『 위대한 개츠비』에 나타난 대중문화 담론

F. Scott Fitzgerald openly denounced popular literature for its obscenity and vulgarity. Nevertheless, his work willingly engages in the popular discourses of the Jazz Age. This paper focuses on how popular culture operates in constructing Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. The cover jacket of the first edition of The Great Gatsby published in 1925 includes an Art Deco style drawing of a woman with big eyes in the sky over an amusement park made bright with electric lights. The cover is emblematic of Fitzgerald's keen awareness of emergent arts and innovated technology, both of which are deeply related to the advent of modernism. References to popular culture continue and abound in The Great Gatsby. For example, the colossal advertisement of T. J. Eckleburg signifies the pervading dominance of advertising industry. Many characters also recognizes the persuasive force of commodity culture along with advertising. Myrtle is the female consumer who emulates celebrities and their fashions advertised in such popular magazines as Town Tattler, a typical scandal magazine of the 1920s. Gatsby's schedule is written on the last fly-leaf of Hopalong Cassidy, a popular novel based on the frontier cowboy. Along with Dan Cody, whose name combines Daniel Boon with Buffalo Bill Cody, this novel represents the secularization of the frontier spirit. Fitzgerald also makes a reference to a popular novel titled Simon Called Peter, which is related to a murder case which took place in 1921. Without a doubt, Nick writes a book--perhaps a biography or fiction--about Gatsby, as an author-narrator and a character. Nick's choice of the epithet “great,” however, must be considered along with “characters” found in popular culture, such as Hadji Ali, the “Great Magician of Egypt.” Other associations that Fitzgerald tried to make include his tentative title for the novel, “Trimalchio in West Egg,” which obviously implies a negative view of Gatsby’s lifestyle. Thus, Gatsby's “greatness” becomes ironical when measured against references to popular culture.