Partying in The Great Gatsby: Baz Luhrmann’s Audiovisual Sublime

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol Vernallis
Keyword(s):  
Gilded Age ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Film History ◽  
Spatial Layout ◽  
Baz Luhrmann ◽  
Great Gatsby ◽  
The Great Gatsby ◽  
Contemporary Cinema ◽  
Spatial Locations

The first party sequence in Baz Luhrmann’ s The Great Gatsby (2013) counts as one of the most opulent, densely articulated, and extravagant in film history. On its release critics noted its ‘frenetic beauty’, ‘orgasmic pitch’, and ‘Vincente Minnelli-style suavity with controlled vertigo’. Décor, costuming, sound, movement, and colour come to the fore because the sequence’s spatial layout can’t be determined until its end. The mélanged soundtrack itself refuses to grant the viewer a sense of ground. What distances might this musical sample brook? Who’s performing and who isn’t? To which period and community does this music speak? Why this snippet against that? Sounds’ sources and imagined spatial locations seem to cross and overlap with elaborate vectors. This analysis plumbs the ways nineteen aural and visual techniques pull the viewer affectively and proprioceptively in different directions, helping, with the aid of digital technologies, to construct an extravagant rhetoric appropriate for our unfortunate gilded age. Considering Gatsby provides a way to further understand audiovisual aesthetics, the newly emergent role of soundtracks, contemporary cinema, and our time.

Reorchestrating the Past

2021 ◽  
pp. 316-356
Author(s):  
Paul Giles
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Musical Aesthetics ◽  
Baz Luhrmann ◽  
The Past ◽  
Great Gatsby ◽  
The Great Gatsby ◽  
Musical Modes ◽  
English Composers ◽  
Harrison Birtwistle

Taking its title from Australian novelist Alexis Wright’s description of her novel Carpentaria as a ‘long song, following ancient tradition’, this chapter considers how antipodean relations of place interrupt abstract notions of globalization as a financial system. The first section exemplifies this by focusing on Australian/American director Baz Luhrmann, whose version of The Great Gatsby (2013), filmed in Sydney, resituates Fitzgerald’s classic novel within an antipodean context. The second section develops this through consideration of Wright’s fiction, along with that of New Zealand/Maori author Keri Hulme, so as to illuminate ways in which spiral conceptions of time, where ends merge into beginnings, contest Western epistemological frames. In the final section, this ‘long song’ is related to the musical aesthetics of Australian composer Peter Sculthorpe and English composers George Benjamin and Harrison Birtwistle. The chapter concludes by arguing that musical modes are an overlooked dimension of postmodernist culture more generally.

Is the American dream dead? Inequality, mobility and entrepreneurship

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 234-256
Author(s):  
Young Back Choi
Keyword(s):  
Intergenerational Mobility ◽  
Negative Relationship ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Statistical Inferences ◽  
Great Gatsby ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
The Great Gatsby ◽  
The Rich

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to question the frequently heard claims of a negative relationship between inequality and intergenerational mobility (such as the “Great Gatsby Curve” by Alan Krueger) and to propose entrepreneurship as the neglected prime countervailing force against the putative advantages of the rich. Design/methodology/approach – A critical examination of evidences marshalled to support the case for a negative relationship between inequality and mobility, in terms of the appropriateness of statistical inferences and the consistency between implications and observations. The paper adopts alternative approach of Austrian economic in emphasizing the role of entrepreneurship in generating mobility. Findings – The putative negative relationship between inequality and mobility is not supported by evidence. The result is partly that egalitarians tend to skip close examination when they run into evidence that seems to support their preconception. It is also partly that the dominant tradition in economics, based on the model of efficient allocation of given resources, induces them to overlook entrepreneurship, the prime wealth creator and generator of mobility. Research limitations/implications – The research outlines an argument that the rich do not have advantage in entrepreneurship because it depends not on the ownership of currently valued resources, but on the discovery and exploitation of profitable opportunities. This claim is made based on Kirznerian perspective and author’s own theory of inference and learning process. However, it would be nice to able to provide empirical evidence of this claim made in the paper. Social implications – Many policies of redistribution, based on the belief that increase in inequality (as measured by Gini coefficient) signifies a diminution of intergenerational mobility, should be re-examined since the alleged negative relationship between inequality and intergenerational mobility turns out to be untrue. For greater intergenerational mobility, entrepreneurs should be encouraged, by allowing them to experiment freely. Originality/value – Emphasizing the role of entrepreneurship in intergenerational mobility and the dealing with the question of whether or not the rich would have advantage in entrepreneurship is original to this paper.

scholarly journals Fact and Fiction: The Contribution of Archives to the Study of Literary Translation

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 165-176
Author(s):  
Mary Wardle
Keyword(s):  
American Literature ◽  
Literary Translation ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Great Gatsby ◽  
The Great Gatsby ◽  
Digital Material ◽  
Fascist Regime ◽  
The Many ◽  
Shed Light

This paper examines the role of traditional physical archives within Translation Studies research, investigating the contribution that such resources can add, providing information that otherwise would not be available in existing scholarly volumes, academic journals and digital material. The question is illustrated with the specific case of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925) and its first two translations into Italian, carried out respectively in 1936 by Cesare Giardini and 1950 by Fernanda Pivano. Both translations were published by Mondadori, Italy’s largest publishing company, as part of two different series, I romanzi della palma and the later Medusa collection.Adopting a microhistory approach, the study of these translations, through the resource-rich archives of the Fondazione Arnoldo e Alberto Mondadori in Milan, can shed light on a number of issues that the text alone cannot provide: documentation, including the other books published in the same series, highlights the target audience that Mondadori were seeking to address; the paratextual elements of the books themselves are revealing of the prominence (or otherwise) of American literature in general and Fitzgerald in particular within the Italian literary polysystem at the time of their publication; in the case of the first translation, readers’ reports on the novel indicate how the censors of the Fascist regime might receive the somewhat racy themes contained in the book, while, in the case of the 1950 translation, correspondence between the publisher, literary agents and the translator herself highlight the many issues surrounding the ultimate publication of the volume.

scholarly journals Playing the Old Tunes: A Fiskean Analysis of Baz Luhrmann’s 2013 Cinematic Adaptation of The Great Gatsby

2016 ◽  
Vol 71 ◽  
pp. 60-70
Author(s):  
Marjan Khodamoradpour ◽  
Alireza Anushiravani
Keyword(s):  
Media Studies ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Baz Luhrmann ◽  
Cinematic Adaptation ◽  
Great Gatsby ◽  
The Great Gatsby

Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby has been adapted many times by different directors. However, the two prominent adaptations standing out throughout history are Jay Clayton’s 1974 adaptation as the most sincere rendering of the book, and the recently adapted movie by the Broadway director, Baz Luhrmann. The latter adaptation is important in that it has been accomplished in the age of technology, in 3D format, and at the time of the new readings, i.e. cultural or new historical readings, of the novel. This paper is an endeavor to analyze the movie through John Fiske’s theory on media studies. Also, an effort has been made to see whether in this new adaptation, the idea of the new studies of the novel have been shown by the director, or else the movie is a mere representation of struggle for money discussed by the traditional Marxist scholars, metaphorically playing the old tunes.

scholarly journals The Great Gatsby: Love and the Accumulation of Financial Capital and Symbolic

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 21
Author(s):  
Gilson Vedoin ◽  
Ingra Cristina Silvestre ◽  
Victor Vinícius Do Carmo
Keyword(s):  
Temporal Dynamics ◽  
Pierre Bourdieu ◽  
Film Adaptation ◽  
Financial Capital ◽  
Structural Elements ◽  
Baz Luhrmann ◽  
Cultural Phenomenon ◽  
Great Gatsby ◽  
The Great Gatsby ◽  
Gerard Genette

This paper aims to highlight the capital relations that permeate the story the Great Gatsby, Francis Scott Fitzgerald, considered here as the hipotexto, founding text on design of Gerard Genette (2010) and your the most recent film adaptation, hypertext (GENETTE, 2010, p. 12) that works as transposition and/or updating the previous text made by the Australian Director Baz Luhrmann in 2013. In this sense, from the theoretical formulations proposed by Pierre Bourdieu (1996) about the art as social, historical and cultural phenomenon, the product of a structured and stratified society, we use the concepts of capital and symbolic power to highlight the logic financier that articulates the personal relationships and emotional in the narrative of Fitzgerald, above all, from a reading of their analytical structural elements. In this analysis, we focused on conflict cells established between the characters, the Narrator, the spaces and the temporal dynamics established in hipotexto interaction written with filmic hypertext.O Grande Gatsby: Amores e o Acúmulo de Capitais Financeiros e Simbólicos O presente trabalho se propõe a evidenciar as relações capitais que permeiam a narrativa O Grande Gatsby, de Francis Scott Fitzgerald, considerada aqui como o hipotexto, texto fundante na concepção de Gerard Genette (2010) e sua adaptação cinematográfica mais recente, hipertexto (GENETTE, 2010, p.12) que funciona como transposição e/ou atualização do texto anterior realizada pelo diretor australiano Baz Luhrmann em 2013. Nesse sentido, a partir das formulações teóricas propostas por Pierre Bourdieu (1996) acerca da arte como fenômeno social, histórico e cultural, produto de uma sociedade estruturada e estratificada, utilizamos as noções de capital e poder simbólico para evidenciar a lógica financista que articula as relações pessoais e afetivas na narrativa de Fitzgerald, sobretudo, a partir de uma leitura analítica de seus elementos estruturais. Nessa análise, enfocamos as células de conflito estabelecido entre as personagens, o discurso do narrador, os espaços e a dinâmica temporal que se estabelece na interação do hipotexto escrito com o hipertexto fílmico.

Amitabh Bachchan

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Ciecko
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
Uttar Pradesh ◽  
Family Values ◽  
Crime Drama ◽  
Baz Luhrmann ◽  
Great Gatsby ◽  
Regional Language ◽  
The Great Gatsby ◽  
Production Company ◽  
Love Triangle

Amitabh Bachchan (b. 1942 in Allahabad) is perhaps the most enduringly iconic figure of Bollywood. He has appeared in nearly two hundred films and made cultural impacts as television presenter, stage performer, spokesperson, brand ambassador, and social media influencer. “Big B” possesses a tall physique, heavy-lidded visage, and sonorous multilingual voice. After onscreen debut in the epic Saat Hindustani (dir. K A. Abbas, 1969), his reputation and fame were established with anti-hero action roles as corruption-fighting police inspector-turned-vigilante in Zanjeer (dir. Prakash Mehra, 1973), as good-hearted thief in “curry western” Sholay (dir. Ramesh Sippy, 1975), and as tragic gangster in crime drama Deewar (dir. Yash Chopra, 1975). Bachchan’s composite personae represented the populist “angry young man” at a time of political/social/economic crisis. In the pioneering “middle cinema” of director-screenwriter Hrishikesh Mukherjee, including Anand (1971) and Namak Haraam (1973), Bachchan co-starred with the “original” Hindi film superstar Rajesh Khanna, ultimately eclipsing Khanna’s screen currency with his own class-crossing, genre-bending charisma. Bachchan appeared as characters all named Vijay (victorious) in Salim-Javed scripted films directed by Yash Chopra, Chandra Barot, and Ramesh Sippy. He executed his own action stunts, dances, and baritone playback tracks for numerous screen performances. An array of “double” roles, as well as comic films like Amar Akbar Anthony (dir. Manmohan Desai, 1977) displayed his expanding acting range. In addition to classic “buddy”/multihero pairings, Bachchan first shared the screen with actress Jaya Bhaduri in 1973, the year they married. Rumors of relationships with female stars provided abundant gossip fodder, culminating in a love triangle storyline in Silsila (dir. Yash Chopra, 1981). Bachchan’s status as superstar/national symbol was confirmed via public concern after a near-fatal injury during the filming of Coolie (dir. Manmohan Desai and Prayag Raj, 1982), widely covered in the press. Thereafter, Bachchan’s controversial foray into politics representing his home city in Uttar Pradesh, resulted in a screen hiatus and, later, attempted comeback. In the 1990s, his titular production company faced bankruptcy; however, the star accrued new currency in film and across media platforms, topping the BBC News online millennium poll as greatest star of stage or screen and becoming the host of a popular glocalized television game show. His son Abhishek and daughter-in-law Aishwarya Rai Bachchan exemplify next-generation stardom. Amitabh Bachchan has meanwhile remained a fixture in the Indian star firmament as the global Bollywood landscape continues to expand in the 21st century. His socially mediated utterances, advertising campaigns, and philanthropic endeavors regularly become part of public discourse. Bachchan portrayed multiple silver-bearded patriarchs in blockbuster millennial films emphasizing traditional family values, but his contemporary catalogue also includes rogues, renegades, curmudgeons, and outsiders. Bachchan’s contributions to Bollywood’s intertextual richness and influence are also demonstrated by his cameos in Hindi movies, Indian regional language films, and in the postmodern adaptation/remake of The Great Gatsby (dir. Baz Luhrmann, 2013), his Hollywood debut.

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