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A Cultural Analysis of “Wall Street” (1987)

Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street” (1987) stands as a cinematic artefact reflecting American culture’s essence during its production period. Quickly making itself a standout among the crowd, the film is set against the 1980s backdrop of a period of great economic prosperity, deregulation and a throwback to excessive materialism. This atmosphere of accumulation in wealth has been captured aesthetically in the movie. This essay provides a detailed review of the cultural motifs embedded in the movie “Wall Street” based on its themes and historical background. The essay aims to reveal the component’s meaning in the context of the American society of that time. Reaganomics of the 80s and the corporate world rising as an entity, the movie “Wall Street” portrays the essence of the 21st century, where greed, among other vices, was the prevailing culture of America. The movie’s theme greatly depends on the moral problems expressed by numerous characters, especially the main protagonist Bud Fox, and through which to explore wide-ranging attitudes of the society towards success, morals, and the way to get richness. Since it is, ‘Wall Street offers a double prospect of reflection and commentary on the complexity of American capitalism and the human condition.

Greed and Excess

The central theme of “Wall Street” is about the greed and excesses found in the characters of Gordon Gekko. Gekko’s reckless climb to riches at the expense of personal values reflects a recipe for the materialism and individualism that characterized this age. The film reflects both phenomena inside the stock market, where morality is reduced to the sidelines with the implicit approval of the society that admired success and kept chasing wealth during the boom of the 80s. Stone expresses the standpoint of the `80s person through Gekko’s saying: “greed is good,” which implies that the idea of unrestrained capitalism being good is success, but not greed. Gekko’s brazen chasing of this filthy wealth in the film serves as a reality check and demonstrates so clearly the virtue of money, even at the expense of other people’s well-being. A plot that features a character’s desire to be unprincipled and to ignore others can be seen as the writers trying to bring about the instability that high-handedness and unbridled avarice cause to society. Besides, Gekko’s effect is not restricted only to Wall Street; it starts to generate and spread among the American culture, thus defining the general success perspective. His characterization of a believable and overwhelming lucky guy who glorifies abundance and power reflects the reality on mainstream media screens. It represents the cultural trend of the following of money and success. The thesis of this movie warns of what happens when one forgets to strive for morality instead of insisting on increasing profit; the picture of the country’s social values lasts.

Moral Ambiguity and Compromise

In contrast to the poor ethical conduct of Gekko, who only aims for his interests, the youthfulness and ethical and unethical aspects of 1980s American culture are personified by Bud Fox. At the beginning of the movie, Gekko seduces Bud with his charm and wealth, only to have him struggle with his inner voice as he becomes more involved in the corruption of the financial world. This story parallels crises and moral conflicts among those who want to be crowned success despite subjecting themselves to ethical impoverishment. This theme resonated at a time when the rise of Reagan’s aggression and greed was a painful watch.Bud’s character, with his broken inclination towards money and human values, is the representation of the moral decline that took place during the time, caused by the confusion of money and ideas. People have admitted that seeing Bud’s moral decline and rehabilitation, they have been challenged to examine their moral limits where they are forced to compromise on their ethics to pursue personal wealth, a vice of the era characterized by greed and individualism. Overall, Bud Fox’s story in “Wall Street” demonstrates the moral ambivalence of the 1980s to the viewers, who are greeted with a sophisticated take on the fictitious universe where everything is subordinated to financial gains and political benefits. Reagan’s administration included policies that everyone felt influenced by. Their contradictory thoughts and actions, thus, reflected broader societal issues. Thus, it was a significant factor that made society’s moral values willy-nilly.

Cultural Context

To understand the cultural relevance of “Wall Street,” it is essential to correlate it with this historical time’s political and economic context. This was regarded as the decade of Wall Street success and aggressive capitalism. The movie takes place in the 1980s, an era of well-being and the period of the economic boom with which the right economics Reaganomics was connected. It glorified the free markets and indifference to governmental regulation. However, the movie calls against the greed, social injustice and corrupt practices that capitalism unduly allows. Indeed, his portrayal of Gordon Gekko as a personification of corporate greed reflects this ethical dilemma against one’s sense of moral values quite well, as this moral decay was viewed as one of the main reasons income inequality negatively affected American society. The age of Reagan shaped the future of wealth distribution imbalance in which the top earners kept on getting richer while others’ livelihoods deteriorated gradually. “Wall Street” was the title that defined the time and age, showing the terrible outcomes of unrestrained greed and the manipulative downfall of flailing to achieve more money than could be contemplated. Gekko’s original utterance “Greed is good” sticks in our ears, as that decade’s glittering financial success without looking down at its social implications was dominating. Much of the film’s resonance is due to how it approaches the dark side of life by capturing the ethical conflicts of the Reagan Era generation. With deregulation as the background, there were moments when “Wall Street” warned about the downsides of bringing money into power hubs: quantity is not enough; quality matters. To sum up, the picture is intended to exemplify how the cultural crises and conflicts of which were in 1980s America are represented in the picture, and it is an eloquent remark of how the feel of a society that is built on uncontrollable selfishness and individualism.

Conclusion

In conclusion, “Wall Street” (1987) is undoubtedly a masterpiece of cinematic art that debates the social insides of 1980s America. By projecting the image of characters such as Gordon Gekko and Bud Fox, the film dives into the underworld of the ethics and morality values in a capitalistic system and a society plagued with unbridled thirst for wealth. The movie “Wall Street” lost none of its timely quality. It conveyed the portentous atmosphere of the Reagan Era and the dawning of an era of corporate power that showed greed, corruption and lack of ethics, which often accompanied this period of economic stability. Stone precisely looks to fit the dots in the narrative and to trace the themes of venality, ambition, and moral integrity, thus prompting the viewers to reflect thoughtfully on the predominant philosophy and attitudes in 1980s America. A film imbued with another face of the cinematographer’s historical environment and the film’s overall aesthetics can tell more profoundly about its cultural impacts and importance. The latter, “Wall Street”, is the venerable fable about what will happen should one seek advances triumphantly over values. Apart from chronicling the human predicament within the context of eponymous corporatism, the picture delights both the audience of the 1980s and the modern viewers as it re-analyzes the issues of American capitalism and the eternal fight between materialism and ethics. Thus, “Wall Street” will forever serve as a striking portrait of the socio-historical and moral dilemmas unique to the socio-cultural fabric present during its production period and as an intriguing reflection on the moral difficulties inherent in the path of success.

Bibliography

Arsenault, Raymond. “Wall Street (1987): The Stockbroker’s Son and the Decade of Greed.” Film & History Vol. 28, no. 1-2 (1998): 16-20. https://shorturl.at/GQSY8

Stone, Oliver, director. Wall Street. 20th Century Fox, 1987. 2:06:00. https://hdrezka.ag/films/drama/5682-uoll-strit-1987.html

 

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