Class in the Media

The Upper East Side. 90210, Beverly Hills. The Northshore. All these locations have connotations that accompany them, mostly some of affluence. Another similarity? Each of these places has been spotlighted through the media due to their wealth. The Upper East Side is currently being featured through Gossip Girl. The zip code 90210 actually has its own show, "90210." And the Northshore of Chicago? The Northshore and all its money was featured through the hit movie, Mean Girls. All three of these places have been famed due to their money, society and culture. With these types of shows and movies, is it all too easy to believe that these societies are the norm? I believe these shows and movies promote even stronger class divisions because they highlight the differences between the rich and the "poor" in very publicized ways.

Gossip Girl is a television show on the CW channel every Monday night from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. based on the Upper East Side of New York City and the lives of young adults there. This show is by no means a "reality" TV show, but the ways in which it portrays the Upper East Side certainly convinces viewers that this is truly the life of Upper East Siders, as they call themselves. Below is a video clip of one of Gossip Girl's most featured, annual parties, the Masquerade Ball, to illustrate the type of culture Gossip Girl features.



It is an interesting time to watch Gossip Girl, a show centered around lavish parties and designer clothing, with the current unemployment rate around 9.6% according to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics and the United States bouncing back after the recession. Gossip Girl first aired on September 19, 2007, just three months before the recession in the United States officially began. While Gossip Girl showed eighteen year old teenagers paying thousands of dollars for a gown to wear to the upcoming ball, the news channels showed rapidly growing lines of people outside homeless shelters and houses being taken over by the banks.

With shows such as these, class divisions are clearly evident and supported. The general public is watching these shows from their homes which they are struggling to pay the mortgage every month, and the CW is telling them that if only they were luckier, they could live the life of an upper east-sider. The rich are strapping on their dancing shoes, the middle-class are trying to pull themselves up by their boot straps. In a country in which the government is attempting to bail anyone and everyone out and encouraging people to ban together to raise people back to pre-recession status, shows such as Gossip Girl can only foster increased tensions between the rich and the poor. An example I believe that really illustrates the tensions between the wealthy and the poor is portrayed well through the movie, Marie Antoinette. In this movie about the French government during the French Revolution, it discusses much about Marie's ignorance to the incredibly large divisions between the rich and the poor and her inability to see how the luxuries she possessed and utilized were increasing tensions. Below is a clip about the movie that summarizes the issues.





As you can see through the clip, the wealthy were feasting while the poor were starving. This is a concept illustrated very similarily through Gossip Girl and 90210. Class conflicts and divisions are evident in our society, but do we see the ways in which they are encouraged? Media, such as movies and TV shows, often does a better job of portraying these issues better than we give them credit for, if we were only to take the time to analyze the show rather than just use it as an hour of relaxation. Readers: what other examples exist like these in the movie and television industries?