Our book club debate on 'The Great Gatsby' got derailed when someone brought a 2013 film comparison

Last Thursday at the library in Portland, we were supposed to discuss the symbolism in chapter 5, but one member kept insisting the movie version from 2013 was better because of the party scenes. It totally split the group into two camps for 45 minutes. Has anyone else had a debate completely go off the rails because someone compared the book to its film adaptation?

3 comments

3 Comments

xena_hernandez982d ago

The 2013 party scenes are visually stunning and honestly made me appreciate the decadence Fitzgerald described even more.

kellyallen3d ago

Slam the brakes on that comparison SO fast. It drives me BONKERS when someone in a BOOK club wants to talk about a MOVIE instead. The whole point is the text, the words on the page, the stuff the director HAD to leave out. A movie is a completely different thing, like comparing a painting to a song. It completely ruins the flow of a good discussion about themes and metaphors. You waste 45 minutes arguing about casting choices instead of what Fitzgerald actually WROTE.

craig.olivia3d ago

Wait, hold on. You actually let the discussion go on for 45 minutes about casting choices instead of what Fitzgerald wrote? I mean, I close that down after like the second sentence usually. That's just wild to me that people let it go that far. Maybe it's just me, but the moment someone starts talking about how hot the actor is compared to how the book described them, I shut it down. Like, that's not what book club is for at all. That sounds like a nightmare honestly, just sitting there while people debate if the guy who played Gatsby was prettier than the one in the last movie version. I get too annoyed to even let it get to ten minutes let alone three quarters of an hour.