A Gatsbean Odyssey: American Modernity (4/7)

We tend to see The Great Gatsby as a picture of the 1920s, but backwards through the lens of the present. We focus on what characterizes the past for us in retrospect, but we might try to see what was significant to Fitzgerald writing from within those times. The introduction by Guy Reynolds to my copy of The Great Gatsby does this nicely:

“Fitzgerald was born into the America of the horse, gaslight and railroad, but by 1925 the world was made of electricity, cars and telephones.”

When we encounter The Great Gatsby, we focus on bootleggers, speakeasies, flappers, big-band jazz and kooky dances, but Reynolds shows how Fitzgerald was also focused on technology: telephones, photography, cinema, home appliances, motor cars, skyscrapers and artificial illumination. Whereas Georgie in Booth Tarkington’s The Magnificent Ambersons could scoff at horseless carriages as a newfangled invention that would soon fade away, cars in The Great Gatsby are undeniably here to stay, they are ubiquitous, and they are part of the pulse of city.

Fitzgerald is also focused on money, class disparity, the fabulous excess of capitalism high on financial speculation, and the dishonest who thrive in such a climate. Reynolds sums up as follows:

“In The Great Gatsby the American is a [cheating] sportsman, a stockbroker or a crook inhabiting a fluid, mobile, society.”

Fitzgerald’s attitude toward his times was cynical. Reynolds has a number of great phrases describing what the author saw: “dizzying, narcissistic wealth and its sudden corruption,” “febrile superficiality,” “glamour, allure and ultimate artificiality,” “consumerisation of the self,” “trickery, imposture and conning,” “fetishisation of good clothes” and “conspicuous consumption.” Luhrmann highlights these themes by adorning his film with hip-hop music from artists like Jay-Z who are known for their celebration of extravagant wealth.

 

Jay-Z's "$100 Bill":

 

The use of a music genre that didn’t even exist in Fitzgerald’s day doesn’t clash with the subject matter because America today is so similar. The technology may have changed, but the powerful role played by technology and money in our society has not. If there is a big difference, it is that we the normal people are more jaded than the characters in Fitzgerald: We know their world crashes.

 

And soon.

America had bought the ticket, and beginning with the stock market crash of 1929, it had to take the ride.

 

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