Following the trend set by several recent television series geared toward teenage audiences (such as The O.C., 90210, and One Tree Hill), the CW’s Gossip Girl employs the format of serialized melodrama. This narrative technique often eschews reality in favor an aesthetic that encourages viewers to derive pleasure from the structure and mode of narration itself. The producers utilize serialized melodrama to engage, according to University of Texas professor Michael Kackman, “cultural tensions, instabilities, and anxieties” while consciously being unable to resolve them. Such a production strategy not only crucially prefigures the audience’s perception of the plotline, but also the manner in which the show approaches issues of race, ethnicity, and class.

Within this framework, Gossip Girl reduces socio-economic, racial, and ethnic difference to aesthetic commodities that exist and function merely for the pleasure of the viewer. The program flaunts inequities, juxtaposing outrageous excess with middle-class modesty, in order to entertain viewers. It expresses ambivalence about race and ethnicity by almost over-diversifying its characters (according to demographic statistics of Upper East Side Manhattan), yet painting them in ancillary, subservient, and other problematic lights. The show capitalizes on a general, superficial interest in difference by allowing viewers to experience it all in a detached, ironic sense that circumvents discussion of any overarching, serious ideology.

Since the show unapologetically celebrates the combination of wealth, privilege, and whiteness, these dominant discourses remain unchallenged and at the fore of all of the action. Thus, viewed holistically, Gossip Girl unabashedly showcases socio-economic inequities and racial/ethnic stereotypes for the pleasure of its viewers.

The producers of Gossip Girl clearly regard the representation of minorities as a priority, seeing as how the minority characters weren't in the eponymous series of teen novels by Cecily von Ziegesar (the books lacked specificity about the skin color and ethnic background of these characters). In fact, Gossip Girl might even be guilty of over-diversification, judging by the fact that nearly eighty-six percent of the population in Upper East Side Manhattan is white. Beyond its veneer of progressivism, the show’s attitude toward difference is problematic in its tokenization of minority figures, its reflection and reinforcement of stereotypes, and its incorporation of other methods of otherization, all of which serve as sources of pleasure (schadenfreude?) for the viewer.

Almost every minority in the show functions as an ancillary, subordinate character that is only animated by a white character in a position of power. Blair Waldorf’s sidekicks, Isabel Coates (Nicole Fiscella) and Kati Farkas (Nan Zhang)/Nelly Yuki (Yin Chang), who are respectively African-American and Asian-American, almost never speak and are constantly being bossed around. They are frequently dressed in matching outfits that correspond to some event occurring in that particular episode. For instance, in “Poison Ivy,” Kati and Isabel are wearing matching headbands, necklaces, and white blouses with navy blue sweatshirts that have their first initials sewn onto them; also, when they speak to each other briefly, Blair (Leighton Meester) swiftly and harshly silences them. Similarly, in “Dare Devil,” the pair is depicted wearing matching, extravagant pearl necklaces, mutely flanking Blair or obsequiously giggling at her quips about other patrons of the establishment. Again, in “Seventeen Candles,” Fiscella and Zhang’s characters are clad in matching nautical costumes.

In essence, the pair is presented as one of Blair’s many accessories (almost like a pair of earrings), implying that race/ethnicity is a mere commodity only useful for aesthetic pleasure and identifying whiteness in opposition to an ethnic, racialized other. Additionally, when the camera focuses on Blair Waldorf’s face in several episodes (especially the scene at the steps in the pilot episode and the scene at Blair’s eighteenth birthday party in “Bonfire of the Vanity”), Kati and Isabel are flanking her, and are partially cut-off by at the edge of the frame. Relegating Blair’s two minions to the periphery of the frame, or behind her as if to hold up the bottom of a regal cape, suggests their peripheral roles in society.

The next problematic aspect of Gossip Girl’s treatment of race/ethnicity involves the presentation of ambiguously ethnic characters like Vanessa Abrams (Jessica Szohr). Much like the Viagra commercial that features an ambiguously Latina dance instructor, the producers have coded Vanessa as somewhat exotic and possibly Latina. By using what the University of Oregon's Priscilla Ovalle dubs the “Rita Moreno/Rosie Perez costume kit,” Gossip Girl presents Vanessa as stereotypical Latina with dark, wavy hair and large hoop earrings. Further, Vanessa is simultaneously coded as different (and of lower class status) from the girls that inhabit the Upper East Side: in “The Handmaiden’s Tale,” a close-up shot of Vanessa calls attention to her bright yellow, high-top basketball sneakers, set against the background of one of New York’s many caged, playground style basketball courts.

The introduction of Szohr’s character (climbing through a window) is also problematic in its invocation of West Side Story-esque imagery of secret ethnic romance that must fly under the radar of acceptable society. On another note, the lack of mention of Vanessa’s family and the somewhat nomadic identity ascribed to her makes it seem as if her family was negligent and that she relies on the parental guidance and support of the Humphreys. Additionally, it is interesting to note the only purpose that Vanessa, the only non-white primary (although below Blair, Chuck, Dan, and Serena on the hierarchy of central characters) character serves in the ongoing narrative is to rouse tensions between Dan and Serena in the first season, or Blair and Chuck later in the second season. In tandem with the portrayal of Isabel and Kati, the implication is that if girls of color don't stay in their place, they will only complicate matters.

Dorota, Blair’s Polish maid, is the only other character with a non-white background. Aside from the obvious stereotype of “the Polish maid” and Blair making her do all of her menial tasks (like making her pick up the trash in Central Park during her detention in “Carnal Knowledge”), certain dialogue exemplifies the attitude that difference from the dominant discourse of whiteness implies inferiority. For example, in “The Serena Also Rises,” Blair whines to Dorota, “Don’t ever go to high school, Dorota! The girls are spoiled, stupid and ungrateful!” This patronizing statement reflects Blair’s ignorance of whether or not Dorota, wherever she came from, actually went to high school.

As far as stereotypes go, the treatment of Asian-ness in the show is especially regressive. Nelly Yuki (Chang) is presented as a nerd with dark, thick-rimmed glasses that clutches to her calculator for dear life, especially in “Desperately Seeking Serena.” Also, in “The Dark Night,” Chuck’s constant references to his happy-ending massages, his “daily shiatsu,” and the fact that he flies in an Asian sex expert from Tokyo (who he calls “Madam Butterfly”) when he suffers from impotence, merely reinforce popular ideas about Asian sex fantasies and posit them as manifestations of Asian-ness that can be enjoyed by the wealthy like any other commodity. Asian culture is again commodified in a preview for the next episode shown after “O Brother, Where Bart Thou?” when Chuck’s depression about the death of his father is signified by dim lighting (the dark/light dichotomy might imply that which is non-white is inherently bad), Asian drumming music, and images of him in a mysterious Asian massage parlor, or the image of him passing out in what looks like an opium den. This imagery suggests that such elements of Asian culture and history are outlets to indulge the guilty pleasures of whites.

Next, as opposed to classic melodramas like Dallas that attempt to portray the wealthy as just as troubled as the lower echelons of society, Gossip Girl unapologetically celebrates the fundamental advantages of aristocracy for the audience’s pleasure. The show’s seemingly perverse view of what it means to be white and wealthy is not unbeknownst to the producers; in fact, white privilege is acknowledged explicitly at almost every juncture in the show. For instance, in “Desperately Seeking Serena,” as Blair enjoys her SAT study session fully accoutered with massages, pedicures, and private tutors, she wonders aloud, “How do you compete with that?” On the other hand, the disadvantages of not being able to rub shoulders with the elite are fully fleshed out when, in “Poison Ivy,” Dan and Jenny chalk up Dan’s failure to be nominated as an usher at the admissions event to the fact that “[they’re] not exactly royalty uptown.” In relation to the influence of class on identity and difference in Gossip Girl, Dan’s middle-class status functions as a way to posit him as an outsider that does not fully understand the world of wealth and privilege – as Serena constantly reminds him at the high-society events they attend together throughout the first season. Jenny Humphrey’s struggles to fit in with the rich crowd at her school, and all of her sacrifices (such as “eating her brown-bag lunch alone in a bathroom stall” so she can go out to lunch with the rest of the girls at a posh restaurant everyday), demonstrate the dichotomy the show draws between the working class and the upper echelons of wealth.

Taken as a whole, the producers of Gossip Girl strategically utilize the genre of serialized melodrama in order to, as Christine Gledhill puts it, “draw into a public arena desires, fears, values, and identities which lie beneath the surface of the publicly acknowledged world.” The show exploits racial, ethnic, and socio-economic difference in a manner that encourages viewers to derive enjoyment from the flagrant presentation of these complicated issues that can't be reconciled within the show. In this light, many of the problematic aspects of the show’s treatment of race, ethnicity, and class can be contextualized as components of a complex narrative structure constructed for the purposes of entertainment. The hidden identity of the omniscient narrator, known only as Gossip Girl, contributes to the show’s ability to disavow its relationship to any coherent or serious ideology. Because it’s all just gossip…isn’t it?