How Is Daisy Presented In The Great Gatsby

The film The Great Gatsby (2013), directed by Baz Luhrmann, is a film based off F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel from 1925. The novel and movie tells the story of Jay Gatsby, a self-made millionaire and his strong desire and obsession with reuniting with his former lover Daisy Buchanan, a wealthy woman of high class. The story is told through the narrator Nick Carraway and his interactions with Gatsby. The movie explores the themes of illusion versus reality and is an example of the romanticization of women in film. This is shown by various film techniques that Luhrmann uses. This can be seen in the scene where Nick goes to visit his cousin Daisy at the Buchanan’s home in East Egg for the first time in the film. This scene introduces us to Daisy’s

These techniques include props and colour, mainly the use of flowing white curtains on set. The colour white and white curtains are commonly known to be a symbol of innocence, purity, and chastity. These curtains surround Daisy as we see her for the first time, looking over the end of the couch in a suggestive manner. She is dressed in a white strapless dress which is not seen in the first shot of Daisy. This gives the impression of what we are supposed to think of her, which is an image of Daisy that is influenced by the male gaze. In this scene Daisy is placed under a sexual light and is intentionally presented in a delicate and vulnerable way, which shows the theme of how women can be romanticized in films. This gives the audience the impression that Daisy is

She lives only for luxury and doesn’t have anything truly meaningful in her life. This shows the theme of illusion versus reality. The illusion being Daisy appearance and the way she is presented and the reality being the person she really is, which isn’t as innocent as her iconic colour makes her seem. In some ways white may not be used to symbolize purity in this film and could represent the exact opposite as being used on daisy who is a very disloyal, selfish, and impure person. The meaning of the colour white gets overthrown with the real imperfections of Daisy’s character. The colour white can also have another meaning that it symbolizes pure wealth and class as Tom and Daisy’s house has a mostly white interior. Daisy and Jordan also wear a lot of white dresses and pearls. This symbolizes that they are made of old money with class purity. Gatsby on the other hand, even though he has as much if not more money than those with old money, he will never have the class purity that the rest of the elites have due to his low-class background and the way he made his money. This is symbolized by the fact that Gatsby’s possessions are often gold, silver, pale pink and blue, but never pure white. No matter how much Gatsby tries to be on the same