Why the Roaring Twenties should be named ‘Decade of the Student’

Hannah Epstein explains why The Great Gatsby and a night out at the LCR aren’t so different…


I often hear people say that they wish they had been born in a different time period. During the Restoration for the romance or the fifties for the glamour, the past is a popular place to be. (Personally, I feel the future, at least a few hundred years further along the timeline, will be a much more exciting era to be living in.)

Leo looking suave…

The much anticipated screen adaption of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is due out in just a few weeks, starring the lovely Leonardo Di Caprio! The hype surrounding this film made me wonder what attracts the average student to a film set almost a hundred years before their existence. Watching the trailer, however, I realised the answer was staring me right in the face.

Sex, drugs and alcohol.

Gatsby, a man of complete mystery, throws lavish and often orgiastic parties at his grand mansion. Does that sound so different from our very own LCR? At the A-list, you can be fairly certain that ten people (at the very least!) who you’ve seen jumping about to One Direction are later going to be engaging in some form of sexual activity. So sex can be checked off the list.

As for alcohol… Drink is the saviour of pretty much any dead club night, and if you spend most of your time at the bar, then it really doesn’t matter how many people are on the dance floor. Prohibition may have meant that Gatsby and co had to rely on bootleg booze, but rely on it they did.

Beats elbowing people out the way to get a VK in the LCR…

As for drugs, it isn’t often that you can walk around campus without the slight hint of smoke in the air, and not the kind from regular cigarette. The Great Gatsby proves that drug use really is nothing new.

Yes, I’ll admit that the majority of student life is more about essays than organised crime. But there is no denying the other parallels that can be drawn between the Roaring Twenties in affluent America and student life. I mean, this film is being released in 3D and Jay-Z is its executive producer – need I say more?

Drama and gossip are usually important factors to a recently legal adult looking to have a true university experience. Everything that we don’t want our parents to know about our lives away from home can be found in that great American novel.

So it is my humble suggestion to any student who wishes to enhance their already debauched university experience, to go and see the film when it’s released, or better yet read the book.

Pick up some tips from those thoroughly disgusting and delicious 1920s Americans, and the next time you head out for a night of fun, try them out for yourself. You never know, you could end up having the best night of your life. All thanks to Gatsby.