The film also explored interesting themes, such as the American Dream. The reading talks about testing one's moral flexibility when starting one's career. Bud starts the film out by saying "that's illegal" a few times, one of those being to Gordon Gekko. But Gekko encourages him that if he wants all the things he says he does, he has to bend the rules and cheat. Bud hopes that if he does what Gordon says, one day he'll be the one giving out the demands. And who wouldn't want to be as successful as Gordon Gekko? Except for the fact that he is successful off of crushing anyone and anything in his path along with trading this image. The one thing that bothers me most about this film is that these men are going to great lengths and doing ridiculous things all for the image that maybe a company is going to have a profitable year. It is somewhat sickening to watch, yet when I imagine myself after college trying to establish my career, I wonder if I would test my morals.
While watching this film I also was comparing it to this year's The Wolf of Wall Street, and the reason I liked that movie better was because of how it was almost satirical of Wall Street. You laugh while watching Jordan Belfort rile up his broker's and have ridiculous things happening inside of the office. I think Wall Street and everything these people do is disgusting, so to watch it put into a more comedic light made it more enjoyable for myself. With Wall Street I could see where the story was going and was just bored with the predictable-ness of it all.
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I agree that everything that occurred in this film was all for the sake of image. Gekko even says in the film that money is all about perception. I completely agree with how sickening it is to watch people get sucked into the system the way Bud did with Gekko, however we all wonder just how tempting these opportunities would be if we were put in a place such as Bud. We talked about in class how tempting it would be, so I agree that it's questionable what we would do if put in a similar situation. I also watched the Wolf of Wall Street just a few weeks ago and really enjoyed it. It was definitely much more comedic than this film.
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad I wasn't the only one who thought this movie was entirely predictable....
ReplyDeleteI also think it's interesting how this can be related to the American Dream. Whenever I think of the American Dream, I think of nice house, picket fence, nuclear family, latest model car, and everything being hunky-dory. But I'm starting to realize that the American Dream has evolved from that original 50's/60's stereotype. In the 80's, being rich and successful in a big city was the new American Dream. Getting there may involve pulling some strings and taking risks, but it was still there. I think that today's American Dream is simply getting a job and getting out of debt, and then keeping that job and staying out of debt...
It is so easy for a young person to get caught up in something when their idol is telling them they are doing the right thing. I think starting out our careers it's so important to see who is genuinely trying to help you and who is using you to get to the next level.
ReplyDeleteThere's probably more fun to be had with this movie if you consider the idea of selling images and perceptions, rather than goods and services, as an aspect of postmodernism.
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