It’s about fashion, style and disposable income. Teenagers who go about flaunting a fast lifestyle full of heartbreak, scandal and martinis. In this world, gossip flows like currency and is just as powerful.
It all takes place in the upper east side of Manhattan, an area known for its wealth and privilege. It is the TV tale of rich and powerful teens whose lives fuel gossip on an anonymous blog and several weeks ago, Hunter got a brief stint as the setting for one of its episodes.
With the coupling of both Park Avenue entities, the real and the fantasy, it was time to get the dish on “Gossip Girl” at Hunter. Over hot chocolate and a mini canoli at the Food Emporium café, located on Third Avenue a few blocks from Hunter, Ashley Erica Burnside, a media studies major, said, “Gossip Girl constantly promotes negative behavior that is epidemically ruining the relationships among girls.”
Nicole Mancini, 22, concurred. An English Language Arts major, Mancini, who has never seen the show, said she has heard enough about it from friends to draw her own conclusions. “I think that it doesn’t give girls a good positive image,” she said, alluding to the show’s excess of “illegal things” like underage drinking.
Not all of the criticism of Gossip Girl and its characters was negative. Dr. Jes Battis, who has taught a “Television Culture” course at Hunter, had a different take on the show. He said via-email that the show’s Upper East Side teens were pretty realistic in their portrayals, and he liked “the idea of a young female lead who seemed to be in control of her sexuality.” But still, Battis said that the show made it seem like only the Upper East Side existed while Brooklyn was miles away and Queens apparently vanished. Mancini seconded this, saying that the Upper East Side was a society all its own, where the same people hung out at the same places. The show simply reflected that, she said, as she sat at a booth at the third-floor cafeteria on the Hunter campus.
Also seated at the cafeteria in the West Building was Steven Tinisky, 22, who lives in Brooklyn. Tinisky said he was a huge fan of the show and that he has watched every episode to date. He liked the high drama as well as its “prestigious” setting, the Upper East Side.
Asked about Gossip Girl at Hunter, Tinisky with one hand against his green Armani shirt, said, “I was kinda proud because I love that show.” Surprisingly, some interviewees who criticized the show expressed the same fondness. Even though they said they did not particularly like the show and its messages, Burnside and Mancini said that they would tune in to Hunter’s “debut” on Gossip Girl, which aired April 28. It was also the debut of Lin Chang, a full-time Hunter student who was becoming a reoccurring character on the show.
The WORD’s Jamie Adorno can be reached at jadorno@hunter.cuny.edu