Teen television is one of my favourite genres. It is a niche of TV storytelling I find fascinating and rich and one I persistently return to for entertainment, comfort, and occasionally schadenfreude or academic interest. That said, like any reviewer who watches TV or movies (and then writes about them) purely out of personal interest (and not professional imperative) there are certain shows I simply don’t (and probably won’t) watch. Although I love the genre, there are certainly some teen shows that have never piqued my interest, and so I’ve avoided them. Some have simply presented a barrier to entry (those offered on a channel I do not have access to, for instance) which has been enough to turn me away, and others have literally made me cringe when previews or print ads have made their way into my life. So I haven’t seen everything, and some shows just don’t interest me.
Recently, I discovered that my local library stocks books upon which two of these series that I have never watched are based: Gossip Girl and Pretty Little Liars.
Now, not being a fan/viewer of either of these shows, I was moderately surprised to discover that each was based on a seemingly endless series of young adult fiction. Curious, I picked up the first book in each series and thought I would break with tradition and review the novels that inspired these recent teen series.
What struck me was how similar the two novels actually are. They are books about rich, privileged, mostly white, private school teens. These characters generally have the freedom to do what they will, as their parents are rich, busy and only vaguely involved in their lives. Somehow due to their family wealth, they are all attractive, athletic, and/or intelligent. The stories are focused through female main characters, in particular former best friends who have grown apart. These girls care about their reputations, and they have secrets that they protect because they fear how they would affect said reputations. Oh, and one of the girls has an eating disorder.
Naturally these similarities are the main reason I can so easily write about both books at once. They also lend themselves quite naturally to comparison. So first, let me say, Gossip Girl was a much, much better book. In fact, part of me suspects that Pretty Little Liars was itself a ripoff of Gossip Girl, attempting to be edgier that its inspiration, throwing murder, blackmail, and sex into the mix.
But, quite simply, the writing is so unbearably bad in Pretty Little Liars, I had to force myself to finish the book, hoping to reach some poorly executed resolution, but alas, the conclusion of book one simply leads to (literally) a dozen more terrible books, so despite my success I did not get to learn the identity of the mysteriously omniscient “A.”
Gossip Girl, on the other hand, was composed of completely passable prose. Despite the obnoxiously rich protagonists, these characters were written in such a way that a reader might understand their flawed motivations. There is a certain upfront acknowledgement that the glamourous New York City lifestyle represented is pure fantasy to most people. And despite the extent to which money seems to ooze out between the pages, Gossip Girl is written as a Young Adult novel about friendships, dating, and insecurities about having sex for the first time. These completely common, normal themes temper the fantasy of private school largess with the reality of the lived teen experience, even if the teen in question is vomiting up her parents’ expensive booze, or models for some famous artsy photographers.
In comparison, Pretty Little Liars offers a misguided attempt at fantasy lifestyle, wrapped in all the obnoxious preoccupation with reputation, without the touchstone of teen experience. It is as shallow as can be, with the narration continually commenting on the clothes and hair of all the boys and men that the main characters are likely to make out with and/or have sex with. It presents secrets like kissing another girl and having an eating disorder as shameful moments in a girl’s life that must be hidden at all costs, up to, and (I believe, later in the series) including murder.
So, while both series demonstrate how contemporary adolescence has been wrapped up with the fantasy lifestyle of wealth and independence, Gossip Girl at least provides some basis of universal identification, while Pretty Little Liars simply creates horrible role-models and reinforces horrible behaviours and values like manipulation, vanity, and slut-shaming.
While I have no clue how these novels have been adapted to fit the small screen, the truly appalling themes and plot lines in Pretty Little Liars compel me to stay away from this adaptation. Hopefully they have managed to do away with the ghastly prose and have hired some writers who can at least string some dialogue together, but all in all, this book was a mess: poorly written, poorly plotted with no resolution, and depicting terrible people who do and think terrible things.
I began reading these books with the sense that neither show appealed to me for similar reasons: who cares about rich, stylish teens being rich and stylish? Coming away from the novels my opinion of the two series has diverged drastically. I am now moderately interested in Gossip Girl, believing there may be some depth beneath the glamourous exterior. Pretty Little Liars, as I have said, somehow managed to be worse than expected.
