American Psycho is excellent though, if someone walks out of that film thinking Bateman is a cool guy then there’s probably not much hope for them
I don’t think people who watch the Wolf of Wall Street and want to be Jordan Belfort are missing the point of the movie. Maybe Scorsese thinks otherwise, but the film he actually made is one of the greatest ever aspirational capitalist fantasies. To blame the audience for his purported message getting “misinterpreted” is a cowardly dodging of responsibility.
As depicted, Jordan Belfort’s life is pretty fucking awesome. He is unimaginably wealthy, is deified by his underlings, has a hot wife, and can do virtually anything he wants. The movie almost ends with a brief scene of Jordan going to prison and seemingly suffering some consequences for his action, but then shows that his sentence was a lavish life at Club Fed and he went right back to being a rich and worship capitalist after getting out. Sure his wife hated him and he had a huge drug problem, but those problems are hardly enough to even the scales against the total male power fantasy that his life is shown to be.
Much like you can’t make a truly anti-war movie if its protagonists are a bunch of macho army men instead of war’s civilian victims (ie: Come and See), you can’t make an anti-capitalist movie if its heroes are the rich and powerful instead of those they impoverish and oppress.
True. Just look at all of the character images in the screenshot above. See all of those classic low angles giving a sense of power and confidence to these characters. The camerawork in most of these films is constantly fawning over these villainous characters. Yes there’s a critical subtext in there that hopefully most people can see, but it’s buried underneath thick layers of power fantasies and flattering aesthetics. It’s no wonder that so many average young teenagers who want to be cool get distracted and miss the critique hiding beneath it all, particularly when media literacy is so poorly taught in schools because it’s not STEM.
The movie almost ends with a brief scene of Jordan going to prison and seemingly suffering some consequences for his action, but then shows that his sentence was a lavish life at Club Fed and he went right back to being a rich and worship capitalist after getting out
This was 100% intentional because near the end of the movie there’s a shot of the FBI Agent who got him riding home on a run-down bus and looking kind of miserable. Like, Bellfort ultimately is still living a great life while this agent who won isn’t doing too great.
I always say that the mistake filmmakers make is that they don’t want to make their character truly cringe. You’ve got to have the Fight Club guy go into his room and the walls are covered with underage anime characters and he wanks himself to sleep while clutching a body pillow and dirty talking to it.
Can’t make it that cringe otherwise folks won’t watch it at all.
The Sopranos hits a nice balance, probably as good as you can get without a much more critical audience.
Hmmm today I will idolize a sociopath killer in American Psycho.
[misses point of the film like a boss]
More proof they are fucking idiots. I still remember during the occupy wall street protests they’d laugh at and spit on protesters. No moral compass
Fight Club gets very close to chronicling a proletarian revolution tbh
