Hollywood as a Degenerate Reality: F. Scott Fitzgerlad’s The Last Tycoon

Abstract

This article, the second part of research on The Last Tycoon, attempts to show that Fitzgerald defines the function of Hollywood and its relation to society, almost in the same manner as Louis Marin illustrates his own idea of the function and the permanence of Disneyland as a Utopian space. Just as Hollywood takes reality and refashions it in a state of unlikely perfection, so Disneyland or Utopia, as Marin has put it, is a "fantasmatic projection" of the historical and social reality of the American nation. And as a result, the function of Disneyland, and, it can be argued, Hollywood, too, is to show "the differences between social reality and a projected model of social existence". But since both tend to see the function of Hollywood and Disneyland within the confines of entertainment and pleasure does this indicate that these ideal places relegate meaning to the arena of entertainment and therefore our sense of historical awareness is undermined?