The Great Debate

Starting Friday, masses of Americans will sit with 3-D glasses perched on the ends of their noses, carried away by Baz Luhrmann’s magic carpet ride into the ur-myth of the modern age. The 3-D technology works splendidly to sweep us into the material wonder of the 1920s: Sparkling objects whiz by, seemingly close enough to snatch from the air. The dizzying pace of the era’s change comes alive in the kaleidoscopic rush of party sequences; a hypnotic hip-hop beat propelling us through opulent rooms that display Jay Gatsby’s capitalist triumph in all its eye-popping splendor.

That we’re asked to view the Land of Baz through a pair of mass-produced cardboard spectacles ‑ our heads aching slightly as our eyes struggle to reconcile two separate projections of the same image ‑ makes an uncanny kind of sense.

The Great Gatsby, after all, is a novel of double vision. Gatsby is a man who wishes to be seen, and not seen; an exhibitionist eager to show off every aspect of his magnificent wealth but bent on hiding the hustling it took to acquire. Fitzgerald reveals the power dynamics in who gets to look at whom, and the tension between what’s in front of us and what’s moving just beyond our field of vision. The observant author filled his slim book with references to eyes: floating eyes, tragic eyes, aggressive eyes, impersonal eyes. One character is known simply as “Owl Eyes.” There are eyes that approve and eyes that scorn. The motif is so prominent that artist Francis Cugat chose to feature a pair of hypnotic eyes that hover over the carnival lights of a city for the novel’s iconic cover.

Fitzgerald wants us to be dazzled by Gatsby, but not be so blinded that we can’t see the limitations of his viewpoint. With all his strength of vision, Gatsby is not looking for a better world. He’s just looking for acceptance into a corrupt world that already exists — a world rife with racism, exclusion, women reduced to objects and, above all, fantastically expensive stuff. All the sumptuous parties and social graces cover up habitual lying, criminality and degradation. It’s ugly at the top. That’s Gatsby’s blind spot.

The last major film experience of Gatsby was 1974, in the wake of the Watergate revelations that drew back the curtain on political corruption. Still reeling from the mayhem of a Wall Street-driven financial crash, we turn to Gatsby once again for a sense of perspective on our American experiment.

2012 was the first class-warfare election of our new Gilded Age. The first since the middle class has come to understand, in the words of new Senator-elect Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), that the “rules are rigged against it.” Business-as-usual may no longer be acceptable.

But Washington didn’t get the memo. Even as ballots were still being counted in Palm Beach, Florida, the two parties lurched into the fierce debate over the fiscal cliff, the noxious brew of automatic spending cuts and expiring tax cuts that would poison the recovery. The debate, a dismal sequel to the 2011 debt ceiling melodrama, focuses on deficits not jobs. Once more, Republicans are threatening to blow up the recovery unless Democrats make otherwise unacceptable concessions. Once more, President Barack Obama looks for a “grand bargain,” seeking bipartisan support for terms divorced from opinion outside the beltway. Once more, what Scott Galupo at The American Conservative called the “clown show” of the House Republican caucus blows itself up.

Republicans are the most clueless about this new reality. The election’s one clear mandate, confirmed in polls ever since, was for Obama’s oft-repeated pledge to let the Bush tax cuts expire on those earning more than $250,000. Yet, House Republicans stood staunch in defense of the very rich – refusing to pass their own speaker’s bill to extend the tax breaks on everyone except millionaires.

Here in the egalitarian paradise of the United States, there is apparently nothing worse than “class warfare” – which is why Republicans are trying to affix this damning label to President Obama’s new plan to raise taxes on the rich. One hitch, though, is that the billionaire Warren Buffett is not alone in his willingness to pay higher taxes. Many other wealthy Americans are also ready to see their taxes go up. The battle over taxes, its turns out, is not just between the rich and everyone else; the upper class itself is divided on this issue. That is good news for Obama, who’ll need all the help he can get to enact deficit reduction that balances spending cuts with new revenue.

Various wealthy Americans have praised the President’s tax plan since it was unveiled Monday. “It’s time for millionaires – like me and the ones in Congress – to step up to the plate and start paying their fair share,” said Guy Saperstein, a wealthy lawyer who is part of a group called Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength. Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, not exactly known for his noblesse oblige, chimed in, writing on his blog right after Obama’s speech that paying taxes is the most “patriotic thing you can do.”

Obama’s call for higher taxes on the rich is not new. He pledged repeatedly to raise taxes on high earners during his 2008 run for President – and won the vote of these same Americans, those making over $200,000, by a comfortable margin.