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Madame Bovary and Gossip Girl: Similarities and Differences
Gossip Girl is a TV drama series based on the book sequel of novelist Cecily Von Ziegesar. Von Ziegesar, wrote her first novel, at 2004 and her starting point was her private school days. Then 2007 the book series become a TV novella in the same name Gossip Girl and on air till 2012. Basically, in the TV series, we watched the rich adolescences of Upper East Side (Manhattan / New York) torturing each other by socially, psychologically and sometimes even physically. They harmed each other every now and then for sudden reasons like social relations, love relations or money-based problems.
In Gossip Girl, we see two private schools one for boys one for girls: Constance Billard School For girls and St. Jude’s School For Boys. In these schools we see highly privileged teens; Serena Van Der Woodsen, the socialite blonde bombshell whose mother from Irish aristocracy; Blair Waldorf, whose mother is a well-known fashion designer; Chuck Bass, whose father a successful businessman (or tyrant) and doing dirty jobs; Nate Archibald and other male or female figures from school or their social life from Upper East Side. Upper East Side is a symbol here to provide richness, high-class lifestyle and social status. And there is Dan Humphrey from the Bronx who is the outsider, the unwanted and invisible nerd boy, going to the same school with the Manhattan elites, dreaming to be a well-known novelist and secretly has a crush on Serena from the first grade of school. Although his father -was an almost Rockstar like two decades ago- an art gallery owner and his mother is an artist, Dan has no privilege inside the elite boys and girls. We can call him basically a middle-class poor boy. In the TV series the voice over usually calls him as ‘poor boy’ too. He is the modern Madame Bovary. Who does not accept his place in society and wants to upgrade himself. He is not the one and only persona who is looking for an upgrade. For example, Blair Waldorf is an admirer to be a royal. She also calls herself as Manhattans royalty and even married with a prince for that aim, but she can not make it her way to the top and the marriage finishes with a divorce. So, if we want to find someone who achieved his/her goals to the top, we have to follow the Lonely Boy aka Poor Dan Humphrey.
From the starting of the TV series, a woman voice is guiding us and telling us the story. Like Gods voice, her voice is popping up in every episode. The voice assumes she is Gossip Girl. Gossip Girl is a blog site writing by anonymously. The blogs owner is writing about secrets of the elite students, sharing their secrets, making them fight with each other, guiding their social relations and managing their lives like theyre his or her puppets. All the students, especially the fivesome are on gossip Girls hands because she knows everything about them and nobody knows who she is. Besides Gossip Girl is not just messing with the students but their relatives, friends, and families. The anonymous is acting like nothing she or he cant see. The voiceover gives us that impression too.
After one-year Gossip Girls page starts spreading rumors to Manhattans young elites, about Serena and Dan. Somehow, they meet in a coincidence. Gossip Girl starts writing about Lonely Boy or Poor Dan Humphrey then he became visible in the eyes of school society which acts like he does not exist. Then, Serena and Dan start to dating. It was a dream for Dan like a year ago but now it seems like he is living his dream.
As times passes, Dan becomes one of the main subjects of Gossip Girl. Not just him also his sister Jenny and his father Rufus, became a part of the gossip page. He became much more visible day by day, but Gossip Girl keeps calling him an outsider or poor Dan. Now he is an insider but also an outsider. The voice reminds the truth to us for 6 seasons, from the start. Even Dan broke up with Serena, their parents Rufus and Lily started dating then getting married, then Dans family moved to upper east-side, the voice never gives up of calling him as an outsider. Dan and his friends never forget where he came from: He is the Lonely Boy from the Bronx. From the middle class. From petite bourgeois.
At the end of season 6, Dan Humphrey comes out as Gossip Girl. He is the one behind all the gossip and manipulation. He is secretly ruling the Upper Eastside and its residents lives. When we expected all his friends will refuse him and don’t want to see him again, they embrace him with respect because of being the real king of the Upper East Side, all the times. The passive and weak one wins the game in Manhattan. And powerful Upper East Siders who have money, social status and everything a man can imagine, lost over him. I found that twisted ending as evidence of the revenge of petite bourgeois. And I want to examine his situation from different social concepts.
Bovary vs. Humphrey
Daniel Humphrey is coming from the Bronx. In the TV series, the location is used as a symbol of middle class, boring people, low standards and lame people. The Upper East Siders’ approach about Dan was the same. They took him as a lame poor boy. They did not give him importance. He was just a common person for them. Dan knew that fact and he planned something to conquer their world and started to write the blog; Gossip Girl. In the beginning, Dan’s situation was not so different from Madame Bovary’s. He was not happy in his place of the social life and he wanted to upgrade himself. The upper-class schoolmates were taking him as a villager, like Bovary. Also, like Madame Bovary, he was in love with an upper-class person: Serena. He had to be one of them to be with Serena and a part of the world.
There are similarities with Humphrey and Bovary. Like, they both are in-between people, not rich or poor but middle class. They both want to upgrade themselves. They both in love with an upper-class person. They both trying to reach higher life-standards from what they have. They both trying to be inside. They both are getting bored of what they have. They both reading too much and so intellectuals in a similar way. But their ways are so different. Because of Madame Bovary is a depict of a petite bourgeois French woman from the 19th century, but Dan Humphrey is a portrait of a young intellectual American boy from the 21st century. Bovary is a depict from the beginning of modernity, Dan Humphrey is a depict who belongs post-modernity or information society. Whereas the two depicts mirroring the same social class, but their conditions are so different from each other.
Like Madame Bovary, Daniel Humphrey cannot forget where he came from (Bronx) and not feeling belong to Upper East Side, but he does not fall into a depression. Well, in his life we can see chaos everywhere, but he never falls into it, because he creates it. He has control of everything, so he never became suicidal or turbulent, but always calm and smart. Unlike the tragic persona of Bovary, Humphrey is writing his story. This was the promise of modernism from the start. When they killed the god, they told us, you have wills, you are rational beings, you can write your own destiny. Madam Bovary tried and failed, but after two century, Daniel Humphrey did – literally. He wrote his own destiny and shaped the others. Like he is playing god in the game. For me, he took the revenge of Emma Bovary by turning the tables and winning the glory in the name of the petite bourgeois.
Madame Bovary is a typical narrative of modernity. Jacques Ranciere gave big importance to the novel about describing modern life and the turmoils of it. In his article Why Emma Bovary Had To Be Killed (Ranciere, 2008) he explained the facts why the novel is so important about the understanding of modernity. In his article, he tells Flaubert depicts Emma Bovary as a sentimental character who wants literal pleasures to come alive. The sentimental character wants the pleasures of art and literature to be real, concrete pleasures. He or she wants them to be more than a matter of intellectual contemplation: a source of practical excitement. (Ranciere, 2008) This situation is the same for Dan Humphrey. He has the same persona with Bovary. Also, Ranciere pointed out the social climate changing in France at that time and the turmoil of the social class. He says the excitement was the key world of the community at that phase. Because the social order was changing. ‘In the good old times of monarchy, religion, and aristocracy, there had been a clear, long-standing hierarchy that put every group and every individual in its right place. It gave them a firm footing and limited horizons, which are the conditions of happiness for poor people. Unfortunately, that order had been shattered, first by the French Revolution, second by the rise of industrialism, third by the new mediathe newspapers, lithographs, and so on, which made words and images, dreams and aspirations, available everywhere to anybody. Society had become a hustle and bustle of free and equal individuals that were dragged together into a ceaseless whirl in search of excitement that was nothing but the mere internalization of the endless and purposeless agitation of the whole social body&. Poor people were now taking a new view of what practical-mindedness meant. They wanted to enjoy all that was enjoyable, including ideal pleasures. But they also wanted those ideal pleasures to be practically enjoyable ideal pleasures. (Ranciere, 2008) This explains our Dan Humphrey’s situation as well as Madame Bovary. After two centuries, whereas youre in France or America, things are not changing too much. Dan wants to be a part of the upper class, because he wants to taste the lifestyle, the pleasures, like two decades ago.
Ranciere says, this French person had gained their freedom together and their new democracy model involves lover classes as equal as upper classes; in politics and social life. Commoners have a right to do politics, arts and have leisure time like upper classes; but did they have money to live the life which they had the right to live? French Revolution created a new democracy and new problems at the same time. Before that, things were much easier. Everybody knew their places and lived the life path which they allowed to live. After the French revolution, the industrial revolution and at the beginning of modernism, this excitement issue was a big problem. They needed new orders to arrange the pleasures. Reincerie says Therefore a new democratic ghost was substituted for the older; political democracy, they said, had been crushed, but there was a new, far more radical uprising of democracy that no police, no army could tear down: the uprising of the multitude of aspirations and desires, cropping up everywhere in all the pores of modern society. To be sure, the idea was not exactly new; Plato had invented it two millennia before by stating that democracy, in fact, was not a form of government but the way of life of those free Athenians who cared for nothing except their individual pleasure. (Ranciere, 2008) From his point of view, the modern anti-democrats took the model as wrong as it can. They were greedy. They started to want anything that GOLD can buy, also, what gold cannot buy; like literature, passions, values, art, and ideas. (Ranciere, 2008).
In Platos Republic, the Ideal State model, there are three classes: Rulers (philosopher), Soldiers and Artisans. (Heighnotes, 2016) From Platos point of view, people unite to the form of the community because they have needs. People are born with abilities and talents. So, they have to do different jobs which are good for everybody. In this kind of society, everyone has their own job. And this kind of society, grow easily. Then your neighbors start to jealous, and a war risk appears. Then you need guardians. The guardians of the state who are trained soldiers, like a dog. They know who a friend or a foe is, and bark at the right person. At the point the need of training that soldiers require wisdom, so you need philosophers. Philosophers tell stories to the soldiers to train them. The stories must be positive to give them motivation. At that time the poet was excluded from the police. Because from Platos point of view, Homeros was the wrong story to tell the soldiers. They censored the myths, and the philosopher started to write his own myth. One and the most important myths of Plato is Three Metal which is taken as starting point of monotheism.
In Three Metal Myth, the citizens of the city are brothers but when God create each one, he added gold to the rulers (philosopher), silver to the soldiers (aux) and iron to the artisan. Plato says you have to know your place. You should never ever mix the metals. A good society is the one which everybody knows what they were made of. The mixture of any metal is creating problems in society. Children are usually made of the same metal as their parents, but if this is not the case the child must either descend or ascend in the social order. You can be gold or silver after education if you are talented but once you are one, you cant change it. Know your place was the main concept behind the myth.
In the old Greek city, there are the police and the Oikos. Police is for play and leisure, politics and art. And the Oikos is for necessity, economy, artisans, producing things, usefulness and work. Everybody does their own job and one thing which is naturally suited. Work is done in the Oikos by the slaves. The concept of leisure time was belonged to the residents of the polis, except artisans. Artisans belonged to the polis, but they were doing jobs with their bodies. The leisure time concept or the pleasures were not their things, because they had to work, they did not have time. For Ranciere the problem has started when artisans or workers gained their freedom to do politics and art and have leisure times on their own. The modern people’s main tragedy is to manage the situation and fit in a place in social. They feel disconnected and not belong, because of that case. It was like that in Madame Bovarys century and it is the same in Dan Humphrey’s century. Petite bourgeois still struggling to fit in social order and they want to climb the social ladder.
The Modern Nihilist: Emma Bovary
When we talk about modernism, we also remember nihilism. Nietzsche assumed that nihilism is a disease of modernism for the first half of 19th century. He thought that nihilism infects everybody in European society. He said What I relate is the history of the next two centuries. I describe what is coming, what can no longer come differently: the advent of nihilism. (Nietzsche, 1968) This testifies my thesis about Dan Humphrey and Madame Bovarys sameness in another way. After two century Dan Humphrey is as nihilist as Madame Bovary, but -like when I said at the beginning- with differences. Can the nihilist learn who he is and use his power to turn the tables? To answer the question, we have to understand who the nihilist was and after two centuries who he becomes.
For Nietzsche, we are rational beings. In modern city life, there is too much rationalism, we are overstimulated, and we become introverts. We are BLAZE creatures. We are trying to protect ourselves from turning inside. We are losing excitement and looking for excitement. In an over-stimulated world, we turn blaze then we go extreme. Then we get over stimulated and we go blaze. It’s an endless circulation. This is the tragedy of the modern world. And it was a bigger problem in the 19th century. The system calls us, don’t demand. Moderate your demands. Don’t demand about what is beautiful or great and live in peace. Even devil is a banal devil without evil. This was the nightmare of the 19th century. Nietzsche hated the situation. This situation which is Madame Bovary belongs.
In the 21st century, we have the decaf reality. We have normalized the modern culture. We have virtual sex which is sex without sex. Decaf coffee, coffee without caffeine. We have invented a form of politics without politics, without antagonists. This is the post-truth without truth. This is the truth which Dan Humphrey was born. Nihilism is the answer to this situation. It is the search for a pain-free life for Nietzsche. This conquers the denial of life. A nihilist is a person who imagines a life without porn, conflict or antagonist. Whenever he/she sees one of these, immediately runs away. The nihilists are unable to live with conflicts or struggles. This is the new form of a modern person. Religion also creates another world to escape. Three monotheist religions, Islam, Judaism, and Jews are the forms of nihilistic religions. They take this chaotic world as an illusion, just a testing world and assume the other world is the true world which is pain-free. The truth in that approach is an illusion. This approach is sort of the origin of Nihilism in our culture. (Woodward, 2002)
Modernity means the death of God. When the god is dead, you have two alternatives. A world without values or values without the world. You can say, I’m ok with this world and you became passive Nihilist aka Boring Demon (Decaf culture) or you say I’m ok with the other side, I like this illusion and you become Radical Nihilist. In two ways, a nihilist is a man who judges the world. That emerges a weak type of person because he creates a ‘true world’ because he cannot adopt the world.
Darwin says the strongest survive but Nietzsche says the weak survive because he/she does not disappear. The weak eat the strong so the weak is powerful. This is exactly our Lonely Boy, Dan Humphrey. He was the weak one, but he ate the strong ones. Then it proves he has the power. This is anti-Darwinist schema but how the weak one is dominant and survive? There are two segments in Nietzsche: Resentment and Ascetism. Resentment is the passive forces, Ascetism is the active forces. In Nietzsche, there are active and passive forces. Woodward says, ‘The radical nihilist is one who judges of the world as it is that it ought not to be, and of the world, as it ought to be that it does not exist.’ (Nietzsche 1968, p.318). Radical nihilism contains two possibilities: the passive nihilism of accepting a meaningless world in despairing resignation, or the active nihilism of seeking to destroy what remains of the traditional categories of valuation. Active nihilismthe useful form of radical nihilism (as opposed to passive nihilism)is the attempt to destroy all values, including those that were attached to the ‘true’ world. Nietzsche’s attacks on traditional religious, moral, and philosophical values such as God, metaphysics, truth, pity, compassion, humility, and the distinction between good and evil, can be seen as active nihilism in action. (Woodward, 2002)
The resentful person is who does not act or cant act. He is passive. Continuously delays acting. Cannot forget or forgive but can not act. This is the symbol of the modern person. They are hostile opposing the world. They build a fiction which separates them from what they can do. Their subject position: they have the illusion of the wolf cannot kill the lamb with the free spirit. Their moral position: the beaten one is the good one. Then the weak becomes good. Like Dan Humphrey. He is the one who has beaten all the time, but he has been beating everyone around him secretly. With the separation of Ascetism and Resentment took us the first form of nihilism. 1- Religious Nihilism: The original. The first man. The myth of creation. Imagining the first man, Adam. 2- Radical Nihilism: 12th man. 3- Passive Nihilism: The last man. Capitalism. 4- Anti-Nihilism: Perfect Nihilism. Overman.
Modernism has two types of Nihilism: Passive Nihilism (consumer culture) and Radical Nihilism (terror). In contemporary life, we are still living with these types of Nihilism: War against the terror. Out characters in Gossip Girl are passive nihilists. They are a part of consumer culture. What are the characteristics of passive nihilism? One-dimension society. Passive reality. Taking radical Nihilist as his first antagonist (false antagonism). Freedom is shopping. Police state. A world with values. The most violent form of nihilism. Only an overman is overcome Nihilism, who wants to get rid of himself.
Daniel Humphrey is also a good example of Nietzsches passive nihilist. He seems like the weakest chain, but he wins in the end. But what is the difference of him with Madame Bovary? What makes him a winner when she was a loser at the end of the game? The different centuries? Or the different phases of modernity?
Breed of Information Society: The Postmodern Nihilist Daniel Humphrey
From my point of view, the main difference with Madame Bovary and Dan Humphrey is they belong to different phases of modernity. Bovary is a depict from the beginning of the modernity, Humphrey is the breed of the information society or postmodernity. I think the glory of him basically based on the new modernity type. Yes, we are all Nihilist right now, but the age is so different from before. First, we are living in an information age, information society. And the power is not based on who you are or where do you come from anymore. In our age, you can rule the world with knowledge and technology. At least some theorists are thinking like that.
Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo developed a detailed account between Nihilism and post-modernism. When Dr. Ashley Woodward wrote about postmodern Nihilism he says, Although there are competing theories of postmodernity, theorists agree that changing social conditions, typically thought to be occasioned by the development and proliferation of new information technologies, mean that the old theories of modernity no longer apply to societies in the most technologically developed nations at the present time. Postmodernity is generally thought to be characterized by the fragmentation of society into multiple, incommensurable forms of life. (Woodward, 2002) He says, According to Vattimo, modernity will have come to an end when we are no longer able to view history as unilinear. This, he believes, has in fact occurred, and constitutes the advent of postmodernity. For Vattimo, the popular postmodern theme of ‘the end of history’ means the end of unilinear history&. History has ended not only for the theoretical and practical reasons outlined above but because the mass media has made us aware of the untenability of a unilinear history since that history can only tell one story where there are many to be told. Media and information technology have made people increasingly aware that there are multiple histories, not just one. In summary, then, for Vattimo postmodernity is characterized by the ‘end of history’ in societies of mass communication, instituting an era of fragmentation, multiplicity, and pluralism. (Woodward, 2002)
With the sudden effects of globalization and technology, nowadays were living in a different society. Some call it as the end of modernity and the beginning of the post-modernity. That can mean different thing: 1- A specific period of social life. 2- A form of cultural sensibility (Art) 3- An aesthetic style (media forms) 4- A mode of thought useful for analyzing that period. Post-modernity means, what came after modernity. Modernity is a set of social development which includes industrial developments in nation-states (pre-modern, feudal, community, kingdom) and changes in the mood of the production. At the end of the 90s, when everything happened so fast, some call it post-industrial society, information society or network society, late modernity, high modernity. They were trying to analyze (late 80s-early 90s) the impact of TV, internet and other technological developments on consumers. They were trying to understand if we’re moving to another society. Frederic Jameson was talking about cultural logic, Jean François Lyotard was talking about post-industrial society and Jean Baudrillard was talking about hyperreality and simulacra. Vattimo also one of those philosophers and he was talking about a new Nihilist model. He provides us a postmodern Nihilism. His main idea was the modernist Nihilism is not suitable for the post-modern world. He was assuming, when we overcome something, we have progressed over it and we find ourselves in a different path of history. For Vattimo, who assumes the history is already ended, postmodern society seems like a Nihilistic society.
Dan Humphrey is a part of a completely postmodern society and by the help of technology, he can write his own story. He is not as weak as the first modern people, the first Nihilists. After two centuries and in a highly technological world, people can find a way to living without a god; and living the destiny which they deserve as much as higher class people. I think Dan Humphrey is a modern version of Madame Bovary and the story shows us, this is the age of petite bourgeois. Like Castell says, information is more important than the machine. Having skills, being well educated is more important in information society which Daniel Humphrey is a part of it. That is the real reason behind his success to write his own destiny and conquer the Upper East Side.
REFERENCES
- Heighnotes.com, 4 April 2016, Platos Theory Of Three Classes And Three Souls, https://heignotes.com/tag/platos-theory-of-three-classes-and-three-souls/
- Rancière, J, 2008, Why Emma Bovary Had to Be Killed, pp. 233-248, Critical Inquiry, Vol. 34, No. 2 (Winter 2008), The University of Chicago Press
- Woodward, A, 2002, Nihilism And The Postmodern In Vattimo’s Nietzsche, http://www.minerva.mic.ul.ie/vol6/nihilism.html
- Wright, C, 2012, Platos Just State, https://philosophynow.org/issues/90/Platos_Just_State
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