Why Does Hollywood Celebrate Fraudsters Who Rip Us Off?

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/economy/scorsese-and-capitalism



Margot Robbie, who plays the wife of hard-partying stock swindler Jordan Belfort in The Wolf of Wall Street, explains in an interview how Martin Scorsese bamboozles the audience into cheering a morally repugnant man:

“Often, you know, the protagonist, the hero of the story is a bad guy, but you’re on his side the whole way. And everyone else, too, like, they’re not really technically portrayed as good people in the film, but you’re still on their side. They’re breaking the law and you want them to get a way with it. It’s kind of amazing that he can position the audience to feel that way about characters who are blatantly doing horrible things. It’s great though. It’s fun!”

For three hours, Belfort, portrayed with manic intensity by Leonardo DiCaprio, lies, humps and snorts his way through a binge of fraud and frolic that would make Gordon Gekko, and possibly a few Roman emperors, blush. Belfort starts out hustling penny stocks, selling “garbage to garbage men,” but quickly works his way up from screwing over poor people to ripping off wealthy investors, using the proceeds to hire truckloads of hookers and dwarves used for target practice at office parties (seriously!).

Not everyone was amused. In an open letter to Scorsese and DiCaprio, Christina McDowell, the daughter of one of Belfort’s partners in crime, describes the emotional pain and financial ruin she suffered as a teen when the dad she believed in turned out to be a crook. She doesn’t mince words about the treatment of the Belfort saga in the film:

“So here's the deal. You people are dangerous. Your film is a reckless attempt at continuing to pretend that these sorts of schemes are entertaining, even as the country is reeling from yet another round of Wall Street scandals. We want to get lost in what? These phony financiers' fun sexcapades and coke binges? Come on, we know the truth. This kind of behavior brought America to its knees. And yet you're glorifying it—you who call yourselves liberals.”

[Katashi_itto]

1. It's easy, Villains are almost always more interesting and easier to adapt to screen.

Movies are about making money after all.

[xchrom]

2. i stole this from tansy gold

[jakeXT]

3. No code ?

On or about July 1934 American cinema changed. During that month, the Production Code Administration, popularly known as the Hays Office, began to regulate, systematically and scrupulously, the content of Hollywood motion pictures. For the next thirty years, cinematic space was a patrolled landscape with secure perimeters and well-defined borders. Adopted under duress at the urging of priests and politicians, Hollywood's in-house policy of self-censorship set the boundaries for what could be seen, heard, even implied on screen. Not until the mid-1950s did cracks appear in the structure and not until 1968, when the motion picture industry adopted its alphabet ratings system, did the Code edifice finally come crumbling down.

http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/d/doherty-hollywood.html

[LuvNewcastle]

4. Film is a dangerous medium.

The right director can turn a child-molesting pimp into a hero. A lot of people seek out such movies because they love the idea of the Superman, someone without a nagging conscience or any apparent morality. People like Scorsese allow people to fantasize about being that ultimate sociopath for a few hours, so I suppose that in a sense, his films do have a function. However, I wish more people would give some thought to what there is inside themselves that gets such pleasure from these films.

[el_bryanto]

14. Scorcese believes that he is going to hell

But I suspect at least part of his motivation on this one is to also expose the crimes and the mindset that allows you to commit those crimes. You can dramatize something without endorsing it.

Bryant

[Bluenorthwest]

17. Again, thank you Bryant.

Your words are correct, portrayal is not endorsement it is a way to explain how a person winds up doing things that land them in prison. The term is 'cautionary tale'.
The folks who see a story about a fallen criminal and see it as attractive are showing us something about themselves, and one purpose of such art is to reveal the truth about the audience.

[HughBeaumont]

5. Failure doesn't make the kind of cinema that criminality does.

I think it's because we don't want to accept that 99% of the time, working your fingers to the bone gets you nothing but bony fingers, no yachts, no champagne and no reward.

America makes fun of The Douchebag . . . but, let's face it, loves, loves LOVES The Douchebag and cannot QUIT The Douchebag. Criminals are loved beyond measure. Says a lot about us.

[monmouth3]

6. Bonnie and Clyde were not nice people. Michael Corleone was not a nice person. Gordon Gekko was

not a nice person. However, Hollywood's treatment of their lives is at best, entertainment. We escape for a few hours into their world but in our hearts we know, they were the losers and we enjoyed every minute of it.

[Bluenorthwest]

10. Of course by way of fact, only Bonnie and Clyde actually had lives, Gekko and Corleone are fictional

characters, created for the telling of the stories of which they are parts. Bonnie and Clyde as I recall from both history and the film, died in a hail of bullets in an ambush that ended their crime spree.
Sometimes those basics such as 'real vs fiction' are important. Corleone, not a person at all. Gekko? Again a character, but not a person.

[monmouth3]

21. Well, in the words of Hillary Clinton,,,"What difference does it make?"..LOL...

[Bluenorthwest]

24. Well you were contrasting the lives of these people to the Hollywood depictions of them when two out

of three had no lives at all. Your post claimed these were bad people but the films about them were just entertainment, when in two of three cases the 'people' exist only as fictional elements in that entertainment. That matters. Sorry.

[monmouth3]

26. I think you really need to chill out...n/t

[CBGLuthier]

7. she kind of sucks as a movie critic.

these kids today kind of rants are so fucking quaint. "You people are dangerous" Filmmakers? What a crock of self-serving shit.

[LisaLynne]

8. Those aren't the critic's words. nt

[Brigid]

9. That quote was not from Lynn Parramore.

It was Parramore quoting Christine McDowell, the daughter of one of Belfort's "associates." And IMO it sounds like she is absolutely right. I will have to reserve judgment until I see the film, of course; but it sounds as though it glorifies Wall Street chicanery the same way many shoot-em-up movies and TV shows glorify gun violence. I get the feeling that before I see it I'd better check my blood pressure meds.

[Bluenorthwest]

15. McDowell is the daughter of one of the crooks in the story. Not wife, daughter.

She does not want the story told at all.

[Brigid]

16. Oops. I goofed.

[Bluenorthwest]

20. I'd be kinder to the daughter wounded by bad parents than to the wife of a crook

But she's still harping about the money she lost, which was gained in dubious ways but she still feels entitled to. She's creepy. I disagree with her about the film entirely.

[cherokeeprogressive]

11. Because Hollywood rips us off.

Quite simple actually.

[Egalitarian Thug]

12. Because they possess all the traits we most highly reward.

That's a major part of America's hard right turn to stupid, and cinema is a great yardstick by which to observe and measure it. Look at the hit films from the '70s and compare them to the hits of the '80s.

The '70s were probably the height of the anti-hero era, but the protagonist was on the side of the people, or at least against the establishment. In the '80s and later the same character worked to preserve the system of oppression as it is always preferable to the Godless anarchy of Communism.

[Bluenorthwest]

13. 'You people are dangerous'? What tripe. A man who specializes in films about thugs and crooks

makes a movie about a crook, in which he employs a device favored for villainous leads since Shakespeare, direct address to the audience. Just as in Richard 3, the fact that the story is being told to us by the principle wrong doer is intended to very clearly state that it is the viewpoint of the villain. " I am a liar, a crook, drug abusing wife beater....here's my honest story" is not something most people buy into. Most people understand that device. Most people see any story in which principle characters go to prison as a cautionary tale, even if we see the parties and excesses that came before. Telling a story is not in and of itself a glorification of that story. It is a telling of that story. Idiots think anything placed on a stage or on screen is being 'glorified' but the opposite is very often the case, the entire point of Richard 3 was to smear the reputation of Richard and his surviving house in order to enhance the claims to the throne by the Tudors who paid for the play. Richard is the lead, he gets lots of laughs and the audience is 'in on' all manner of murder and treachery with him. Still, the character is not intended to be liked. Enjoyed? Absolutely. Then loathed entirely.
Do films about Hitler 'glorify' Hitler? Did 'Helter Skelter' glorify Manson? Is Charles Foster Kane supposed to be regarded as heroic and as a pattern for viewers of Citizen Kane?

[obnoxiousdrunk]

28. +100 ...n/t

[Inkfreak]

18. I would say Hollywood is NOT liberal.

Sure, many celebrities are. But I'd bet a good deal of the money behind Hollywood could care less about progressive ideas. Just my opinion.

[jollyreaper2112]

33. liberal doesn't even mean anything anymore

Liberal is a catch-all slur, the same as a hippie in the 60's calling anyone they dislike a fascist, kids saying things are gay without even knowing what homosexuality is, etc. Hell, when I was a kid I thought that a cocksucker was a kind of suit material like with seersucker and was an insult against the kind of person who wears it, much like carpetbagger was to yankees taking advantage of the south during Reconstruction. I didn't know.

Anyway, Hollywood is about doing what sells. People want things. Sometimes those things are bad for them, maybe bad when used irresponsibly, maybe bad in any dose. Religions will latch onto the damage caused and take a stand against it.

It's a mistake to assume that something group X opposes must logically be grouped with anti-X. The Jews hated Nazi Germany. So did the USSR. That doesn't mean being anti-Nazi made the Russians pro-Jew.

Hollywood knows that sex, violence and general exploitation sells. Some people in the business might kid themselves about having a larger agenda -- their detractors sure do -- but it's all about making a buck. If it wasn't movies they'd be making porn or pushing some manner of drugs. Hell, if collectible dolls was the racket and they got a corner on it, they'd be all about the dolls. But movies is the racket they're in so that's what they're pushing.

I don't want some asshole with a bible in his hand telling me what I can and can't watch. This doesn't mean I'm exactly happy certain films get made. There's no redeeming qualities of a Serbian Film. (Wiki it if you must. Baby rape is the least offensive thing in it.) So while I'm telling the moral majority to go get stuffed, I'm not exactly cheering everything that a lack of censorship allows for.

And frankly, I think most of the moral crusaders are just monetizing sex and violence, same as the producers. The producers create the problem, now the moral majority gets to bang on about providing the cure. It's just another angle, just another racket.

[HappyMe]

19. People love to hate villians.

[Baitball Blogger]

22. McDowell is walking up a steep hill.

There are rich rewards for people who commit fraud and those who are willing to be good buddies to protect their secrets. It is a way of life.

They do it because there are incentives involved. Financial ones. For too many, Belfort is a role model.

I am sadden that Liberals would make a movie where someone like Belfort doesn't get his comeuppance in the end. I haven't seen the movie, but it looks that way.

Maybe we should just not go see the movie and let it fail?

[Drew2510]

23. Probably for the same reason(s)

they celebrate extreme violence, blood and guns: money

[librechik]

25. they identify. They are also fraudsters and cheaters with way too much money.

They're just a lot better at it.

[Blue_Adept]

27. Seriously?

If you're cheering the character here, you're the problem.

The movie is a huge indictment. But that gets missed by a lot of people apparently.

[PoliticAverse]

29. Why do people pay to see movies that celebrate bad characters?... n/t

[Tommy_Carcetti]

30. Call it the Archie Bunker effect.

Archie Bunker was intended by his creators to be a close-minded, stuck in the mud, bigot. Someone not to be emulated.

But you have conservatives who--despite knowing that Archie was not intended to a flattering portrayal--will repeat his sayings ad nauseum, as if they were words of great wisdom to love by.

Same thing could be said about teenagers and Beavis and Butthead back in the 1990s. Mike Judge intended for the two titular--heh heh, he just said "tit"--characters to be burnout, deadbeat teenagers. Yet somehow there were always kids who thought that they were intended to be "cool."

It's the fine line to be drawn in art--how to portray an unflattering character well enough without making them unintentionally appealable or sympathetic.

[closeupready]

31. For the same reason Hollywood glorifies violence - it sells.

Why the confusion?

[badtoworse]

32. You could ask the same question about gun violence

Does anyone believe it would be as pervasive as it is, if it wasn't the dominant subject in our movies, TV and video games?