The Great Gatsby: Why We Party
By Malaika Handa
The Great Gatsby was nominated for costume design in the 2014 Oscars. The movie was based on the novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald and revolves around Jay Gatsby, who throws enormous parties to attract the attention of a lost love. The Great Gatsby uses CGI, 3D, dramatic camera angles, and oddly modern music to make the parties seem truly larger than life, especially on the big screen.
Nowadays, we associate large house parties with teenagers, which makes Jay Gatsby’s obsessive materialism seem all the more childish. But why? What makes the stereotypical teenager drink and do drugs and put themselves in possibly harmful situations?
A common theory is that teenagers are purposely defiant and rebellious. Drinking and drugs are illegal, so teenagers leap at the opportunity to use them. However, if anyone really believed that theory, then they would simply make alcohol legal for high-schoolers (especially in America, where the drinking age is 21). Once legal, drugs and alcohol would lose their glamour and novelty--at least, according to this theory.
However, I would argue that the average teenager parties out of stress. I am not condoning the illegal behavior, or trying to justify it; I am merely suggesting its cause.
Teenagers are given all sorts of contradictory demands. We are told to sign up for classes that we think we would do well in, but only if they will help us get into college. We have to get nine hours of sleep a night, when after homework, studying, and extracurricular activities we are lucky to get six or seven. We should find resume-padding internships over the summer, and volunteer work--but also get a job, to start saving money for university fees. We are supposed to be independent--but we have to ask permission to use the bathroom.
That’s not to say that we aren’t lucky. It is true that there are countries where education is nonexistent, and we should be aware of how abundant our opportunities are. But as I go through the college application process, I find more and more aspects of it that explain why a stereotypical teenager would need to unwind on the weekend.
Our generation is getting called all sorts of names: Time’s cover story in May of 2013 used the words “lazy, selfish and shallow” within the first sentence. Those are all words that go along with the stereotype of teenage partiers--but they ignore why teenagers live that stereotype. Maybe we are lazy because we have lost interest in the rote memorization that our education system requires. Maybe we are selfish because schools call collaboration “cheating”. Maybe we are shallow because we are raised in a materialistic society. And maybe we party because we are simply too stressed out to find any other way of coping.
By Malaika Handa
The Great Gatsby: Why We Party