Queer Review: The Great Gatsby (2013)

The Great Gatsby
Director: Baz Luhrmann
Writers: Baz Luhrmann and Craig Pearce. Based on the novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Joel Edgerton, Carey Mulligan, Elizabeth Debicki, Jason Clarke, Isla Fisher

Overview
A lively adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, Baz Luhrmann manages to energize the story without losing sight of the characters or essential themes. Furthermore, he manages to enhance several of the novels queer subtexts, creating a fantastic vision of a classic novel in the process.

Synopsis
Bonds salesman Nick Carroway (Tobey Maguire) has recently moved to the north side of Long Island, where he meets the mysterious Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio), who is famous for throwing gigantic parties, although no one knows his reason for doing so. It turns out that Gatsby is madly in love with Nick's cousin Daisy (Carey Mulligan) and secretly hopes she will stop by one of the parties. Gatsby befriends Nick and eventually requests that Nick arrange a tea party so he can finally meat Daisy. But of course, there are complications as Daisy is already married to Tom (Joel Edgerton) a Machiavellian character and an extremely jealous man.

The Queering
When it comes to the history of civil rights, particularly LGBTQ rights, our culture tells us that there has always been a steady progress towards equality. A progress that has made no regression. If one were to only analyze back to the 1940's and 50's, it's possible to see how this perception might come about. Yet it is not a true vision of history. The roaring twenties saw perhaps, the first "coming out" so to speak, for gay identity, in which cultural acceptance for queer folks was very far ahead of it's time. Berlin for example, prior to the NAZI's taking over, became a gay cultural mecca, with Magnus Hirschfeld establishing Scientific Humanitarian Committee 1897, in order to advocate for LGBTQ people. Unfortunately, the NAZI's would later destroy much of his work. New York City during the gay 20's was also a cultural center for the newly evolving gay culture, with the Harlem Renaissance, featuring LGBTQ people of color, providing the backbone of the revolution.

It was into this gradually queering world that F. Scott Fitzgerald published The Great Gatsby a novel with several obvious queer subtexts. Subtexts by the way, that Luhrmann has managed to expand upon. The most obvious is that of Nick Carroway is clearly in love with Jay Gatsby. While the hollowness of Gatsby's grand vision is gradually revealed to the audience, Nick's view of Gatsby remains untainted. Even after his lies have been revealed, Nick still calls Gatsby "the most hopeful person I have ever known". In the film, when Gatsby dies at the end, Nick becomes so miserable and morose, that he winds up in a sanitarium, which provides the framing device for the film.

There are other queer subtexts as well. In the opening scenes, Tom is unable to keep his hands off of Nick. When Daisy is first introduced, she admits that she had spent the whole afternoon on a couch, that also happened to have contained her friend, tennis champion Jordan (Elizabeth Debicki) and the two share a low key, but rather obvious subtext.

F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel was primarily concerned with exposing the emptiness of the 1920's excess. The film also does this, but slightly differently, with more melancholy and less wit. Luhrmann also is not afraid of using modern music, which I didn't find distracting personally, although others might. The films' main strength lie with the way Luhrmann manages to capture the excesses of the 1920's before pulling back and gradually revealing how hollow the lifestyle is that Gatsby -- and everyone else -- is leading. Overall though, I think Luhrmann is faithful enough to the novel to avoid causing most English teachers from experiencing fainting fits, but I'm not sure what how many of them will view the rather significant shifts in tone.

Now in my opinion, this is a dream cast for this story. With the exception of Carey Mulligan, there is not a weak performance to be found. However, I blame Mulligan's work on the fact that the character of Daisy is poorly developed. While I understand the character's symbolic significance, she still ends up with little more personality than the green light that Gatsby is constantly reaching for. I could not tell if this was intentional or not on the filmmakers' part, but I found it distracting. Particularly during a scene where Gatsby and Tom talk about Daisy's feelings at length before they actually bother to ask her, even though she was present the whole time. Worse, Daisy does not even speak up for herself until she was asked. I honestly cannot think of a contemporary narrative where a female character was both A) designed to be the focus of the story and B) given so little agency. Jordan (played with flair by Elizabeth Debicki) fares a little better, although she was given little to do once she had finished introducing Nick to the high life.

As far as more technical details go, the opening scenes are poorly structured and edited, with an over-reliance on Nick's voice-over. Maybe it just took me a little while to get used to Luhrmann's style, for once Gatsby is introduced, I found the films' rhythm to be much more tolerable.

Overall though, this is a rather memorable adaptation of an American classic novel. Luhrmann provides a rather strong, and at times gaudy, visual style, but outside of the jumpy opening scenes, he knows when to slow down and focus on the narrative as well as the characters entrapped within it.

Recommendation
This Gatsby is worth going to extraordinary, I mean great, lengths to see, old sport.

The Rating
***1/2 out of ****

Trailer


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Silver Demon: On Creating a Queer Superhero

To look at the mainstream media's depictions of LGBTQ characters is an exercise in watching a never ending stream of victims, villains, with a few sidekicks here and there and the occasional nod to the fact that some of us are "normal" folks with day jobs, families, etc.

As far as I can tell, there are almost no queer superheroes in existence. Well actually technically there are a few. Recently, the X-Men recently got to have a big gay wedding and one of the Green Lantern incarnations got to come out. I also came across a YA novel Hero by Perry Moore

To be frank, it can be exhausting evaluating queer orientated media. In the past two decades there has been an uptick in depictions of LGBTQ individuals. Some of these have been quite good, while others have a slew of problematic elements associated with them. But the queer superhero is, for all intents and purposes, practically an endangered species. Which is why I wanted to create one.

Initially I waffled on whether or not to include homophobia in my story and/or having the character deal with their sexuality. One of the earliest versions of the main character had them repressing their attraction to other men and this in turn causing them to lose their super powers. The character would then have only regained their powers when they had come out and acknowledged their true identity. This idea eventually went off and died where all bad ideas should go to die.

Then I had the character existing in a world where homophobia did not exist (or at least was not referenced and had little impact on the story itself). This idea was eventually abandoned after I decided that my two main characters should meet at a bar called The Stonewall Tavern, a reference to the real life Stonewall Inn.

I forget exactly why, but this eventually led to a whole lot of other changes, namely the decision to incorporate homophobia and transphobia directly into the story itself. This in turn resulted in setting the main part of the story in 1969. Given that the main characters still get to meet at a place the Stonewall Inn, most people can probably accurately guess one of the major elements of the climax.

Since Batman got Gotham and Superman got Metropolis, I thought it only fair that my characters got their own city to run around in. Thus the City of Noche was born. At this point things might have gotten a bit out of control. By creating a fictional city, I was able to create a world that would allow me to metaphorically build the concept of the Isophyls directly into the story itself. This also meant I could have the Stonewall Inn overshadow the Compton Cafe, while sitting across the street from an institution I called the White Knight Tavern. Rioting in my story? Never! Ignore my shifty eyes least they deceive you! *cough*

This was probably the one part of the story I went overboard with. As I talked about earlier, I used historical figures as the basis for several characters. But I didn't stop there. Streets, business, various locations, pretty much everywhere I could reasonably do so became a reference to some element of LGBTQ history. Whether it be in reference to a significant protest, a tragedy, or our communities contributions to society, be it scientific advancement, governmental, economic, the military, technology, the arts, religion, or civil rights, if I could find a place in the story to acknowledge LGBTQ history, I did. My partners copy of Queers in History by Keith Stern became so dog eared and worn that he ended up bequeathing it to me.

Of course there is the question of what kind of personality or job would be most appropriate for my characters. I had something of a debate with myself about how masculine or feminine to make my characters. I did not wish to perpetuate the stereotype that all gay men are feminine sissies, but the problem is that in rejecting this stereotype, means enforcing the unfortunate notion of the "feminine = bad". I got around this issue by making the main cast of characters as diverse as possible.

Some people might ask the question of whether or not the world is ready for a LGBTQ superhero story, particularly one of such a nature as one I have created. Personally, I think this is the wrong question to even be asking. The never ending tide of queer victims and villains I mentioned at the beginning, requires a counterpoint in order to be turned. Ready or not, the world needs queer heroes.

Queer Issue: The Queer Umbrella is an Oxymoron

Having just come across this poll on The Huffington Post, I felt a bit of a need to respond. Why? Becuase it's a completely pointless question to ask.

The whole purpose of the developing a queer identity, historically speaking, was to shun labels, boundries, and umbrellas. To even say something like "queer umbrella" would be like saying "I want to blur the boundries between good and evil, but cannot accept that there are shades of grey between them". Likewise, asking if the queer identity includes polyamorous relationships and asexuals is like asking if oak trees and mammels are all catagories of nouns.

If one thinks that asexuals and polyamourous relationships might not be or cannot be included in the term queer, than one obviously knows nothing of queer history or the origins of such.

Queer Issue: A Christmas Wish List on the Future of Queer Cinema

I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.
-Mahatma Gandhi

It's easy to rant and rave about what one does not want to see in films, but all the ranting and raving will do nothing in the end towards creating a robust and thriving Queer Cinema. That is not to say that I wish to discourage any anger directed towards the movie industry regarding the lack of diversity and inclusiveness on the silver screen. There are huge problems when there is a near total absence of queer youth, queer people of color, and feminine traits are used almost universally to denote evil. Although, I must add that on a micro level there is nothing wrong per se with an overly feminine antagonist. The problem is one that exists on the macro level, when nearly *every* movie ever made will take the time to point out the macho manliness of the hero while highlighting the lisping femininity of the limp wristed bad guy.

And so I decided that I wanted to create a Christmas Wish List to make clear what I want and what I believe the movie industry should be doing. I am not looking merely to vent, but to make a statement of what should be.

Dear Santa,

This is a wishlist of what I want for the future of Queer Cinema.

When it comes to queer cinema, I want more of everything. I do not want erasure, I want exposure and truth. I want cinema to depict honestly how queers have been integrated into the full history of human culture. I want to see the stories of how queer sexuality was accepted by some societies, ignored by others, and oppressed by far too many. In short, I want it all.

I want more stories with gays, lesbians, asexuals, bisexuals, pansexuals, and omnisexuals. Deliver to me characters who are transgender, transsexual, gender queer, intersex, and do not forget the flaming drag queens and kings. I want to see depictions of those genderfucks who ate the livers of society's gender paradigms with fava beans and washed them down with a nice Chianti.

I want the film industry to tell me the stories, as Clint Catalyst would say, in praise of the prancy boys, as well as the tales of butch dykes, of femme lesbians, and of the manliest of gay men. Show me the stories of leather daddies and leather mommies. I want the celluloid closet to be destroyed utterly and completely.

I want to know the stories of queers of every religion, of every culture, and of every race and color. Show me queers who are Atheist, Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Deist, Animists, Taoists, or Agnostic. Tell me of queers who are African, Asian, Middle Eastern, Latino, Hispanic, European, or Native American. Give me the chronicles of all the different queer peoples of color.

Give me queers in space, battling evil empires and boldly going where no queers have gone before. I want to be able to unravel queer mysteries with fabulous detectives. I tell you, do not skimp on tales of queer cops and robbers, queer monarchs and peasants, and queer cowboys and Native Americans. I don't know why I cannot quit any of them. Give me myths of fairy godfathers making offers that cannot be refused. Give me the story of the spy who took her martinis stirred, not shaken.

I want romantic comedies about queer protagonists who search desperately the whole movie to find love and at the end do so. But tell to me also the stories of those queers who reject "love" believing it to be an invention of an oppressive heternormitive society.

Give me narratives with angry inches, at least 20 centimeters, boys who cried, and those who like it hot.

Create for me legends and fantasies of queer wizards and demons, of queer witches and warlocks. Tell me the tales of queer vampires and ghouls. Try and scare me with tales of queer psycho slashers stalking hapless victims through showers and dreams.

Give me queer heroes and villains, queers who can fly and queers who fall, queer saints and sinners. Give me the good, the bad, and the ugly of all things queer. Feed me the queerest soylent green you can find.

I want desperately to see a queer on the bow of the Titanic, screaming defiantly into the wind, "I'm the QUEEN of the WORLD!"

Show me the money of the queer wealthy, but please do not forget the suffering of the queer poor and homelessness.

Give me tales of queer youth and queer seniors. Do not hesitate to tell the stories of queers who are disabled. I want narratives with queers who are fat and thin and of those queers who are handsome or beautiful and of those who fail to meet their society's standards of good looks.

I want stories of queer couples who stayed together in pure monogamy until death bid them part. Then show me the chronicles of the queer sluts, whores, prostitutes, gigoloes, and porn stars. Do not forget those queers that never found love, the unlucky virgins, or those who willingly took vows of chastity.

Tell to me the tales of queer artists, for I want to know the experiences of queer poets, writers, painters, composers, sculptures, actors, actresses, directors, authors, and musicians. They are the stuff dreams are made of.

Show me the stories of queer scientists, professors, academics, thinkers, philosophers and journalists. But do not ignore the stories of queer idiots, morons, and dunces. They all had me at hello.

Give unto me, queer firefighters and arsonists, queer athletes and qeeks, queer teachers and students, queer doctors, nurses, paramedics and the queer patients they treated.

There are stories of extraordinary queers to be told and of those queers who were extremely ordinary. So give me queers who coulda been contenders.

I wish to know the stories of queer radicals, liberals, and conservatives, of joiners and rejecters.

Spin for me the stories of queer warriors, soldiers, and generals and of those who committed brave feats in battle. But tell me also of those queers who protested the unjust nature of war and of those who committed even braver acts of civil disobedience.

I want to be told the stories of queer politicians and leaders, of queer activists and social reformers. Tell to me of those whose impact throughout history is so great as to be immeasurable and of those who lived in obscurity their whole lives. I want queers who cared passionately about worthwhile causes and those queers, who frankly my dear, didn't give a damn.

Tell me the stories of queer marxists, socialists, and capitalists. Queers who are completely selfless and queers who believe that greed is good. I want to see queers screaming, "you are not your bank account!" I want the first and second rules of Queer Club to be that you do not talk about Queer Club.

Tell me the sagas of the queer working class, of queer farmers, factory workers, waiters, waitresses, airplane pilots, train operators, ship captains, postal workers, and tollboth collectors. I want to know the experiences of queer secretaries, administrative assistants, bureaucrats, tax collectors, telemarketers, childcare workers, personal aides, and taxi drivers. And, yes, *I* am talking to you.

Since I am greedy, spin for me myths of queer weirdos and freaks, and of rainbow flying monkeys.

Tell for me the histories of queers who accept the fate dealt to them and those who are now mad as hell and ain't going take it any more.

Document, I beg you, the stories of Sylvia Rivera, Glenn Burke, Ernst Röhm, Ruth C. Ellis, Georg Joachim Rheticus, Margaret Mead, John Reith, John Maynard Keynes, George Washington Carver, Alan L. Hart, Alan Turring, Bayard Rustin, Jean Jacques Régis de Cambacérès, Solon of Athens and too many other queers from history to list here. I want them all to be as widely known as that of Harvey Milk.

May not want a single story go untold because we were too afraid tell them.

Thank you.