The Roaring '10s - How GATSBY May Be the Quintessential American Movie For Right Now

the modern dance party pic courtesy of addicted2edm.wordpress.com

Culture comes full circle. That is to say, styles and trends don't move on a Darwinian evolutionary ladder but more like the sine function of an occasionally lopsided wave.

See all the many rebellions, uprisings, and acquiescences that define our human history, the push and pull between barbarian and civilization, between empires and feudalist states. See the alternations between complexity and simplicity in the symphonic (as well as chamber) musical forms. It's always been true. But never has this been moreso than in the 20th and now the 21st century. And that, my friends, is what is so great about THE GREAT GATSBY, all you hatin' reviewers be damned.

I want to start off by saying F. Scott is a miserable writer, using stilted language, bad grammar, and with seemingly little real grasp on correct verbiage (I'll always be irked by a line in the book where he writes "she said decisively" when it seems like "she said derisively" is what he meant to write). I went to the movie because I love the Jazz age and out of respect to F. Scott's superior friend, Hem, not to mention the fact that Leo is just the man, period, done.

But as I left, I was staring at those unceasing blue eyes of reality as it smacked me in the face: the roaring 20's is back. Look at popular books like THE PARIS WIFE, Oscar-winning movies like MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, hit TV series like BOARDWALK EMPIRE, and now GATSBY - yeah, the 20's are roaring again.

And why not? With all the confusion that's befallen us since - the Great Depression, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, hippies, acid, cocaine, heroin, cultural revolution followed by the backslide into the soullessness and cold consumption of the 80's, the melancholy depression of the 90's, Enron, 9/11, Iraq, the Great Recession, drones, Patriot Act, environmental destruction, identity theft - I mean, shit, doesn't it sound nice to just have a few drinks, an illegal vice everybody was in on (giving it both the allure of the forbidden and the acceptance of the authorities) and just simply live like there's no tomorrow? And, of course, dance until you black out or get in some bloomers?

It simply didn't hit me how much we're recycling of that roaring generation until I saw GATSBY. The ease with which 20s jazz flowed into modern dubstep and the believability of a Long Island party that resembled a poolside rendition of Electric Daisy just reinforced it. The music of the 1920s more than anything else was all about dancing while highly intoxicated. The music of today - whether you're talking jam and folk bands or the monster that is EDM - is all about dancing while highly intoxicated. Women in the 20s dared to bare leg and hosiery - women today dare to bare stomach, ass cheeks, some even flash T&A as a rebellion against those damn authorities. There was a phantom of doom back then lurking behind everything that was so frightening and foul that everybody decided to just get fucked up and ride that mother until the wheels fell off. And today, with the oceans rising, the air strangling us, the hideous manipulations of the Street and a government where it's hard to say who's the good guy or, for that matter, if there even is one - shit, all we can do is dance and mollify and fire down dingers and live, man.

Even more, GATSBY the movie pointed out the vast chasm between the haves and the have-nots - and not since the 20s has that gap been so wide as it is now. F. Scott never fully developed this theme, or his characters - maybe it was fear, maybe it was drink, maybe it was simply that he couldn't paint a complete enough picture (which explains his miserable failure in Hollywood). And the flick pointed out the soullessness embraced by many of the 1% and corporate interests that were running America at that moment and which led to the Depression. At the same time, what both the book and movie show is that all those Horatio Alger stories are bullshit, and that even if they happen every so often the man who climbs as such is surrounded by others just waiting - and hoping - for him to fall.

But no, in this day of fedoras and people again partying in suits, or at least ties - of loose morals and loud, wild dance music - we're officially echoing the roaring 20s. Only took 90 years. Maybe someday they'll call these the roaring 10s.

I leave you with the most indelible shot in the whole flick, a moment that is wonderful for its culmination of all these points I'm getting at here.

The scene when the great man, the legendary host who makes it possible for people to explore the depths of their debauchery with only the finest booze, music, and dancing, turns and introduces himself. He holds out his hand just as Gershwin's RHAPSODY IN BLUE is crescendoing. This was the original drop, by the way, people, the classic crescendo. And RHAPSODY IN BLUE may be one of the most important American songs of all time because it holds in its very self the key to American musical greatness. It's the crossroads, where classical music essentially handed off its crown as reigning audio entertainment for the masses to jazz and in general music based in the rhythms of the black man (jazz became rap, blues became rock, and nobody but a small handful of squares, myself included, listen to classical music anymore). And it's a love letter to New York, the quintessential American city, both then and now, the heart and soul of our massive, beautiful, fucked up, thumping, dropping, hopeless and hopeful nation. Just like GATSBY which, while chastising the gangsters and Wall Streeters and blue bloods draws the very ethereal dream world in which they buzz and vibrate amidst a city which itself is one of the greatest monuments to just what man can accomplish when he is ambitious.

But I digress. That scene, where RHAPSODY is crescendoing and the fireworks, which we took from the Chinamen who dynamited the railroad tunnels and now signify holidays in America (happy Memorial Day), and the party is building, foaming over like champagne racing up a flute, and a man with a smile and a handshake, if he does it well, if he's confident of himself and lets the world know it, knows that smile and handshake will very well propel him to the top of the world which, in spite of its near-impossibility and heavy fallibility is still possible in America like no other nation - this is the type of awe-inspiring cinematic moment that will be forever tattooed on my brain.

This is America in a nutshell, a nation of over the top celebration and fortunes built on little more than charm and a predilection towards socializing. A place where the only difference between the supposed respectable powerful men and the supposed criminal powerful men is the great hypocrisy embraced by the respectables. A grand old time. And a place where dancing and cutting loose and to hell with tomorrow brings all this vacuous beauty and world-creating hope together in one visceral revelry. And where in spite of our puritanical ancestry, we all love the sauce.

Cheers, good sirs. May the 10s continue their mighty roar. And may you have a great Memorial Weekend.

- Ryan