Department of English

My thesis examines the ways in which gossip, intertextuality, and fashion intersect with affect, relationality, and the “Young-Girl” figure to form various discursive networks both within the world of Gossip Girl and extradiagetically, generating meaning on multiple levels. My analytic techniques include explicating the show, comparing it to outside texts, many of which it references onscreen, and examining the show’s impact on an increasingly digital, surveilled, and “connected” world and its lasting cultural imprint. I aim to find a middle ground between those people who critique Gossip Girl from a very specific theoretical and critical position, and its existence as a highly successful and popular television show in which many people, myself included, find value and artistry. I hope to contest the dichotomy of either condemning or valorizing a media relic that one may form strong feelings about due to its subject material, aesthetics, or the cultural moment it depicts, and instead represent Gossip Girl as an amalgamation of form, content, and rich theoretical ideas that engenders pleasure, value, and conflict in its audience members. I suggest that the show stands out in the genre of teen soap operas because of its dual relationship to a) art and critical theory and b) popular consumer culture.