Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

“Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.” So preaches Michael Douglas in his Oscar-winning role as immoral businessman Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone’s Wall Street. Stone’s follow-up to his Best Picture winner Platoon¸ Wall Street does not have quite the reputation Platoon does. I have not seen Platoon, but it seems that this makes sense because Wall Street is not a very entertaining or interesting movie because, although greed may be good, Stone forgot that clarity is good too. The plot of this movie is simple enough. Charlie Sheen plays an ambitious young stockbroker named Bud Fox who possesses a will to do anything necessary to succeed in his career. A low-level grunt at a large firm, the film begins with Fox “cold-calling” people. Essentially,…

Early on in Martin Scorsese’s new film, Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) cheerfully describes money as being like “mainlining adrenaline.” Belfort, the real-life rogue trader who set up Long Island stockbroking film Stratton Oakmont, is depicted in the film as reckless, obnoxious, and sexist. Nonetheless, as portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio, he is a very likeable character. We can’t help but root for him. Everything about The Wolf of Wall Street is excessive. It’s a three-hour orgy of greed,…

The Wolf of Wall Street Analysis The Wolf of Wall Street is a film filled with sex, drugs, and lots of money. It was directed by Martin Scorsese, and released on December 25th, 2013. The movie revolves around the life of Jordan Belfort, a stockbroker who founded his brokerage firm, Stratton Oakmont. After watching the trailer multiple times, it can be concluded that the audience targeted were mainly adults and teenagers. Even more specific, they use rhetoric to appeal to large groups like…

easy to follow. Without the great use of visualization in the movie, it would not have been nearly as successful. It really helps the movie reach a much broader audience than it would have without these animations. Throughout the movie, there are many contrasts, especially between the bankers and the ordinary people. A central argument is how the banking industry has been making money since the crisis while the rest of the world is failing financially. To illustrate this, the movie shows graphs…

ivy league school; but this can often be a facade or a sign of privilege. An example of an impressive trait often admired by Wall Street recruiters is people who are deemed as “smart”, which can be related to the idea of being impressive in terms of knowledge or education. But this smartness can be fabricated by people who look or dress “smart”, but aren’t necessarily more knowledgable than the rest of society. The manufacturing of such an appearance highlighted by Ho, who claims that “smartness…

drifted away from Puritanism, many ideals continued to be prominent in society. This includes individualism. Several writers from Massachusetts incorporated this Puritan value into their work. One example is Herman Melville and his novella, Bartleby the Scrivener. This story encompasses an older lawyer working in Wall Street with fellow oddly named workers such as “Turkey,” “Nippers,”and “Ginger Nut.” The lawyer hires another quirky worker named “Bartleby,” who proves to be quite a challenge for…

consisted of immigrant families, there were almost no authority figures that would defend the poor. Even the church (Episcopal) at the time was essentially “the largest slum landlord in New York (Carr, 300)” and profited greatly from the immigrants. In his confrontation with J.P. Morgan and the heads of the Episcopal church, Moore realizes that the string of murders were resulting in an immigrant population that was “angry enough to stop showing up on Sunday and coughing up what little money…

New York City's population increased from 124,000 in 1820 to 814,000 in 1860. The population growth resulted in a rapid rise in real estate prices that created a market for tall buildings like those that hem in the lawyer's office. The high cost of space in lower Manhattan also forced workers to search for cheaper housing elsewhere, thus creating the story's austere Wall Street setting that during evenings and Sundays is virtually devoid of human life. The building that houses the law office,…

Stephen Crane The Guilded Age was the time period from around 1890 to 1920. It was a time period of massive immigration to American cities, urbanization, and industrialization. There were large changes to the economy around the country but the places affected the most were the larger cities, for example, New York City. With an influx of population in these cities, sanitation, comfort, safety, and opportunities were limited if not nonexistant. Families were thrown into a life of serious poverty…

Interpretation of Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-street Herman Melville is an American author born on August 1, 1819, in New York City. Melville was a cabin boy and sailed on several vessels. He is best known for his sea-faring adventure novel such as his most widely recognized publication, Moby-Dick. In his short story, Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-street, the unnamed narrator, a man in his mid 60 's who owns a law office starts the story by saying that he believes that…