The Great Gatsby film is filled with postmodernism traits of all

sorts. With the book being a legendary modernist piece, it was

almost inevitable that the movie, which was released in 2013,
would be filled with postmodernism. The first and most prominent
characteristic in the film is pastiche. Instead of being filled with
classical music as one might imagine, The Great Gatsby
soundtrack is filled with modern music including Jay-Z and Lana
Del Rey. Some of these popular artists songs are featured in jazz
renditions, showing the mixing of different genres and time
periods.
The beginning of the film opens with Nick Carraway in a
room that seems to be a therapists office, telling the story of
Gatsby. Although it is only a few times throughout the film, it
does exhibit some temporal distortion. The whole movie is just
Nick telling a non-fiction story to his therapist, and the viewers
are living the story. Several times, the director cuts back to the
therapists office, which is supposed to be the current time. In the
film, the screen is showing images of Gatsbys house and then
the therapist interrupts with Sohe was your neighbor? (The
Great Gatsby, Luthermann).This is an excellent example of
temporal distortion and having a non-linear timeline.
Another postmodernism trait that appears frequently in
The Great Gatsby is minimalism. Minimalism is the use of
characters and events that are decidedly common and nonexceptional characters. There are tons of these in Gatsbys party
scene. There are several characters introduced that are just like
one each other, just another money and party hungry young
person. For example, in he book there is a party scene where
Gatsby is introduced to two girls in matching yellow dresses.
"You don't know who we are, said one of the girls in yellow, but
we met you here about a month ago... we sat down at a table
with the two girls in yellow" (44).