Georgetown Independent

Issue date: 9/4/09 Section: Arts and Entertainment

Media Credit: stevesword.com The cast of "NYC Prep"

OK, I'll admit it. Like Blair Waldorf, Serena Van Der Woodsen and the rest of their merry band, characters of the CW's "Gossip Girl," I graduated from an Upper East Side private school. Located in two imposing Gilded Age mansions, my school boasted beautiful views of Central Park, legions of girls in plaid skirts, and cashmere sweaters and ballet flats and a yearly tuition nearly able to rival that of Georgetown. Over the last two years, our neighborhood was invaded every so often by the "Gossip Girl" cast and crew so they could film around the real private schools upon which the show is based. And while we publicly dismissed the scripted show and its fans as ridiculous and ignorant of true New York schoolgirls, my classmates and I secretly enjoyed pretending, for those few days, that we really were part of that world-gilded by glamor and yet defined by scandal and intrigue. The popular fictional show based on New York's prep school scene recently inspired the Bravo reality show "NYC Prep," which, in the same fashion as "Laguna Beach" and "The Hills," attempts to document real life Serenas and Blairs. However, for all of the onscreen similarities we were able to point out, we ultimately understood the point that the real students of "NYC Prep"-or at least the Bravo producers working their puppet strings-have failed to grasp: "Gossip Girl" is highly fictionalized; a glossy, expensive incarnation of the old-school soap opera.

In fact, that was my and many of my classmates' primary complaint about Bravo's newest reality series. "They're not really being New York prep school kids," pointed out a fellow graduate of a similar Upper East Side, all-girls establishment. "They're just trying to live up to Gossip Girl." If she could sum up the show in two words? "Ridiculously artificial." Maybe this is partly due to Bravo's clumsy editing process, in which conversations are blatantly spliced together and voiced over to create maximum dramatic effect, but I have to agree with her. Underneath all of the characters' showy words, their colorful boasts and outrageous claims about their fabulous lives, there is a subtle uneasiness to their attitudes. These kids are all playing a part, and they are not quite sure if they've got it down right. And once I picked up on it, the show became almost uncomfortable to watch. The dramatizing works for right for Blake Lively and Leighton Meester, professional actresses on "Gossip Girl" who know full well that their job is to create a fantasy in which an audience can indulge. But it's awkward to watch real high schoolers struggle to keep up a façade they're only halfway sure of. The characters of "NYC Prep" have taken a teen's fantastical conception of the glamorous adult world of New York socialites, mixed it with the episodes they have seen of Gossip Girl, and created personae they're struggling to pass off as their real selves.

Based on my high school experience, not only is this version of New York prep school highly unrealistic, it is not even good TV. The drama that rules characters' lives is less than petty, and the ways in which they try to express it are incoherent. Their friendships seem nebulous, alliances shifting and realigning throughout the course of each episode. This is where I find "NYC Prep" to be the least realistic, even though there was a certain amount of drama at my school, at the end of the day, mostly everyone in my grade were friends. The size and closeness of the community meant that we had all known each other well for many years, as a result there was an element of loyalty and solidarity that seems nonexistent in the world of "NYC Prep." Furthermore, the blatantly competitive displays of wealth that punctuate the show are ridiculous, immature even. Yes, at my high school, most were wealthy, some more so (and some very much more so) than others, but there, money was never displayed so glaringly as in the show. In fact, money was rarely mentioned, let alone made a perpetual issue, and it was considered impolite to behave otherwise.

Unfortunately, "NYC Prep" is only marginally entertaining, and Bravo's toting of it as "reality" is offensive. It's highly contrived, overly dramatized portrayal of the New York City private school scene is about as fictional as "Gossip Girl," and not even half as fun to watch. And there's no Chuck Bass…

Seraphim is an Arts and Sciences sophomore.

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