見與不見:《大亨小傳》中的真實與虛擬現實 - 政大學術集成

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(1)國立政治大學英國語文學系碩士論文 ︎. ︎ 指導教授:邱彥彬先生 Advisor: Dr. Yen-Bin Chiou. 政治大. 見與不見:《大亨小傳》中的真實與虛擬現實. 立. The Seen and the Unseen: On Reality and Virtual Reality in The Great Gatsby. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i n U. 研究生:黃憶 Name: Yi Huang 中華民國 105 年 7 月 July, 2016. . v.

(2) The Seen and the Unseen: On Reality and Virtual Reality in The Great Gatsby. A Master Thesis. 學. ‧ 國. 立. Presented to 治政大 Department of English,. National Chengchi University. ‧. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts. by Yi Huang July, 2016.

(3) Acknowledgement. First of all, I would like to dedicate my most sincere gratitude to my beloved. 政治大 family. It is owing to their unconditional support and love that I can fully concentrate 立 ‧. ‧ 國. encouragement.. 學. on my research and writing. This thesis will not be completed without their love and. sit. y. Nat. I am very grateful for my advisor, Prof. Chiou. During all stages of my thesis. io. al. er. research, Prof. Chiou always provided his insightful advices to help me clarify my. v. n. arguments. Without his guidance, this thesis would not be completed. I appreciate his. Ch. engchi. i n U. patience and kindness which I considered as encouragement for me.. Finally, I would like to thank many of my friends who had helped me get through all kinds of difficulties. Without their support, I would never collect as many academic resources as I wanted and I could never fully elaborate my ideas in the thesis. I wish them a bright and prosperous future.. iii .

(4) Table of Contents Acknowledgement ....................................................................................................iii Chinese Abstract.......................................................................................................... v English Abstract ......................................................................................................... vi Chapter One: Introduction ............................................................................................. 1 Research Background Information ........................................................................ 1 Images and the Creation of Virtual Reality ........................................................... 6 Chapter Description ............................................................................................. 12. 政治大 and The Great Gatsby .................................................................................................. 14 立 Chapter Two: The Unreality of Reality: The Uncertainty of Truth in Modern America. Advertising Images as Unreality of the Reality in Modern America .................. 14. ‧ 國. 學. Fitzgerald, the Roaring Twenties and Celebrity Culture Four............................. 16 Advertising and Photography in the Jazz Age .................................................. 21. ‧. Vision, Perception and Illusion ......................................................................... 26. Nat. sit. y. Chapter Three: An Age of Unclear Vision: Reality and Virtual Reality in Advertising. io. er. and Photography .......................................................................................................... 32 From Vision to Envisioning: Mass Consumerism and Advertising in the Early. n. al. Ch. i n U. v. Twentieth-Century America ................................................................................. 32. engchi. Expressive Strategy and Visibility ....................................................................... 35 Chapter Four: Unreality as Virtual Reality .................................................................. 49 Virtual Gaze: The Correlation of Vision and Imagination .................................. 49 Mobility, Vision and Imagination ....................................................................... 54 Photography and Virtual Gaze ............................................................................ 59 Chapter Five: Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 67 Work Cited ................................................................................................................... 72. iv . .

(5) 國立政治大學英國語文學系碩士班碩士論文提要論文名稱: 見與不見:《大亨小傳》中的真實與虛擬現實指導教授:邱彥彬研究生:黃憶. 立. 論文提要內容:. 政治大. ‧ 國. 學. ‧. 史考特費茲傑羅(F. Scott Fitzgerald)的小說《大亨小傳》為一深刻反映二十世紀美國文化的作品之一，書中描述主人翁蓋茲比如何在現實中追求不可及的夢想直至夢想幻滅的過程。在現實的不可抗逆下，蓋茲比以各式物質展演將不可見慾望的化為清晰的圖像。本論文將透過廣告及攝影概念的引用，探討圖像與觀者的連結如何創造出一個既不屬於現實也不屬於幻象的虛擬現實，並論述蓋茲比如何運用觀者的觀看經驗為自身建立起一可被認同的身份，並且以這樣的策略開展小說中關於視覺與想像的辯證。第一章略述《大亨小傳》的梗概、介紹其相關評論與說明本論文理論架構。第二章將藉由對二十世紀初媒體發展回顧重新定義「可見」的概念；第三章將詳述費茲傑羅與其作品與名流文化及媒體的密切性，及媒體文化對作者生活及作品的影響。第四章檢視書中敘事者尼克視覺化的觀察方式，進而分析其虛擬凝視(Virtual Gaze) 如何打破生理視覺的侷限進而發展出一結合主體感觀經驗與客觀現實的感知方式。第五章重新討論小說中現實與幻象的矛盾，並點出「虛擬」將翻轉對現實的固有認知，並且成就更多可能性。 . n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. 關鍵字：虛擬現實、虛擬凝視、視覺經驗、可見性 v . .

(6) Abstract F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby has been regarded as one of the most brilliant literary works that captures the essence of the roaring twenties. In the novel, Fitzgerald takes readers into a full picture of the life of Gatsby, unfolding the life of the glamour in a new world material without being real and the conflicts between social classes. Writing against the lucid narrative strategy, Fitzgerald completes The Great Gatsby with. 政治大 theories of advertising and photography to examine how the order of presentation and 立 impressive languages, imagery and symbols. The present thesis would like to adopt. observation is converted at the time when visual perception is inevitably intertwined with. ‧ 國. 學. subjective imagination. In addition, the present thesis also aims to shed light on the concept of virtual gaze as well as the notion of identity by taking vision from the field of. ‧. the visible into the field of the virtual.. y. Nat. Chapter one begins with the introduction of The Great Gatsby and the methodology. sit. used in the present thesis. Chapter two includes literature reviews concerning the issue of. er. io. seeing and Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Chapter three focuses on reviewing the. al. n. v i n C h of “visibility.” Chapter among Fitzgerald’s life and the notion e n g c h i U four pays attention to the concept of “virtual gaze” and its capability to break the boundary between physical presentation of images used in the mass media and on building the interrelationship. eyesight and imagination. Chapter five reconsiders the ambiguity of reality associated with contradictory vision and further validates the value of “virtual gaze.. Keywords: virtual reality, virtual gaze, visual experience, visibility vi . .

(7) Chapter 1 Introduction Research Background Information Since its publication, critics have been analyzing The Great Gatsby from various aspects. In Fitzgerald’s lifetime, criticism was mainly about the author’s literary skills and the works’ maturity. Critics including Edmund Wilson and Mencken did not consider. 政治大 appreciated the craftsmanship, 立the structure and the use of symbols in the work. Later,. The Great Gatsby as a serious work. Other writers who paid less attention on Fitzgerald. ‧ 國. 學. reviewer Malcolm Cowley proposed a term “double personality” in his review of Tender is the Night for the first time. The double personality theory is “called upon to explain. ‧. Fitzgerald’s moral ambivalence toward his subject matter, best represented by Nick. y. Nat. Carraway’s ability in Gatsby to simultaneously partake in and comment upon the action”. io. sit. (Curnutt 117). At this time, the writer’s personality and maturity remained the focus in. n. al. er. literary discussion. In the following decade, Fitzgerald’s works gained praises for their. Ch. i n U. v. deep meaning. In this period, the rise of New Criticism demonstrates the drastic shift of. engchi. literary criticism. Focusing on the evaluation of art, critics abandoned biography and embraced structural analysis as they “piled its techniques to assess such authorial concerns as literary development, influences and sources, and The Great Gatsby’s thematic relevance to other canonical works” (Curnutt 120). Later in the 1970s the influence of formalism receded and critics read Fitzgerald within the context of the 1920s. Modern Fitzgerald studies turn to historical research and engage with biographical study 1 . .

(8) and other cultural aspects which have long been neglected. Political issues such as ethnic study and feminist study of Fitzgerald’s works reveal the controversies in 1920s American society. Among these approaches, “ the methodology with the most potential for revealing unappreciated aspects of Fitzgerald is cultural studies, which looks to artifacts from film to fashion to advertising to understand the ways in which cultural media function as models of identity for consumers” (Curnutt 125). The presentation of reality is problematic in The Great Gatsby. The blurring line between illusion and reality leads to confusions in the novel and makes the unreality of. 政治大 presentation of the present and 立the imagination of the past become intertwined with each reality. The unreality of reality in The Great Gatsby is a changing state in which the. ‧ 國. 學. other. Although material commodities reinforce class disparity, they provide the power to subvert the hierarchy of social class. In The Great Gatsby, realism no longer stands for. ‧. single truth; instead, it is a synthesis of subjective and objective understanding. The. y. Nat. difficulty of seeing, as one central theme in The Great Gatsby, invokes the question of. io. sit. whether the validity of reality should be determined by vision or a correlation between. n. al. er. physical eyesight and personal insight. As this issue has been studied in many Fitzgerald. Ch. i n U. v. studies, the purpose of this thesis is to provide the concept of virtual reality as another. engchi. possible way to interpret reality by redefining visibility and invisibility. In previous research, visibility and invisibility are thought to be two opposed ideas defining reality as critics tend to define these two terms according to their capability of inspiring the meaning of reality.. 2 . .

(9) In The Great Gatsby, the depiction of advertising and celebrity culture presents the interrelation between vision and imagination. In modern America, the proliferation of mass media challenges people’s recognition of reality by providing a variety of photographic images. Popular culture in the early twentieth century emphasizes visual presentation of reality as a way to express both the expressible and the inexpressible. While success is defined by visible glamour and desire is presented as personal improvement, advertising creates realities within reality by proposing accessible but intangible dreams. The display of wealth explicitly differentiates Gatsby from Tom as this. 政治大 becomes a performance, characters’ 立 action is more significant than their purchase.. pecuniary emulation invokes Gatsby’s awareness of class struggle. As consumption. ‧ 國. 學. Previous criticism on the narrative of material emphasizes the inevitable economic disparity. Despite Myrtle’s intention to conceal her vulgarity by purchasing material. ‧. goods to secure her temporary privilege and Gatsby’s use of expenditure in creating. y. Nat. himself as a mysterious rich man, Donaldson addresses that Gatsby and Myrtle’s. io. sit. ignorance of the secure social stratum leads to inevitable failure. As Gatsby and Myrtle. n. al. er. are “in the attempt to transcend their status through a show of possessions, they are. Ch. i n U. v. undone by the lack of cultivation that drives them to buy the wrong things” (Donaldson. engchi. 83). Buying the “wrong things” means that false purchase or inappropriate shopping habit will reveal one’s inherent taste. The pretention created by material commodities, according to Donaldson, only begets the falsification of identities. Nevertheless, the illusory transcendence is made possible as Gatsby and Myrtle successfully manipulate people’s gaze by presenting themselves as both the projection of desire and the reflection. 3 . .

(10) of lack. Advertising and the culture of celebrity in modern American society embody contradictory ideas in the form of visual images. Images on advertisements paradoxically present the lack as abundance and convert the concealed desire into visualized imagination. Fitzgerald’s familiarity with advertising business assists him and his wife in promoting their status as celebrities. Fitzgerald understands public’s longing for celebrity and he thus modifies his image as to make it compatible with people’s imagination. By mediating these ideal images via photographs, the report of life style on magazines recreates new identity for Fitzgerald. Photographs can tell the truth but, as Wilson points. 政治大 lurking behind the seeming impartiality 立 of the mechanical eye” (158). Thus, when. out, “the 'truth' of photography is only a more convincing illusion, selection and artifice. ‧ 國. 學. discussing Fitzgerald’s mythmaking enterprise, Prigozy asserts that the Fitzgeralds’ “self-revelation was itself self-recreation in its most extreme form” (11). The ambiguity. ‧. inherent in photographs merges the original and the reproductive and obfuscates. sit. y. Nat. presentation and observation.. er. io. Modernity and the development of technological mechanics changed the presentation. al. v i n C h is one dominant theme Fitzgerald’s narrative of visual culture e n g c h i U in his works. The n. of reality as well as the way of seeing. Being the spokesman of the roaring twenties,. proliferation of advertising business and the celebrity culture blurred the boundary between observer and the observed object. In The Great Gatsby, concealment always leads to confusion and chaos. As Gatsby’s exaggerated gesture is intertwined with his hidden personal history, the image of Gatsby begets a reflective picture of his concealed desire. Similarly, Myrtle’s transformation implies both her being and not being a lady. By. 4 . .

(11) manipulating visual presentation, Gatsby and Myrtle’s identities are recognized as realistic yet illusionistic. The idea of change prompts characters to emulate the new rich, that is, the leisure class. According Gatsby’s father, Gatsby has had a mind for improvement since his boyhood. These general resolves written in Gatsby’s schedule show his determination to change and to conduct self-improvement. Gatsby’s transcendence and his success at the end prove his father’s words that “Jimmy was bound to get ahead” (The Great Gatsby 173). After Gatsby runs off from home, he shows up as a mysterious young rich at West Egg. When meeting with people, Gatsby is always the. 政治大 contradictory impression represents 立 the chaotic order of the early-twentieth-century gentle, well-educated man with a familiar smile on his unfamiliar face. Gatsby’s. ‧ 國. 學. society. Following prosperity, a general tendency toward progress dominates people’s imagination of the future. People’s vision is juxtaposed with their envisioning of a better. ‧. life. This romantic imagination reflects Gatsby’s self-improvement which is woven with. y. Nat. ideals and dreams. Fitzgerald’s narrative of Gatsby’s legend renders him a mythic figure. io. sit. and makes The Great Gatsby an American fable. At the time when illusion seems more. n. al. er. real than reality, Marius Bewley argues, Gatsby’s reality is opposed to the tangible. Ch. i n U. v. illusion since it is “a thing of the spirit, a promise rather than the possession of a vision, a. engchi. faith in the half-glimpsed, but hardly understood, possibilities of life” (38). Bewley implies that Gatsby’s struggle to eliminate the conflict between his inner vision and external harsh circumstances nevertheless begets a potentiality for the illusions to come to existence. The invention and reinvention of a perceptible reality is “illusions in pursuit of a reality from which they have become historically separated, but by which they might. 5 . .

(12) alone be completed or fulfilled” (Bewley 43). Throughout the novel, Gatsby’s unintelligible reality is made tangible as it is invested in the form of his world. Thus, the problematic reality in The Great Gatsby should be considered as the dialectic discourse between visibility and invisibility. To argue for the potential of invisibility in The Great Gatsby, this thesis aims to redefine visibility and invisibility by proposing the concept of virtual gaze. While the difficulty of seeing serves as the inevitable outcome of multimedia experiences, the virtual gaze’s ability to simultaneously engage objective perception with subjective. 政治大 Images and the Creation of Virtual Reality 立. imagination provides a new way of seeing and understanding reality.. ‧ 國. 學. The vacillation between reality and illusion is the characteristic feature concerning the prevalent concept of duality in The Great Gatsby. While almost every character sees. ‧. with dual vision, they recognize reality and illusion indiscriminately. The coexistence of. y. Nat. dreams and realities of daily lives constructs the order in The Great Gatsby. Parr in “The. io. sit. Idea of Order at West Egg” indicates that characters need illusions to support themselves. n. al. er. when dealing with harsh reality as illusions supplement reality without supplanting it.. i n U. v. From her point of view, the illusions or dreams that seem most vibrant to these characters. Ch. engchi. are those that “transform their everyday realities into something that seem either thrilling or meaningful” (62). As reality is incessantly recreated by characters’ imagination, the absence of truth in daily lives nevertheless fulfills the content of reality and authenticates characters’ invention of identities or their personal histories.. 6 . .

(13) Gatsby’s identity, as readers can see, deliberately remains unclear. The mixture of truth and lies constitute his disguise. Strangers judge Gatsby mostly by hearsay while acquaintances like Nick question his identity and try to discover the link between Gatsby’s past and his present. As Nick’s sense of uncertainty towards Gatsby’s story grows stronger, Gatsby shows these photographs as evidence to prove his statement. Nick’s hesitation and his incredulous attitude toward Gatsby’s photographs imply the unattainability of truth. While Dessner holds that photographs reveal truth which springs from the heart’s desire and imagination, Barrett claims that elimination and concealment. 政治大 strong sense of reality, Gatsby’s 立 concealment challenges the authority of photographs. make photographs truer than the reality. Though the display of photographs conveys a. ‧ 國. 學. Barrett, with similar ideas, claims that Nick’s hesitation between the direct report and romanticized account of timeless image. “ Though Nick’s judgments of Gatsby vacillate. ‧. between distrust and devotion, contempt and respect,’’ Barrett argues, “his images of. y. Nat. Gatsby are consistently idealized” (547). Gatsby’s concealment is also demonstrated in. io. sit. his elusive answer to Nick’s questions. Early critics consider Gatsby’s lies and his evasive. n. al. er. attitude as theatricality. Gatsby’s theatricality, the extravagant parties and the display of. Ch. i n U. v. wealth give him a new identity and even transform him into a mythic figure. The mystery. engchi. of Gatsby implies the assimilation of illusion into the reality. As Langman indicates, Gatsby is the mixture of the real and the imagined and the narrative is the weaving of past and present (42-43). Dessner’s and Barrett’s arguments suggest a passive viewing experience as photographs inevitably supplant the reality. Each photograph, as it can preserve specific. 7 . .

(14) moment, “is a privileged moment, turned into a slim object that one can keep and look at again” (Sontag 13). In The Great Gatsby, critics note the cinematic effects to discuss the presentation of visual images in The Great Gatsby. Ronald Berman, in The Great Gatsby and Modern Times, associates cinematic techniques with Fitzgerald’s narrative strategy and points out that Fitzgerald’s use of cinematic techniques affects the way of seeing. As Barrett’s and Dessner’s discourse indicates photography as the means to distort time and extend disbelief, Berman’s argument, on the other hand, explore a deeper thinking about temporality. In the world where visual images dominate subjective perception, Nick’s. 政治大 becomes a scene. Visual images 立 dominate the novel. In The Great Gatsby, magazines and vision resembles the lens of a camera since his witness of each act and movement. ‧ 國. 學. advertisement are used to present characters’ style. However, these visual images intricately imply class disparity as Gatsby and Myrtle intend to replace their origin. ‧. identity with ideal images on the mass media.. y. Nat. In The Great Gatsby, nearly every character believes in photographic images since. io. sit. photographs provide an outlet for their imagination. From the pictures of Dan Cody to the. n. al. er. picture of Oxford, these photographs serve to establish Gatsby’s own version of past. Ch. i n U. v. history and recreate a new identity for him. Wolfsheim, Daisy and all the men and women. engchi. at Gatsby’s party choose to believe in Gatsby’s temporal identity. The suspension of disbelief implies photographs’ ability to make visible truth. Barrett shares similar views and argues that the pictures can be recreated by imagination in the viewer’s mind. Photography suggests an ideal existence. For Gatsby, his use of photographs rewrites history in some degree. Photography challenges the proposition of reality as it can make. 8 . .

(15) visible truths and, at the same time, present the evidence of propositions that are not true but true to its aspiring imagination. (Dessner183) On evaluating the display of photographs, Laura Barrett focuses on photography’s reflection and replacement of reality and proposes that photographs supplant reality in The Great Gatsby. In this essay, Barrett indicates that Nick’s symbolic and impressionistic narrative implicitly suggests the impossibility to fully represent the reality. Nick’s double vision is implied as Nick expresses that he was “within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life” (The Great Gatsby 35). Nick’s narrative strategy rejects. 政治大 thinking. Dessner also holds 立 a similar view and insists that the photograph can preserve straightforward representation and tends to supplement the reality with subjective. ‧ 國. 學. forceful evidence of prepositions that are true to the heart’s desire and to its imagination (183). In The Great Gatsby, photographs demonstrate the mixture of illusion and. ‧. imagination rather than historical truth. They even become the proof of deceit as Gatsby. y. Nat. uses his Oxford picture to make up a story of his past. Living in unreality of the reality,. io. sit. Nick’s vision is inevitably torn between “straightforward reporting of specific moment. n. al. er. and space versus a romanticized account of a universal, timeless image” (Barrett 546).. Ch. Nick’s vacillation proffers the problem of belief.. engchi. i n U. v. Ronald Berman, in his book The Great Gatsby and Modern Times, excavates the integration of cultural traits in the novel. Berman’s research associates the problem of seeing and perception with cinematic technique which is considered one of the influences on Fitzgerald’s writing. For Gatsby, Berman states, the past and the present are dangerously undifferentiated but “the reader’s sense of time and place is affected also by the way that. 9 . .

(16) Nick states his own perceptions and restates the dialogue he remembers” (3). Lawrence Jay Dessner, in “Photography and The Great Gatsby”, argues for the significance of photography and its philosophic assumptions in the novel. From Dessner’s point of view, photography, with an implication to preserve time and place, invokes an imagination of the ideal existence. In The Great Gatsby, reality is performed rather than presented. Gatsby’s theatricality turns him into an incarnation of people’s imagination as he resembles the man on an advertisement. The allusion to photography in The Great Gatsby invokes an. 政治大 recognition of the present. As立 the distortion of time and place are made possible in awareness of vision and temporality. In this artificial reality, vision arouses the. ‧ 國. 學. photography, the vision of a viewer is made relative. Reality sprung from imagination of specific time and place is true to heart’s desire. The interrelation between vision and the. ‧. temporality of photographs, in The Great Gatsby, implies the disruption of linear time.. y. Nat. Nick’s vision, a combination of objective observation and subjective perceptions,. io. sit. emphasizes the simultaneity of vision and imagination. Throughout the novel, characters’. n. al. er. state of being “within and without” suggests the fluid consciousness in perceiving events. Ch. i n U. v. as signpost of time. Gatsby’s consistent retrospective vision of the past displays a full. engchi. immersion in the virtual environment. Being simultaneously within and without, Fitzgerald’s characters believe in the reality that defy the certainty of time and place. In The Great Gatsby, Nick is an observer who sees both the visible as well as the invisible. As the narrator, Nick’s vision and his perception dominate the narrative of plots in The Great Gatsby and, as Miller suggests, he is “charged with relating the story as he sees it,. 10 . .

(17) reconstructing by some means whatever he himself has been unable to witness” (Miller 92). Seeing, in The Great Gatsby, involves not only the visible material world but the description of events occurred at another time and another place which Nick is unable to witness. Nick’s vision as well as his perceptions penetrates the boundary between the exterior of things and characters’ interior consciousness. Thus, through Nick’s eyes, the interrelation between objective reality and subjective consciousness is closely related. In the 1920s, as new theories flourish and provide new insight into the interrelation between seeing and understanding as the reference of relative thinking became one. 政治大 unattainable truth in The Great立 Gatsby indicates the impossibility to adopt objective incessant conception in modernist thinking. The narrative of blurred vision and the. ‧ 國. 學. recognition of things as in modernist thinking“ there is no guarantee of truth from multiple perspectives” (Berman 40). From this aspect, relativity becomes the dominant theme in this. ‧. novel. Relativity, as one essential variant of modernism, emphasizes the shift of attention. y. Nat. from realism to subjective perception. As the impossibility of single truth is an enchanting. io. sit. feature in The Great Gatsby, “forms” convey more visual messages than descriptions. On. n. al. er. evaluating the distorted perception in the novel, Berman points out that “The numerous. Ch. i n U. v. introductions into the text of qualified and distorted perception suggest that reality is too. engchi. complex to be known by realism; and that relationships are too relative to be known” (104). As the essence of forms is perception and impression in The Great Gatsby, the incorporation of forms in the defining reality sheds new light in understanding the narrative of theatricality and performativity which has been considered as absurd or shallow. The absence of truth begets “unreality of the reality” and further grants a possibility to. 11 . .

(18) reconsider the confusing reality. Through the examination of unreality of the reality in The Great Gatsby, this thesis aims to explore the concept of virtual reality with the interrelation between vision and the presentation of forms. Chapter Description As the spokesman of his generation, Fitzgerald’s writing is full of sentimentality and observations of cultural phenomena. This interwoven of author’s reflections on life and culture of the Jazz age make Fitzgerald’s work timeless. In chapter one, I will provide literature reviews concerning reality and senses in The. 政治大 of electronic and mechanics devices appear. With the invention of photographic 立. Great Gatsby. The conception of reality had undergone dramatic changes since inventions. mechanics within a society composed with pictures from mass media, vision became the. ‧ 國. 學. dominant force of order. While objective perception of visibility varies with subjective. ‧. understanding; presentation creates possibilities of change.. The outer world is a hybridity of the real and the illusion. In chapter two, my. y. Nat. sit. discussion will be divided into two parts: the objective presentation of material world and. n. al. er. io. the issue of illusory transcendence. In previous studies of materials in The Great Gatsby,. i n U. v. critics agree that style objects successfully create an illusory transcendence of class.. Ch. engchi. While previous studies emphasize consumerism, my focus will be put on the transcendental power of materials and the proliferation of advertising and mass media in modern America. In this chapter, I will explain how images visualize the concealed desire and elucidate the complex interrelation between presentation and perception. The Great Gatsby is full of visual presentations. These visual images render the reality a form of presentation. Images, as visualized time, emphasize a perception of the 12 . .

(19) instant moment. The recognition of the present implies a physical involvement in experiencing the existence of the absence. In chapter three, I will propose the term “virtual reality” to indicate that immersion and interaction, as two essential features of virtual reality, transcend the boundary between reality and illusion. In the virtual environment, differing conceptions of time and place defies single interpretation of truth and reproduces realities that are true to heart’s desire. Presentation of material life and performativity illustrates the outer world in The Great Gatsby. The objective world changes as subjective understanding allows imagination to present the temporal world from multiple. 政治大 In chapter four, I’ll examine 立 the narrative structure along with Nick’s narrative of. perspectives.. ‧ 國. 學. incidents and his perception of time and place in the novel. Subjective perceptions indicate the significance of consciousness in the reality in which seeing clearly is difficult.. ‧. In the final chapter, I will reiterate the importance of relative gaze in The Great. y. Nat. Gatsby. Rumors and mysteries in this novel create suspicious atmosphere and obscurities.. io. sit. In Fitzgerald’s narrative, vision interrelates with consciousness and space. This thesis. n. al. er. proposes that relative understanding ceaselessly reproduces multiple interpretations of. Ch. i n U. v. reality and thus the truth is created, imagined and being believed rather than trusted. The. engchi. discussion does not mean to justify a slovenly arrangement, but to open up another possibility of elastic interpretation.. 13 . .

(20) Chapter 2 The Unreality of Reality: the Uncertainty of Truth in Modern America and The Great Gatsby Advertising Images as Unreality of the Reality in Modern America In the literary field, writers are the witness of the society and their narrators are the spectators. In the modern world, major scenes in literary works shifts from the pastoral to the urban. Urban city is a merge of spectaculars. Situating in the midst of cities, narrators become spectators and their relations to the city thus rely heavily on visual experiences.. 政治大 serves as an essential trait of立 modernity. Cities, as the field of the visible, provide a place The emphasis of spectatorship inspires writers to think within the visual culture which. ‧ 國. 學. for the practice of looking. As men and women’s fluid sight fixes freely upon every observed object, their observation nevertheless blurs their recognition of reality. These. ‧. wonderers in urban cities are termed as the flâneur by Walter Benjamin. For city dwellers,. y. Nat. mental life is equally important to physical life. The changes of lifestyle and consumptive. io. sit. activities combine the outer world into inner activities of mind and eventually makes. n. al. er. inextricable link between the two. Paris serves as inspirations for these American writers. Ch. i n U. v. as its glamour embodies the transformation from authentic rural life to the artificial. engchi. reality. When discussing the transformations in modern literary domain, Lehan associates urban scenario with the development of artists and writers’ consciousness and indicates that “Paris became a state of mind, supplying the energy for radical cultural change, bringing together some of the best minds of its era” (8). As writers became spectators in modern times, their narrative of the world is thus made visible and imaginable.. 14 . .

(21) In the early twentieth century, America also underwent the process of modernization. Technical development and the invention of scientific theory changed the way people perceive the world. The most notable influence on literary field may be the transformation of media. The proliferation of media business such as newspapers, magazines and advertising interrelates individuals with the mass culture. In this era of vision, workings of personal mind become rather important than ever before as mass media creates two worlds: the physical one associated with the past and the imagined one heading to the future. Individuals’ subjective perceptions determined their understanding. 政治大 reflected on all forms of art in 立the early twentieth century. The emphasis of persuasion on of the objective world. Modernity’s constant questioning of the absolute truth was. ‧ 國. 學. advertising redefined the relations between individuals and the mass media. With the rise of consumptive market, advertising permeated the mass culture. The. ‧. abundance of images and messages on advertisements; however, formed a contradictory. Nat. sit. y. presentation of reality. As an art of persuasion, the position of advertising in the modern. er. io. America society is more fluid than before. In the early twentieth century, the visible form. al. v i n C h products asU regulations. Visual arts are used to promote e n g c h i “agencies brought illustrations in n. of advertising is complicated as it relates itself to the public’s perception and the social. to stimulate imagination and desire, and to spin webs of association around the product” (Ohmann 104). The visual effect contributed to the presentation of advertising images blurred the line between the actual and the ideal.. 15 . .

(22) While the central theme of modernity is the recognition of reality, advertising nonetheless presents an unreality in the society. In the system of consumption, advertising’s ability to arouse desire forcefully converts the act of selling from private domain to public sphere. Advertising, as Raymond Williams asserts, aims to satisfy the minds of consumers and “the attempt is made, by magic, to associate this consumption with human desires to which it has no real reference” (189). When people believe that they can make the right purchase within the magic system, advertising thus establishes new patterns by validating the power of buying. Eventually, advertising serves as the. 政治大 the proliferation of mass media 立interrelated with this new social pattern further expand. visible form for those invisible sources of satisfaction. The rise of celebrity culture and. ‧ 國. 學. the magic of advertising to people in the society in the early twentieth-century America. For Fitzgerald, this change grants him and his characters an opportunity to live in the. Nat. sit. Fitzgerald, the Roaring Twenties and Celebrity Culture. y. ‧. obscured reality.. er. io. Fitzgerald’s criticism reflects how critics’ concern varies with the shift of literary. al. v i n C Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby elastichisethat it is a work n g c h i Urelated to all aspects of life and n. taste and cultural factors. One important reason that makes the interpretation of. at the same time intimately connected to humanity. As the spokesman for young people in the 1920s, Fitzgerald’s personal life is inevitably linked to his writing career. Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda were the iconic figures in the early twentieth-century American society. After publishing his first novel This Side of Paradise, Fitzgerald vacillated between two identities: a write and a playboy. Fitzgerald’s wife Zelda, though. 16 . .

(23) often considered as Fitzgerald’s subordinate, was as famous as his husband. As a modern flapper, Zelda’s boyish haircut, delicate makeup and stylish dress attracted the public’s attention. The popularity of the Fitzgeralds was sustained by interviews and reports. Moreover, as a writer, Fitzgeralds deliberately linked his life to his writing when promoting books. Donaldson indicates that Fitzgerald had worked for an advertising agency for four month in 1919 and he did learn how promotion could help sell books from this experience (164). At the early stage of writing career, Fitzgerald engaged restlessly in establishing his reputation. Knowing that he and Zelda were representative of. 政治大 as exemplars of flaming youth 立in the early years of his career” (Donaldson 146).. the youth culture, the Fitzgeralds “cooperated fully with the media effect to portray them. ‧ 國. 學. Fitzgerald successfully gained public attention by simultaneously presenting the glamour of his personal life and the portrait of the Jazz age in his works. Occasionally, Fitzgerald. ‧. would intentionally emphasize his playful attitudes toward writing and, to the public, he. y. Nat. was “indelibly associated with a younger generation determined to defy its elders”. io. sit. (Donaldson 166). Fitzgerald deprived himself of seriousness as to be accepted as a. n. al. er. celebrity writer who wrote for his generation. Nevertheless, the descending artistic. Ch. i n U. v. reputation forced Fitzgerald to reconsider his strategy when The Beautiful and Damned. engchi. was published in 1924. Though realizing the importance of public perception of his works, Fitzgerald gradually dissociated himself from the image of a careless writer. Still, “his image as a representative of the unbridled younger generation was proving difficult to get rid of” (Donaldson 168).. 17 . .

(24) From the late nineteenth century, the American society had undergone tremendous transformations. Technological inventions led to industrial progress and the flourishing of media business such as newspaper, magazines and advertising. The development of photographic technique and printing press allowed publishers to expand their business and revolutionize efficiency and effectiveness of newspaper production after the war. Newspaper sales thus dramatically increased due to new production technologies, increasingly readable formats that emphasized photographic reproductions and splashy headlines, and a growing urban middle class. (Galow 6) Further, as Galow points out,. 政治大 force during the so-called magazine 立 revolution of the 1890s, a decade in which total. “alongside the rise of newspapers, mass market magazines became a dominant cultural. ‧ 國. 學. monthly magazine circulation nearly tripled” (6). Immediate success followed Fitzgerald’s first novel initiated Fitzgerald’s coordination with the mass media in the. ‧. following decades since, as Prigozy indicate, “the press was a strong alley in creating. y. Nat. their public personas” (4). At that time, Fitzgerald’s appearance inevitably became an. io. sit. appealing topic for newspapers and magazines. While the writer’s appearance. n. al. er. “accelerated his elevation to celebrity status”, his good looks combined with youth and. Ch. i n U. v. brilliance fit ideally into the 1920s’ archetype of the youth and thus completed the image. engchi. of the novelist as a romantic figure” (Bruccoli 116). The public image of the Fitzgeralds was shown on various mass media and Prigozy points out that “the daily press, in feature stories, news articles, photos and gossip columns, and the popular magazines with their lavish illustrations, were the prime sharpers of the legend of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Fitzgerald” (Prigozy 5).. 18 . .

(25) The fame of the Fitzgeralds; however, is a double sword. As the images of Fitzgerald were widely spread, “It was always remarked that Fitzgerald resembled an illustration in a collar man” (Bruccoli 116). The proliferation of the advertising business granted opportunities for writers to sell their book and, taken to its extreme, sell themselves as commodities. To write for the young generation of his time, Fitzgerald had himself immersed in the popular culture of the roaring twenties. The celebration of youth, success and happiness frequently appears within Fitzgerald’s works and, moreover, it became the life principle the Fitzgeralds lived by. Their lives together, as Prigozy. 政治大 impersonate them today, larger 立than life (2). In the early twentieth century, Fitzgerald and indicates, had a mythic quality and their successes and tragedies were like actors who. ‧ 國. 學. his wife Zelda successfully adapted themselves to the mass-oriented popular culture as they fit ideally into the public’s imagination of the young generation. Thus, as Prigozy. ‧. indicates, “Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald throughout their life together were acutely. y. Nat. conscious of their public image” (3). The Fitzgeralds were enthusiastic about any reports. io. sit. concerning them and they persistently collecting clippings from newspaper, magazines. n. al. er. and even advertisements. Moreover, Fitzgerald was a keen observer of the cultural. Ch. i n U. v. marketplace and an expert judge of advertising. Working experience in the advertising. engchi. agency may contribute to cultivating Fitzgerald’s awareness of the public’s consciousness of mass media. Meanwhile, Fitzgerald realized the contradictory nature of advertising cloaked in the alluring illustrations. In the early twentieth century, consumerism and advertising were closely related. With the growth of consumptive activities, advertising became more and more delicate. In the 1910s the widespread use of images, pictures and. 19 . .

(26) icons formed a new kind of communication. At this period, promotion of a product no longer relied on concise descriptive words; instead, abstract words dominated style.1 These abstract words printed on newspapers and magazines “allowed people to pour their own hopes, fears, and illusions into the products” (Batchelor 123). Advertisements on one hand promised the commodity’s quality; on the other hand, enhanced consumers’ belief in the commodity’s benefit. The advertisement reflects the public’s desire to see things they want to see. In this way, “The people characterized in ads represented how people wanted to be seen rather than how they appeared in reality” (Batchelor 123). The. 政治大 becoming identified with his立 time let him represent the excess of the twenties— in Prince Fitzgeralds made a legend out of their daily lives. In his heyday, Fitzgerald’s capacity for. ‧ 國. 學. Charming and its fool. (Bruccoli 130) This doubleness also reflected Fitzgerald’s intent to sell his books by controlling the public’s perception of him, that is, “the precarious. ‧. balance he always sought between the popular figure and the serious writer” (Prigozy 5).. Nat. sit. y. Fitzgeralsd’s achievement in making himself a mythic figure in popular culture. al. er. io. reveals his ability to simultaneously perform and observe. In the roaring twenties,. v. n. Fitzgerald’s privilege in the public sphere rose with the establishment of celebrity culture.. Ch. engchi. i n U. 1 In the 1910s, advertisements found new ways to communicate with consumers. Apart from traditional ads, Batchelor claims that these “new, largely national advertising avoided any mention of specifics and focused their appeal on abstractions” (123). Furthermore, the revolutionary means used in advertisement is an impressionistic approach which conveys messages obliquely to the public. Responding to people’s state of mind, advertisements such as Arrow collars and shirts were “sold with little more than pictures of men smugly secure within this new society” (Batchelor 124). People who read these ads may identify with the image of the product since these abstract words on advertisements implicitly reflect their awareness of their own problem and hopes.. 20 . .

(27) As the Fitzgeralds’ display of popularity and identity obfuscated the publics’ perception of the reality, their “self-revelation was itself self-creation in its most extreme form” (Prigozy 11). Self-creation and self-revelation, the part and parcel of the theme in The Great Gatsby, invoke meditative exploration of the relationship between reality and illusion. The narration of the roaring twenties in Fitzgerald’s works always reflects the writer’s life as the Fitzgeralds’ history “paralleled that of the nation” (Donaldson 173). The study of Fitzgerald’s work and popular culture involves dialectic between the cultural background of the 1920s and the reflection of cultural influences on one hand. 政治大 between Fitzgerald’s life and立 his works denotes the coexistence of contradictory ideas. and the use of cultural traits in Fitzgerald’s creative language on the other. The parallel. ‧ 國. 學. and the possibility to embrace opposed ideas. The use of advertisements and photographs embodies Fitzgerald’s dualistic concept as these two innovative techniques transform the. ‧. concept of perception from the field of the visible into the field of the virtual.. sit. y. Nat. Advertising and Photography in the Jazz Age. n. al. er. io. From the beginning of The Great Gatsby, readers may recognize that this novel is. i n U. v. about observation and perception. Meanwhile, the novel is about perception of the outer. Ch. engchi. world as well as the inner mind. While Nick has insufficient ideas about Gatsby’s history, his imagination has him assert that “Jay Gatsby of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself” (The Great Gatsby 98). Critics who analyze the structure and form of The Great Gatsby always point out its structural complexity and textual confusions. For critics, The Great Gatsby has been difficult to categorize since its unusual narrative design, its sources and elusiveness cannot fit comfortably into any 21 . .

(28) literary mold suggest that the novel can be an example of modernism. (Prigozy 343) The allusion to modernism in Fitzgerald’s works arouses debates among critics at Fitzgerald’s time. The common belief in representing the nation urged writers to reveal the nation as Berman states that literature then “might renew its contact with the national past” and writers might “confer blame for the business culture and praise for the youth culture” (5). Berman points out that Fitzgerald “adopted certain ideas but, equally important, he knew when to modify or even to reject them” (5). For Fitzgerald, the American scene is not single. A belief of a stable national culture is impossible so that the expression of the. 政治大 Perception thus serves as 立an essential part in Fitzgerald’s writings. Fitzgerald’s. national experiences should be varied.. ‧ 國. 學. evaluation of objects is represented in an artistic visual form. In Translating Modernism: Fitzgerald and Hemingway, Berman links Fitzgerald to his contemporary painter friends. ‧. Gerald and Sara Murphy and suggests that their modernist painting skills influence. y. Nat. Fitzgerald’s literary performance. The adaption of techniques of visual art changes not. io. sit. only the way fictional scenes are presented but also the expression of complicated issues. n. al. er. concerning the spirit of the twenties. In the early twentieth century, the use of distortion. Ch. i n U. v. in art dissects reality and realigns it in unexpected ways as the artist ought to see it. Ways. engchi. of seeing thus becomes the major concern for Fitzgerald and “in The Great Gatsby he asks not only what America is like but what it looks like” (Berman 32). Photography and advertisements are the embodiments of the problematic presentation in The Great Gatsby. Consumer culture in the early twentieth century fostered the proliferation of advertising. Fitzgerald was fully aware of the risk and. 22 . .

(29) potential of this boom as he understood how advertising could accelerate the new pattern of consumption. In the modern American society, the increase of income fostered economical prosperity. Consumptive activities such as conspicuous consumption and pecuniary emulation dominate people’s consumptive activity. Writing in the age of progress, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby consists of various aspects of American society in the early twentieth century. People in the early twentieth century underwent a succession of tremendous changes. After the industrial revolution, technological elevation changed people’s lifestyle. After the war, mass production expanded the market by. 政治大 installment plan, people were立 granted more opportunity to purchase expensive material providing great amount of material goods. In the 1920s, due to credit and affordable. ‧ 國. 學. commodities which they were unable to pay for. The massive economic boom led to a prosperous society as well as an era of materialistic fascination. From the beginning of. ‧. the twentieth century, materialism and mass consumerism shaped the society. y. Nat. economically and culturally. Materialism permeated the mass culture by infusing. io. sit. consumptive activity with desire and the imagination of an ideal self. In the era of. n. al. er. progress, prosperity became the American reality. Advertisements on magazines and. Ch. i n U. v. newspapers ceaselessly emphasized the fable of abundance and encouraged individuals to. engchi. pursue success and self-realization. At this period, advertising guarantees the quality of goods and, moreover, it responds to people’s desire. As Minter indicates, “acting on impulse, doing whatever one wanted, began to gain acceptance as ‘natural’ and therefore desirable way of achieving self-fulfillment” (91). Advertisements thus create a culture in which consumerism and self-realization are closely associated. Dynamic consumptive. 23 . .

(30) activities reflect individuals’ identification with the ideal images of the figures in advertisements. Advertisements modified people’s perception of themselves as well as the world they live in. Reality became an obscure concept since advertisements reconstructed social and secular standards. In The Great Gatsby, characters live by envisioning the ideal image of themselves. The most effective yet oblique way to express their desire is through an imitation of advertisements. Nearly every character in The Great Gatsby shapes their personal image according to specific style of the 1920s. Tom’s stout and healthy body performs vitality. 政治大 following the latest trend, dress 立themselves as flapper. Style was part of the conspicuous and self-efficiency admired by contemporary advertisers. Jordon Baker and Daisy,. ‧ 國. 學. consumption among the middle or middle-upper class as their looks, like the ideal images on advertisements, were under constant evaluation. Aside from these rich men and. ‧. women, Myrtle and Gatsby’s transformation seems more unnatural and deceptive. The. y. Nat. influence of advertisements is so pervasive that “all of the novel’s characters—no matter. io. sit. their class— take notice of and respond to advertising” (Maxwell 318). Initiated in the. n. al. er. late nineteenth century, the advertising industry underwent tremendous changes in the. Ch. i n U. v. twentieth century. Apart from previous goal of promoting commodities, modern. engchi. advertising sold ideas about selves and promoted self-change. As self-change is closely associated with style, advertising thus served as a mode for self-fashioning. On analyzing Myrtle’s consumptive activities, Donaldson argues that Myrtle’s shopping list reveals her insecurity towards conspicuous consumption. In contrast to Daisy, Myrtle lacks financial support and inheritable social status from a wealthy family. Most importantly, Myrtle’s. 24 . .

(31) lack of taste shows her inferior status. Myrtle’s planned expenditure, as Donaldson suggests, is a means of elevating her social class. Nevertheless, Myrtle fails at last as the inherent lack of taste inevitably expels her from the upper-class society. Gatsby also fails to overcome the obstacles results from social disparity. Throughout the novel, Gatsby uses extravagance and the display of wealth to fulfill his dream of repeating the past and marring Daisy but his dream nevertheless fails at last. To conclude Gatsby and Myrtle’s tragedy, Donaldson asserts that their failure is caused by their unwillingness or inability to “comprehend that it is not money alone that matters, but money combined with secure. 政治大 On the one hand, advertising 立 emphasizes self-change; on the other hand, it clings to. social position” (83).. ‧ 國. 學. individuals’ lack. After the war, advertising created demand instead of necessity in the market. In many respects, the contradictory feature of advertising denotes the double. ‧. vision by which advertisements invented and reinvented the consumers. In the early. y. Nat. twentieth century, advertising manipulated the public by creating images which were. io. sit. grounded on hard facts and psychological basis. Advertisers were required to be sensitive. n. al. er. to consumers’ need and longings. Since the consumers’ deep frustration was impossible. Ch. i n U. v. to determine, “what matters is that advertisers increasingly believed in the existence of a. engchi. childlike mass audience, and treated it as an opportunity for creative salesmanship” (Lears 211). Advertising recreates for its audiences an alluring reality by corresponding reflexively to their wish and expectation. Commodities used to create the materialistic reality are deprived of their nature and presented it in the form of desire. Manufacturers at this time felt discomfort when they realized that advertising presents commodities as. 25 . .

(32) floating signifiers and “dramatized the unease of the materialist amid the dematerialized desire that animated consumer culture” (Lears 215). As a result, in the 1910s, advertising revolved around three key themes: an effort to help the individual find meaning in an increasingly complex and bureaucratized world, offered “solutions” to many of modern life’s newest problems and finally helped to create a new standard of conduct (Batchelor120). In a broad sense, the crucial message advertising conveyed to its audience is a virtualized reality. Viewers identified with advertisements and communicated with them through imitation and modification. Myrtle’s planned. 政治大 possible, according to Berman’s 立 arguments. When discussing Myrtle and Gatsby’s. expenditure obfuscates her identity. This confusion of identity makes class transcendence. ‧ 國. 學. expenditure, Berman argue that as “Fitzgerald’s story takes place when power is passing from old to new money, with consequences for all forms of public and private life”,. ‧. “Tom will have anxieties about social change while Myrtle will try to take advantage of it”. y. Nat. (Berman 67). The motif of change in advertising industry resonates with Myrtle and. io. sit. Gatsby’s desire to achieve social mobility. While Myrtle and Gatsby at the end fail to. n. al. er. realize their dream, Fitzgerald’s writing reveals a more complex relationship to the issue. Ch. i n U. v. of reality that involves his suggesting the advertisements as the supplantation of reality while at the same time questioning it.. engchi. Vision, Perception and Illusion The correlation of representation and perception formulates the modernist vision. The confusing physical sight prevalent in The Great Gatsby makes seeing difficult. Considered as Fitzgerald’s mature and crafted work, critics praised The Great Gatsby for. 26 . .

(33) its prose style, meticulous structure and the elusive narrative technique. Miller, on the analysis of Fitzgerald’s textual structure, indicates that Joseph Conrad may be the great influence on Fitzgerald during the gestation period of The Great Gatsby. (79) He finds that Fitzgerald adopts many specific elements from Conrad’s technique including the use of modified first person narration and the use of deliberate “confusion” by the re-ordering of the chronology of events. (Miller 80-81) Miller views Fitzgerald as the successor of Conrad and suggests that the adoption of Conradian technique in The Great Gatsby is a difficult and artistic achievement. Holding similar opinion, F.H. Langman points out that. 政治大 feelings not through direct speech 立 and actions. Instead, “these feelings are brought into The Great Gatsby, as a novel radiant with feelings, delicacy and tender, expresses. ‧ 國. 學. the novel obliquely, through description, narrative, meditation, and symbol” (34). In the novel, abstract concept and the concrete materials coexist as glittering materials signify. ‧. both the secular and the symbolic. Thus, as critics note in their overview on The Great. y. Nat. Gatsby, seeing is difficult. Bruccoli indicates that “the technique in The Great Gatsby is. io. sit. scenic and symbolic” and Fitzgerald endows the scenes and descriptions of characters. n. al. er. with so much suggestiveness that they acquire the symbolic force to extend the meanings of the story” (219).. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald’s intention to intertwine physical sight and personal insight is fully shown on the photographic technique for Nick’s narration and the display of photographs and advertisements. Fitzgerald’s intention to make readers “see” begets “an inability to clear seeing.” As the novel is full of images, symbols and implicit suggestiveness, the realization of the reality is not the interpretation of the visible world. 27 . .

(34) but an interrelatedness of the visible and the invisible. Throughout the novel, Nick’s incredulity towards Gatsby’s photographs is a reminder of the uncertainty of reality. Nick’s omniscient vision witnesses the rise and fall of Gatsby, all the incidents and, the most important of all, the characters’ desire. Nick is more an observer than a witness as his imaginary vision compensates for the invisibility of physical reality. Gatsby’s theatrical identity and his concomitant desire to repeat the past obfuscate the reality. Moreover, other characters also live a double life which consist of both the ideal and the concealed.. 政治大 visible reality and the concealed 立 desire. From Nick’s perspective, the recurrent motif of Being both within and without, Nick is fully aware of the boundary between the. ‧ 國. 學. each character’s desire, as it contradicts their present states of being, inevitably falls into illusion. Gatsby’s desire to repeat the past is embodied in his use of the photographs to. ‧. rearrange his past and recreate identity. The past Gatsby attempts to repeat is an “ideal. y. Nat. past” which is different from his own personal history. Through a display of photographs,. io. sit. Gatsby constructs a compensating version of reality and applies its context onto his. n. al. er. photographs accordingly. Photography becomes a medium to express and affect the way. Ch. i n U. v. Gatsby and other characters think. The nature of photography challenges people’s. engchi. previous experience of time. The most notable feature of photography is its ability to manipulate the perception of time. As photographs capture and freeze the specific time of an event, it becomes a symbolic resistance of linear time. Free from decay and corruption, photographic images denote ideal vision and eternity. Photography, in its extreme form, can be seen as a solution to the problematic reality in The Great Gatsby. Gatsby’s. 28 . .

(35) deliberate concealment of his past turns him into either a mysterious figure or an ideal image “sprang from his Platonic conception of himself” (The Great Gatsby 98). The power of photographs sustains the ideal image and suspends disbelief as they “record and preserve the essential myth, the rewriting of history” (Dessner 183). As photographs are considered as the realization of desire, they supplant part of the reality. Indicating photographs’ ability to rewrite history, Dessner explains that photographs can “make visible truths which otherwise would be invisible and unknown, and they can present forceful evidence of propositions that are not true, not scientifically or historically true. 政治大 ambiguous nature is poised in 立the midst of competing impulses: original/replica, the but true to the heart’s desire and to its aspiring imagination” (183). Photography’s. ‧ 國. 學. visible/the invisible, the ideal/the real. The difficulty to keep balance between these contradictory ideas is shown in Barrett’s assessment that “perhaps equipoise between the. ‧. actual and the imagining is impossible in the twentieth century” (Barrett 553).. y. Nat. Fitzgerald’s attitudes toward modernity are carried into his works and presented as. io. sit. the blurring and confusing reality. In the modern age, progress and retrogress exist. n. al. er. simultaneously. As the invention of technological mechanics such as automobiles and. Ch. i n U. v. telephone revolutionize people’s daily lives as well as their thinking of time and place.. engchi. Moreover, the discovery of relativity challenges the conventional idea about time and, at the same time, sheds new light on literary and art field. Duality, simultaneity and relativity dominate the modern spirit. The proliferation of advertisement, photography and celebrity culture in the twentieth century captures the era’s spirit, that is, the completeness within the fragment. Containing revelation and concealment, advertisement. 29 . .

(36) communicates with the public in an ambiguous language. Advertisements sell quality goods and guarantee better life by conveying messages that prompt the public to pursue success and happiness. While people identified with the product they bought, they identified themselves with the figures on the advertisements. Men and women depicted on advertisements are the ideal projection of the public. Fitzgerald, like Gatsby, was familiar with this idea and tacitly used it as self-promotion. Donaldson points out that Fitzgerald’s striking good looks attracted magazines and newspaper reports and thus “it was frequently remarked that Fitzgerald resembled an illustration in a collar ad” (116).. 政治大 emphasized his youth, intelligence 立 and recklessness, is the praise of eternity. Fitzgerald’s The portraits of Fitzgerald on magazines, newspapers and advertisements, as they. ‧ 國. 學. mythmaking enterprise recreated his personality so that he could fit ideally into people’s expectation. The exploitation of physical attraction accelerated Fitzgerald’s way to. ‧. stardom. He and his wife Zelda’s celebrity status transformed their self-revelation into. y. Nat. self-promotion as Prigozy suggests that “their self-revelation was itself self-recreation in. io. sit. its most extreme form” (11).. n. al. er. The realization of self-recreation on advertisements and photography redefines the. Ch. i n U. v. way people perceive the reality as well as the way reality is presented. In the twentieth. engchi. century, seeing is not physical visibility since witness does not equal truth. Fitzgerald’s awareness of the physical reality constructed by images can be regarded as his denial to visibility. However, the correlation of vision and imagination begets a virtual reality. Advertising and photographs on the mass media, as one form of modernism, work subtly to call into question the possibility of the modern so construed. In celebrating the. 30 . .

(37) generative power, advertising and photography acknowledge their own obscurity, founding themselves in contradiction: they declare their authenticity, claiming the presentation of images as true, but in doing so they defy their predicament as an artificial one of trying to create illusion in a world so uncertain that no truth is guaranteed.. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. 31 . .

(38) Chapter 3 An Age of Unclear Vision: Reality and Virtual Reality in Advertising and Photography From Vision to Envisioning: Mass Consumerism and Advertising in the Early Twentieth-Century America In the early decades of the twentieth century, technological inventions drastically changed people’s lifestyle. Mechanical innovations fostered the development of American society. Business firms thrived due to the convergence of industry and. 政治大. consumption in the society. The rise of the middle class, as the new rich, influenced the. 立. American society both economically and culturally. Compared to the last generation, men. ‧ 國. 學. and women of the middle class had more disposable income. The increasing cost on material goods rendered the flourish of commercial activity. As merchandisers at the. ‧. beginning of the 1900s began to find ways to promote their products, advertising became. sit. y. Nat. an efficient way to promote consumerism and it emerged as the most pervasive technique. er. io. for promoting the budding consumer culture. (Batchelor 16) In the 1990s, signs. al. dominated the public’s vision as they appeared on billboards, store windows and public. n. v i n C h not only stoodUfor materialistic consumerism transportation. The rise of the advertising engchi but changed the public’s recognition of the reality. Embedded in people’s daily. consciousness, advertisement urged people to validate their self-worth through the products they purchased. (Batchelor 16) Advertisements permeated people’s daily life and reshaped their thoughts on materials. At the beginning, advertisements taught people what to buy and then they told people how to live. These advertisements set up a standard. 32 . .

(39) of life by providing imagery associated men with commodities. Seeing these implications conveyed by the advertisements, people began to believe that specific consumptive goods could promise an ideal life. Later, advertisements provided meaning of life and solutions to the problems people encountered in the modernized society. With the coming of industrial society, people fled to cities for work. Activities of industrial production eliminated individuality and substituted personal value with the value of material good. As technological and industrial progression accelerated the pace of living and increased people’s anxiety, advertisements demonstrated, visually, how products could solve basic. 政治大 new standard of living. In the立 1900s, the style and format of advertising also changed. problems of modern living in the fast-paced society. In this decade, advertising set up a. ‧ 國. 學. with the market strategy. The wide-spreading images formed a new way of communication. Different from traditional advertisements which plainly promote. ‧. commodities, modern advertising uses imagery combined with abstract words to express. y. Nat. thought and ideas. Seeing these abstract words printed in newspapers and magazines,. io. sit. consumers are allowed to project their own desire or thought into the products. (Batchelor. n. al. er. 123) These impressionistic images persuade people into believing what they see instead of what is shown.. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. In the early twentieth-century America, vision was distorted. The prevalence of advertisements and progressive development of film technology provided abundant images and photographs. With various reflections upon materialistic life, images provided indefinite reality. Since glamour and prosperity constitute the symbolic cultural context, the representation of life becomes more complex. Visibility dominated people’s. 33 . .

(40) perception and was deemed true. However, these images presented in front of the public were also indefinite, confusing or even contradictory. Images in the roaring twenties promoted a prosperous, glamorous and affluent life; however, while many of the images of the Roaring Twenties have an element of truth, they tend to be exaggerated. (Carlisle 28) The proliferation of advertisement signaled the dissolution of reality. As advertisements were expanded in the 1910s, they were widely printed on magazines, newspapers and billboards. Through illustrations and abstract word, advertisements conveyed features of product to the public. Advertising in the 1910s avoided direct and. 政治大 of a product is replaced by abstract 立 allusions, these printed massages and images not only specific presentation of a product; instead, it displays an abstraction. As concrete reality. ‧ 國. 學. change the public’s consuming behavior but transform their life from reality to mere representation. At this time, advertising allows people to “pour their own hopes, fears,. ‧. and illustrations in to products” (Batchelor 123). Two major advertising strategies were. y. Nat. used in the 1910s: the straightforward feedback of consumers and the impressionistic. io. sit. communication with consumers. Direct copy of a product on the ads ensures the quality. n. al. er. and honesty of the product. The impressionistic approach aimed to associate a product. Ch. i n U. v. with consumers and persuaded them into believing in the benefit of the product. The. engchi. impressionistic approach revolutionized the form of commercial expression as well as people’s perception of themselves. In the 1910s, people’s perception of the advertising was manipulated since “the people characterized in the ads represented how people wanted to be seen rather than how they appeared in reality” (Batchelor 123). The recurrent theme of self-change changed the idea of vision into envisioning. In the 1920s,. 34 . .

(41) while people had more disposable income to buy material goods, company offered them with a variety of goods that would satisfy customers’ desire to display social status through the products they purchase. Mass consumerism encouraged People’s consumptive activities includes buying things with low prices offered by companies as well as expensive items such as house or automobiles. This phenomenon did not happen “until the 1920s that ordinary middle-class consumers began buying large numbers of more expensive items on installment” (Batcheor 241). The popularity of affordable installment plan encouraged people to pay on installment and directly lead to the expansion of mass consumerism.. 立. 政治大. In The Great Gatsby, the distorted relations between identification and presentation. ‧ 國. 學. not only reflect the influence advertising has on individuals in the consumer society but offers a new way to examine the reality. In a series of consumptive activities, Gatsby and. ‧. Myrtle recreate a reality in which their concealed dream and desire come into existence.. Nat. sit. y. As Fitzgerald intends to make readers see, the obfuscatory visual perceptions in the novel. er. io. merges vision as well as imaginary vision to redefine visibility and invisibility. This. al. v i n C the interrelation between American culture of mass media andh e n g c h i U Fitzgerald’s meditation on n. contextual analysis of The Great Gatsby provides an insight into the twentieth-century. reality. These immersive multimedia experiences and spectacular amusements offered within the burgeoning culture industry suggest not the distorted perception but the potential of the virtual that forces the absence into existence. Expressive Strategy and Visibility. 35 . .