<\/div><\/div>
As Rufus Humphrey prepares for the opening of the latest exhibition at his eponymous gallery, for which no one has RSVP\u2019d, Lily van der Woodsen-Bass \u2013 n\u00e9e Rhodes, and formerly Humphrey and Bass \u2013\u00a0is arranging the final details for her Sotheby\u2019s auction, to benefit the Art Production Fund. Scandal ensues.
\n
\nGossip Girl<\/em> was broadcast from 2007 \u2019til 2012, and produced by Stephanie Savage and Josh Schwartz \u2013\u00a0of The OC<\/em> \u2013 for the television network, The CW. The ruling passion is power. It\u2019s dry with a dash of satire \u2013 knowing and sarcastic, without losing the magic of the unreal. Gossip Girl<\/em> embraced the truth of our never really leaving high school, and festooned it with the perks of adulthood.
\n
\nThe teen drama focused on exactly that: the trials and tribulations of insufferable, privileged teenagers as they navigate addiction, affairs, murder and property empires, and dip in and out of being related to each other. Rampantly jealous and wildly loyal, the central characters \u2013 Serena van der Woodsen, Blair Waldorf, Nate Archibald, Chuck Bass, and Dan Humphrey \u2013\u00a0oscillate around each other, twisting and turning between love and hate. The story goes that an anonymous blogger, Gossip Girl, is tracking the every move of the senior class at a prep school on New York\u2019s Upper East Side; and the show opens with the mysterious return of former \u2018Queen Bee\u2019 Serena, who disappeared to a Connecticut boarding school after sleeping with the boyfriend of Blair (her BFF), among other dramas.
\n
\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.billiemuraben.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/1-Mozart.png\")
\n
\nGossip Girl<\/em> may be one of the first programmes to engage so enthusiastically with the inanimate as character. The disembodied voice of Gossip Girl \u2013 who turns out to be a man \u2013 is a woman, who plays what may be considered the central role, and is not \u2018seen\u2019 or \u2018known\u2019 until the final episode. She\/he\/it lives in the mobile phones and on the screens of the characters, and directs their lives. Arguably, the animated inanimate precedes the animate.
\n
\nThrough each season the characters speed through relationships, surnames, jobs, colleges, and principalities, and although the teen amateur oligarchs are certainly busy, the central characters populating Gossip Girl\u2019s<\/em> New York aren\u2019t always the teen idols. First, there\u2019s the aforementioned disembodied narrative voice of Gossip Girl and second the artwork \u2013\u00a0closely followed by the borderline hysterical product placement.
\n
\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.billiemuraben.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/16-delusions.png\")
\n
\nIn 2007, the executive producers behind Gossip Girl<\/em> worked with the Art Production Fund \u2013\u00a0a non-profit organisation which produces public art projects \u2013 on one of the first instances of a collaboration between a TV series and contemporary artists. In consultation with the Gossip Girl<\/em> team, APF chose works by artists such as Kiki Smith, Marilyn Minter, Ryan McGinley and Richard Phillips, which were hung in the penthouse apartments and hotel suites populated by the key screen families.
\n
\nThe main location was Lily van der Woodsen\u2019s apartment, and her \u2018collection\u2019 was unveiled in the fifth episode of Season 2. She enters the apartment already in conversation with her art consultant, Bex, who, on exiting the lift, introduces Lily to her newly adorned surroundings:
\n
\nBex: Kiki Smith greeting you in the foyer, Elm & Drag pulling you into the main room…
\nLily: Oh, I love that\u2026
\nBex: And making a statement on the stairwell, Richard Phillips.
\nLily: … isn\u2019t it just breathtaking?
\nBex: Any museum would be thrilled.<\/em>
\n
\nRichard Phillips\u2019 Spectrum<\/em> is the star piece. Hung at the centre of the space, above the glass stairwell, it features not only in conversation but also as a central character. Known by the core gang as \u2018the rainbow woman\u2019, in the final season the painting is embroiled in an elaborate scheme.
\n
\nIt\u2019s the sixth episode of Season 6, otherwise known as \u2018Where the Vile Things Are\u2019, and Spectrum<\/em> is at centre stage. Nate, the local all-American, dead-behind-the-eyes good guy, has a rare brainwave and steals the phone of the financial advisor to Bart Bass (the formerly dead, hotelier father of Chuck, Nate\u2019s best friend), in the hope of unearthing the secret of where Bart has hidden a suspicious envelope \u2013\u00a0the records of an illegal oil deal with a Sudanese sheikh. (Really.)
\n
\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.billiemuraben.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/36-revenge.png\")
\n
\nNate and Chuck trawl the phone for clues and find one in its calendar: \u2018Bass, Traffic\u2019. It turns out that the advisor records each of his money-saving plots with the name of a film, and in this case it\u2019s Traffic<\/em>, a film in which, as Chuck kindly explains, \u2018the head of the drug cartel stored his illegal account information in the back of a painting\u2019. But Chuck has been banned from his sort-of familial home \u2013\u00a0his mother may or may not have died soon after giving birth to him, and his father had been long dead before he unceremoniously reappeared in the back room of a brothel in upstate New York, only to commandeer his real estate empire from Chuck who, at 19 and in the midst of grief, had continued his father\u2019s legacy \u2013 so Nate takes on the responsibility of “paying them a visit”.
\n
\nOn entering the apartment, Nate realises that “The rainbow woman is gone!” It is in fact at Lily van der Woodsen\u2019s Sotheby\u2019s art auction for the APF, where Rufus Humphrey is wreaking havoc with his current spouse, and former step-daughter (scandal), Ivy Dickens. Ivy inherited half of Lily van der Woodsen\u2019s mother\u2019s estate, having been employed by Lily\u2019s sister to impersonate her daughter, with the aim of commandeering her trust fund. She is now masquerading as Rufus\u2019s girlfriend, but is actually in cahoots with Lily\u2019s ex-husband, William van der Woodsen, to destroy Lily \u2013 or so she thinks\u2026
\n
\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.billiemuraben.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/26-vile.png\")
\n
\nBack at the auction, in an effort to resolve the gallery panic, Ivy has bought every painting, and made a deal with Sotheby\u2019s to display the work from Rufus\u2019s gallery. Lily panics at the thought of sharing the spotlight with both Ivy and her ex-husband, and so enters Spectrum<\/em> for auction. The painting \u2013\u00a0behind which Bart Bass has hidden the aforementioned microfilm \u2013\u00a0stars in a live auction, a battle between Lily, Ivy, and Chuck, which ends at a crescendo of one million dollars. From here, it\u2019s just a hop, skip and a jump through promises of ruin and sex games before the evidence goes up in flames. It\u2019s really very straightforward.
\n
\nSnobbery is looked down upon.<\/strong>
\n
\nThe distinction, or lack thereof, between the animate and inanimate in Gossip Girl,<\/em> is the only aspect of the series in which the hierarchy is flat, if not non-existent. The characters\u2019 clothes speak with more clarity and purpose than the characters can seem to portray; they trade each other as often as they sell stories or hotels (and occasionally for hotels), and the art that surrounds them has a life of its own \u2013\u00a0in and out of the show.
\n
\nAfter the collaboration between Gossip Girl<\/em> and the APF came to fruition, a series of prints went into production, selling at 250 dollars apiece, and APF co-founder Doreen Remen \u2013 who also guest-starred in \u2018Where the Vile Things Are\u2019 \u2013\u00a0waxed lyrical about the impact of displaying work on screen: “Exhibiting artworks in this context is a way to engage people in their daily lives; a chance to generate a spark of interest that may grow into something thought-provoking and mind-opening”. In the episode, Remen reflected this statement, and Richard Phillips went along with Humphrey\u2019s questionable interpretation of art history:
\n
\nDoreen Remen: I like that your art is reflecting the same socially relevant projects we commission at the Art Production Fund.
\nRufus Humphrey: And I like that you can see the street art influence. I\u2019m not talking about the \u201980s, but the \u201940s. Dubuffet, Pollock, Ray Johnson.
\nRichard Phillips: When artists were the stars of New York, instead of celebutantes.<\/em>
\n
\nIn this star turn, Gossip Girl<\/em> did what it did best, layering references upon references. Phillips\u2019 comment makes a joke of the show, and somewhat of himself. By having artworks \u2018starring\u2019 in a network show, and guest-starring in the show himself, he reaches the apex of Pop, and somehow brings Gossip Girl<\/em> into its history. In an interview with The New York Times<\/em>, Phillips said: “It’s so wonderful how my work has been able to reach out, Warhol would never have been able to dream of such a thing”.
\n
\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.billiemuraben.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/7-Machiavelli.png\")
\n
\nNot unlike Andy Warhol\u2019s Factory, Gossip Girl<\/em> attracted a wild mix of personalities while it mass-produced images \u2013 of artworks, of themselves, of New York \u2013 and moving images. The show regularly spliced the realms of fact and fiction, the plausible with the implausible, and was somehow just dry enough to convince established artists and organisations to go along with its high jinks. Politicians, ballet dancers, designers, and musicians both star and are referenced, and real-world scandals are accounted for. New York plays itself. Mayor Bloomberg plays himself. Sonic Youth play a special set for Rufus and Lily\u2019s wedding.
\n
\nThe inner circle\u2019s relationships crossed over in reality and on the show, and gossip about the actors was as popular as gossip about and between the characters. Real-life columnists reviewing Gossip Girl<\/em> appeared as characters, and character arcs appeared in real-world expressions. Serena and Dan dated on the New York set while Blake Lively and Penn Badgley, who played the aforementioned characters, dated on the New York streets.
\n
\nEvery episode would reach a crescendo at a high-production gala, auction, or masked ball, with the characters walking the red carpet, being chased by paparazzi and featured on Page Six<\/em>. Every week would close with a mirroring reality for Gossip Girl\u2019s<\/em> stars, often in the same elaborate outfits, on the same marble steps. In a conversation with New York<\/em> magazine, Penn Badgley (Dan Humphrey) said: “Look, the show that we\u2019re on, it wants us to be celebrities, it\u2019s trying to launch us into the media like a project. You know. Like a social experiment”.
\n
\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.billiemuraben.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/30-goat.png\")
\n
\nGossip Girl<\/em> was distributed internationally and spawned a number of spin-offs, but it was the way that it permeated and was scattered across New York that was most remarkable. In a bizarre, regurgitating food chain, Gossip Girl<\/em> would be consumed by New York, and New York would be consumed by Gossip Girl<\/em>. Like pigs in shit. The show went high and low, far and wide, extolling the virtues of VitaminWater, Windows phones, and Chanel make-up, with the regularity and fervour of an underfunded lifestyle magazine. In addition to featuring figures such as publisher Jonathan Cape, critic Charles Isherwood, novelist Jay McInerney, and journalist Hamish Bowles, the show also coupled up n+1\u2019s<\/em> former editor Keith Gessen with Elizabeth Hurley, when she was moonlighting as a newspaper editor at The New York Spectator<\/em>, sleeping with Nate and pretending to be Chuck\u2019s mother.
\n
\nElmgreen & Dragset\u2019s Prada Marfa<\/em> sign, which holds a prime spot in Lily van der Woodsen\u2019s apartment, was made especially for the show \u2013 as a precursor to the permanent Prada Marfa<\/em> sculpture in Texas, which was made in partnership with the Art Production Fund. The print, known on APF\u2019s site as \u2018Elmgreen & Dragset – Prada Marfa Sign (Prop Art)\u2019 can be bought for as little as $149.99 on Art.com. It has also spawned countless imitations, including images of signs pointing to Paris, New York, and London, and a variety of \u2018PRADA\u2019 signs in a mix of typefaces, printed in gold, on marble and in millennial pink.
\n
\nIn 1977, Printed Matter was founded in Tribeca, New York, by Sol LeWitt and Lucy Lippard, with the intention of disseminating artists\u2019 books. To quote from details of the organisation\u2019s history on Printed Matter\u2019s website:
\n
\nLarge-edition and economically produced publications allowed for experimentation with artworks that were democratically accessible, affordable, collaborative, and could circulate outside of the mainstream gallery system. Printed Matter provided a space that championed artists’ books as complex and meaningful artworks, helping bring broader visibility to a medium that was not widely embraced at the time.<\/em>
\n
\nWhy shouldn\u2019t the next logical step be dissemination in the background \u2013 and foreground \u2013 of teen drama?
\n
\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.billiemuraben.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/40-smoke.png\")
\n
\nThere were few \u2013 if any \u2013 redeeming features of the characters who made up Gossip Girl\u2019s<\/em> New York \u2013 and that was their best quality. If anyone had a virtue, it was in their total, uncompromising embrace of viciousness and vacuity. This doomed bourgeoisie, in \u2018love\u2019, addressed culture and politics with the same confident lack of care they inflicted upon each other. If an art of and for the people is what we want and need, here\u2019s a playbook. To quote Jean Genet’s The Thief\u2019s Journal<\/em>: “To achieve harmony in bad taste is the height of elegance”.
\n
\nXOXO, Gossip Girl
\n
\n2018<\/p>\n
\n
\nGossip Girl<\/em> was broadcast from 2007 \u2019til 2012, and produced by Stephanie Savage and Josh Schwartz \u2013\u00a0of The OC<\/em> \u2013 for the television network, The CW. The ruling passion is power. It\u2019s dry with a dash of satire \u2013 knowing and sarcastic, without losing the magic of the unreal. Gossip Girl<\/em> embraced the truth of our never really leaving high school, and festooned it with the perks of adulthood.
\n
\nThe teen drama focused on exactly that: the trials and tribulations of insufferable, privileged teenagers as they navigate addiction, affairs, murder and property empires, and dip in and out of being related to each other. Rampantly jealous and wildly loyal, the central characters \u2013 Serena van der Woodsen, Blair Waldorf, Nate Archibald, Chuck Bass, and Dan Humphrey \u2013\u00a0oscillate around each other, twisting and turning between love and hate. The story goes that an anonymous blogger, Gossip Girl, is tracking the every move of the senior class at a prep school on New York\u2019s Upper East Side; and the show opens with the mysterious return of former \u2018Queen Bee\u2019 Serena, who disappeared to a Connecticut boarding school after sleeping with the boyfriend of Blair (her BFF), among other dramas.
\n
\n
\n
\nGossip Girl<\/em> may be one of the first programmes to engage so enthusiastically with the inanimate as character. The disembodied voice of Gossip Girl \u2013 who turns out to be a man \u2013 is a woman, who plays what may be considered the central role, and is not \u2018seen\u2019 or \u2018known\u2019 until the final episode. She\/he\/it lives in the mobile phones and on the screens of the characters, and directs their lives. Arguably, the animated inanimate precedes the animate.
\n
\nThrough each season the characters speed through relationships, surnames, jobs, colleges, and principalities, and although the teen amateur oligarchs are certainly busy, the central characters populating Gossip Girl\u2019s<\/em> New York aren\u2019t always the teen idols. First, there\u2019s the aforementioned disembodied narrative voice of Gossip Girl and second the artwork \u2013\u00a0closely followed by the borderline hysterical product placement.
\n
\n
\n
\nIn 2007, the executive producers behind Gossip Girl<\/em> worked with the Art Production Fund \u2013\u00a0a non-profit organisation which produces public art projects \u2013 on one of the first instances of a collaboration between a TV series and contemporary artists. In consultation with the Gossip Girl<\/em> team, APF chose works by artists such as Kiki Smith, Marilyn Minter, Ryan McGinley and Richard Phillips, which were hung in the penthouse apartments and hotel suites populated by the key screen families.
\n
\nThe main location was Lily van der Woodsen\u2019s apartment, and her \u2018collection\u2019 was unveiled in the fifth episode of Season 2. She enters the apartment already in conversation with her art consultant, Bex, who, on exiting the lift, introduces Lily to her newly adorned surroundings:
\n
\nBex: Kiki Smith greeting you in the foyer, Elm & Drag pulling you into the main room…
\nLily: Oh, I love that\u2026
\nBex: And making a statement on the stairwell, Richard Phillips.
\nLily: … isn\u2019t it just breathtaking?
\nBex: Any museum would be thrilled.<\/em>
\n
\nRichard Phillips\u2019 Spectrum<\/em> is the star piece. Hung at the centre of the space, above the glass stairwell, it features not only in conversation but also as a central character. Known by the core gang as \u2018the rainbow woman\u2019, in the final season the painting is embroiled in an elaborate scheme.
\n
\nIt\u2019s the sixth episode of Season 6, otherwise known as \u2018Where the Vile Things Are\u2019, and Spectrum<\/em> is at centre stage. Nate, the local all-American, dead-behind-the-eyes good guy, has a rare brainwave and steals the phone of the financial advisor to Bart Bass (the formerly dead, hotelier father of Chuck, Nate\u2019s best friend), in the hope of unearthing the secret of where Bart has hidden a suspicious envelope \u2013\u00a0the records of an illegal oil deal with a Sudanese sheikh. (Really.)
\n
\n
\n
\nNate and Chuck trawl the phone for clues and find one in its calendar: \u2018Bass, Traffic\u2019. It turns out that the advisor records each of his money-saving plots with the name of a film, and in this case it\u2019s Traffic<\/em>, a film in which, as Chuck kindly explains, \u2018the head of the drug cartel stored his illegal account information in the back of a painting\u2019. But Chuck has been banned from his sort-of familial home \u2013\u00a0his mother may or may not have died soon after giving birth to him, and his father had been long dead before he unceremoniously reappeared in the back room of a brothel in upstate New York, only to commandeer his real estate empire from Chuck who, at 19 and in the midst of grief, had continued his father\u2019s legacy \u2013 so Nate takes on the responsibility of “paying them a visit”.
\n
\nOn entering the apartment, Nate realises that “The rainbow woman is gone!” It is in fact at Lily van der Woodsen\u2019s Sotheby\u2019s art auction for the APF, where Rufus Humphrey is wreaking havoc with his current spouse, and former step-daughter (scandal), Ivy Dickens. Ivy inherited half of Lily van der Woodsen\u2019s mother\u2019s estate, having been employed by Lily\u2019s sister to impersonate her daughter, with the aim of commandeering her trust fund. She is now masquerading as Rufus\u2019s girlfriend, but is actually in cahoots with Lily\u2019s ex-husband, William van der Woodsen, to destroy Lily \u2013 or so she thinks\u2026
\n
\n
\n
\nBack at the auction, in an effort to resolve the gallery panic, Ivy has bought every painting, and made a deal with Sotheby\u2019s to display the work from Rufus\u2019s gallery. Lily panics at the thought of sharing the spotlight with both Ivy and her ex-husband, and so enters Spectrum<\/em> for auction. The painting \u2013\u00a0behind which Bart Bass has hidden the aforementioned microfilm \u2013\u00a0stars in a live auction, a battle between Lily, Ivy, and Chuck, which ends at a crescendo of one million dollars. From here, it\u2019s just a hop, skip and a jump through promises of ruin and sex games before the evidence goes up in flames. It\u2019s really very straightforward.
\n
\nSnobbery is looked down upon.<\/strong>
\n
\nThe distinction, or lack thereof, between the animate and inanimate in Gossip Girl,<\/em> is the only aspect of the series in which the hierarchy is flat, if not non-existent. The characters\u2019 clothes speak with more clarity and purpose than the characters can seem to portray; they trade each other as often as they sell stories or hotels (and occasionally for hotels), and the art that surrounds them has a life of its own \u2013\u00a0in and out of the show.
\n
\nAfter the collaboration between Gossip Girl<\/em> and the APF came to fruition, a series of prints went into production, selling at 250 dollars apiece, and APF co-founder Doreen Remen \u2013 who also guest-starred in \u2018Where the Vile Things Are\u2019 \u2013\u00a0waxed lyrical about the impact of displaying work on screen: “Exhibiting artworks in this context is a way to engage people in their daily lives; a chance to generate a spark of interest that may grow into something thought-provoking and mind-opening”. In the episode, Remen reflected this statement, and Richard Phillips went along with Humphrey\u2019s questionable interpretation of art history:
\n
\nDoreen Remen: I like that your art is reflecting the same socially relevant projects we commission at the Art Production Fund.
\nRufus Humphrey: And I like that you can see the street art influence. I\u2019m not talking about the \u201980s, but the \u201940s. Dubuffet, Pollock, Ray Johnson.
\nRichard Phillips: When artists were the stars of New York, instead of celebutantes.<\/em>
\n
\nIn this star turn, Gossip Girl<\/em> did what it did best, layering references upon references. Phillips\u2019 comment makes a joke of the show, and somewhat of himself. By having artworks \u2018starring\u2019 in a network show, and guest-starring in the show himself, he reaches the apex of Pop, and somehow brings Gossip Girl<\/em> into its history. In an interview with The New York Times<\/em>, Phillips said: “It’s so wonderful how my work has been able to reach out, Warhol would never have been able to dream of such a thing”.
\n
\n
\n
\nNot unlike Andy Warhol\u2019s Factory, Gossip Girl<\/em> attracted a wild mix of personalities while it mass-produced images \u2013 of artworks, of themselves, of New York \u2013 and moving images. The show regularly spliced the realms of fact and fiction, the plausible with the implausible, and was somehow just dry enough to convince established artists and organisations to go along with its high jinks. Politicians, ballet dancers, designers, and musicians both star and are referenced, and real-world scandals are accounted for. New York plays itself. Mayor Bloomberg plays himself. Sonic Youth play a special set for Rufus and Lily\u2019s wedding.
\n
\nThe inner circle\u2019s relationships crossed over in reality and on the show, and gossip about the actors was as popular as gossip about and between the characters. Real-life columnists reviewing Gossip Girl<\/em> appeared as characters, and character arcs appeared in real-world expressions. Serena and Dan dated on the New York set while Blake Lively and Penn Badgley, who played the aforementioned characters, dated on the New York streets.
\n
\nEvery episode would reach a crescendo at a high-production gala, auction, or masked ball, with the characters walking the red carpet, being chased by paparazzi and featured on Page Six<\/em>. Every week would close with a mirroring reality for Gossip Girl\u2019s<\/em> stars, often in the same elaborate outfits, on the same marble steps. In a conversation with New York<\/em> magazine, Penn Badgley (Dan Humphrey) said: “Look, the show that we\u2019re on, it wants us to be celebrities, it\u2019s trying to launch us into the media like a project. You know. Like a social experiment”.
\n
\n
\n
\nGossip Girl<\/em> was distributed internationally and spawned a number of spin-offs, but it was the way that it permeated and was scattered across New York that was most remarkable. In a bizarre, regurgitating food chain, Gossip Girl<\/em> would be consumed by New York, and New York would be consumed by Gossip Girl<\/em>. Like pigs in shit. The show went high and low, far and wide, extolling the virtues of VitaminWater, Windows phones, and Chanel make-up, with the regularity and fervour of an underfunded lifestyle magazine. In addition to featuring figures such as publisher Jonathan Cape, critic Charles Isherwood, novelist Jay McInerney, and journalist Hamish Bowles, the show also coupled up n+1\u2019s<\/em> former editor Keith Gessen with Elizabeth Hurley, when she was moonlighting as a newspaper editor at The New York Spectator<\/em>, sleeping with Nate and pretending to be Chuck\u2019s mother.
\n
\nElmgreen & Dragset\u2019s Prada Marfa<\/em> sign, which holds a prime spot in Lily van der Woodsen\u2019s apartment, was made especially for the show \u2013 as a precursor to the permanent Prada Marfa<\/em> sculpture in Texas, which was made in partnership with the Art Production Fund. The print, known on APF\u2019s site as \u2018Elmgreen & Dragset – Prada Marfa Sign (Prop Art)\u2019 can be bought for as little as $149.99 on Art.com. It has also spawned countless imitations, including images of signs pointing to Paris, New York, and London, and a variety of \u2018PRADA\u2019 signs in a mix of typefaces, printed in gold, on marble and in millennial pink.
\n
\nIn 1977, Printed Matter was founded in Tribeca, New York, by Sol LeWitt and Lucy Lippard, with the intention of disseminating artists\u2019 books. To quote from details of the organisation\u2019s history on Printed Matter\u2019s website:
\n
\nLarge-edition and economically produced publications allowed for experimentation with artworks that were democratically accessible, affordable, collaborative, and could circulate outside of the mainstream gallery system. Printed Matter provided a space that championed artists’ books as complex and meaningful artworks, helping bring broader visibility to a medium that was not widely embraced at the time.<\/em>
\n
\nWhy shouldn\u2019t the next logical step be dissemination in the background \u2013 and foreground \u2013 of teen drama?
\n
\n
\n
\nThere were few \u2013 if any \u2013 redeeming features of the characters who made up Gossip Girl\u2019s<\/em> New York \u2013 and that was their best quality. If anyone had a virtue, it was in their total, uncompromising embrace of viciousness and vacuity. This doomed bourgeoisie, in \u2018love\u2019, addressed culture and politics with the same confident lack of care they inflicted upon each other. If an art of and for the people is what we want and need, here\u2019s a playbook. To quote Jean Genet’s The Thief\u2019s Journal<\/em>: “To achieve harmony in bad taste is the height of elegance”.
\n
\nXOXO, Gossip Girl
\n
\n2018<\/p>\n
Originally published by Open Editions, in the anthology Occasional Table: Distributed<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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