- Gatsby parties are common, but this one stands out for its extravagance—the expected outlay was $20,000—and the particular irony of its locale. F. Scott Fitzgerald, who wrote The Great Gatsby after dropping out of Princeton, once called the school "the pleasantest country club in America," which is one of those great insults that sounds like a compliment to those being held out for criticism.
I'm not sure how you would read the Cliff's Notes for The Great Gatsby and not see it as a scathing indictment of excess. I think marketers will be marketers and I think asking kids to read The Great Gatsby and then ask them what their "green light" is is an exercise that could go wrong easily... but I think there's some undue editorialization here. Gatsby is a tragedy and an unambiguous one. The fact that everyone is getting all twitterpated about what it all means is a sure sign that those writing the articles haven't read it in far too long. Carey Mulligan caught a ration of shit for saying she was playing Daisy like a Kardashian... but she's right, dammit. Daisy is nothing more than a skinny Kardashian from the '20s and F. Scott Fitzgerald busted ass to show it. The problem is we have a media machine that presumes that "being a Kardashian" is a good thing because we're so far down the wormhole that we're no longer thinking about this shit.
Maybe I have too much faith in the world, but I'd imagine these parties (not including the corporate ones) are named that way ironically (or it is all just done tongue-in-cheek). I think the fact that the novel is supposed to be a rallying cry against decadence is why they are called Gatsby parties. Everyone wants to sort of celebrate the absurdity of wealth, because only the truly wealthy can do that. Although I don't really remember the Great Gatsby well enough for me to feel assured in my statement being right.
I think it can only be done ironically if you have to rent the tux, if you know what I mean.
The meaning of the green light could be up to interpretation. To me the green light wasn't a goal in the book, it was an unhealthy obsession. Easily my favorite book of all time.