Hollywood should stop glorifying Wall Street

• Source: Global Times
• [22:22 October 11 2009]
• Comments

By Zhu Weiyi

Hollywood has an indirect responsibility for the coming of the financial crisis. The blockbuster movie Wall Street (1987) was intended by its director to be a scathing criticism of the stock market, but was seen by many as glorifying its supposed villain, Gordon Gecko, modeled on convicted insider trader Ivan Boesky. "Greed is good", a saying from Wall Street, became a famous quote, and deeply popular among generations of young peoples.

The famous flop The Bonfire of the Vanities, in contrast, depicts Wall Street figures more profoundly. Melanie Griffiths plays a wild woman who smoothly controls the men she meets in the movie. A country girl from the South, she comes to New York by herself and with her looks, youth, and schemes, successfully feeds off the parasites of Wall Street.

In a sense, the relationships between men and women in the film reflect the capital market. Love and financial gambles are the same as human desires mix, and the trafficking of power, money, and sex reflects the deals between men and women. Nonetheless, The Bonfire of the Vanities was a critical and financial disaster, in contrast with the huge success of Wall Street.

The goal of Wall Street is relatively simple: maximizing profit. Henry Paulson, Treasury Secretary of the US, and other people of this kind not only refused to expressly admit their mistakes, but blank them out even in their own thoughts. If there are too many conflicts in their minds, they simply can't take the top spot. If a little evil can be found in ordinary people, there are big demons inside the Wall Street figures.

There are few struggle of conscience from the people on top, nor the ordinary people who worked below. People who struggle with conscience would not come to Wall Street, or at least would not stay long there. Presumably this is also one of the reasons why Wall Street movies are hard to make.

With regard to Wall Street, there are also people writing books to hit back, such as The Black Swan and The Last Tycoons. However, these works can hardly be filmed because of their documentary nature.

These books mainly talk about the market and economy with little description about people and rarely touch the depths of the soul.

Nonetheless, with the intelligence of Hollywood screenwriters and directors, they should be able to shoot some classic films on the theme of Wall Street, no matter how hard this subject is. The subject of the Holocaust is no less difficult than that of Wall Street thievery; however, Hollywood took on the challenge.

Movies are very influential. Joseph Stalin (1878-1953), the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, believed that film was the most important art form. For a long period of time, every Soviet film had to go through Stalin personally and was only screened publicly after getting his consent.

Under Stalin's guidance, the movies which praised Stalin always looked good. Stalin's image in Lenin in 1918 and Lenin in October was naturally positive. Stalin summoned the actor who played Stalin and asked him a direct question, "How you intend to play Stalin?" The actor cunningly replied, "According to the image in people's minds."

With the influence of the financial crisis, people have a very bad impression of Wall Street – in fact, it may be the worst ever.

Hollywood should change the positive image of financiers and re-reverse the reversed history.

The author is a part-time professor at the Institute of Law, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences