Commodities in Literature, Literature as Commodity: A Close Look at the Gossip Girl Series

Young adult novels, written by adults for young people, are anthropological statements that reflect not only the conditions of their making but also authorial and social views of adolescence and the adolescent experience. The fictionalizations may be derived in part from authorial experience as well as from the author's current observations of youth culture. Because most young adult literature is created by adults on behalf of adolescents, its creation is seen as a kind of literary service to youth, and much criticism of the literature concerns itself with the authority of the text and the practicality or wisdom of the messages within. Peter Hunt summarizes this argument in his introduction to Peter Hollindale's article, "Ideology and the Children's Book" (in Hunt 18), and states that much critical work surrounding children's literature has either been in service of this "polemic" or addresses "specific issues such as censorship or covert racialism." Recent research, however, has sought to look more broadly at the capitalist imperative behind the creation of children's literature.¹ If popular texts may be considered as deliberately conceived and marketed structures, the criticism of popular texts should include not just an examination of morals and messages but also an examination of textual conceptualization. The Gossip Girlseries, commissioned by one arm of a target marketing conglomerate specializing in adolescents and young adults, by the very nature of its conception, opens itself to just this type of criticism. The novels emphasize the power of the gaze, drop product names in the dual service of characterization and advertising, and, in what Terry Eagleton might call the series' "conditions of making" that become evident in analysis, refer back to the teen consumption concerns of the auspicious producer.

The Gossip Girl series of young adult novels, attributed to author Cecily von Ziegesar, represents a calculated success not only for the six novels' author but also for the publishing company and the book packaging group responsible for its conception and distribution. The novels, the first of which appeared in 2002, detail the lives of a cast of wealthy Manhattan teens, most of whom attend the posh fictional private school Constance Billard. Interspersed among the fine points of the characters' drinking, partying, and shopping habits appear updates to the fictitious Gossip Girl Web page (www.gossipgirl.net), which further monitors the comings and goings of the adolescent socialites. The focus on the female characters' searches for love among the upper crust as well as their penchant for designer name-dropping has garnered the series more than one comparison to the popular HBO television show, "Sex and the City." The conception and ultimate creation of Gossip Girl exemplify a new mode of production in media for young people. The series—pitched initially by a media production company as a concept to a number of venues—was sold to the highest literary bidder. Little, Brown, and Company garnered the rights and opportunity to publish the series, and the series is linked (both within the texts themselves and in production) to both 17th Street Productions (the production company) and its parent company, Alloy, Inc. (a direct marketing firm for youth) via a Web site associated with the novels. In this case, literature for young people, conceived initially as a conceptual commodity and not with charitable intent, becomes the serendipitous product of a capital venture, the goal of which is to sell products—any product. The content of the series mirrors this concern, as the details of the lives of the characters—and the characterization itself—are described in terms of commercial consumption. The new association of young adult literature with "media production," commerce, and marketing is one that invites closer consideration as our reading and recommendation proclivities confer not just literary approval but commercial sponsorship as well.

The success of Gossip Girl adds to the list of children's publishing phenomena attributed not just to a single author but to an entire company. While authorial credit is given to Cecily von Ziegesar, the series is considered the "brainchild" of 17th Street Productions, a book packager...