“Gossip girl” is one of my favorite American dramas. This drama is mainly about a high school students’ who live in Manhattan, New York Upper East side life. Main character’s name is Serena. She lives in a gorgeous hotel with her family and goes to a prestige private high school. Blair is Serena’s best friend and her mother is successful fashion designer. They were born as elites, and many dramas happening around these two rich girls: betray, love, friendship, secret, school life, family, lies, drag, and anything can happen.
Through this drama, I read some American actions. First, when Blair entered her high school’s principle’s office to talk about her future, she sat a chair without the principle’s permission. As a person who came from outside of American culture, her action was considered very American. In my culture, it was considered rude and arrogant. In another scene, Serena held a magnificent birthday party for her friend Jenny at Serena’s place. However, Jenny wanted to have a small home party only with her family and close friends. Therefore, Jenny was upset when she knew that Serena held such a big party. Jenny ruined the party by letting many strangers in Serena’s place. After the party, those unlisted guests messed up everything and Serena’s house became like after a storm. Serena’s mother got angry and asked Serena and Jenny who was in charge. Serena answered “This is not my mess” and left a room. This scene showed American idea of individualism. Americans think that they have responsibilities only when they think things were totally their faults. In my culture, however, we think both Serena and Jenny have responsibilities for the party. Jenny did invited strangers and consequently, ruined the party. However, it was because that Serena ignored Jenny’s will, and also Serena was one of the hosts of the party. Was Serena’s reaction normal in American culture?
The characters and casts are as interesting as the story. Serena is an active blond girl and used to be a party girl. Blair is an honor student and proud of being in upper class, and she has brunet hair. Here you can see American stereotyped image. Blond is a cheerful and likes playing around. On the other hand, brunet is decent and polite. Practically, Leighton Meester, who acts Blair, had blond hair, however, she changed her hair color blond to brunet in order to fit Blair’s character image. Now, I watched season 1 to season 2, and there were only two African-Americans, two Asian-Americans, and one Latin-American were casted in this drama. I can think of more than thirty casts on this drama and all of them are White except those five of them. If someone who does not have no other experience with the U.S. watches this drama, definitely he or she would think American is White. Also, this drama gives images such as America is wealthy, freedom country (and American people like touch football).
In drama world, you can see what people think of American, American culture, and dramas illustrate American stereotypes clearly more than a real world. Also, Just like Jennifer mentioned, this activity is fun and opening eye. This time, I choose “Gossip girl” because this is my favorite. Maybe this show is not a typical American life, however, this drama showed me a lot about America. If you choose a comedy show, you could see exaggerated typical America. Do you have any TV shows that you think “this is America” except the one you watched this time? And why?
The show I think is mostly American is Life Unexpected. I also would like to emphasize that I think this is mostly American to society in this generation. This show is about a 16 year old orphan who finds her biological parents and forms a family with them again. The show illustrates real-life situations that many Americans go through; struggles to form families, the challenges of maintaining a committed relationship, the struggles of high school peer pressure, and the challenges to keep your personal life separate from career. And all of this is shown in a lower to middle class environment/neighborhood.
返信削除Not really. Television is fantasy, just like movies and I rarely think any of them portray American life as it really is. Now, there are some shows that are more like documentaries and these would be the ones I would be most apt to think reflect more accurately the reality of being an American. With that said, I am skeptical of any information provided by the media in any form, but there are some that are more credible than others but they are not sitcoms, dramas, etc.
返信削除Off the top of my head I cant really think of any show that I have watched that I really thought that it portrayed America well. I think that every show makes up how Americans are and how we live, act, and look. Every show makes up some drama to keep people watching and makes American look sometimes ridiculous.
返信削除I can't think of any television shows that portray America as it really is. Most shows want to be entertaining, and most of real life is ordinary. People watch tv to escape their everydays lives and want to watch something with a lot of drama, action, or comedy. Any of these shows exaggerate real life. Even so called reality tv shows do not show real life or how people truly act because people on reality shows are in a high stress, competitive atmosphere. This causes them to act differently than they would in real life.
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