This blog is reaponse of thinking Activity given by Professor Dr. Dilip Barad sir. Here i discuss about the Film screening questions.
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s third novel, The Great Gatsby was first published ninety-five years ago in 1925. Regarded as his magnum opus, it is set during the “Roaring 20s” in America and is a vivid chronicle of the decadence, glitz and excesses of the “Jazz Age”. This representative work is a cautionary critique of the American dream which has made it one of the most quintessential American novels of all time.It is narrated by Nick Carraway, a young bachelor who moves to East Egg and settles right opposite Jay Gatsby’s mansion. Gatsby, a self-made millionaire, is a flamboyant albeit reserved man with a mysterious past. Nick is intrigued by this secretive man who throws extravagant parties every weekend and the two strike up an unlikely friendship. Eventually details of how Gatsby amassed all that wealth from his murky business interests unfurl, along with his fatal obsession with a married woman, Daisy Buchanan, which ultimately leads to his demise.The Great Gatsby explores themes of idealism, materialism, debauchery, social upheaval and more. This book is still strikingly relevant in the materialistic world we live in, a world that no longer frowns upon the distasteful show of wealth and fame.
👉About the author:
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 – December 21, 1940) was an American novelist, essayist, short story writer and screenwriter. He was best known for his novels depicting the flamboyance and excess of the Jazz Age—a term he popularized. During his lifetime, he published four novels, four story collections, and 164 short stories. Although he achieved temporary popular success and fortune in the 1920s, Fitzgerald received critical acclaim only after his death and is now widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century.
Here I write my opinion on muvie screening The Great Gastby.
1, How did the film capture the Jazz Age - the Roaring Twenties of the America in 1920s?
Ans, F.Scott Fitzgerald was the most famous chronicler of the 1920s America named by him “the Jazz Age.” The Great Gatsby is one of the most significant literary documents of this period. Prohibition, the ban on the sale and consumption of alcohol , made millionaires out of bootleggers. The World War I left America in a state of shock, and the people of the generation that participated in the war turned to extravagant living to compensate.
Chapter Two analyzes the main features of the American “Roaring 20s” such as materialistic attitude towards life, striving to attain high social status, prohibition as well as social phenomena “ flappers” and “ self made man “ in the context of the events and the characters of The Great Gatsby.In the contemporary phenomenon of “Gatsby parties”—festivities intended to capture the air of the titular Jay Gatsby’s famously lavish, bacchanalian parties—jazz is de rigueur to evoke the 1920s.this is about the Jazz Age and film also use many ideas about the Jazz Age.
2, How did the film help in understanding the characters of the novel.
Ans,
This film helps me to understand of the all the characters. At first I read the summary of the characters of the novel but when I read the first summary of characters I am confused about all the characters and can't understand the characters properly but then I saw that movie and I can understand all the characters and their details.
When the film started, all the characters were introduced but Jay Gastby's character was a bit mysterious and then Tom Buchanan's character enters the film. Tom is Daisy's husband but first his character is Gray Shade so nobody likes his personality. Then Gastby reveal his and Daisy life truth' he says, That he loves Daisy and Daisy loves him, not Tom, and then Tom tells a few stories about Gastby's life and then Gastby reveals his character and he angry of Tom.
When Gatsby's deceptions are revealed and his illusions shattered, DiCaprio becomes at once terrifying and pathetic, a false idol toppling himself from his pedestal. In his final moment of realization, DiCaprio's blue eyes match the blue of Gatsby's pool, and his anguished face, framed in tight close-up, has a ghastly beauty.The rest of the cast is nearly as impressive. Nick Carraway is almost as much of an abstraction as Gatsby — an audience surrogate, with touches of The Nice Guy Betrayed — but Maguire humanizes him, just as DiCaprio does Gatsby.
Carey Mulligan is physically and vocally right for Daisy Buchanan — when she flirts, the famous description of the character having "a voice like money" nearly makes sense — but the film doesn't idealize her, as Gatsby and Nick often seem to. There's a contradictory, complicated person there. She's matched — appropriately overmatched, really — by Joel Edgerton's Tom. The actor suits the book's description of the character as "hulking" and projects the jovial arrogance of a thug impersonating a cultured man with money; he's scary but life-sized, and always comprehensible. The small roles are well cast, too, with Elizabeth Debicki's Jordan Baker as a standout.
3, How did the film help in understanding the symbolic significance of ' The Valley of Ashes', 'The Eyes of Dr, T.J Eckleberg' and 'The Green Light'?
Ans, 👉The Valley of Ashes:
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| The Valley of Ashes |
The Valley of Ashes appears several times throughout the book when characters travel through it on their way into or out of Manhattan. It is first mentioned in chapter 2, when Tom Buchanan, Daisy's unpleasant husband, brings protagonist Nick to meet Myrtle, Tom's mistress. The valley of ashes between West Egg and New York City consists of a long stretch of desolate land created by the dumping of industrial ashes. It represents the moral and social decay that results from the uninhibited pursuit of wealth, as the rich indulge themselves with regard for nothing but their own pleasure. The valley of ashes also symbolizes the plight of the poor, like George Wilson, who live among the dirty ashes and lose their vitality as a result.
The other very important detail in the Valley of Ashes is an old billboard located in the valley that advertises an oculist, which Nick describes as follows:
''Above the grey land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive... the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg... They look out of no face but... from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles... His eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days under sun and rain, brood on over the solemn dumping ground.''
👉The Eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg:
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| The Eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg |
The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are a pair of fading, bespectacled eyes painted on an old advertising billboard over the valley of ashes. They may represent God staring down upon and judging American society as a moral wasteland, though the novel never makes this point explicitly. Instead, throughout the novel, Fitzgerald suggests that symbols only have meaning because characters instill them with meaning. The connection between the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg and God exists only in George Wilson’s grief-stricken mind. This lack of concrete significance contributes to the unsettling nature of the image. Thus, the eyes also come to represent the essential meaninglessness of the world and the arbitrariness of the mental process by which people invest objects with meaning. Nick explores these ideas in Chapter 8, when he imagines Gatsby’s final thoughts as a depressed consideration of the emptiness of symbols and dreams.
👉The Green Light:
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| The Green Light |
This film start with green line and this green light represent hope and then we here seen that film use green light to many frames and Nick also compare Green Light with hope of Gastby. The green light represents Gatsby’s hopes and dreams for the future. Gatsby associates it with Daisy, and he reaches toward it in the darkness as a guiding light to lead him to his goal. Because Gatsby’s quest for Daisy is broadly associated with the American dream, the green light also symbolizes that more generalized ideal. Nick compares the green light to how America, rising out of the ocean, must have looked to early settlers of the new nation.
| 4, How did the film capture the theme of Racism and Sexism? |
Ans, In 1925, instances of racism and sexism were not uncommon. However, racism and sexism are not really tolerated or accepted in today’s time. The roaring twenties, an American era of urban excellence, the rich became richer, the alcoholics became drunker, the war was over and men and women alike were thriving! In the novel The Great Gatsby, Nick Carraway is writing about his experiences falling into the hands of filthy wealth, a colorful, dazzlingly loud lifestyle of his neighbor Jay Gatsby and his incredible parties. He soon finds himself caught up in a love story from the past of his cousin Daisy Buchanans and his new neighbor’s affairs, even more so, becomes attached to the hip with Gatsby, devoted to him. ‘You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together, (154)’ Nick Carraway shouts some of the last words Gatsby would hear. As times were still racist, sexist, and non-accepting of certain identities.
He makes several racist and sexist remarks. It is easy to dislike his character. Tom says, “Have you read ‘The Rise of the Colored Empires’ by this man Goddard?”...”The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be---will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.” “Its up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things.” Although Tom is an easy character to hate, it is not apparent that he is the sole villain to the story. He is not necessarily what destroys Gatsby in the end. In the book, it is Tom’s goal to have Wilson lash out at Gatsby. He does not out right tell Wilson that Gatsby is to blame for Myrtle’s death. He instead just tells Wilson the car that kills his wife is yellow. In movies there always has to be a villain. The producers decided to make Tom the villain. Tom practically tells Wilson that Gatsby is to blame for the death of his wife, Myrtle. Although Tom is made out to be the villain, the producers decided to leave out Tom’s racist and sexist remarks. In the apartment party scene, they completely omit Tom’s abusive behavior of hitting Myrtle. Racism, sexism, and abuse are not as tolerated or accepted in today’s society as they were back when the book.
Racism, a pivotal contradiction in the 1920s, is evident in Tom Buchanon, nullifying the idea of equality presented in the American Dream.Daisy, Ms. Baker, Tom, and Nick are all at dinner when Tom starts to talk about these “scientific” books he has been reading about the white race. He goes on to say that the book say that Whites are a superior race and they are to control all the other races or they will rise to control.
5, Watch the video on Nick Carraway and discuss him as a narrator.
Ans, “In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. "Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."Nick Carraway is The Great Gatsby's narrator, but he isn't the protagonist.
Be had at least partially responsible for Gastby's eventual Death the film however largely embraces Nick as a victim narrative reinforcing the nation of Nick as an unbiased and reliable narrator. Who finds himself victimized by difficult even shocking situations never by his own fault. Nick Carraway has been committed into a sanitarium with a laundry list of conditions including alcoholism, insomnia, anger, anxiety, depression all caused by psychological and emotional trauma. The suffered while living in New York as the audience were compelled to sympathize with him right from the beginning in this scenario. Nick Carraway is definitely a victim as a means of coping with his past trauma; the doctor assigned to the next case encourages him to write about his experience of this act of writing. The Great Gatsby is primarily conveyed as a cathartic experience for Nick moving him towards renewed well- being ironically this framing device actually plant the seed of Nick's realisability that's rooted so deeply in Fitzgerald's novel could such a psychologically trouble author's account of events even be trustworthy probably not there are other knots towards Nicks unreliability in the film to.
Thank you
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