The Movie ' Wolf Of Wall Street '

Wealth has often consumed the lives people in the past, corrupting them and causing people to make bad decisions due to this greed. Wealth and greed will continue to take over others’ lives for as long as the human race still exists. The desire for wealth and greed as shown in the The Great Gatsby by Francis Scott Fitzgerald by some characters’ intense obsession with money, lavish lifestyles, and their sense of entitlement, ultimately putting other characters in harm’s way.

Novelists such as Willa Cather and F. Scott Fitzgerald used themes of desire of wealth as a fundamental element to motivate their characters. In their novels, the theme is reflected by the rich Americans who primal desire is to obtain more and more wealth. These characters are so infatuated with and blinded by money that they no longer regard the more noble qualities of life. In each of their works, these authors present intricate, self-conscious characters that desire wealth in order to attain their dreams. In reality, wealth cannot buy people, ideas or even time.

Jordan Belfort is the notorious 1990’s stockbroker who saw himself earning fifty million dollars a year operating a penny stock boiler room from his Stratton Oakmont, Inc. brokerage firm. Corrupted by drugs, money, and sex he went from being an innocent twenty – two year old on the fringe of a new life to manipulating the system in his infamous “pump and dump” scheme. As a stock swindler, he would motivate his young brokers through insane presentations to rile them up as they defrauded investors with duplicitous stock sales. Toward the end of this debauchery tale he was convicted for securities fraud and money laundering for which he was sentenced to twenty – two months in prison as well as recompensing two – hundred million in

shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned not more than 25 years, or both.

The movie takes place in the early 1990’s, when Jordan Belfort partners with Donny Azoff to start his brokerage firm, Stratford-Oakmont. After the introduction given by Jordan, we follow his life from the time that he is 22 years old when he had just started on wall street, all the way to the time of his arrest. Throughout the movie, you can see Jordan’s narcissistic personality aid him in his rise to the top and eventually lead to his fall.

     The corruption of idealism by wealth can be seen throughout the film, especially through the thoughts

The Meltdown is a PBS special on the events of the financial crisis of 2008, in a timeline format, revealing the thinking behind decisions made during the fateful months before the stock market crash in August of that year. Some financial gurus on Wall Street devised a plan to bundle several mortgages together into a group, and then selling that bundle to another group of investors looking to invest in securities. The lender did not need to earn money from the loans he was giving out, he merely gained enough of a profit from the bundling operation that billions were being made on Wall Street from 2005-2008. The problem is that these bundles were risky, and as credit unworthy individuals defaulted on their mortgages, the entire system crumbled into what is now known as the Stock Market Crash of 2008, and have subsequently lived during the Great Recession.

Money, sex, drugs, and greed-these four words are characterized and displayed profoundly throughout the movie Wolf of Wall Street. Based on a true story about the life of Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio), the movie is narrated and gives insight to the struggle, power, and addictions that surrounded Belfort’s life. Belfort was a stockbroker who learned his way as an entry-level worker on Wall Street before creating his own company Stratton Oakmont. Belfort quickly learned that success on Wall Street was a result of doing any means necessary, regardless if it was the truth or providing a false sense of hope. His main scam involved selling cheap stocks and inflating the prices so the brokers can sell at a high price. Although this was illegal, Belfort was so involved and addicted to money and drugs that his scamming ways were irrelevant.

If you have ever seen the movie The Wolf on Wall Street, there is no doubt you have seen the effects drugs can have. Leonardo DiCaprio portrays a high-strung stock broker reliant on a multitude of illegal drugs to keep up with his hectic life style. His addiction gets so severe that at one point in the movie, he is lying on the floor, unable to move due to the drugs’ effects on his body. Even though the movie is set in the 90’s, a decade infamous for its use of drugs, today, drug usage and abuse has never been more of an issue. According to Alice Park (2016), “More people died of drug overdoses in 2014 in the U.S. than in any other year” (p.49). What people fail to realize is that drug abuse effects more than just the individual that uses them. The loved ones trying to support the user, the community the user is in, can all be affected by drug abuse. In fact, all members of society are affected by the abuse of drugs. In short, no one benefits from drug abuse. In the words of the Nation Institute of Drug Abuse, “Drug abuse is a major public health problem that impacts society on multiple levels. Directly or indirectly, every community is affected by drug abuse and addiction, as is every family. Drugs take a tremendous toll on our society at many levels” ( Magnitude, 2016).

The movie 'Wall Street' is a representation of poor morals and dissapointing business ethics in the popular world of business. This movie shows the negative effects that bad business morals can have on society. The two main characters are Bud Fox played by Charlie Sheen and Gordon Gekko played by Michael Douglas. Bud Fox is a young stockbroker who comes from an honest working-class family but on the other hand, Gordon Gekko is a millionaire who Bud admires and wants to be associated with. Greed seems to be a huge theme of this movie. This movie portrays the unethical society we live in. It shows how money oriented society has become and that people will do almost anything to get ahead.

The Movie that I choose to analyze was the movie The Wolf of Wall Street this movie is about a guy who is starting off his career wanting to earn money fast so he goes to Wall Street and works as a broker for a small firm, where he ends up picking up bad advice along with some bad habits that get him rich fast, but not in a very ethical way. Some of the main characters that I will be talking about in this essay are Jordan Belfort also referred to as Jordy, he is played by Leonardo DiCaprio, Donnie Azoff Played by Jonah Hill. There are many other characters in this movie, but these are the main characters that are faced with difficult dilemmas. A lot of the choices that are made in this movie are Unethical. Even though it seems that he does everything for greed you end up understanding the reasons he did those things, but even though they are done for the right reasons does not mean it is right.

The Wolf of Wall Street is a black comedy, dramatic film featuring the great Martin Scorsese as a director, starring Leonardo Di Caprio. Leonardo Di Caprio plays the role of Jordan Belfort, “The Wolf of Wall Street”. The movie is set in the 1980’s – 1990’s, handling a true story, the story of the successful smart nasty Jordan Belfort. Jordan is a stockbroker who started the path by selling penny stocks then evolving to become and I repeat again “The Wolf of Wall Street”.

Anger and helplessness were the first emotions that I felt while watching the movie, “The Inside Job.” I was reminded of another movie portraying greed and ruthlessness, Oliver Stone’s 1987, “Wall Street,” which introduced “Greed is good” into the American vernacular (Gordon Gekko). Obviously, the instigators of the 2008 financial crisis embraced the “Greed is good” adage.

Jordan Belfort, a multi-million dollar scam artist who travelled the road to riches. While travelling this journey, he established many relationships that helped him reach such destination. The memoir The Wolf of Wall Street portrays the relationships and influences people had on Jordan and vice versa. The three biggest influences that Jordan encountered were Mark Hanna, Danny Porush and Nadine Belfort.

In any given movie that one may watch, you can break it down and look at the philosophical meaning behind it and create an ethical perspective. One could take bits and pieces of the movie and compare them to the ethical theories of either one or multiple theorists, with the goal being to create a better understanding of what the film’s ethical basis is and how exactly they incorporate the theorist’s ideas into the film. One of the most recent films that caught the eye of theorists within the ethical department is the movie “Wolf on Wall Street”. In this essay I will present the critique of this movie, the multiple ethical dilemmas such as: Utilitarianism, virtue theory, and how the characters disregarded these ethics in their mission for wealth and success.