Jay G. versus Jay-Z: Anachronism in The Great Gatsby

When I read a book and a character starts singing or there is music on the story, I always try to recreate the music in my mind, even though it hardly ever resembles the song at all. Reading 'The Great Gatsby' was not different: I was trying to play an imaginary jazz song for the parties given in Gatsby's mansion. 

''Jay G.''

After finishing the book I watched the film adaptation of Fitzgerald's masterpiece directed by Baz Luhrmann and it surprised me that instead of jazz it had rap music in the Original Soundtrack (OST). I thought it did not make any sense because the book is set in the 1920's in which jazz was the prominent music. That is why the 1920's were called the Jazz Age. In fact, this term was coined by Fitzgerald in the title of his 1922 collection of short stories, Tales of the Jazz Age. And as I said before I was shocked because at first I thought it was a complete waste not to use jazz to tell the story of Jay Gatsby.

''Jay-Z''

On Luhrmann's adaptation, it can be found a special concept called anachronism, which can be defined as 'the phenomenon of out of place objects in a period piece.' In this case, there is a musical anachronism: The mixture of rap music with the 1920's. This unusual mix can lead us to the question ''Does the musical anachronism work on The Great Gatsby movie?''

Some people would say NO, because it is horrendous music, unnecessary, and does not really fit the themes the book transmits (The American Dream and its consequences, reliving of the past, and so on). Others believe that it is interesting; however, they are not used to that idea. 

The first time I came across the word anachronism was watching two anime series directed by Shinichiro Watanabe in which he mixed jazz and blues in a science fiction-themed world (Cowboy Bebop) and rap music in the Edo Age (Samurai Champloo) and I believe that mixing two opposing ages would seem strange at first, however, if you know how to do it, you can get it right. Watanabe did. What about Luhrmann? 

Luhrmann recreating the Gatsby world.

I would say that due to the fact that my music tastes are really opposed to modern hip hop music (I usually listen to metal, rock and hardcore), I am not a big fan of a Jay-Z or Beyoncé song on Gatsby's parties, but the idea itself is interesting, not so well executed, but atractive for someone who is looking for something different on a book adaptation.

On the one hand, hip hop works in the film adaptation as background music, usually in the parties at Gatsby's mansion and some minor scenes (for example, when Gatsby and Nick are driving in the highway and they see a group of black people in another car. Photo below), and I believe it does reflect the frenetic and bizarres parties. On the other hand, the most jazz-infused rap songs are good tributes to that era and create the melancholic and sad ambient that the story has.

One of the many examples of musical anachronism present in the film.

In addition, it is necessary to say that rap music is usually seen as the music for gansters and dangerous men. And let's face it: Gatsby is a ganster. Jay was not raised in a golden cradle as most rap artists. He is an outcast as most of modern day rappers in their early days. He is someone who is outside the 'normal group'; the rejected, a dangerous man who earned his money using deceaving ways. For Luhrmann, hip hop gives the dangerous feeling that Gatsby exudes.

''Will you still love me when I’m no longer young and beautiful? Will you still love me when I got nothing but my aching soul?''

The love story and the passion between Daisy and Jay become more beautiful and filled with sorrow with the use of modern music, giving us a prelude of what will happen next: The end of a love that can never be the same again.

The Great Gatsby portraits the corruption of mankind, the dark side of the human condition, the power of money, the attempt to relive the past...

Does the anachronism help to portrait these themes? Yes.
Does hip hop prove to be useful for that age filled with destructiveness and false happiness? Yes.
Does everyone love the mixture of rap and the story of a man who pursuits the impossible? No.

It might be weird and unusual, but anachronism is a concept that should be used more frequently, because music is timeless and it should not be forgotten just like our romantic Jay, who gave everything to touch something he could never reach.

Thank you for reading!

Bibliography:

Henderson, A. (2013, October 10). What the Great Gatsby Got Right about the Jazz Age. Retrieved April 27, 2015, from http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/what-the-great-gatsby-got-right-about-the-jazz-age-57645443/?no-ist

McCormack, M. (2013, June 3). The Great Gatsby: When Anachronism Works. Retrieved April 27, 2015, from http://theglobalpanorama.com/the-great-gatsby-when-anachronism-works/

Loring, A. (2013, May 16). 'The Great Gatsby' Proves the Timelessness of Hip Hop. Retrieved April 27, 2015, from http://filmschoolrejects.com/features/the-great-gatsby-proves-the-timelessness-of-hip-hop.php 

A room for Judith Shakespeare

“Women are supposed to be very calm generally: but women feel just as men feel; they need exercise for their faculties, and a field for their efforts as much as their brothers do; they suffer from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as men would suffer, and it is narrow-minded in their more privileged fellow-creatures to say they ought to confine themselves to making puddings and knitting stockings, playing on the piano and embroidering bags. It is thoughtless to condemn them, or laugh at them, if they seek to do more or learn more than custom has pronounced necessary for their sex.”

― Charlotte Brontë

Some months ago, a girl friend and I went to the mall to buy new clothes and we decided to shop around the men's section first to get some shirts (because let us face it, some of us think they are so much more comfortable than women's) and an employee in there caught our attention by asking us what were we doing there. We told her we were looking for some shirts for us and she insisted we were in the wrong section. She complained that women must wear women's clothes since they should not look less feminine nor lose their identity and reiterated that the world nowadays is upside down in where no rules or patterns are followed anymore, but, is it true we have got to that “equality” level with no social gender roles/traditions/keens that many people claim we have gained? Now, I ask myself, what would Virginia think about this?

Inequal reality

Inequality (noun): the unfair situation in society when some people have more opportunities, money, etc. than other people.

Source: Cambridge Dictionaries Online

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/inequality

It is well known that throughout  decades women have been some of the rulers of the VIP territory of underrated and unvalued human beings, and no, not because they have the right to say what should/should not be done, but because they are the main guests of this patriarchal party in which it is already stated what costume should be worn, what the role of each one within this feast is and what they are expected to perform.

We see that there is a lack of equality whither opportunities and rights for men and women, and it is rendered into a kind of superiority that is beneficial for half of the population only. Woolf creates a fictional character, Judith Shakespeare, who is settled as the gifted, talented and brilliant sister of William Shakespeare to make a contrast between what is offered to a gender and what is forbidden to the other. In spite of having the same skills, capability and background, the author commands us to be aware of the circumstances they had to go through just because of being female humans. It is related to how women are seen among society and within their own surroundings, due to they must replicate certain archetype, and if it is was not followed, they were seen practically as incomplete creatures.

Godey's Fashions for February 1874

Authors at the time had also this foresight and it is reflected in history and literature. Virginia wonders why wealth and poverty are strikingly different between these two genders and she finds the influence of this in the value both genders generate, being one of them more important than the other in all senses. In history, women had no rights in most of the countries, and nowadays, even when we are allegedly more advanced within this field, many cultures still forbidden women to live in peace and prosperity. The author, in her attempts to find an answer of why it this treatment given, she realizes that there are many books written by men about women but none for women writing about men. She also appreciates that the perception of inferiority men have towards women is actually a feeling of superiority hidden by themselves, as a way to be protected and enlarged in this image towards an empowerment of the “weak gender”.

“An androgynous mind was not a male mind. It was a mind attuned to the full range of human experience, including the invisible lives of women.”

― Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

For Woolf, having an “androgynous mind” is the major and harmonic way to explain the reality that characters should accomplish, since you can see the world from two different perspectives that lead you to a complete whole of experiences. Furthermore, if you are conscious of the vision you have towards what is in front of your eyes, it is more likeable to shape these life lessons to a personal reality.

It is all about money

Being wealthy or poor changes your vision towards the world and also changes your perspective about yourself. For our study of the text, since women could not be allowed to keep their own money for themselves until a few decades before Woolf's essay and in her own words it was essentially that “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction”, we have to be aware that only a few were also beneficed by this privilege. At Virginia's times, women did have the right to own properties and a wage, but in the past the truth was different, and still with some impacts in that period of time. A lot of women were still dependant of men because although the feminist movement began to arise, it was not present within the whole society. Women were prevented to get respected jobs nor all fields were granted for women to study at college/institutes, and of course, the salary they could get was also inferior than men's paycheck.

But, what does being a lady means?

I reckon it is not necessary to say again that women's rights have not been respected and we still have a quite long road to go along, therefore I am here, as a woman, to share my own viewpoint of what is sold to us (yes, because now we can and have to buy) of what being a “real woman” is: well, it is not a surprise that we still have to go after certain templates, but do you think they are the same as in the Victorian times?

Here we go with some examples:

• To be always O.K. – being kind to people and to try to project a good image has been a “rule” to every gender, nevertheless, if you are aware of advertisement then and now have always shown a particular beauty model that must to be followed for women to feel themselves like women and to seem like women. XL eyelashes, tiny waists, saloon's hair, perfect nails, etc. What a expensive way!
• Dress code – Vans large size shoes? No way! At least if you want to look like a boy, then it is alright. Does it sound fair?
• Motherhood – unfortunately, there are still people who think that if a woman is not a mother cannot be considered as a woman as a whole. It comes from the old perspective of women as the one who keeps the eyes over her family and the one who should keep the balance between the children-house. We can add to this that the woman has more value if she is married, whether men do not have a time-limit to be a husband.
• Company of men – thinking of going out on Friday to meet a friend at Subida Ecuador by 8p.m.? I advise you are not going alone, unless you want to be rapped or called a fallen woman. It must not be a law that prohibits a woman being by their own as it was before, but there are still some consequences if that rule is not attended.
• Silence, please – I believe it is not well seen yet if a woman screams or talks too loud, or at least that is what some of you have seen when you are on the bus and someone whispers “¡qué señorita!" at the moment when a girl is practically yelling on the phone. Let us be honest, it is not as when it was banned could make any sound with their high heels, but still. Some might think something is something, but what about you?

The Goat: a room for your own

Charlotte Brontë, a brilliant and proud
owner of a room.

For some feminists it is hard to believe wholeheartedly this discourse of a gentlewoman talking about gender equality and women's rights when this Woolf girl was someone that did not experienced the essence of being an ordinary girl, since she could have the money to have her privacy and the opportunities given thanks to her father for education and because of falling into the society's game: she had to marry in spite of her own will. Thus, what about the Judiths of the time? The ones that were shadowed for males, the ones that had a whole world to give, the ones that were born as special as men are, but still were forbidden to fly?

Yes, they just did not owned a room, they just did not owned their future and did not even thought of owning their lives.

Behind all those anonymous and men-but-no-men signed novels and works written by women, we could have had some vast literary masterpieces if the treatment was different, but may we get Judith's pride back?

Certainly, my point of view is based upon my own experiences and my own sight of the world, could you say I am wrong? Perhaps, I might change it someday, however, I am learning from others, with what I read or what I have heard. Throughout the years our society has developed new brand ways to be as much inclusive as it can, although I believe there cannot be a change if the base of ideas is not changed. It is a long way to go, and avoiding gender roles and stereotypes would be much easier to go through this quicker. So I ask you, do you really think we are on the right way?

References

http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/women

http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/androgyny

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/trail/victorian_britain/women_home/ideals_womanhood_01.shtml

Is Gatsby great?

The American dream, this is what The Great Gatsby is all about. But what does The American Dream mean? Well, according to James Truslow Adams who coined the term in 1931 in his book The Epic of America: 

“The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.” (Adams, 1931)

“In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.”

It sounds nice, doesn’t it? That is exactly what Jay Gatsby took a look at: the idea of having a lot of money and a high social status even though he was poor as a child. If we take a closer look at Gatsby’s life and the events which lives through the novel, many of those situations have been lived by Fitzgerald as well. The idea of thinking about a luxurious life and idolizing it, or the story of a man who falls in love with a well-to-do woman on war times. All things considered, the novel is clearly based on Fitzgerald’s life; it is the reflection of his own insights, feelings and beliefs. By creating Nick and Jay, he basically express his own personality but in both sides of the same coin. On the one hand, we have Nick, who has moved to a new place in which an exciting lifestyle is just beginning. On the other hand, Gatsby is the man who dreams about becoming rich (materialism) and also, he has fallen in love with a beautiful lady who symbolized everything he wished in an idealized perfection. An extraordinary gift for hope is what makes Gatsby great! Because he never gave up on the idea of love; he chose Daisy, and he continued choosing her over and over times without any pause or doubt.

There will always be a person in your life that you have had strong feelings for since the moment you

first met them, that was Daisy in Gatsby’s life. His love is definitely beyond what some others think love is all about. It is amazing to realize that everything that Gatsby has made and built is just because of one reason; winning back Daisy into his life. Over the whole novel, there is one thing which is always present: The green light at the end of Daisy’s dock across the bay which Gatsby is always observing and what Nick named as: “an enchanted object”. Moreover, that green light is a symbol of what Gatsby wants to achieve, the idea behind that green light is as simple as if he crosses that bay and get that green light he can get the girl and what he have been thinking of, his dream and desire.

Now, what comes to my mind is a little question, Is this true love or is it a matter of objectification?

In order to explain or clarify the concept of "objectification" here you can find a video about it. Enjoy!

References.

Adams, J. T. (1931). The Epic of America. United States.: Little, Brown and Company.

Fitzgerald, F. S. (1925). The Great Gatsby. Wildside Press LLC.

By Cindy Toro Fuenzalida

Feminine, feminist or written-by-women?

In A room of one’s own, Virginia Woolf highlights two factors of relevancy to explain what obstacles women have found to produce literature over the eras: On one hand, the impetuous subjugation exerted by men over women which relegated them to domestic life in such way that actually this have acquired a sort of 'feminine' identity all over its facets at a very profound level and which, moreover, have prevent women from experiencing what they need to know and live to enrich their minds and talents. On the other, women lack a proper literary tradition, one whose origin was feminine, which guide their creative efforts and allow them to continue or react to a subjectivity constructed by their ‘mothers’. It is in this point in which it raises my doubt: When Woolf tells us about ‘the lack of a tradition for female writers’, does she refer to a feminine, a feminist or a written-by-women literature? But before we delve into this question more deeply, let’s clarify what differentiates these three concepts.  

A feminine literature

Whatever the adjective, it diminishes literature,

Isabel Allende.

For Vicente Serrano (1991) to claim that it exists a feminine literature would imply to advocate in favor of difference, since the idea of a body of literary work whose essence is woman-related (and given that manifested in the features of what women have written) would lead us to separate inexorably this from masculine literature (p. 71). In turn, assuming it suggests that language development differs significantly from men to women due to biological differences, which would be evidenced in two opposite styles of writing. 

Nonetheless, literature cannot be explained with respect to techniques and procedures only, as it also involves a concern that constitute the core of a literary work: The particular way in which authors treat topics and the circumstances that surrounds them while they conceived a story. Therefore, feminine literature would suppose that women, in turn, understand the world distinctively, are concerned with issues proper of them and create representations and symbolizations which are easily contrastable to the ones that men do (Richard, 1994: 129-130; Vicente Serrano: 1991: 72-73).

Feminity (2010), by Nadine Viard

For some literary scholars the idea of determining that it exists a feminine literature as it does a feminine mind do not condition literary performance, so both women and men would produce, together, just one kind of ‘literature’ which (Vicente Serrano, 1991: 74). However, Richard (1994) points that this argument is held by people who are afraid that the concept of feminine literature were understood as a literature whose quality is below the masculine one’s, hence the motivation to claim that there is not literature associated to gender (p. 131). She agrees with it, though not because she is concerned for not diminishing women’s literary work, but because she considers that writers are equally called to reach quality and personal distinction in their literature, by constant invention of new identities, a sensitive comprehension of emotions and situations and use of language that demonstrates talent and technique, factors which are neither limited nor potentiated by gender but by writers’ passion to what they do (Richard, 1994: 136-138).

A feminist literature

We cannot say that something is feminist, just because it involves women,

Hélène Cixous

 

We can do it! or Rosie, the riveter (1943), by J. Howard Miller.

It was commonly used as a feminist icon during the post-war massive integration of women to the working world in the USA. 

Regarding feminist writing, it emerged as a reaction to male hegemony, a rupture with women’s submission (which, in the end, is what validates men’s exclusion), that would be why it became such relevant for women’s work as writers (Gillies & Mahood, 2007: 26). Nonetheless, this conclusion have been questioned by a subsequent debate: Is everything that women write is always feminist, either explicitly or implicitly? If what women write is mostly feminist or not isn't clear by now, however, that there is a literature that aims to explain what women are like, defends what they deserve and represents what they have to say, is difficult to deny.

 

A written-by-women literature

I don't believe that women write different from men, 

Marjane Satrapi.

A subject less controversial has to do with the notion of a written-by-women literature. The lack of debate about this might be because the pragmatic studies which this concept has emerged from, that is corpus analysis, or in other words, study of recurrent linguistic features that are decipherable in real samples of language as well as the abstract concepts that possibly explain this features (Richard, 1994: 129).

An example is the work of Matías López and Campillo (2009). In their article "¿Puede hablarse realmente de escritura femenina?" they analyze the work of four Latin American female writers and determine that they share a preferred use of first person, a sense of intimacy, crucial role of details, psychological analysis of characters, elucidation of essentiality, and precise, fluent, rhetorical language.

  

Woman writing in the garden (1965), by Daniel F. Gerhartz

Yet, there is a problem with analyzing what women write. This studies are conditioned by the characteristics of the particular group of women whose work is being adressed (such as nationality, age, ideology), thus, conclusion drawn by researchers are just ‘tentative’, thus they cannot be universalized to define the foundations of women’s writing (Richard, 1994: 132). 

This premise would lead us confirm that there would not be a properly feminine literature (or we have not been able to acquire a clear understanding of what that is about at least), but there would be feminist literature as well as several literatures written by women at different times, communities and circumstances (Richard, 1994: 133).

But then, what Virginia was talking about…

Virginia Woolf should have been aware of possible wrong interpretations of A room of one’s own if when she pointed that women lacked a literary inheritance, hence their assertiveness to talk about a "literary tradition for women". This is a rather holistic concept which includes all what we can find inside the literary universe of women, from how they write to what motivates them to do, what they do it for, about what and how their literary tradition is related to other traditions and other literatures through times and cultures. 

Perhaps in A room of one’s own we cannot define the kind of literature that Virginia Woolf were adressing to, but we can fin a pertinent question about a literary tradition which is absent in this field, even though it already counts with multiplicity of voices, except of the women's voice, not only to respond to the –hegemonic– masculine inheritance, but also to add to everything that have been already written, a female touch.    

References

Gillies, M. & Mahood, A. (2007). Modernist Literature: An Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Matías López, M. & Campillo, P. (2009). ¿Puede hablarse realmente de escritura femenina? Espéculo, vol. 14, no. 42.
Richard, N. (1994). ¿Tiene sexo la escritura? Debate Feminista, vol. 9, no. 1, p. 127-139.
Vicente Serrano, P. (1991). Aproximación a la polémica sobre “la literatura de mujeres”. Acciones e Investigaciones Sociales, vol. 1, no. 1, p. 69-80.