The O.C. article that we read in class instantly made me think of Gossip Girl, a show that most of you probably know runs on the CW and revolves around the lives of privileged Manhattan socialites and of course, all of their problems. Gossip Girl’s creator, Josh Schwartz, was first the creator of The O.C., and his creative team for Gossip Girl is much the same as it was for his former show. Gossip Girl, which began in the fall of 2007, was immediately hailed as an O.C. transplant to New York City. People Magazine even did a photo feature online in October 2007 entitled, Gossip Girl: The New O.C. (link below) where many of the The O.C. characters are compared to their new Gossip Girl counterparts. And the shows are basically the same: a bunch of beautiful, over-privileged, messed-up teens get into all sorts of trouble, much of which seems melodramatic and extreme for someone of the young age of 17 or 18; and of course their even more messed-up (usually neglectful) parents do not fare much better.
This really got me thinking, not only about storylines and formats, and how they have been recycled and featured on both shows (pregnancy scares, drug addictions, the revolving door of sexual partners and significant others), but also about the characters on both shows, how they are so alike in what they represent on both shows and how they reflect the gender roles that Elizabeth Meyer presents in her article “Masculinities on The O.C.”. Meyer asks the question about whether The O.C. actually changed how gender roles were reflected, if the show was changing “the time-honored tradition of valorizing wealthy, White, hyper-heterosexual, men and women performing their comfortable and normalized gender roles” (455).
And the answer here, to me, is not really—The O.C. makes more of a statement of reinforcing stereotypical gender roles than it does to challenge or change them, and Gossip Girl is the same.
On The O.C., the character of Ryan is the representation of hegemonic masculinity, of “heterosexuality, power, authority, aggression, and technical competence”(457). He is what we have been taught to think of as a “real” man. In Gossip Girl, we are presented with Chuck Bass, a womanizer with one of the most powerful names in New York (thanks to Daddy Bass). He is nothing if not aggressive, both with women and with business. And as his character progresses, he becomes a business mogul at the age of 18 (shocking!), proving his technical and professional competence. He lives and acts as if he is about 40 years old and is presented as the picture of a perfectly dominant male. He essentially proves to be a good guy with a very dark side, much like Ryan, who has been mixed up in a lot of trouble and tries to reform himself.
The complicit representation of masculinity on The O.C. is the character of Seth, who does not explicitly fall under the umbrella of hegemonic masculinity but does not challenge traditional male gender roles in any way, “thereby enjoying its many rewards” (457). In Gossip Girl, Seth Cohen becomes Dan Humphrey, a Brooklyn outsider, a writer, the good guy who makes it to the inside of the Upper East Side world by winning the heart of the most popular girl in school, Serena van der Woodsen. Dan could have been the character to challenge the way that men are typically portrayed, but much like Seth, he ends up being like the other males on the show, passing around girlfriends and going to swanky parties like he belongs there, when he really does not. And just like Seth, the only thing that separates Dan from any of the other males is the occasionally witty crack or allusion to his high level of intelligence. He enjoys all these benefits of traditional masculinity even though his character is made out to be better than Chuck and the other Upper East Side males.
The marginalized masculinities, which Meyer says are males of color or disability, are absent from Gossip Girl just as they from The O.C. The only portrayal of a male that is not traditional and pushes the envelope a bit is Serena’s gay brother and his boyfriend (both of whom are only recurring guest stars, not series’ regulars), just as in The O.C. where we only had a character’s gay father, who in the show for only a very short time, to challenge traditional views of masculinity.
Interestingly enough, the one male character on Gossip Girl that does not seem to fit into any one of these molds is Nate Archibald, who could be seen as probably a hybrid of the hegemonic and complicit masculinities. He is not often strong and authoritative and aggressive like Ryan or Chuck but he is the perfect picture of heterosexuality. He has the sensitive side of Dan with a highly sexualized persona similar to that of Chuck. After all, he did have sex on a barstool with his girlfriend Blair’s best friend Serena (but he did say he was sorry)! I find this interesting because while he does in a way challenge traditional masculinity by not fitting into one definition of masculinity, he is the male character that is really put on the show to look pretty, to be the heartthrob. His type of masculinity is, in a way, moot because he is just there to make the girls “drool”.
Meyer shows us that The O.C. did not really challenge gender roles, and neither does Gossip Girl, as is obvious from the fact that the same stereotypical characters are being portrayed. And the women of Gossip Girl are also stereotypical female representations and mirror the women on The O.C. Serena is Marissa, the stunning blonde “It” girl who is coincidentally more screwed up than everyone else. Blair Waldorf is just like Summer, portrayed as “the bitch”, the dark, brunette queen, but with vulnerabilities that keep her from being a total villain. And Gossip Girl is all about coupling up these people into all possible pairings, therefore also showing the interdependence of men and women that was also seen on The O.C. No matter how successful any of these characters are on either show, they still need someone of the opposite sex to complete their lives (or their night) or else they go spinning out of control and completely lack any independent, individual, personal definition.
http://www.people.com/people/package/gallery/0,,20055177_20151408_20122595,00.html#20127643
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