Journal 21

Journal 21 - Some Like It Hot and The Great Gatsby Comparison/Contrast

Although Some Like It Hot is a comedy and The Great Gatsby is a tragedy, both works use popular culture to portray life in 1920s America.  Focusing on the following elements (characterization, conflict, and theme), discuss how the two works are similar and different and what each is saying about American life.

These two movies are similar because they both have love triangles. In Some Like It hot the love triangle is between the two personas of Joe and Sugar. She wants to marry someone rich and powerful so Joe invents the persona Junior. This is very similar to Daisy wanting to marry someone rich so Gatsby becomes rich and powerful to get the girl. Other similarities can be found between Jerry and Nick. They both play the sidekick to the real hero of the story like what Nick did for Gatsby and Jerry did for Joe.  Osgood and Tom share similarities because they both play the rich man who does whatever they want to. Both of these movies also contain a gangster, in “Gatsby” there was Wolfshien and in Some Like It hot there was Spats. The two movies also have similarities in their conflicts with the love triangles and they share the themes of love, romance, crime, money, and morality.

The movies are different though because of how the characters act in these situation and how the American 1920s. In The Great Gatsby, the love triangles are extramarital affairs and they go wrong with Myrtle and Gatsby both end up dead. Osgood is not exactly a bad guy, but Tom is the villain in Gatsby. Gatsby, who is the hero in his story, has similarities in his bootlegging and crime involvement to Spats, who is the villain in Some Like It Hot. The comedy of Some Like it Hot, ends on a positive note with the couples being together, but in The Great Gatsby, it ends in death and on a much more negative note. One theme in The Great Gatsby that is much more prominent is the theme of the differences and conflicts caused by social classes. Some like it Hot shows a much brighter, funnier, and easy going look at the 1920s, where The Great Gatsby shows a negative, violent, and judgmental take on society that is not present in the other movie.