I have not seen the film; what about it appealed to you?
For my part, when I said that Gatsby’s Idea was “Fuck the Jazz Age”, what I meant was something along the lines of: “The period in American history from the end of the first World War until the onset of the Great Depression was a decadent, morally bankrupt time and furthermore the so-called ‘American Dream’ that it was said to embody is a hollow lie; fuck it, and fuck any similarities that our current time period has to it”. It’s been years since I read the book, though; so it’s possible that I’m misremembering details. Elsewhere in this thread, Moridinamael says: “The value of The Great Gatsby is (some would say) in how it perfectly expressed the zeitgeist of a time and place.” This comment leads me to believe that my assesment of Gatsby as an Idea story may be incorrect; perhaps it works better as a Milieu story. Perhaps I would have enjoyed it better if I had understood it as such when I initially read it.
You sound like you don’t know that Gatsby was written during the period it chronicles. I don’t expect that this will have a large effect on your reading, but some of the details in the long version of your slogan are definitely off.
I’m not sure what I liked about the film so much: I’m a sucker for Lurhmann in general. But there’s something more general about privilege and carelessness, and the dismissal of those outside an enchanted circle, going on in it for me: these might be particularly well-shown in the jazz age, but they aren’t limited to it. There’s clearly something about the American Dream going on—apparently Fitzgerald tried to change the title to ‘Under the Red, White and Blue’, but I think being British I don’t fully get the American Dream either intellectually or emotionally.
Then again, this is
just the film
probably heavily influenced by half-hearing about it and expecting an entirely different story (I thought Gatsby was the dangerously careless one and that the narrator would be drawn into his glitzy world but wouldn’t have the money and power to escape the bad sides and would be discarded)
I saw the film with people who’d read (and possibly briefly studied) it, and I suspect my view isn’t typical. For instance, I saw a clear and direct read-across between Gatsby and Steerpike (from Gormenghast), and everyone thought I was just being weird...
I have not seen the film; what about it appealed to you?
For my part, when I said that Gatsby’s Idea was “Fuck the Jazz Age”, what I meant was something along the lines of: “The period in American history from the end of the first World War until the onset of the Great Depression was a decadent, morally bankrupt time and furthermore the so-called ‘American Dream’ that it was said to embody is a hollow lie; fuck it, and fuck any similarities that our current time period has to it”. It’s been years since I read the book, though; so it’s possible that I’m misremembering details. Elsewhere in this thread, Moridinamael says: “The value of The Great Gatsby is (some would say) in how it perfectly expressed the zeitgeist of a time and place.” This comment leads me to believe that my assesment of Gatsby as an Idea story may be incorrect; perhaps it works better as a Milieu story. Perhaps I would have enjoyed it better if I had understood it as such when I initially read it.
You sound like you don’t know that Gatsby was written during the period it chronicles. I don’t expect that this will have a large effect on your reading, but some of the details in the long version of your slogan are definitely off.
I’m not sure what I liked about the film so much: I’m a sucker for Lurhmann in general. But there’s something more general about privilege and carelessness, and the dismissal of those outside an enchanted circle, going on in it for me: these might be particularly well-shown in the jazz age, but they aren’t limited to it. There’s clearly something about the American Dream going on—apparently Fitzgerald tried to change the title to ‘Under the Red, White and Blue’, but I think being British I don’t fully get the American Dream either intellectually or emotionally.
Then again, this is
just the film
probably heavily influenced by half-hearing about it and expecting an entirely different story (I thought Gatsby was the dangerously careless one and that the narrator would be drawn into his glitzy world but wouldn’t have the money and power to escape the bad sides and would be discarded)
I saw the film with people who’d read (and possibly briefly studied) it, and I suspect my view isn’t typical. For instance, I saw a clear and direct read-across between Gatsby and Steerpike (from Gormenghast), and everyone thought I was just being weird...