Just realizing that I remember 0 of this novel, which I read in my sophomore high school world lit class. That class was so beloved, covering Arthurian legend and Shakespeare and an enormous term paper project (I did Victor Hugo; I still have the slides photographed from carefully marked art books to illustrate my presentation) and somehow I remember none of Gatsby in the slightest. Some years the trauma overtook the readings, I guess. Your review of the misguided musical makes me inclined to read the novel again.
1. Gatsby may be a bootlegger but it's implied throughout the novel that his money comes from the Big Con and fake bonds/wire schemes. So yes, he's an actual criminal.
2. Nick is also selling bonds on Wall Street and as Fitzgerald probably guessed, in the mid 1920s, Wall Street bonds weren't backed by real money either. So I think Fitzgerald is pointing out the hypocrisy of one is a criminal and one is a stockbroker -- doing the exact same thing.
3. Whiteness in the 1920s doesn't just mean white skinned. It means WASPs. Which is why both Gatsby (originally Jay Gatz) and Meyer Wolfsheim aren't really white in Tom's eyes. Fitzgerald as an Irish Catholic was well aware of that.
4. Gatsby is attractive because he's got energy and purpose -- willing to do anything to achieve his American dream. Myrtle is Gatsby with less money and polish but again willing to do anything for a better life. There's a reason that both of them die violent deaths. Being rich is admirable -- getting rich is not.
5. I don't think Gatsby is written for the Princeton/old money set. It's written for the first and second generation Americans who were trying to achieve that level of society. And it tells them, you are not welcome. This doesn't end well.
I'm with you in that I don't think this is a story that works with color blind casting. I don't usually have a problem with it - Shakespeare and Dickens work beautifully with diverse casting -- but the white supremacy is a large part of both Tom's and Daisy's worldview that I don't see how you ignore it. If the entire cast was black, you could do the talented tenth vs. Bamas but just to randomly mix it up seems to miss the point.
You're absolutely right about Gatsby and Meyer Wolfsheim. There's a lot of less than subtle anti-semitism in the novel. Nick describes Wolfsheim as a "small flat-nosed Jew" and makes constant reference to his "tragic" nose. He also describes Wolfsheim's secretary as a "lovely Jewess" with "black hostile eyes." He isn't focused on Jewishness as a religious faith but clearly as an ethnic identifier that he can tell on first meeting.
I know there was a remake of "Gatsby" some years ago, where Gatsby was a Black hip-hop millionaire with a sketchy criminal background. That made sense in both the "new money vs. old" and "we'll let you hang out with us but we still despise you" senses. I think it was just called "G."
It really says something about the American public that a novel about the horrible abuses and mistreatment of the working class simply gets the reaction "wow, the food in our meatpacking industry is awful, we need to pass laws to make meatpacking less gross!" And a novel about class values and hypocrisies just gets the reaction "what cool parties, and what an ideal beau this rich self-made guy is!"
I admit I skipped out on reading the book in high school, because our teacher said "don't just watch the movie (the 1974 version was the only one available at that time), read the book, because I'll know when you get your quiz" and I saw that as a personal challenge and not only didn't read the book, I didn't watch the movie but only read the Mad Magazine spoof. My scheme was foiled during the quiz because in Mad Magazine they change the character names, so "Daisy" was "Dizzy" and clever me didn't know better and assumed "Dizzy" was a spoof on "Lizzy" so throughout the quiz I referred to her as "Lizzy" and the teacher was like "WTF, kid? Who the hell is Lizzy???"
Reading it for real years later Gatsby comes across as a fake and a cad, Buchanan a boor and a bigot, Daisy as an empty person, and only years later did I really see Nick as an unreliable narrator with biases of his own.
I haven't thought about "The Great Gatsby" since college (which was 40 years ago). I may have seen a play in the last 20 years or so; all I remember thinking then was "these people are assholes".
I never know what to think about color blind casting, especially in a show where race/class is probably a factor. I recently saw a production of The Glass Menagerie where a Black actress played Amanda. At first, I admit to being a little thrown (the last production I saw was the movie with Karen Allen). The casting seemed to fit the overall ethereal feel of the play, and all the actors were very good.
It seems to me the "hero-ization" of people like Gatsby goes back to our own admiration and love of rich people, regardless of how they got there or who they murdered/hurt along the way. We see it our politics every day.
I work in the building that houses the Broadway theater, here at Broadway and 52nd. I've watched the Gatsby crew bringing the sets and lights in through the lobby, and then the sprucing-up of the marquee and the lobby. Two colleagues have seen the musical, confirming your take; the color-blind casting seems indiscriminately applied, and the class differences between characters are blurred so much as to be largely non-existent - Gatsby is still clearly a crook, but he's the attractive option for Daisy. But in the end, the main complaint is that the musical feels like you're a spectator at one of the "Gatsby parties" that so many who work in the financial district seemed to gravitate to a couple of years back. With Broadway tickets costing what they do, I'll consider their reviews a warning to save my $ and spend them on seeing Cole Escola drag out as Mary Todd Lincoln at the Lyric Theatre.
Yeah, I remember when the 90s Cabaret played at Studio 54 and the intent was to make you feel the sleaziness of the Kit Kat Club. Instead, most Gatsby adaptations play up the glamour of the parties, which are supposed to be somewhat grotesque with people behaving terribly.
The paperback copy of Gatsby that I read in the 1970's had Robert Redford on the cover. I think I found it abandoned in some Study Hall. There was material in that novel my teenage brain could not wrap itself around. One thing I figured out pretty quickly was, This Ain't A Love Story.
Any literary adaptation must make some often major structural changes, if only to keep the audience from wandering off at the five hour mark.
Peter Jackson managed to get one adaptation spectacularly right and another just as spectacularly wrong. Sometimes the Muse just phones it in while her nail polish dries.
Form your take, this Gatsby falls into the WHAT WERE THEY THINKING column.
"We got the rights to the title. We got a budget. We have a line on some up&comers to star in it. Now, someone come up with a script to go with these songs. Something about reaching for your dreams. Let's get cracking, people. Rehearsals start soon. "
Apparently the studio got extremely excited about the merchandising as well, marketing everything from Gatsby-branded clothes to liquor and kitchenware. Which once again is sending the message "let's worship these glamorous rich people and all the THINGS!"
Very very fine work, thank you. Anyone teaching Gatsby should assign this (or summarize it for younger students).
Just realizing that I remember 0 of this novel, which I read in my sophomore high school world lit class. That class was so beloved, covering Arthurian legend and Shakespeare and an enormous term paper project (I did Victor Hugo; I still have the slides photographed from carefully marked art books to illustrate my presentation) and somehow I remember none of Gatsby in the slightest. Some years the trauma overtook the readings, I guess. Your review of the misguided musical makes me inclined to read the novel again.
Thank you.
Rant warning.
1. Gatsby may be a bootlegger but it's implied throughout the novel that his money comes from the Big Con and fake bonds/wire schemes. So yes, he's an actual criminal.
2. Nick is also selling bonds on Wall Street and as Fitzgerald probably guessed, in the mid 1920s, Wall Street bonds weren't backed by real money either. So I think Fitzgerald is pointing out the hypocrisy of one is a criminal and one is a stockbroker -- doing the exact same thing.
3. Whiteness in the 1920s doesn't just mean white skinned. It means WASPs. Which is why both Gatsby (originally Jay Gatz) and Meyer Wolfsheim aren't really white in Tom's eyes. Fitzgerald as an Irish Catholic was well aware of that.
4. Gatsby is attractive because he's got energy and purpose -- willing to do anything to achieve his American dream. Myrtle is Gatsby with less money and polish but again willing to do anything for a better life. There's a reason that both of them die violent deaths. Being rich is admirable -- getting rich is not.
5. I don't think Gatsby is written for the Princeton/old money set. It's written for the first and second generation Americans who were trying to achieve that level of society. And it tells them, you are not welcome. This doesn't end well.
I'm with you in that I don't think this is a story that works with color blind casting. I don't usually have a problem with it - Shakespeare and Dickens work beautifully with diverse casting -- but the white supremacy is a large part of both Tom's and Daisy's worldview that I don't see how you ignore it. If the entire cast was black, you could do the talented tenth vs. Bamas but just to randomly mix it up seems to miss the point.
Rant over.
Thanks so much for the thoughtful response!
You're absolutely right about Gatsby and Meyer Wolfsheim. There's a lot of less than subtle anti-semitism in the novel. Nick describes Wolfsheim as a "small flat-nosed Jew" and makes constant reference to his "tragic" nose. He also describes Wolfsheim's secretary as a "lovely Jewess" with "black hostile eyes." He isn't focused on Jewishness as a religious faith but clearly as an ethnic identifier that he can tell on first meeting.
This production is obviously not the real Great Gatsby story but someone’s idea of a story in search of a musical.
I know there was a remake of "Gatsby" some years ago, where Gatsby was a Black hip-hop millionaire with a sketchy criminal background. That made sense in both the "new money vs. old" and "we'll let you hang out with us but we still despise you" senses. I think it was just called "G."
It really says something about the American public that a novel about the horrible abuses and mistreatment of the working class simply gets the reaction "wow, the food in our meatpacking industry is awful, we need to pass laws to make meatpacking less gross!" And a novel about class values and hypocrisies just gets the reaction "what cool parties, and what an ideal beau this rich self-made guy is!"
I admit I skipped out on reading the book in high school, because our teacher said "don't just watch the movie (the 1974 version was the only one available at that time), read the book, because I'll know when you get your quiz" and I saw that as a personal challenge and not only didn't read the book, I didn't watch the movie but only read the Mad Magazine spoof. My scheme was foiled during the quiz because in Mad Magazine they change the character names, so "Daisy" was "Dizzy" and clever me didn't know better and assumed "Dizzy" was a spoof on "Lizzy" so throughout the quiz I referred to her as "Lizzy" and the teacher was like "WTF, kid? Who the hell is Lizzy???"
Reading it for real years later Gatsby comes across as a fake and a cad, Buchanan a boor and a bigot, Daisy as an empty person, and only years later did I really see Nick as an unreliable narrator with biases of his own.
I haven't thought about "The Great Gatsby" since college (which was 40 years ago). I may have seen a play in the last 20 years or so; all I remember thinking then was "these people are assholes".
I never know what to think about color blind casting, especially in a show where race/class is probably a factor. I recently saw a production of The Glass Menagerie where a Black actress played Amanda. At first, I admit to being a little thrown (the last production I saw was the movie with Karen Allen). The casting seemed to fit the overall ethereal feel of the play, and all the actors were very good.
It seems to me the "hero-ization" of people like Gatsby goes back to our own admiration and love of rich people, regardless of how they got there or who they murdered/hurt along the way. We see it our politics every day.
I work in the building that houses the Broadway theater, here at Broadway and 52nd. I've watched the Gatsby crew bringing the sets and lights in through the lobby, and then the sprucing-up of the marquee and the lobby. Two colleagues have seen the musical, confirming your take; the color-blind casting seems indiscriminately applied, and the class differences between characters are blurred so much as to be largely non-existent - Gatsby is still clearly a crook, but he's the attractive option for Daisy. But in the end, the main complaint is that the musical feels like you're a spectator at one of the "Gatsby parties" that so many who work in the financial district seemed to gravitate to a couple of years back. With Broadway tickets costing what they do, I'll consider their reviews a warning to save my $ and spend them on seeing Cole Escola drag out as Mary Todd Lincoln at the Lyric Theatre.
Yeah, I remember when the 90s Cabaret played at Studio 54 and the intent was to make you feel the sleaziness of the Kit Kat Club. Instead, most Gatsby adaptations play up the glamour of the parties, which are supposed to be somewhat grotesque with people behaving terribly.
The paperback copy of Gatsby that I read in the 1970's had Robert Redford on the cover. I think I found it abandoned in some Study Hall. There was material in that novel my teenage brain could not wrap itself around. One thing I figured out pretty quickly was, This Ain't A Love Story.
Any literary adaptation must make some often major structural changes, if only to keep the audience from wandering off at the five hour mark.
Peter Jackson managed to get one adaptation spectacularly right and another just as spectacularly wrong. Sometimes the Muse just phones it in while her nail polish dries.
Form your take, this Gatsby falls into the WHAT WERE THEY THINKING column.
"We got the rights to the title. We got a budget. We have a line on some up&comers to star in it. Now, someone come up with a script to go with these songs. Something about reaching for your dreams. Let's get cracking, people. Rehearsals start soon. "
Apparently the studio got extremely excited about the merchandising as well, marketing everything from Gatsby-branded clothes to liquor and kitchenware. Which once again is sending the message "let's worship these glamorous rich people and all the THINGS!"
Stick pins, expensive suits, garden parties, flappers and prohibition hooch. Are you trying to tell me there was more to the 1920's?
It was like the 80s - lots of conspicuous consumption by the 1%, while Coolidge's economic policies were driving Wall Street toward the crash.
Jesus wept.
I’m really looking forward to the epic merry go round showstopper number in the Catcher in the Rye musical.
Can’t applaud this enough. I’m so tired of the darkness and sadness of this story getting smushed in favor of “wow look at the fancy parties!”