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History of Feminism
Related: About this forum“Gatsby” Gets Flappers Wrong
Have you heard? Theres a new swell in town named Gatsby, and hes bringing flapper flair back into fashion. Baz Luhrmanns latest cinematic spectaclehis take on The Great Gatsbypromises to be a sensational commercial for Prada and Brooks Brothers, who partnered with Luhrmanns wife, costume designer Catherine Martin, on the films clothing.
But if you think flappers were only about drop-waist dresses, fox furs, cloche hats and excessive celebration, youre missing the point. The trouble with Gatsby is, as beautifully as F. Scott Fitzgerald describes the opulent world of 1920s high society in his novel, he gets flappers all wrong. Thats because he portrays this liberated New Woman through the eyes of men.
Through their writings, Scott and Zelda Fitzgeraldthe young, glamorous literary couple du jourdefined the Jazz Age as we know it. Scott declared his Southern belle wife, whom he married in 1920, the first American flapper. The inspiration for Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby, Zelda was known for her wild antics, like drunkenly jumping, fully clothed, into the fountain at New Yorks Plaza Hotel.
In her June 1922 piece for Metropolitan Magazine called Eulogy on the Flapper, 22-year-old Zelda only hints at the radical edge of the flapper movement:
The Flapper awoke from her lethargy of sub-deb-ism, bobbed her hair, put on her choicest pair of earrings and a great deal of audacity and rouge and went into the battle. She flirted because it was fun to flirt and wore a one-piece bathing suit because she had a good figure, she covered her face with powder and paint because she didnt need it and she refused to be bored chiefly because she wasnt boring. She was conscious that the things she did were the things she had always wanted to do.
But in the 1925 novel The Great Gatsby, Scott depicted a more dire view of flappers. Narrated by a man, the cautionary tale seems to warn against the wiles of The New Womanthe feminist ideal of an educated and sexually liberated woman that emerged in the 1900s. So instead of intelligent, independent women telling their own stories of rebelling and rejecting their mothers values, you have male war buddies sharing how vapid, spoiled socialites carelessly wrecked their lives. In A Feminist Reading of the Great Gatsby, Soheila Pirhadi Tavandashti points out the pattern:
More:
http://msmagazine.com/blog/2013/05/06/gatsby-gets-flappers-wrong/
But if you think flappers were only about drop-waist dresses, fox furs, cloche hats and excessive celebration, youre missing the point. The trouble with Gatsby is, as beautifully as F. Scott Fitzgerald describes the opulent world of 1920s high society in his novel, he gets flappers all wrong. Thats because he portrays this liberated New Woman through the eyes of men.
Through their writings, Scott and Zelda Fitzgeraldthe young, glamorous literary couple du jourdefined the Jazz Age as we know it. Scott declared his Southern belle wife, whom he married in 1920, the first American flapper. The inspiration for Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby, Zelda was known for her wild antics, like drunkenly jumping, fully clothed, into the fountain at New Yorks Plaza Hotel.
In her June 1922 piece for Metropolitan Magazine called Eulogy on the Flapper, 22-year-old Zelda only hints at the radical edge of the flapper movement:
The Flapper awoke from her lethargy of sub-deb-ism, bobbed her hair, put on her choicest pair of earrings and a great deal of audacity and rouge and went into the battle. She flirted because it was fun to flirt and wore a one-piece bathing suit because she had a good figure, she covered her face with powder and paint because she didnt need it and she refused to be bored chiefly because she wasnt boring. She was conscious that the things she did were the things she had always wanted to do.
But in the 1925 novel The Great Gatsby, Scott depicted a more dire view of flappers. Narrated by a man, the cautionary tale seems to warn against the wiles of The New Womanthe feminist ideal of an educated and sexually liberated woman that emerged in the 1900s. So instead of intelligent, independent women telling their own stories of rebelling and rejecting their mothers values, you have male war buddies sharing how vapid, spoiled socialites carelessly wrecked their lives. In A Feminist Reading of the Great Gatsby, Soheila Pirhadi Tavandashti points out the pattern:
More:
http://msmagazine.com/blog/2013/05/06/gatsby-gets-flappers-wrong/
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“Gatsby” Gets Flappers Wrong (Original Post)
ismnotwasm
May 2013
OP
WCGreen
(45,558 posts)1. I don't like the feel of the movie as I watch the cartoonish previews with over
stylized fashion, sets and, well, everything.
It reminds me of the Moulin Rouge! movie from 2001. It worked then but I don't think if will work for Gatsby. I guess I could be wrong but ...
I never watch those, I don't know why. Maybe a good musical...
Luminous Animal
(27,310 posts)3. I love the magazine cover and the article is great, too.
Unfortunately for Fitzgerald and Gatsby, they were limited by their notion of class.