From Flappers to Rappers

The movie “The Great Gatsby” successfully mixes 1920’s jazz and modern hip hop. It seems to be radical to put off-the-time music in a movie, but the sound tracks are perfectly fit to the music. Some might say the sound tracks used are awkward, but the blend of classical jazz music and modern music makes the movie more dynamic and modern. By balanced use of 1920s music and modern day hip hop, the movie becomes classical in some scenes and modern in other scenes. Actually, when Fitzgerald wrote the novel, jazz music had been treated just as the modern-day hip hop is treated nowadays. It was considered as ‘new’ and a lot of people were not used to such kind of music. Now, just like Fitzgerald featured the new music in his novel to make it more dynamic, the movie puts the modern-day hip hop to make the movie more dynamic and the hip hop music perfectly matches the time period in the movie, when the gangsters were wild and illegal moves are widespread.

The hip-hop music perfectly matches with the movie. The beat makes the scenes more thrilling, and the music makes the party more exciting. The modern-jazz such as ‘Back to Black’ fits in the 1920s mood, however it also sounds modern. Although the movie is based on 1920s, the party scenes and the flappers are completely different from those in the black-and-white photo. They look really modern, just like they were in that time period, and lively.

The mood of movie is quite critically affected by the modern music. 1920s jazz sounded really radical, adventurous and racy at that time, however, it sounds really old-fashioned or even boring today. Putting those music in the movie would have make the movie more realistic, however, it wouldn’t really sound dynamic and adventurous to nowadays’ audience. So the modern-day hip hop is a really successful rhetoric choice, because, it makes the movie a little bit anachronistic but ironically restores the mood of 1920s more realistically.