movie review

Morgan Smith

Z1663638

Sociology 170 section 9

Movie Blog

The Great Gatsby

            The Great Gatsby is a great movie that really shows the differences within a society and the wealth distribution, the differences in gender and social classes.   The Great Gatsby demonstrates the social conflict theory through out the movie because it shows the men only as these wealthy individuals and the women almost as their accessories. There is also a conflict in the roles that each character holds in society and the role that they want to hold in their individual lives.  From watching the movie and looking for things that relate to the book and from trying to watch it from a sociologist perspective I looked at the movie differently then the pervious times I watched it where I was just looking at Gatsby and Daisy’s love story. This time when watching it I thought it related to chapter 11 which is social class in the United States the most because your watching and kind of trying to figure out how Jay Gatsby has made his fortune and then your viewing Daisy and her husband Tom Buchanan who are also wealthy, they also have a friend named Jordan Baker who has a higher income and wealth status.  While Nick Daisy’s cousin and Gatsby’s friend and neighbor does not have the income and wealth that his friends he has made do.  The movie shows all of these elaborate and expensive parties to try and portray to the viewer actually how much money Gatsby truly has.  The movie also tries to show the characters social class by the way that they are dressed, the fancy cars for the era they have and the houses that they live in. Tom and Daisy and Gatsby and Nice all live in East Egg, which happens to be the richer side of New York, while you then have West Egg, which is the lower income part of New York where Tom’s mistress Myrtle lives who’s husband owns a gas station and car repair store and they don’t dress and talk the way that the people from East Egg do.  I also think that the movie relates a lot to chapter 6 Social interactions in everyday life because each character has their own status that they portray to society from being the wealthy man to the neighbor and cousin to a mistress in this movie. Throughout the movie people who attend the parties talk about Gatsby as this amazingly rich and powerful man and he has this master status among the society even though half of the people speak of his name and attend his parties have never truly met him personally.  He achieved this status by his work and his way that he built his empire of money over short period of time.  While Daisy has the role of Gatsby’s long lost love that he is trying to win back and of Tom’s wife. Gatsby was torn with a role stain in the movie because he is trying the whole movie to fix his heart and make Daisy fall in love with him all over again but he is also trying to maintain his image among society and the people he knows. This movie is just from a completely different social structure then the one that we tend to view that we live in today and that relates a lot to chapter 10, which is social stratification. When I was watching this movie I was completely amazed at the money that was being made during this era because when I think about todays society you never see those kinds of elaborate parties but we do still see the breaks on certain things that the rich receive.  During the twenties where the movie takes place it was easier for people to have social mobility with their social class and it was easier to achieve a wealthy life style and a comfortable income and the ones who had the money didn’t just inherit their money they worked for it either being professional athletes, owning franchise or indulging in illegal partaking’s that would make them a profit fast so they could invest it again. Social stratification is this trait that society has not one that individual people have, Gatsby never got caught by any authorities for having parties with alcohol or being a business partner with Meyer Wolfshiem because they were wealthy in America and society just seems to over look them, just like In the movie when Gatsby takes Nick to lunch and they go to a place where public figures in society are there drinking illegal alcohol and having fun at the underground restaurant.  Its not because they were good at hiding what they were doing to make their money it was because they held these high and powerful position within society that was greater.