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The Great Gatsby (Greed (Gatsby's house is quite modern and features…

- - - - Daisy's main colour. Innocence. Purity. Death.
    - - Associated with nature and kindness, but also envy and greed
    - - Gatsby's main colour. His car is yellow, his house also has some yellow as do some of his outfits. Yellow can represent gold. Could also represent fool's gold. Could represent decay.
    - - Colour of nobility and blue bloods, but also a colour of sadness, depression and loneliness.
    - - The colour of the poor. Ugly, not chosen on purpose.
    - - Lust, passion, violence. Myrtle's main colour
- - - - Old money. Very athletic. Has a habit of sleeping around. Believes he is a naturally superior person than others (eugenics). Says "wolf pack" without any irony. Has facial hair
        
        Tom sees his masculine traits as essential to his character, success and respect. He insults and bullies men who show less masculinity than him and acts even worse towards women. Tom "Life is a something you dominate, if you are any good". This seems to be Tom's view on people as well as life. He doesn't care about people's feelings, but he does care about controlling people. It's a little odd that he does attack the masculinity of both Nick and Gatsby, yet unlike them, he never went to war.
    - - Another war vet. As incredibly wealth as Tom, but his is all new money and comes from gambling, bootlegging and probably insider trading. Always shown as clean shaven. Wears a wide range of colour, but commonly wears pastels. The pink suit is a plot point taken straight from the novel and since Tom explicitly calls out, it has more significance. Gatsby comes from a poor family and before he achieves his wealth he first
        
        Gatsby doesn't care about traditional masculine roles. This is an interesting contrast to his somewhat traditional views on relationships (Gatsby believes in true love, Daisy is the only woman he has ever been with and he decides he wants her to be the only one before he brings himself to kiss her). Gatsby's ability to earn incredible amounts of money, driving skills, confidence and perseverance are all very masculine traits, but his fashion sense, kindness and compassion are all comparatively feminine ones. Gatsby is man who benefits from not being a stereotypical man and this one of the reasons Tom hates him even before he realises Gatsby is having sex with his wife.
    - - War veteran. From a rich family, but nowhere near as rich as Tom's. He is rich enough to go to Yale, but does need to get a job. He grows facial hair later on
        
        Nick does not start off as a masculine character and Tom loves to emphasise this. In the apartment, Tom even accuses Nick of cuckoldry. As if to meet Tom's challenge, Nick stays and has sex with Myrtle's sister. Later, as Nick spends more and more time with Gatsby, we see him start like Tom less and less. He also becomes a more confident person and rejects Tom's invitation to supper (and to implicity abandon Gatsby) after the incident.
  - - - Daisy has the most feminine traits of any character (although her hidden intelligence and cynicism suggest she is emphasising these traits because she think they are all the world wants to see from women). She constantly wears colours like white, pink or light purple and often adorns herself with jewels.
        
        Although Daisy has many feminine traits, none of them are motherly. She acts far more like a child than a parent and this is one of the early hints that she is not meant to be a likeable character.
    - - A pro golfer (although she doesn't need the money). Jordan is easily the least feminine of the female character in the text and the audience normally also sees her as the most likeable.
    - - Myrtle is vain and envious, and somewhat powerless (despite her strong personality). She is given some of the most negative feminine traits. Her relationship with Tom is... Tom is her sugar daddy.
        
        She dies when she is trying to run to who she thinks is Tom because she believes he will save her from a life of poverty with Wilson.
- - - - The majority of Tom's servants are black. This is to display how much he seems to enjoy bossing them around. Black people are always silent servants at Tom's house. On the other hand, Gatsby hires servants without caring about the colour of their skin, and we see his servants are more willing to talk and seem happier. Gatsby also is more polite to his servants
      - The poor are shown as hardworking and caring, but their lives seem horrible. When Myrtle is killed, the local poor residents all gather to mourn, help her husband and try to get some kind of justice through the police. Conversely, when Gatsby dies, no one shows up or seems to care except Nick.
        
        The poor characters often all wear clothes of a similar colour and type, suggesting that they care more about being a community. Myrtle's red and greed really stand out from this, and this makes sense because she hates being poor. However, when Myrtle is killed, she is wearing grey/off-white sleeping-ware, suggesting that she is part of the poor community at the end of the day.
      - When the camera is focusing on the performances, the camera is normally focused on female characters and performers. These characters are often introduced by others and they nearly never speak unless it is part of song. Gatsby's male guests are musicians and composers, but his female guests are singers and dancers. When Jordan describes the party guests, the most powerful female people she can mention are heirs, but the powerful men can be judges, mayors, senators and more. Daisy's cynicism about the roles of women in society are well established.
  - - - Some of this may have backfired. "Great Gatsby" themed parties and formals were popular when the movie came out and still today. Anyone who throws a 1920s themed party and calls it a "Gatsby" party may have missed the point that these parties are for vain, selfish and careless people.
      - Characters like Tom are incredibly hypocritical. He loves drinking, but judges Gatsby for bootlegging. He hates Gatsby for having an affair with his wife, but he has had at least three. He hates black people and Jewish people, but he has a great time at a speakeasy run by a Jewish gang and featuring black performers. He complains about "new money" types encouraging loose morals like interracial marriage, but is happy to buy alcohol from them and likes to cheat on his wife with an audience. This suggests that powerful people (who Tom represents) love to enjoy the immorality they judge others for having.