Above is a photo my friend took when she was visiting The Hamptons a few weeks ago. It is a photo of Penn Badgley and Blake Lively (and others who I have no idea who they are), stars of the teen drama, Gossip Girl. The photo is hard to see (and it's their backs).
Reading Luci’s post about stalking further makes me think of the facebook. We may not have something as tight-knit as the network in Gossip Girl but surely the facebook acts as out own non-celebrity tabloids. Any unaware (or aware) picture taken of us with or without caption tells a story about our lives and is very public.
Often this stalking isn’t limited to just our close friends. No longer are we getting coffee and ‘catching up’ but much of our catching up or hearing about each others’ lives are posted on the internet to read on our own time at our own discretion.
This ties into the idea of celebrity. Luci points out how annoyed celebrities must be with their private unassuming lives being known by all, and there is no time to rest and be normal. However with the rise of reality TV, reality stars, etc. are we involving ourselves too into this public life that is on display for everyone and up for judgment and interpretation by all with the uses of online applications such as facebook tagging, blogs, etc?
For those seeking public careers such as politics or entertainment, many people do find every hint of a camera to be a potential threat. For a normal facebook fan sometimes unflattering pictures are de-tagged to avoid connections but for others the camera is avoided entirely during a situation that could be a professionally-compromising documentation.
So while Gossip Girl is a teen fiction, it’s very much a dramatic reflection/representation of the technological information passing world we share a love-hate relationship with. With the internet and accessibility of online social networks, an unassuming picture can say something about our lives, and experiences (accurate or not) and can be passed and viewed to those known and unknown people. We have now begun to prove that celebrities are no longer the only ones often with their private lives on display.
2 comments:
This is an excellent post, Paris. I really like how you draw from Luci's post and make an argument about Facebook and Gossip Girl that is at once easy to understand yet hard to come to terms with. I feel very conflicted about this issue. On the one hand, I'm doing this class with blogs and I feel like it can produce good writing and honest communication. On the other hand, I refuse to sign up for a Facebook account, which drives many of my friends crazy. And to be truthful, I can't tell you exactly why I don't want this kind of 'exposure'. I mean, as people always tell me, you can always choose not to be 'friends' with someone if they request you. But isn't this a little too much like high school where cliques ruled the world? Maybe I just had a bad experience in high school and I don't want to be a loser again. (Or at least I choose only to be a loser in the limited confines of our classroom!) I don't know about this. But I do know that your post makes me want to watch Gossip Girl and learn more about this problem that you explain so well, this "dramatic reflection/representation of the technological information passing world we share a love-hate relationship with." Nicely done!
I loved your post. It made me think of facebook and myspace as the outline for proving that celebrities are no longer the only ones with their private lives on display!! Thanks for your comments and ideas on the topic.
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