According to Salon.com TV writer Heather Havrilesky, pervasive sex and violence aren't what's harming our TV-watching teens -- it's pervasive wealth. On shows such as Gossip Girl, 90210 and Privileged, she writes, admiring depictions of the richest among us "make aspiring to own designer jeans and nice cars look hopelessly middle-class, compared to the fully serviced, spa-polished, couture lives of the truly wealthy."
Havrilesky points out that TV has always given us escapist wealth fantasies, from Dallas to Dynasty to, let's say, Dirty Sexy Money. But "we were meant to pity these lost, soulless, trashy people, squabbling in their enormous but somehow claustrophobic mansions." With these new CW shows, on the other hand, being rich just makes people happy.
"While Chuck, the poor little prince of Gossip Girl, may pace and swill fine bourbon in his lonely hotel room at the Palace, while Blair nibbles on chocolates in the fluffy confines of her four-poster bed and laments that 'Lady Godiva' is her only friend, these are rare low moments in otherwise fabulous, fun-filled lives that include glamorous parties in the Hamptons, dinner out at the best restaurants every night and a phalanx of handmaidens who quietly fulfill every whim. From the warmhearted, loving, McMansion dwellers Sandy and Kirsten of The O.C. to the spunky, good-natured grandmother lounging about in her Mediterranean-style villa on 90210, the filthy rich aren't the cartoonish demons they once were, and the benefits of their exorbitant lifestyles are paraded before our eyes at every turn. TV writers have abandoned the notion that heart and spirit might win out over money in the end, instead choosing to show us just how many things money can buy."
Still, it's just TV, right? But Havrilesky more or less blames a bunch of issues on this sort of wealth envy, from the mortgage crisis to a middle class drowning in credit-card debt. "Can these dramas -- which are made for young people, after all -- really be written off as harmless fun when so many of us aspire to throw money around like young barons and dukes with demonstrably tragic consequences for the entire country? As a growing percentage of families lose their homes and taxpayers are forced to foot the bill for the mortgage industry's indiscretions, while millionaire executives and private investors remain unscathed, should we feel so comfortable celebrating the growing divide between the haves and have-nots?"
We say, that's a lot to ponder. Which we intend to do shortly, but first we need to go buy a bunch of lottery tickets and try out for Who Wants To Be a Millionaire.
Image: The CW
Previously:
Salon Declares "The Summer of the Sensitive Slut"
All of Gossip Girl
All of 90210