Gatsby's American Dream

Panties are in a bunch over the news that occasionally-schlocky-epic-film director Baz Luhrmann (Austraila, Moulin Rouge) has purchased the rights to The Great Gatsby. Anxiety over his possible treatment of Fitzgerald's dissection of the American Dream and one of THE WORLD'S BEST WRITTEN books is, I suppose, appropriate. Luhrmann says he wants the movie to be, in part, a commentary on the greedy free-for-all that precipitated our current economic disaster, and his detractors have relished pointing out that The Great Gatsby was published a few years before The Great Depression. This point makes absolutely no difference save for the fact that Fitzgerald's critique of his time wasn't done in the spirit of post-hoc finger wagging, so Luhrmann must avoid simplistic, showy nods to the idea that excess inevitably leads to tragedy. Besides, the tragic context of a Depression in the wake of The Roaring Twenties is a value people have placed on the book after the fact. Gatsby is more centrally about how mansions are built, wars are waged, men are destroyed all in the effort to impress girls.

In this way The Great Gatsby was archetype creating; arguably on par with the star crossed lovers of Romeo & Juliet. The story of a man seeking fortune and influence in order to win over the idealized object of his affection shows no signs of fading from American reality. I'm not too hung up on Luhrmann's Gatsby. He'll make it huge and colorful, he'll indulge in the imagery (the billboard in the Valley of Ashes, seems right up his alley). It'll be of interest, without having to serve as the definitive version. Years from now someone else will come along and make another version (American neo-realism, contemporized MTV/ADD, or some new style that hasn't even been invented yet) and we'll all be able to debate which we like best.

In honor of the above: Gatsby's American Dream covering The Cure.