F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby Book Vs Movie
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There is an age old debate centering on the merits of books versus movies. The written word can usually offer more detail, while their movie counter parts just emphasize the big points in the story. One book and movie that illustrates this point is The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Of the two, the book provides for a better representation of the time period. The first example is F. Scott Fitzgerald lived during the time he wrote about. The second example is when Fitzgerald wrote the book it allowed for unflattering language and stereotypes that by the time the movie was made; they had to modify the language to fit in with the cultural norms to avoid being offensive. The third example is the contrasting cultures depicted in the book and movie, due to the eighty year plus time difference society, culture and acceptable norms have vastly changed. As such, F. Scott Fitzgerald does a better job representing the time period than the director Baz Luhrmann in The Great Gatsby.
To begin, F. Scott Fitzgerald lived during the 1920’s an era of flappers, dancing, speakeasy’s, jazz and wild parties. When Fitzgerald was writing The Great Gatsby, he had his surroundings to help depict what he was trying to convey. Though, when making a movie about a book that happened in 1922, history books are one of the few…show more content… The United States was going through a cultural upheaval during the forefront of the author’s writing of the story. In the movie, Gatsby and Nick go to a “speakeasy, a hidden bar, which features entertainment from a bevy of Josephine Baker-like dancers, who are not mentioned in the book” (Haglund). Even though there were many dancers during the twenties, Fitzgerald didn’t mention them when writing. In filming a movie, everything is open to interpretation so Luhrmann probably made good use of his research of the twenties and put it to use when imagining scenes like at the