Here we go.
Like every other red-blooded American citizen, I consider The Great Gatsby to be one of my favorite, if not my favorite classic American novel. I adore classic Americana, and it's so sadly scarce nowadays due to the super-ironic, hyper self-aware sort of media that we've been putting out for the last maybe decade or so that I've become very defensive of a particular model of Americana that I believe encompasses the truly great parts of American culture. Americaaaaaa, fuck yeah!
So, anyway, the Gatsby trailer comes out like a year ago, and then they pushed the actual release of the movie back six months, which is always a good sign. Qualitaaayyyy. For those of you who don't know, The Great Gatsby is a novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald about the futility of the American dream, in a freaking nutshell. It follows a level-headed narrator, Nick Carroway, as he moves from the humble Mid-West to the jazzy, flashy Long Island and encounters a mysterious man who is mysteriously rich and mysteriously hung up on a girl from his mysterious past, who happens to be Nick's cousin, Daisy Buchanan, because why not? Daisy is married to a hulking ex-football star who is cheating on her with a full-figured and vivacious woman, Myrtle, who is in turn married to an unreasonably depressing blue-collar worker, noted for being constantly covered in dust. Nick is basically flung into this world of excess with Jordan Baker, the sassy sarcastic friend of Daisy, as his spirit guide.
A few things about Jordan Baker and Daisy Buchanan: these women are fully-fleshed, fascinating, multi-layered personalities who absolutely drive the story. Nick Carroway is a string of reasonable and thoughtful observations of the people around him, and who wants to hang out with that guy? Not the reader, that's for sure, or we wouldn't ask him to skip through a brief rundown of his life for three months to get to the good parts with the parties, and the drinking, and the characters! But Jay Gatsby may as well be a cardboard cut-out for how stiff and weird he is. His personality is a stream of posturing, and his entire character is just a stand-in for the point Fitzgerald is trying to make about the hollowness of American culture. Meanwhile Daisy is flirty, and charismatic, and flighty, with a bit of that absurd cleverness that we adore in figures like Oscar Wilde or Dorothy Parker. Her characterization is a work of art, she is why the Great Gatsby is a classic novel; not its wooden, representative namesake. And Jordan-- her cool-headed, blasé demeanor makes her our perfect Virgil for this exposition, if not a perfect personality, as Carroway discovers to his dismay. And that's just it-- she isn't perfect. She's terribly flawed: selfish and dishonest and cold, but clever and witty and interesting all the same.
And here's where I run into trouble in the damn trailer for this movie: where are the driving forces of this novel? Jordan is relegated to one line by an actress clearly playing her as some kind of two-dimensional gossip, and Daisy is a wilting flower, no pun intended. I mean, while Daisy is not exactly a bastion of strong-willed womanhood in this story, she's not some fawning maiden, either. She's witty, she's incredible: her lines are the best in the book, hands down. Where is the "do you want to hear about the butler's nose?" or "I hope she's a fool--that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool." In the trailer, she's just overcome with love and lust, in a sensual make-out scene in the woods somewhere that is never written in the book because it's too easy, it removes the layers of dimension to have Daisy and Gatsby just lay it all out there like that. It's sexual tension that creates great and sophisticated art. The tension, not the release. Tension is complicated, and difficult to master. Anyone can do release, it's completely easy.
Which brings us to the hyper-sexualization of the female presence in the movie (always the women). There are go-go dancers in Meyer Wolfsheim's ancient, decrepit old club where he ruminates on his colorful and dark past? Please. The film makers are simply taking the little memorable snippets from the novel: Drinking! Parties! Glitter! Lights! and bulldozing all of the gorgeous, layered, delicate intricacies that makes the story great, so that what we're left with is an over-simplified, jarring, shocking spectacular with no particularly interesting characters or story. It's pretty pictures with no substance, and you could literally do that with any source material so why do this to an American classic? Why make this an option for particular uninformed teachers to show in a classroom to get kids interested in reading? Why make this a thing that readers associate with the novel, why make it harder to grasp the delicately woven spider-web of the book-- make it easier to ignore in favor of the glittery, flashy distractions? I know the answers, of course, and it's ironic because that's exactly the problem that the book warns us against: giving up a rich inner life for the superficial outer trappings of money, over-sexualization, greed, objectification-- and it's one of many reasons why I adore this book. This movie is making it a really meta representation of itself.... and yes, I understand that movies are not always exactly like their trailers and there's a chance this travesty is going to pick itself up and dust itself off to be a fine film, but the marketing is not a good sign. Unless the scenes in the trailer are entirely cut from the movie, I have few hopes. I guess it's true that the best thing a girl can be in this world is a beautiful little fool.
No comments:
Post a Comment