Thanks to the CW Network, blogging has officially entered the mainstream consciousness. Though we’ve been living with Gossip Girl and its anonymous author/narrator for a year, it’s been rather a passive relationship. With each fantastic plot twist the characters move further away from living underneath the Gossip Girl’s watchful keyboard. Or perhaps they simply don’t care, and the writers offer a subtle message through all the Chanel, leather, and lace: none of this actually matters. (Perhaps this is one of the many reasons the late-20s & up demo digs Mad Men? Remembering a world without an Internet [or barely any civil rights and social advancements] is perhaps the greatest escapism of all.)

Though Gossip Girl seems largely unconcerned about the impact of blogs, last night’s series debut of the revamped 90210 tows a harsher party line on the medium. In between the obvious and typical moral messages found in all teen programming (”Don’t do drugs!”, “Cheating is bad!”, “Be honest with yourself and others!”, all of which I might add are important, so don’t mistake this as snark.), it seems that blogging has joined the Greek chorus, though with mixed messages. In one subplot, Silver, who runs a Gossip Girl-meets-Perezhilton.com blog, eviscerates the new student on their first week, and a former friend on Week Two. And though that character seems be coming to terms with the realities of her online decisions, we’ll have to keep watching to see if she gives up the ghost.

If Silver’s blog is the bane of a 90210ers existence, why are the few parents seen in the series more up in arms about term papers than internet bullying? I get it though, why writers might want to paint negative portrayals of blogging and other uses of social media — cyberbullying happens, and we’ve seen some pretty grim examples of it, more recently the case of Megan Meier — TV is still strangely the dominant medium, a place where we take our cues from. It would be boring TV after all, if West Beverly Hills High opted to value a unique skill such as Silver’s and promote it as an equally positive value as singing in a musical (which they did), or playing on a sports team (and they did that too).

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008 at 6:02 am and is filed under internet, tv.