The Decaying Dreams of Capitalism in The Great Gatsby and Parasite

Abstract

This paper examines the portrayal of social mobility and class conflict in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby (1925) and Bong Joon-ho’s film Parasite (2019) to argue that the two works depict the destruction of the American dream in monopoly capitalism and the Korean dream in late capitalism, respectively. Numerous critics have written on the significance of the American dream in The Great Gatsby, but seldom was an attempt made to place the novel alongside a film on the development trajectory of capitalism. Although the two works are situated in vastly different time periods and regions, they both depict the struggles of non-elites in capitalism where social mobility has become considerably low. In this paper, I investigate the socio-economic contexts of the two works to reveal the way in which they portray the underlying class conflict within capitalism that has led to the public’s disenchantment with the meritocratic values embedded in the American and the Korean dreams. Gatsby’s inability to use legitimate measures to earn his wealth is found in the structure of monopoly capitalism which does not allow fair competition to individuals against the accumulated capital of the eighteenth century captains of industry. It then investigates the way in which the Kims and the Ohs in Parasite have been relegated to the status of precariats who are subjected to informal employment with little hope for upward mobility. The paper concludes with an emphasis on the importance of the comparative study of cultural works that are shaped by diverse forms of capitalistic societies.