The Plausibility of Dan Humphrey as Gossip Girl, the great ongoing debate of our time….
When I heard that Penn Badgley had been cast as the central character in You, a series about a stalker, I checked that I hadn’t slept through several weeks of this year and skipped right ahead to April Fool’s Day.
It feels like a perfect continuation of Gossip Girl’s season finale finally revealed that Kristen Bell’s viciously sugary voice was reading the words concocted by none other than Dan Humphrey aka Lonely Boy. Indeed, in season 4, episode 11, Blair has a delightfully hilarious monologue in which she says Dan stalks Serena. Oh the irony.
Because I am trashy committed to investigating writing in all its forms, and it has just been announced that The CW is contemplating rebooting Gossip Girl, I have been re-watching the chronicles of our favourite Upper Eastsiders. Plus, Joe Schwartz, co-creator of Chuck (which you must watch) did develop Gossip Girl, so all of his work is imbued with a touch of genius and must be appropriately revered. It’s certainly interesting watching the entire series with the knowledge of who Gossip Girl actually is.
Yet with each progressive episode, the question looms ever-larger: What. The. Hell.
Executive producer Joshua Safran recently revealed that Dan in fact was not initially intended to be Gossip Girl but in fact, Eric was. This makes quite a lot of sense if you watch the first two seasons (except for the question of how he managed this from the Ostroff Centre). The ultimate rationale was the fact that as an uncontested skilled writer, he had the ability to take on the voice of an entitled adolescent gossip monger. But let’s pretend we don’t have that piece of knowledge regarding Eric, and delve into the questions that are raised from watching the entire series with the knowledge that Dan is actually the queen of the seedy secrets of Manhattan’s elite.
First up, let’s consider that Dan had some truly bizarre priorities and time management capabilities.
This Tumblr post and this article go through several points in the show when someone sends a post to Gossip Girl and it is almost immediately sent out, at a time when Dan is in sight of everybody else or very obviously occupied (I went to type out the plot explanation for the Saints and Sinners party, S4 E9 but it was so convoluted that it just sounded silly). Moreover, his reaction upon reading the blasts tends to be one of very visible shock.
How can we explain it? I’ve put a lot of thought into this one because I evidently have some odd priorities. I’ve always assumed he quickly ducked to the bathroom or whatever to smash out the post and schedule the post to go out five or ten minutes later so that he’s physically present when everybody receives the notification to so that his surprised reaction is witnessed by everybody. The premise of the show is that phones have furthered the manner in which gossip travels, so it does kind of make sense. Harder to explain is the fact that he pulls surprised faces when he reads a blast while completely alone. Force of habit, perhaps?
Perhaps more odd, as other people have pointed out, is that Dan put out several blasts which actively hurt his own self-interest, or contain very personal information about his sister.
Why did he do this? Obviously, to shield himself from the suspicion of being Gossip Girl, Dan had to reveal secrets which he would have rather remain unknown, both about himself and about people close to him. This article details several of those instances. It does make sense that people would start to question why the tips they were sending in to the site regarding the Humphrey family were not being published, so Dan felt in order to maintain the ruse, he had to do it. Moreover, arguably in moments when Jenny was being particularly unpleasant, Dan might have shared her various scandals in the hope that it was a wake-up call for her to be thrown back onto the straight and narrow. Nevertheless, those are still actions which have significant moral questions surrounding them.
Honestly, the most significant problem with the big reveal is that there’s no way Dan can be looked at as anything other than a massive sociopath. Dan’s entire reason for making the Gossip Girl website is because he falls irrevocably in love with her after half a conversation at a party he wasn’t even supposed to attend when he was 15. He decides that as things stand, because he is a poor (although I really question the discussions about his poverty – the Humphreys have a loft in Brooklyn and Rufus can afford elite private school fees for both of his children) and she is a popular, wealthy socialite, his love will forever remain unrequited. So his solution is that of any normal, rational person: create a gossip site which capitalises on people’s insatiable desire to spread rumours and half-truths about one another, which somehow catapults him onto the radar of Serena’s social circle.
A few issues are raised by this.
First, that is a very tenuous plan. It’s circuitous, convoluted, and assumes that the only prerequisite for Serena falling madly in love with him is actually meeting him. It’s also quite childish. Most problematic, though, is that Dan and Serena break up (several times, in fact), and Dan commits himself to other relationships, including one with his best friend Vanessa. Yet if the end goal of creating Gossip Girl was so that he could end up with Serena, why does he continue the blatantly destructive site?
How can we explain this? Two theories have prevailed in my mind across the years. Either Dan never truly gave up Serena, which is next level obsession commitment, or he felt as though he was too deep down the rabbit hole; perhaps he was weirdly addicted to the thrill of posting as GG, or the sense of power which came with holding all of the secrets of the super rich and fashionable in his hand. Or maybe he felt slipping into a voice so totally devoid from his own was something he used to hone his skills as a writer.
Yet the point still remains: that is a psychopathic thing to do!
At the end of the day, Dan’s seedy side project is plausible if you assume that he was almost constantly juggling the incoming messages and dirty laundry of petty gossips with a steely resolve and time-management philosophy that would make most CEOs look on in admiration. Equally, the willingness to expose not only those he cares about but also himself to social harm is indicative of a pretty impressive resolve. However, none of this changes the fact that Dan Humphrey evolved beautifully into Joe Goldberg who even maintains the literary connection and works in a bookstore. Wow.
He is a sociopath, and knowing who he is at the beginning changes the entire tone of the show.