Is it fair to say that a major theme in The Great Gatsby is the decadence of rich people? If so, I don't understand why so many people seem to like the book, non-ironically, for the parties and the glamour. Am I missing something?
The appeal of the party scenes in The Great Gatsby is, although it appears glamorous and perfect, Fitzgerald shows us that it's like any party we've attended.
Take this excerpt for instance:
"We were at a particularly tipsy table. Gatsby had been called to the phone and I'd enjoyed these same people only two weeks before. But what had amused me then turned septic on the air now."
Tell me you haven't had this feeling about someone. The party scenes are relatable to people in all levels of wealth.
“Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different.”
Lots of people aren't, so it's not uncommon to see people whose appreciation of some works never gets beyond the surface level.
And sometimes they're so inattentive that even the text itself is lost on them. My standard example of that is Bruce Springsteen's song "Born in the USA," which is widely understood (in America, anyway) as a bombastic, "we're number one!" patriotic anthem, played at political rallies and sports events and the like. If you pay attention to the actual lyrics (http://www.elyrics.net/read/b/bruce-springsteen-lyrics/born-...), however, it's clearly a song about how the American system screws the little guy. But most people don't listen beyond the upbeat, poppy chorus, so they miss Springsteen's entire point.
Same with Neil Young's "Keep on rockin' in the free world", Dire Straits' "Money for nothing", and other songs even in other languages.
Personally, I've soured on the idea of being ironic in songs. Most people will miss the irony, they only listen to the catchy chorus, and more often than not, the lines you meant as absurd will be proudly paraded by the same people you were mocking. Take the recent "We the people" by A Tribe Called Quest: the chorus, taken alone, is a bigots' anthem on a catchy tune; I bet it will soon become a mainstay at neonazi rallies and the likes.
I once read an interview with Norwegian/Swedish rap metal or whatever group Clawfinger; they scored a minor hit with their somewhat provocatively named 'Nigger' - the message being something along the lines of the N word being a white invention to denigrate coloured people &c, the chorus simply being "Niggerniggahniggahniggah" or something like it. (Wonder if the HN content management system lets me get away with this...)
Anyway, the singer mentioned they had once been approached by a number of obvious neo-nazis after a gig, and he pretty much thought this was it - they were in for a serious beating at best.
Much surprise arose as shoulder-slapping and bear hugs ensued. "Awww, we love that Nigger song of yours, it is amazing the way you get away with it!" (Muted thanks and head for the tour bus. Double haste.)
I recommend this book[0] to anyone interested in the historical origins of this sort of inverted subtext. It makes a strong case for esotericism as a way to impose a barrier to entry on intellectual sophomores, to duck critique from authorities, and to promote critical thought, among other purposes. In essence, that people who aren't inclined to do critical thinking(who are the majority at all times) will see what they already wanted to see, while the remainder take home the underlying wisdom.
>Traditions place its origin in a pre-Revolutionary War song originally sung by British military officers to mock the disheveled, disorganized colonial "Yankees" with whom they served in the French and Indian War, apparently written c. 1755 by British Army surgeon Dr. Richard Shuckburgh while campaigning in upper New York.[13] The British troops sang it to make fun of their stereotype of the American soldier as a Yankee simpleton who thought that he was stylish if he simply stuck a feather in his cap.[1]
That's a rather different point though. In the case of Yankee Doodle, the Americans new what it meant and used it as an act of defiance, where the other poster was talking about people missing the point entirely
I think there are at least three or four things that keep Gatsby compelling:
* The prose style keeps a consistent balance of fluid/grounded and imaginative the whole way through. It's nowhere near as "sticky" as other literary novels, which can force you to grind down on each sentence to get at the meaning.
* The storytelling, at its surface, relates to self-absorbed goals that people connect with as fans automatically. When people are fans of something, that's basically down to them liking the characters, setting, and specific scenes or scenarios, not the hard details of the plotting or any subtextual stuff. "Everyone is here to indulge their kink" applies to pretty much any media, and here the kink is clearly "the American Dream as ostentatious wealth". If the novel were focused on Jay Gatsby's hard-striving bootlegging days, or if it concluded with a sudden turn to frugality and Puritan ethics, it would never be as popular.
* The aspects of the book that are ordinary and humanizing of the characters act to make them even more relatable than a book that tried to make them worthy of their wealth. Gatsby's version of the American Dream, besides involving a very performative version of wealth, contains a mythologized, Icarus-like aspiration to ever greater ambitions. Nick Carraway is there primarily as an observer of events, and only occasionally a participant, and in fact gradually withdraws from his own aspirations over the course of the book - making him a great self-insert for the middle-class reader who would like to believe themselves better than the rich, while simultaneously indulging in the luxury aesthetics.
When I heard Baz Luhrmann was going to direct an adaptation a few years ago, I had to laugh. It was clear from his style of direction that it would be extol the glamour and miss the entire point of the book -- and it did.
You're not missing anything. Reading a book and understanding it are two very different things.
Same with Downton Abbey. A lot of fans seem drawn to the opulent castles and hordes of servants but one of the themes of the show is the disappearance of these things due to their innate incestuous purposelessness. The main characters only barely hang on to their lifestyle by increasingly embracing the ascendance of the middle-class.
Oh, man. The looks I've gotten when people asked me what I thought of *Downton Abbey," and I told them I was rooting for someone to burn the place down...
The palace of Versaille is beautiful and has been kept by the French despite the decadence that created it (eg "let them eat cake") leading to the revolution where such decadent were killed with a guillotine.
No, you aren't missing anything. The Marissa Meyers of the world are the ones missing the point entirely. And like Gatsby, it usually ends in disaster.
