I can't believe I'm actually writing about this, but my inspiration for this blog actually came from yesterday's episode of Gossip Girl. In it, the students are doing the play "The Age of Innocence" which is based on the novel by Edith Wharton. Now, just as some quick background information, "The Age of Innocence" is based on New York's rich society in the 1800's. Gossip Girl is based on today's rich society of New York. Anyways, "The Age of Innocence" is full of scandal and...of course...gossip. So, while the students are performing, there is drama of their own going on back scene. To make the story short, drama erupts on the stage and the students end up taking their frustrations out on eachother while still in the spotlight. Now, one of the known critics in the audience comes up to the director after the play and says: "I loved it." He states that the juxtaposition of the kids' drama onto the play's drama was perfect and that the deconstruction of the second scene was brilliant. Now, I've been trying to figure out just exactly how the kids' explosion of teenage angst was in fact the deconstruction of "The Age of Innocence" and I've come to the conclusion that the critic in the play didn't have a clue either. A modern representation of the rich 1800's society may make it more relatable to the teen audience, but, if I've grasped at least a little of deconstruction, which I hope I have, that doesn't succeed in deconstructing the text. I was trying to come up with binary oppositions for "The Age of Innocence" and please tell me if these are wrong.
Rich Poor
Scandalous Proper
Betrayal Loyalty
Secrets Openness (?)
Fake Real
Now, if we look at "The Age of Innocence" vs. Gossip Girl we get this:
Rich Rich
Scandalous Scandalous
Betrayal Betrayal
Secrets Secrets
Fake Fake
Hmm... not very good oppositions. The problem I do see, however, is that in these binary oppositions the rich are always associated with scandal, betrayal, and dangerous secrets while the poor get off as always being the good, loyal, and proper people. However, rich is seen as "postive" in today's world while poor would be "negative." This seems a little messed up to me. In both Gossip Girl and "The Age of Innocence" the rich society is all about putting up a front of being everything they're portrayed as not being (loyal, proper, honest, ect.). And this is where I get stuck. Apparently this front the rich are putting on in both 'texts' is exactly how the poor are portrayed. Like we said with the J-Lo song: the rich are "protesting" a little to much how good of people they are. But what's lacking then? A conscious? The ability to think of others besides just themselves? I think perhaps it's an absense of reality. They put up a front in the story because they're actors, they're above the "real world" that the poor are experiencing every day.
I hope that that made some sense...please comment on this because I think I changed my mind about 10 times when writing this!
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Nice post. And I think you're right when you say that essentially the binary opposition here is what the rich pretend to be and what they really are. The novel by Wharton itself is deliberately exposing (or demystifying) the world of the scandalously rich. By showing that they only pretend to be proper and to have propriety (because they have property, if you catch the word play), then she very democratically shows how anyone can be rich... that there's nothing natural or just about who gets to be wealthy and who doesn't.
ReplyDeleteSo, how does the breakdown of play in Gossip Girl "deconstruct" the novel. I think you're right that the critic of the play was just using the word deconstruct to sound smart and didn't actually know what he or she was saying.
However, that said, you're own layout of the binaries actually begins to deconstruct it. I really like the way you set that up, with the "fake fake" at the end -- most definitely on the right track. As you mentioned, the novel creates a real/fake binary, and implied in that is that the rich people in the novel are "fake" (obviously, because they are fictional characters) whereas the actors/audience are "real." Whenever you read a novel, implied in your reading experience is the "difference" between you, the reader, and the characters. And so when the play falls apart in Gossip Girl and the "real" people start acting like the fake characters, the instability of that binary is revealed. What's real, and what's fiction? Gossip Girl doesn't show us a deep meaning here, an origin or truth. Rather, it plays with the very idea of representation itself.
Now, at the end of the day, this is not a deconstruction that goes very far--it is Gossip Girl, after all, and not Edith Wharton. But here's some food for thought. In novel, the two women characters are definitely coded by their hair color. I think the innocent one is blond, and the devious one is brunette. Or maybe the opposite, I can't remember which. And you are probably familiar enough with that kind of symbolism. It's implicit in The Scarlet Letter too, and some people have praised Hawthorne for deliberately questioning the blond=innocent, dark=devious binary.
But in the movie made about ten or fifteen years ago starring Michelle Pfiefer and Winona Ryder, the hair color symbolism was reversed. (Again, I don't remember the story that well, so I forget who was who.) Now, this is just hair color. It probably doesn't seem important... but can we begin to deconstruct the story from that?
I did not get a chance to watch that episode yet, and now I am even more intrigued. While watching the show I will definitly be paying attention to what you highlighted here. The slide you point out, between rich being bad but in today's soiety being rich is positive, is true. The American dream is to become rich, and we still strive to become rich even though we view the rich in a bad way.
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