The new year is upon us my dear friends and with it comes the 2013 awards season, and a whole new year in cinema. And somehow all the stupid crap I pulled last year is dead and gone now and I have a whole year to pull an entirely new set of crap. Iron Man 3, Thor 2, Oz the Great and Powerful, Man of Steel, The Wolverine, Sin City 2, jOBS, and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug are among those to look forward to in 2013.
Les Misérables and Argo are Golden Globe favorites alongside Lincoln and Zero Dark Thirty. Baz Luhrmann‘s The Great Gatsby might give hip hip mogul Jay-Z his first Oscar, as he was recently hired to score the film. Luhrmann is known for Moulin Rouge and Romeo & Juliet, two films in which he also used contemporary music in a period film.
Based on the classic novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby takes us back to the roaring twenties, focusing on titular character Jay Gatsby (Leonardo Dicaprio): a legendary charming, confident, ambitious and lavish hero of the post World War I era. Nobody is perfect as it turns out, as main character Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) starts to unravel Gatsby’s true nature. Carraway’s obsession with Gatsby is representative of humanity’s attraction to fame, glamour, and the spectacle of the Artisan: Let’s take a look
He smiled understandingly—much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it….It faced—or seemed to face—the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself , and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby p. 48
James Gatz a.k.a. Jay Gatsby is characterized by his ambition, charm, frivolity, and mysterious nature. A “self-made man” Gatsby was born into poverty, and from a young age decided that material wealth would dominate his aspirations. And so he changed his name to Jay Gatsby and befriended the rich and powerful. Upon being shipped off to World War 1, Gatsby earned the rank of Major, and was decorated with valour. During the war Gatsby received a letter from love interest Daisy Buchanan, and decided that wealth and stature was his only option to win her affection. Returning home to prohibition, Gatsby found a perfect opportunity to become rich and powerful. Buying an extravagant mansion on Long Island, Gatsby threw frequent and lavish parties, and quickly became the target of conversation and speculation among his peers. Bold, daring, audacious, and wrapped in mystery Gatsby knows, as all Promoters do, that speculation is a powerful agent. Indeed Gatsby has a knack for living in the eye of the beholder, letting himself be whatever his guests want him to be. Commonly referring to fabricated ancestors in regards to his wealth and pedigree, Gatsby finally became the man he had always wanted to be. Turns out however that nothing in life is free, as Gatsby’s powerful illusions begin to fade.
The Great Gatsby drops May 10, 2013.
I would guess that Leonardo is also a Promoter, what do you think?
PS to “The Prince:”
Did you feel like you might be writing about yourself just a little? 😉
Haha it was definitely a slight passion piece. Leo? To be honest I’m not sure. Promoter sounds reasonable but he’s a pretty complex guy. I was thinking about how old he was when he did titanic and basically became a sex symbol. Most people, specifically artisans are easily corrupted by something like that. But instead he evolved into one of our generations best actors. Anyway I’m not entirely sure so if you wanna further discuss it feel free! P.S. go broncos!
Oz the Great and Powerful has been a happy obsession for me ever since I first saw it. Do you care to write a Keirseyan analysis of it, Derek?
I would love to and was thinking about it but unfortunately I haven’t seen it yet and assumed that the four temperaments were not central to the story line. I assume you know the classic quote : “Courage, Home, Heart, Brain — Baum in his Wizard of Oz characters managed to capture the essence of four personalities. Four distinct patterns of attitude and action that have been observed again and again in human beings for over two thousand years”. — Please Understand Me II, p. 17 Anyway I apologize in advance as I fear the time has passed for me to blog on that movie since I usually blog in anticipation of films. Anyway I hope you enjoyed the film and please tell me if the four temperament were prevalent in it’s story line?
Well, to be candid, my fascination with the movie is erotic. For a PG-rated Disney film, it’s remarkably sexy. As a male Artisan attracted to female Rationals, I’m captivated by this story of a male Artisan who romances beautiful witches, beings who can allegorically be interpreted as female Rationals.
Aside from the pejorative sense of “witch” to mean a vicious, disagreeable woman, what is a witch but a female wizard? “Because Rationals value the strategic intellect so highly, they tend to take as their idol the technological wizard, especially the scientific genius. After all, a wizard is the ultimate scientist, with what seems an almost magical power over nature….Scratch a Rational, find a scientist; but glimpse the figure the Rationals would aspire to become, and behold a wizard.”—Please Understand Me II, p. 192. In one of my blogs that is no longer online, I explained the allure of female Rationals: “Their love of knowledge makes them interesting; their devotion to reason makes them trustworthy; their calm demeanor makes them pleasant; their disrespect for authority makes them exciting; their self-controlled, nonconformist sexuality makes them mysterious; their toughness on themselves makes them figures of pathos; and their skepticism about me makes them a challenge. Hubba hubba, what’s not to love?” Some of the women of The Big Bang Theory exhibit these traits quite charmingly, don’t they?
I like to think that Oz the Great and Powerful offers not only escapist fantasy but also moral lessons for a guy like me. But for this, some translation is required: Oz’s character flaws as a Promoter Artisan do not exactly match mine as a Composer Artisan. According to Keirsey’s eternally unpublished work The Dark Escape, an aberrant Promoter becomes an “unscrupulous cheat,” while an aberrant Composer becomes a “perverse derelict.” Whereas Oz gets in trouble by proactively womanizing, I get in trouble by habitually denying my sexual and romantic desires. I can trace this habit all the way back to age thirteen, when family politics and schoolyard politics drove me to act as if puberty happened only to other people. At 40, I find that I have to make some effort to keep eros from falling down the memory hole, or else I lapse into fantasies of endless war against my father—who has been dead for fifteen years! By sparking my erotic imagination, Oz the Great and Powerful just might help me find wisdom and inner peace.