The Wolf of Wall Street

The Wolf of Wall Street

During the late 1980s, the stock markets around the world suffered a huge crash, referring to the day as Black Monday, October 19, 1987.  The film, “The Wolf of Wall Street”, is set in this period where a stock broker Jordan Belfront is now out of a job. While looking for a new stock brokerage to work for, he comes across the small time company only dealing with “Pink slips” which are also known as penny stocks. These stocks gives these brokers 50% commission rates, bringing out the greed in Jordan. Starting off he gets middle class workers who have mortgages on homes they have to pay off and careers like garbage men. He lies and manipulates stocks in favour of himself, whether or not his clients have a loss. Jordan continues to do this and opens his own company, Stratton Oakmont inc. to target the richest 1% of Americans. Becoming very rich in a small period of time he begins indulging himself with drugs and prostitutes not knowing that one day his methods can very well come back to haunt him. His father sees what he is doing and says “One of these days the chickens are going to come home to roost”. This essay will examine issues relating to concepts that are explored in the film such as elitism, along with gender roles and finally the American Dream.  This film also explores the problems of drug abuse and corruption that can be said are the primary cause of the downfall of Jordan Belfront.

Gender and sexism plays a huge role in Wolf of Wall Street. Women are displayed as objects many times in this movie, in the beginning of this film Jordan Belfront is narrating his accomplishments to the audience, such as his big house and million dollar cars. At the same time he introduces his wife Naomi in the same way, viewing her as an object and something he possess. The two main leads in this film, Jordan Belfront (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Donnie Azoff (Jonah Hill) are constantly cheating on their wives and taking drugs. Jordan’s first wife, Teresa Petrillo, caught him cheating with Naomi. As soon as she moved out and the divorce settled, he brought Naomi in to his apartment. At first Naomi is the only female character in the movie with a strong sense of control over Jordan as she is displayed as an overall strong character. To begin with, it was Naomi who had seduced Jordan, not the other way around which can be seen to happen in most situations. In one scene she knows Jordan may have been with a prostitute the night before and as punishment she says he can only watch and not touch, while she wears very short skirts and that she will be “panty-less” around the house. Her control over him doesn’t last too long, as she continuously becomes fed up with what he does, and how much drugs he uses. Towards the end, Jordan comes home from his deposition and goes on top of Naomi forcefully after saying shes not in the mood. After constantly saying “stop it, get off me”, she gives in to his needs and says it will be the last time, we know she is probably going to leave him. “That was the last time we ever have sex. I want a divorce…Get off me, I want a divorce.” After she tells him he can’t have the children he begins to physically assault her.                                                   Most the male characters in this film do not hold much respect to the female characters. Most of whom we see are prostitutes, however the ones who are not, such as air hostesses, they are tended to be treated the same way. While in first class on a flight, the two main leads were taking part in inappropriate groping and “dry humping” which they were doing while blacking-out under the influence of drugs. Another scene in the film which stood out was when in celebration of grossing over 28million dollars in their first month, Jordan Belfront offers one of his female employees $10,000 to shave her head, and to later which he says she has agreed to use the money for breast implants. To this statement we can see that it is most likely false from the way the female employee reacts to the announcement, trying to hide her embarrassment.