i’m laughing remembering the time my next door neighbor (an 8 year old girl) told me “party in your bedroom” by cash cash was one of her favorite songs and then she proceeded to scream the lyrics with her friends.
that song is about a camgirl. her parents never suspected a thing. hahahaha. i hope she has a realization in the future and laughs, like i did with “if you want to be good girl” by the backstreet boys.
So let me explain this theory for those of you who haven’t heard it before already.
The Great Gatsby is a story of a man that makes his fortune bootlegging and throws countless magnificent parties all in hopes of attracting the attention of his old flame Daisy.
But it’s really a story about insurmountable class barriers. Daisy will never be with Gatsby, no matter how much she claims to love him. No matter how hard Gatsby tries, he will always be stuck on West Egg, only able to admire the ‘green light’ of upper class american romanticism from afar.
Themes of insurmountable class barriers permeate the entire novel right from some of the famous opening lines:
“Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”
And so here’s the theory:
Jay Gatsby was black, passing for white (“High yellow”)
Lower class vs upper class. Old money vs new money. East Egg vs West Egg. White vs black. Don’t believe me?
- Early in the novel, Daisy’s beau Tom goes on a full fledged rant about the oncoming threat of the rise of the black race in society
- Another reference to race is made when Nick and Gatsby pass by a limo driven by a white chauffeur with “three modish negroes”
- Numerous references are made to Gatsby’s notably dark skintone in comparison to Daisy’s lighter skintone
- “I would have accepted without question the information that Gatsby sprang from the swamps of Louisiana or from the lower East Side of New York. That was comprehensible. But young men didn’t— at least in my provincial inexperience I believed they didn’t— drift coolly out of nowhere and buy a palace on Long Island Sound.”
Not only was the insurmountable barrier between him and Daisy one of class and upbringing, but also one of race.
What we take for granted as Gatsby’s whiteness is actually a omission of detail rather than a specific indicator that he was white.
From the article Was Gatsby Black?
Thompson adds, “When I ask people what basis there is for Gatsby being white, I get silence. I have asked students, colleagues. They don’t know. They cannot give me any evidence to back up the speculation. And why haven’t people made this argument so far?”
Of course as with any theory or reading of a classic text, there’s room for disagreement:
Fitzgerald scholar Matthew J. Bruccoli has one answer. “Because it’s mishigas! If Fitzgerald wanted to write about blacks, it wouldn’t have taken 75 years to figure it out. If that’s what Fitzgerald wanted, he would have made it perfectly clear in April 1925. Great works of literature are not fodder for guessing games. This kind of thing is bad for literature, bad for Fitzgerald, bad for ‘The Great Gatsby’ and bad for students who get exposed to this kind of guessing game.”
But why shouldn’t we play a guessing game with it? We don’t have Fitzgerald around to verify any of these details so why not have a bit of fun with the text? It’s a very modern reading of the text and it makes it not only more relatable but more heartbreaking.
Everyone has their own reasons why they can’t be with their own Daisy.
Why shouldn’t Gatsby be black? And why can’t he really be with Daisy?
In this discussion about whether or not Beethoven was black, the point is made:
Another tight question along these lines: Was Jay Gatsby black? Again, it’s probably not literally the case (as Fitzgerald intended it) –- but what’s much more interesting is everyone’s utter inability to take it seriously as a legitimate reading of the text, which it is.
So in high school I never had to read The Great Gatsby (we read The Dubliners instead, and then one of us found out about Joyce’s uh, love letters, so endless giggling), and never had an interest in reading it on my own because come on.
Another novel about a white man’s life? Nah bruh, I’m good.
But reading it within the context of Jay Gatsby as a white passing black man, suddenly my interest is piqued.
(Source: pollums)
Here are some awesome and empowering quotes from several very strong female celebrities.
And Kristen Stewart.
No, you know what? Fuck you.
Let me tell you about Kristen Stewart.
Let’s talk about how she’s the centerpiece of one of the most inexplicably popular misogynistic pieces of film shit and somehow gets blamed for it sucking, despite the fact that, hey, the books were actually worse. For those who were lucky enough to escape reading the actual books, her apparent lack of emotion is 100% accurate to Bella’s character, because Bella is in fact not a character but a blank white wall for fourteen-year-old girls to project themselves onto. Robert Pattinson is not the only one in the cast who hates Twilight, thank you.
Let’s talk about how she got crucified in the media for having an affair with a married man, when that man was her director. And let’s remember that she was called all manner of things for “ruining her relationship with RPattz” when she wasn’t even engaged to the dude, let alone married with kids. But oh no, she gets called a slut because she’s Kristen Stewart, she gets her career fucked because she’s Kristen Stewart, and the dude gets off scott free.
Let’s talk about how she is incredibly shy and anxious (rather, incidentally, like Chris Evans) but does film anyway, because she’s just that awesome.
Fuck your noise. She’s not the best actor in the world but she sure as hell doesn’t deserve that kind of shit.
(via releasethemurderbirds)
i just had a really great hour-long phone conversation with a friend from high school. feels good dude.
oh cool the gov. of maryland signed a gun control law that bans 45 types of assault weapons, decreases the number of bullets allowed in magazines, “and requires handgun buyers to undergo safety training and submit fingerprints to obtain a license.” (latimes).
there’s a bunch of old white people complaining on the news and the nra “vows to sue,” go figure.
You think that Baltimore’s gangs will get their licenses and fingerprints? Not at all. 91% of Baltimore’s murder victims were criminals killed by other criminals, with an estimate of 80% of homicides being gang related. Are these regulations going to make people safer?
Wow, 45 assault weapons. Most murders are committed with handguns and the so called “assault weapons” aren’t deadlier than “normal” ones. The Utoya shooter in Norway racked more casualties with his Mini-14 than any American shooter with an AR15.
Decreases the number of rounds on a magazine? Because it’s too hard to change a magazine, and because criminals will follow the law. To quote MrColionNoir in his YouTube video, David Gregory has a spray tan and he managed to get a 30 round magazine into DC. How hard could it be for street hardened criminals?
White people? Way to make it racial. For your information gun ownership transcends race, age and sex.
91%? 80%? Where are you getting these statistics? Did you just make them up to make your argument sound good? Plus, this legislation arose as a result of some truly terrible mass shootings in 2012 and is meant to try to prevent mass shootings from occurring in Maryland in the future.
It’s easier to kill a whole bunch of people with an assault weapon, which is often defined as a semi-automatic weapon, hence the ban on 45 types of them (so, yeah, I’d say they are deadlier because they carry more rounds and they are self-loading). According to the Washington Post, in both of the two most deadly mass shootings in the United States last year (the shooting in a movie theater in Aurora, CO in August and the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting in December), assault rifles were used by the shooters.
Oh yes EXCUSE ME for “making it racial” when out of 62 mass shootings in the U.S. from 1982-2012, only 15 of the killers weren’t white. OH AND NOW I’M GONNA MAKE IT ABOUT GENDER TOO, only one of the killers was a woman.
I’m fucking tired of seeing people die in mass shootings so I am proud of my state for making these regulations.
oh cool the gov. of maryland signed a gun control law that bans 45 types of assault weapons, decreases the number of bullets allowed in magazines, “and requires handgun buyers to undergo safety training and submit fingerprints to obtain a license.” (latimes).
there’s a bunch of old white people complaining on the news and the nra “vows to sue,” go figure.
