By Zoë Paddock

The highest praise I can bestow upon any culture that I consume is that ‘It was just like gossip’. I must point out that I don’t consider myself a malicious person, but I like how seemingly blasphemous this comment can be when applying it to something as esteemed as art or literature. To my mind, this is not derogatory, as it simply means it has triggered the same dopamine which I would derive from the pleasure of indulging in gossip. Gossip is creating a clandestine network of communication. Is it productive? No. Do we relish it? Yes. Loose lips may sink ships, but they also keep culture afloat.

Breaktime Gossip Girls by Cathleen Carillo

High art, whether it is aware or not, is a perfect paradigm for gossip- spreading, as it sees the perfect collision of a special brand of ‘high-low’, one which I think is key to ripping artistic elitism apart. Art suggests it has the antidote for ‘what it really means to be human’, but gossip is centered more around humanity than the intangible can ever be; it encompasses oration, embellishment and, in the case I’m about to present, collaboration. John Collier’s 1913 scene of melodrama entitled ‘The Fallen Idol’ (below), seen in isolation, does not paint a linear or even mildly interesting portrait of gossip. However, the discourse surrounding it certainly did.

The Fallen Idol, John Collier, 1913 (Auckland Art Gallery)

Developing from speculation of which figure could be considered the ‘Fallen Idol’, the Daily Sketch ran with what hint of scandal they could breed from the painting and ran a competition of the best interpretation of the scene, pithily entitled ‘Why the Idol Fell’. Pamela Fletcher relays the responses in saying: ‘Readers suggested that the woman was “a bridge fiend who had become overwhelmed by debt … The unhappy lady was also alleged to have neglected her dying child; confessed that she was a militant suffragist; ruined her husband's digestion by her bad cooking”. He, in turn, was “held to be a gambler, forger, cheat at cards, victim to drugs or drink, and even a Cabinet Minister”’. Though not bitingly salacious I think they can still be considered amusingly catty. Is this akin to the relatively unobtrusive act of people watching with its hypothetical presumptions, or does it beg the question of what we are looking for when we spread gossip, is it good if it doesn’t contain scorn, envy or revenge?

Yuval Noah Harari suggests it is not about our own personal feelings at its core, but rather sees the creation of an integral network. Within his much lauded ‘Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind’ he does not undermine, diminish or (most importantly) gender the act of gossiping but universalises it in saying “language evolved as a way of gossiping. According to this theory Homo sapiens is primarily a social animal. Social cooperation is our key for survival and reproduction. It is not enough for individual men and women to know the whereabouts of lions and bison. It’s much more important for them to know who in their band hates whom, who is sleeping with whom, who is honest, and who is a cheat.” What these Homo sapiens didn’t foresee is the way current Homo sapiens would glorify the chaotic, problematic and lucrative elements of gossip so that it more likely resembles scandal. Where there is scandal, economic gain comes swiftly behind because, if gossip is benign at its heart, then scandal is its ravenous older sibling. Here enters gossip as a public economy.

For both devotees and slanderers of Shondaland’s Bridgerton, the magnetic and repellent qualities lie in its preoccupation with overblown scandal. Though unimaginable, its real 18th-century counterparts are perhaps more nonsensical and, dare I say it, more scandalous. The story of Lady Seymour Worsley involves a potent mixture of voyeurism, affairs and a public court case thrown in for good measure. In essence, Lady Seymour’s husband suggested that his friend Captain George Bisset should watch Seymour while changing at a bathhouse and then attempted to sue Bisset for ‘damaging’ his wife when they later eloped and had an affair. Though the actual events are high octane gossip, the press coverage is pivotal in its transformation into scandal. The court proceedings, in which Seymour’s husband Richard was only compensated with a shilling, in the words of Sam Kinchin Smith ‘turned the court report into the bestseller to emerge from the scandal. Apparently, George Washington owned a copy.’ In this, literature becomes complicit in a crime against privacy but simultaneously signals its power for economic gain from gossip.

Though I could digress about the politics of reporting in The Sun and The Mirror, which has continued to plague anyone with a propensity for promiscuity within the public eye, I want to reiterate that the state of something ‘reading like gossip’ is still a positive attribute. Dolly Alderton’s ‘Everything I Know About Love’ is a prime example, as the reader endeavors to gain Alderton’s glamourous edge through a kind of osmosis, as we bear witness to a period in her life she describes as “Rambunctious, restless, and ramshackle. Roving, raucous and rebellious. My roaming decade: my roaring twenties”. The way in which we discuss this book or other similar autobiographical works, is akin to the transference of gossip. Yet it also perpetuates the phenomenon of ‘Bovarysme’ or as it’s more colloquially known, ‘main character syndrome’ in which we render ourselves perennial fantasists by creating a different dimension of reality for oneself: through absorbing another's lived experience. The fictional character who most embodies this is Ian McEwan’s Briony in Atonement; who lives in a state in which ‘hidden drawers, lockable diaries and cryptographic systems could not conceal from Briony the simple truth: she had no secrets.’ Though this is ultimately disastrous for Briony within the world of the novel, I think it points to why we love gossip, whether in our lived reality, a celebrity's lived reality or a fictional one. Life cannot be unrelentingly ‘raucous and rebellious', especially when academic deadlines render us too insular for us to access this 24/7. However, through gossip, we can be infinitely interesting and interested, until we get the chance to procure gossip of our own.

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