What Is Marxism And Psychoanalyzing The Gossip Girl

In today’s media world, there are so many genres like horror, comedy, action, musicals, family etc. that helps viewers identify the content and one of the most popular and my personal favorite that has risen tremendously over the years is chick-flicks. For this paper, I will be analyzing a very popular series ‘Gossip Girl’ that reflects many cultural theories like feminism, structuralism, Marxism, psychoanalytical etc. but I would mainly analyze the text through the lenses of two cultural theories namely, Marxism and Psychoanalysis.
Gossip Girl presents the Marxist idea of class that uses a criterion of labor and wealth to differentiate between the public and the bourgeoisie (Meloy, 2009) and many such television shows revolve around the same
The show represents the inequality in the opportunities of the Brooklyn kids and the rest of the Upper East Siders that allows the rich to have access to resources that are unavailable for the rest of the deserving candidates. Dan’s sister Jenny is also one perfect example of Marxist representation. She was a young and ambitious fashion-savy girl but the domineering system of the big names in the industry won’t let her rise by making her do menial tedious tasks by her boss who is also a famous designer, Eleanor Waldorf (a bourgeoisie according to Marxist context).
Both the Humphrey’s tried to get into the so-called classy world in the entire series. On one hand, Dan tries to impress Serena Van Der Woodsen (his dream girl) by taking her to expensive restaurant in a chauffer driven car on their first date and on the other hand Jenny tries to impress Blair Waldorf (the queen bee) since she wants to get into the world of cool Upper East Side girls and she did everything possible to be there from underage drinking, wearing excessive makeup and slutty clothes, helping sneak her friend out of the hospital, stealing from Eleanor’s store
I strongly feel that Gossip Girl reflects Mulvey’s psychoanalytical theory by using many aspects like scopophilia, male gaze, and voyeurism. Now, as we know that Dan Humphrey started the Gossip Girl blog due to his scopophilia desires for Serena Van Der Woodsen. According to Gossip Girl’s Gaze article, in the first episode, Dan Humphrey reveals his crush anonymously using a Gossip Girl blast due to his castration anxiety. In the entire series, the two main female protagonists, Serena and Blair were caught in the flow of action in moments of erotic observation. Serena played a role of a sexy blonde object to be gazed by all the male characters in the show. She is the mere content of the show for spectators and Blair had also been seen wearing provocative lingerie many times. There have been many scenes where the camera focuses on Blair’s lips/thighs while she moves sensually during her striptease. Not only the two main female characters but also, other characters like Vanessa, Olivia etc. have been depicted as sexual objects to other characters and the audience