The ‘Gossip Girl’ Reboot Forgot How To Be a Bitch

Being asked to empathise with sexy, adolescent millionaires in 2021 feels like an insult

View this email in your browser Xoxo 'Years ago', writes film critic Philippa Snow, 'a girl reached out to me on Facebook to apologise for being a bitch to me when we were sixteen and at school. "I was really awful," she informed me, "and I wanted to say sorry!" This surprised me, given that I could not actually remember our having exchanged a single word at all. She was popular – expensive-looking in the same way as a Tiffany heart necklace or a pair of ballet pumps from Tory Burch – and I was not, making us as unlikely to socialise as a hyena and a very tall and beautiful giraffe. If I ever thought of her, it was with the indifferent, distant curiosity I might have otherwise reserved for, say, a minor character on a TV show. Her apology a decade later, presumably meant to clear her guilty conscience, ended up achieving nothing but my irritation. What convinced her I would welcome this level of condescension? More importantly: just who the hell did this girl think she was?' 'The 2021 reboot of Gossip Girl (2007-12) – a TV show about filthy-rich kids at an Upper East Side private school being spied on, then reported on, by an anonymous blogger – turns out to be the equivalent of the original run of Gossip Girl apologising for being a total bitch when you were sixteen and in high school...' Read now © 2021 ArtReview Ltd. All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you opted in at www.artreview.com or the previous digital magazine website Our mailing address is: ArtReview Ltd. 1 Honduras Street London, England EC1Y 0TH United Kingdom Add us to your address book Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.