Gossip Girl: What’s a Parent to Do?
Let me make it clear that by no means am I a prude and in general I spend very little time (perhaps too little) worrying about how sex, drugs and the like are represented in popular media. (Maybe part of the reason I don’t think about it all that much is because my son is only three and therefore, the years when I won’t be able to just turn off whatever I don’t want to expose him to seem like some far off time in the distant future when kids dress in silver jumpsuits and are hovering off to high school on flying scooters.) When my son’s not around I listen to explicit rap music and I’ve been an ardent fan of more graphic TV shows such as The Wire for years now.
Despite this, on a recent visit back the U.S.A. (I’ve been living abroad for over five years now), I started watching a little hit show I’m sure you all know about called Gossip Girl and for the first time in ages, I found myself to be, well, shocked.
From what I can gather, Gossip Girl is to the current generation of teens what Beverly Hills 90210 was to mine or what The O.C. was to the one that came after. We all know the story- a bunch of privileged, good-looking adolescents who don’t say “um” nearly as much as any teenager I’ve ever met, run around having wittyesque conversation while at the same time wrecking constant havoc in each other’s lives. Some of them are good and some of them are evil while others are just misunderstood. Every so often the evil ones will do something likable just to keep us on our toes and the good ones will feel misunderstood and then the misunderstood ones will try to help and so on and so forth.
Gossip Girl is what happens when you take this formula and then put it on steroids with a shot of coke, literally. Of course there were drugs on 90210 and The O.C. There was also sex and eating disorders and kids with drinking problems. The difference is that on 90210, and to a somewhat lesser extent on The O.C., these things were treated as issues that had serious consequences. If someone had a drinking problem it was the focus of an entire episode. In some extreme cases it even took two or three episodes to deal with the problem!
Gossip Girl is different in that getting drunk, using drugs and having sex in high school are merely seen as par for the course. In one episode I watched, “good girl” Serena van der Woodsen is tormented because she has a secret that she is keeping from her boyfriend. Her friends press her to tell them what it is and finally she gives in and starts to confess. It started with the night she got wasted and slept with her best friend’s boyfriend. Later after drunkenly going to a hotel with some friends, she tries to avoid having sex with one of them by suggesting he do a few lines of coke. He does and overdoses at which point her other friend convinces her to flee the scene. Later she watches as his dead body is carried out of the hotel. In short, teenagers getting wasted, sleeping with their best friends’ boyfriends, and doing coke are not enough shock value for today’s teen audience. There now must be a dead body, a cover-up, and oh, did I mention a secret sex tape gone wrong?
How does watching this sort of TV show influence adolescents? Do they just see the rampant sex and drug use as another part of an exaggerated fairy tale world that they’re logically aware is only accessible to .000001% of the population? Is that supposed to make it okay? Dawn Ostroff, president of The CW network seems to think so, telling the New York Times that “Everybody approached this with the understanding that this was a heightened reality… It wasn’t teenagers as we know them throughout the country.” The thing that’s dangerous about this is that while it’s true that the majority of teenagers are unlikely to ever have access to Park Avenue penthouses and designer swimwear; drugs, alcohol and sex are the one part of this fairy tale that every kid in America does have access to.
In an attempt to ward off criticism Stephanie Savage, one of the show’s producers, told the LA Times that people who say that the show “glamorizes teen drinking and sex” aren’t “really watching the episodes… There’s decision-making, regret and consequences involved.” Oh really? Funny because I haven’t really seen any obvious consequences to the martini glass that seems to be permanently attached to bad-boy Chuck Bass’s hand. But maybe I’m just not watching hard enough.
But what is a parent to do? I honestly don’t know. I’m certainly not the first person to make a fuss over the show. The Parents Television Council has been up in arms since the show’s inception, only to have their criticisms turned into a “clever” ad campaign in which quotes from the PTC about the show (”mind-blowingly inappropriate”), are superimposed over steamy images of the half-nude teen characters. In the end, rather than coming off as sensible and caring parents who may have a point, the critics are seen as a bunch of over-reacting fuddy duddies with nothing better to do than promoting censorship. I’m genuinely curious about how parents of adolescents out there are handling this show and others like it. Any good suggestions?
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Johanna -
Great piece. Here’s my two cents … As the father of a teen, I have come to realize that I can’t stop her from being exposed to negative images because those images are everywhere - in music, in movies, on tv, on billboards, in magazines, on talk shows, on videos, on the radio. Not to mention her peers. So what I do is limit what she’s exposed to in my house by doing things with her. We watch football games. We discuss politics. I have actually gotten her to listen to NPR with me (unbelievable, but true) to encourage her to learn what’s going on around her. I take her to church. And I use real-life examples from my own life (the good, the bad and the ugly) to tell her why drinking and drugging are not good. You’d be surprised how receptive kids are to the cold, hard truth. In the end, I just pray that what she hears from me balances what she gets from idiotic shows like Gossip Girl (which I don’t think she watches), and music that glamourizes sex and violence. I think that in the real world, where we can’t stop teens from being exposed to nonsense, letting them know where we stand as parents and letting them know that we expect them to aim for that mark is a powerful counterbalance.
Gossip girl brings up some really advanced topics for young teens. It is actually a great opportunity for parents to talk to their kids about these issues! I wrote a parent viewer guide on Gossip Girls if you want to check out the kinds of questions you can ask your kids while watching with them: http://www.onteenstoday.com/2008/08/30/co-viewing-tv-with-your-kids-and-teens/
Gossip Girl is an amazing show. It’s thrilling and never has a dull moment. So what if it involves drugs, sex, etc.. Teens are old enough to make their own decisions. You shouldn’t be so concerned about the show and what happens in some episodes. Life in real life is not like Gossip Girl; relax. I’m 17 years old and watch the show every Monday night; it has no impact on my views or how I act.
I respect that adults and parents consider GG a threat on the influence of teenagers, but a lot of the content in GG isn’t half as bad as the issues written in the books that I read in 7th grade. I love the gossip and drama that GG immerses the audience in and the exaggerated world that a girl can’t help but envy. Particularly, I watch the show for it’s scenes of New York, good music selection, and exceptional wardrobe. My father lives in Manhattan so I always feel at home watching the show. He’s a fashion buyer and I’ve always been exposed to high fashion; GG is the only show directed towards teens that really exposes and highlights the world of top fashion, and I can’t help but love it. As for the gossip, it’s a good dose of drama without having to have any real issues yourself. The show also highlights the merits of education and none of the characters make any suggestions that schooling isn’t important (well besides Jenny, but that’s a different story, she inevitably is forced to realize by her father that education is important and that she needs to continue it no matter what. SEE what a good lesson). I haven’t felt any negative influences from obsessing over GG. I continue to maintain a 3.9 GPA, take AP classes and I participate in a variety of organizations and volunteer groups where I participate actively in my society. I could talk GG for hours, but I could also discuss topics from politics, physics to philosophy for hours as well. I think my interests are versatile enough to be respected enough to watch GG. I hate the ridiculous right wingers that thing they can impose some type of restrictions on the media. If you want to impose restrictions on your kids, who might not be as diciplined or cultured enough to handle a more mature show than others, then use the freaking remote control.
Depending on the age of the teen, I think we have to give them a little bit of credit for 1) knowing right from wrong; and 2) recognizing how over-the-top and unrealistic a show like Gossip Girl really is.
Hey ms. Johanna,
great work, I can completely agree with everything that you say. recently I have been thinking a lot about how the media influences adolescents in todays world. and although i respect some of the other opinions that have been expressed towards this post, i disagree with them. the thing is, you can have a good show without having it with high schoolers drinking, having sex and drugs. ok, so the truth is, this is just one show, but there are thousand others that promote stuff like this. and everything starts with just one thing, think in ten years if we don’t address this issue, what will it turn into? do we want our 7 year olds thinking its fine to go and have sex? i think that since we do live in America we should have a hold on the media and tell them what we want. we can make a difference, if parents and teens wrote letters to the companies it would make a difference, maybe not a huge one, but it still would. I know that people think that teens are people who don’t care about anything, but thats not true. I am a teenager and i don’t like when i am flipping through channels and i see smut on every channel. and if its bad now, think in a few years what it will turn into.
Thank goodness that even as a teenager (in the 70’s) I was NEVER addicted to t.v. I had (and still do) have better things to occupy my mind and time with. But-once in a great while (if I’m sitting folding clothes or some task like that) I will catch a “small bit” of GG and I think it is the most ridiculous, obnoxious, filthy show. Those girls #1 are nothing but a bunch of snobby, spoiled, back stabbing people! I hate to think what they WOULD grow up to be (IF they ever grew up and IF it were real life–and I’m sure parts of it do resemble the real life of some people) HOW SAD!! Get a life people and do things with your children that will benefit them for life and teach REAL life lessons. No wonder I don’t watch t.v. And no-I’m not a “fuddy duddy” nana from the 70’s-I get lots of compliments from alot younger women and men than I am about my looks and my personality and I am PROUD of that-but I am also a Christian and have morals and values! So I think that proves, you CAN have fun, look good (and decent)and still be popular with all ages of people.
God, to hear so many adults complaining about something that shouldn’t concern them is a little sad. I mean, really, it’s the CW’s job to create a show that is absorbing to adolescents; that’s it. Your job as a parent is to provide your child with the appropriate education to balance out the unreality presented on the television: safe sex, the consequences of drug use, the integrity to be a good friend. Rather than worrying about how to not expose your teen to something that they will obviously have plenty of chances to watch on their own, you should be making sure they have alternative view points and firmly know your stances on the issues. If you do your job right, your teen will make the right decisions regardless of what Chuck and Blair do on Gossip Girl. The real problems come from a parent’s hopeless attempt to shelter their child from every influence outside of their own and the bible.
And, to be honest, this is only my own opinion from personal experience, the stuff portrayed on Gossip Girl is nothing like the real life of a nineteen-year-old. By that I mean, Gossip Girl is not nearly as bad, not as crazy, not as flawed, not as ‘inappropriate’ as the life your child will probably experience in the last years of high school. Sex, drugs and alcohol are always going to be offered to teens, and if your child is pliant enough to say yes to them because of something a fictional character acted out on TV, that is the parent’s fault, not the CW’s.
The best thing you could do is give your kinds some lessons in deductive, logical reasoning. Also teach them how to tell the difference between fantasy and reality. If you teach your children to be rational, they will realise that the garbage on TV is in fact garbage.
Buy your son some books and read with him every day you can. It will give him a head start in life, and help sharpen his reasoning skills. Especially if you buy him books with scientific content.
Stuff about animals or nature (volcanoes, space, bird watching, etc) is generally good for kids because it offers real information that most kinds find interesting to some degree. It also offers a great way of broaching subjects like sex and the like in a way that they can better grasp. I understood more about sex from reading about the mating habits of tropical frogs than I ever did from my mother’s sex talk.
There is a lot of good fiction for children too, but you may want to read the book before giving it to your child. Some kids books deal with sensitive topics in a way you may consider less than ideal.
Also if you have religious view you may want to have some religious childrens books.
Also not having cable might be a good idea. Just have the TV hooked up to a computer (it is easier than you might think,) so you can watch things or browse together.