Dirty Pretty Things (2) - 青少年影集

Still, it's good to be a Gossip Girl. Outside La Bottega, New York is
imploding, gutted by a financial catastrophe of its own doing. Day traders
are now delivering pizzas, and real-life Upper East Side socialites are
brown-bagging it out of Hermes, too embarrassed to be seen luxury shopping.
But like insects preserved in amber, Gossip Girls occupy a fantasy world
where young people don't blanch at $18 cocktails or $700 Christian
Louboutin pumps. It's the spring of 2007, running on repeat - New York
remains a boundless, optimistic place, in which the Dow is topping 13000,
Bernie Madoff's collecting clients and the velvet-rope VIP party never
stopped. Right now, you'd rather be Blake Lively or Leighton Meester than
the head of Goldman Sachs.

當個GG仍是件很棒的事。餐廳外, 紐約正在塌陷, 被它自己造成的金融危機掏空,
交易員變成pizza外送小弟, 真正的上東區上流社會成員用牛皮紙袋購物, 不願被
發現自己的奢華。但就像被保存在琥珀裡的昆蟲, GG佔據了一個幻想世界, 年輕人
不會因為一杯美金18元的雞尾酒或700元一雙的名牌高跟鞋而臉色發白。它仍是07年
的春天, 紐約仍然是個沒有界限, 樂觀的地方, 道瓊指數仍超過13000, 前納斯達克
交易員Bernie Madoff(一個買空賣空的金融騙子)還在收集客戶, VIP趴從不停止。
現在, 你寧願當Lively或Meester, 也不願當投資銀行Goldman Sachs的領導者。

Not that they haven't felt an occasional pinch. "I was in Barneys for a
shoe sale," Lively says. "And there was this pair of boots I'd wanted for
a long time that were really cheap, and there was another pair in a
different color, and this woman says, 'you shouldn't dare buy a second pair
of boots in an economy like this. You should be ashamed.' Meanwhile, her
face looks like she's just gone through a crazy wind tunnel, she's got on
big rings and a Hermes scarf. She looked like she'd just rolled around in
diamonds and gold. I was like, 'I can't believe you're saying this to me.'"

她們並不是完全沒有被影響。"我在Barney(購物中心)的鞋子拍賣時" Lively說,
"發現一雙我想要了很久的靴子變成非常便宜, 而且還有另外一個顏色, 旁邊有個女人
跟我說'在這樣的經濟情況下, 妳不應該買第二雙, 妳該感到羞愧。'可是她的臉
看起來像才經過一個瘋狂的風口, 她帶著很大顆的戒指和名牌圍巾, 看起來就像是
剛剛才在鑽石和黃金裡打滾過, 我當時想'我不敢相信妳跟我這樣講'。"

For those avoiding the human race completely: Gossip Girl, based on a
sharply written teen-book series of the same name by Cecily von Ziegesar,
is a one hour television drama on the CW network executive-produced and
created by Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage, who previously collaborated
on another teen soap, The OC. While The OC followed sun-kissed rich kids
brooding in the California sand, Gossip Girl is set in a more volatile
hornet's nest: private school on Manhattan's Upper East Side.

給那些完全不和人類社會接觸的人們: GG, 改編自一套Cecily von Ziegesar 寫的,
同名的青年書籍, 是CW的一小時電視劇情影集, 由Josh Schwartz和Stephanie Savage
製作, 他們曾合作過另一齣青年影集, The OC。The OC講的是加州的柳橙汁般有錢的
小孩在沙灘上聚集成長, GG的場景設定在一個更反復無常的黃蜂巢穴: 曼哈頓上東區
的私立學校。

Its characters, most from Park Avenue privilege, attend a pair of fictitious
single-sex schools, Constance Billard (for girls) and St. Jude's (for boys),
separated by a leafy courtyard. Lively's Serena is a former queen bee who
mysteriously disappeared from campus, only to return and find her spiteful
ex-best friend, Blair (Meester), in charge. There are crested-blazer-wearing
nice boys (Badgley's Dan Humphrey), pretty boys (Crawford's Nate Archibald)
and charismatic snakes (Westwick's Chuck Bass), precocious kid siblings
(Jenny Humphrey, played by Taylor Momsen, and Eric van der Woodsen, palyed
by Connor Paolo), lusty parents, a put-upon Polish maid (Zuzanna Szadkowski),
a mysterious unseen narrator (a.k.a. "Gossip Girl") and ... truthfully, it
doesn't really matter.

裡面的角色, 大多是公園路上的特權出身, 在一對小說裡才有的同性學校裡唸書,
給女生唸的Constance Billard和給男生唸的St. Jude's, 由一個充滿落葉的庭院分隔
開, Serena是前任的女王蜂, 從校園裡消失一段時間回來後發現她的前任最好朋友
Blair 在掌控全局。這裡有乖乖牌的Dan, 漂亮男孩Nate, 如蛇般邪惡的Chuck,
早熟的弟弟妹妹們(小J和Eric), 縱慾的父母們, 被用透透的好心波蘭女佣,
一個神祕的從未現身的旁白角色 ("Gossip Girl") 和... 坦白說, 這些都不重要。

Gossip Girl may lay on the complex, Wire-thick plotlines, but fans love it
for its unapologetic decadence: beautiful kids spending lavishly, dressing
fabulously, stabbing each other in the back, romping in limousines, snorting
coke and boozing like teenage Peter O'Tooles. Gossip Girl is conspicuous and
practically subversive in its lack of moralizing; there are few purely bad
or good characters ("No heroes, no villains" is one of Schwartz and Savage's
mottoes), no prissy sermons from parents (the folks tend to be more screwed
up than the kids), no After School Special-style tidy resolutions. And then,
because it's 2009, everyone goes home and trashes each other on the Internet.

GG的故事線也許非常複雜, 但粉絲們愛的是它不必道歉的沈淪: 漂亮的孩子們,
花大錢, 穿華服, 在背後捅彼此一刀, 在長禮車裡玩樂, 嗑藥, 喝酒, 就像年輕的
彼得奧圖(電影"阿拉伯的勞倫斯"的男主角,影帝)。GG 是引人注目的而且它的不說教
就是刻意顛覆; 這裡面少有存粹的壞或好的角色("沒有英雄和壞人"是製作們的座右銘
之一), 沒有父母的道德勸說(因為爸媽通常比小孩還糟糕), 沒有課後補習, 然後
因為是2009年, 每個人都會回家, 然後在網路上講彼此的壞話。

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這段比較嚴肅一點點, 不過... 爸媽真的很糟糕, 尤其是RL (指)


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