Growing up in a small town in western Pennsylvania, I’ll always remember Friday nights watching “Gossip Girl” with my sisters. The show was a way for us to escape into the fancy lives of the Manhattan elite. Fans of the series know it for Serena van der Woodsen’s dazzling dresses, polo parties, and enchanting evenings out — and the way it gave normal people a glimpse into the ultra-rich, and in this case fictional, lives of New York’s wealthiest teenagers.
HBO’s “Gossip Girl” reboot is hitting screens in July, and with it, a new political agenda. Make no mistake, the characters will still be extremely wealthy. This time around, they’ll just feel guilty about it. Joshua Safran, executive producer of the series, said the move was made due to recent political events.
“These kids wrestle with their privilege in a way that I think the original didn’t. In light of [Black Lives Matter], in light of a lot of things, even going back to Occupy Wall Street, things have shifted,” Safran said. “I think the first [‘Gossip Girl’] showed a little bit of wealth porn or privilege porn, like, ‘Look at these cars, or here’s a montage of the best-plated food you’ve ever seen.’”
Safran also promised “there’s a lot of queer content on this show,” something the trailer made evident with clips of a same-sex couple and a three-way make-out session. An article for Them magazine, an LGBT-focused publication, said the trailer “is making our queer dreams come true,” and they “just can’t get over how gay it all is.”
The woke leftist agenda is woven throughout every aspect of the glitz and glamour of the reboot. The trailer, which is set to Frank Ocean’s “Super Rich Kids,” still shows vivid images of posh hotels, restaurants, and clubs — it’s almost like the producers know that’s what will bring their original viewers back — but now apparently with an added layer of rich guilt and ramped-up teen sexual deviancy.
A “Gossip Girl” reboot that’s true to the original would be great, but the decision to placate a handful of viewers who were pathetic enough to be offended by the fictional wealth of fictional characters has turned our Manhattan escape into another leftist lecture.
