziegesar; (2) culture into the narrative itself. the television show, aired on The CW television In his explanation of transmedia storytelling, network, streamed on The CW website, and sold Jenkins notes not only a shift in how stories are on iTunes; (3) additional web content, including (a) told but also a shift in the nature of the stories a fictional blog, penned in the voice of the show’s themselves: “More and more, storytelling has anonymous narrator Gossip Girl and featuring become the art of world building, as artists in-depth episode recaps, character background create compelling environments that cannot be information, additional narratives, interactive fully explored or exhausted within a single work maps, still photos, and space for viewer and user or even a single medium.”3 While Jenkins sees comments, (b) music downloads of songs featured potential for both artists and audiences alike in on the show, (c) message boards, (d) links to “The “world building,” he also aligns such practices Upper East Side,” the Gossip Girl Second Life with how cult texts—including Star Trek, Star property, (e) space for viewer/users to make their Wars, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, among many Translating Media 35 Chera Kee, editor, Spectator 30:1 (Spring 2010): 35-38. THE RUMORS ARE TRUE! others—have generated similar forms of audience a fantasy. For most viewers, the lifestyle of engagement. Still, Jenkins claims that “the Web these wealthy high school students—a life of has made visible the hidden compromises that extravagant parties, underage drinking, drug use, enabled participatory culture and commercial and casual sex—is completely foreign, but made culture to coexist throughout much of the twentieth “familiar to fans” through the ongoing narration century.”4 As commercial culture addresses these of the character Gossip Girl and through audience specialized, participatory audiences, Matt Hills’ identification with other characters outside of fears of media producers co-opting cult TV seem this community (characters who must also learn to have been realized. the lifestyle).8 While the narrative of Gossip Girl Accordingly, Gossip Girl fits almost perfectly revolves around a “mystery or narrative puzzle that into the mold that Hills constructs of “how will never be answered”—who is Gossip Girl?— one would go about designing a cult show.”5 several characters (including Blair and Chuck He begins: “A good start would be to use key and Lily and Rufus) are “narratively blocked from production personnel who have worked in the past consummating their love or attraction.”9 As a on shows included in fans’ ‘intertextual network’ of manufactured cult text, Gossip Girl once again cult shows.”6 Appropriately, Gossip Girl executive aligns itself with the show Dawson’s Creek and producers Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage with what Hills, in another article, dubs as the were made famous through their work on The “mainstream cult.”10 O.C., another teen show certainly included in In his definitive essay Star“ Trek Rerun, the ‘intertextual network’ of shows that blur the Reread, Rewritten: Fan Writing as Textual distinctions between “cult” and “mainstream.” Poaching,” Jenkins describes “fandom” as “a vehicle Hills continues: “One might also cast a mixture for marginalized subcultural groups…to pry open of unknown actors/actresses as well as one or space for their cultural concerns within dominant two that have appeared in previous cult shows.”7 representations” and as “a way of appropriating Among the cast of Gossip Girl, Blake Lively (who media texts and rereading them in a fashion that plays Serena van der Woodsen) garnered initial serves different interests.”11 Yet, fans of these fan appreciation through her role as Bridget in The mainstream cults, including Gossip Girl, need not Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (2005), another “pry open space for their cultural concerns within Alloy Entertainment transmedia success. dominant representations” because the dominant While Gossip Girl is not based on the typical representations—the shows and their producers— “science-fiction/fantasy/horror” premise of shows have provided and thereby co-opted that space. like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or The X-Files, as Hills In The CW-generated polls on the Gossip Girl suggests, the world of Gossip Girl is still undeniably message boards, fans not only have the opportunity 36 SPRING 2010 BONOMO to voice their opinions, but those opinions can then (when she is going to a party at her boyfriend be used by The CW for its commercial advantage. Asher’s house), Rufus visits his friend and former Thus, in this age of media convergence, catering to lover Lily van der Woodsen (Kelly Rutherford) for the “migratory behavior of media audiences who a “mother’s advice.” Rufus explains his dilemma: will go almost anywhere in search of the kinds “I tell [ Jenny] she can’t see Asher; she calls him. of entertainment experiences they want”12 is not I take away her phone; they are on iChat. How without commercial imperatives. Convergence is can you keep them from growing up when they the attempt to co-opt the cult fan and the cult text. can have a full relationship from the confines of While Gossip Girl, as a transmedia, mainstream their own bedrooms?” Lily responds: “The answer cult text, has precursors in other television shows is you can’t. She’s going to grow up no matter like Dawson’s Creek, Lost, and Heroes, Gossip Girl what!” In this exchange, the adults not only blur distinguishes itself from these precursors by the distinctions between virtual and “full,” or featuring notions of convergence as part of the physical, relationships, but also acknowledge that narrative itself. More specifically, the narrator the communicative properties of new media are Gossip Girl and the other characters in the show use unstoppable. The parents must simply trust that multiple media platforms to circulate narratives—or their children know how to use them appropriately. the gossip upon which the show is based—to their Rufus then admits that raising his son Dan peers, “who will go almost anywhere in search of was “so much easier.” While Lily attributes this the kinds of entertainment experiences they want.” discrepancy in childrearing to the differences Though every episode features the characters using between boys and girls in general, perhaps multiple media platforms to share and to learn raising Dan was easier for Rufus because Dan is about the most current gossip in the world of the professedly an outsider to this media-consuming show, the episode “All About My Brother” (season teen community. Though Dan uses a cell phone, one, original air date: May 5, 2008) serves as a Dan does not read “Gossip Girl;” thereby Rufus particularly appropriate case study of how Gossip can understand and control Dan more easily. Girl promotes convergence culture as crucial to the Furthermore, Dan’s removal from this lives of teenagers, though uncontrollable by those community also prohibits him from effectively who do not understand it. communicating with his sister. When Dan (Penn At the start of the episode, Gossip Girl Badgley) spies Jenny’s boyfriend Asher ( Jesse (Kristen Bell) announces, in voiceover as always, Swenson) kissing another boy, Dan attempts the outrageous rumors circulating about the to tell his sister in person. Yet, Jenny will not dueling protagonists, Blair Waldorf (Leighton listen. Thus, Dan seeks help from Blair and Dan’s Meester) and Jenny Humphrey (Taylor Momsen). girlfriend Serena, both of whom understand the As Blair (known on the blogs as “The Queen power of transmedia storytelling. Blair ruthlessly B”) and Jenny (known as “Little J”), and their explains, “All that matters to someone like Jenny respective entourages, scale the steps outside right now are the four Gs—Guys, Girlfriends, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gossip Girl and Gossip Girl.” Serena kindly attests, “It’s true. resolves: “It looks like the battle between ‘The Don’t feel bad. Unless it’s coming from one of Queen B’ and ‘Little J’ has moved from the streets them, she’s not going to hear it.” Following their to the blogs…” In this world, mediated rumors advice, Dan decides to text his knowledge of Asher are equally as destructive as face-to-face slander or anonymously to Gossip Girl, hoping that Jenny physical abuse.