Hollywood

Getting away from the early ridiculous movies of the semester, we’ve been moving towards much more serious and historically accurate films. Last week’s Amistad is the most accurate and one of the best acted thus far, though also one of the most depressing.

Compared to Pocahontas‘ treatment of the language barrier, Amistad is practically a Mensa-certified film. While some people in class had some problems with the comic relief moments, I think they help keep you from killing yourself while watching. I think the story was engaging but Spielberg and co obviously made a solid effort to tell the real story (with the exception of Morgan Freeman’s completely made up abolitionist character). It was definitely a benefit that they did not shy away from the harsh realities, even if it made them hard to watch. I think this is one thing that historical movies really have on their side — even if they don’t get everything right, they can touch us on that emotional level, and we know that it happened to people like us.

Morgan Freeman’s made up character was a ridiculous piece of Hollywood. It served no historical, emotional, or story purposes, and it makes me wonder if someone just really liked the name Theodore Jodeson. To give Spielberg and co the benefit of the doubt, however: perhaps they felt that the pressure of portraying an early black abolitionist was too great, and the consequences of misportraying such a figure could do a lot of damage to the film.

I don’t have a lot to say about this film, except that it is beautiful, well-written, well-acted, and most historically-accurate film we’ve watched.

Dikotter, Frank. Sex, Culture and Modernity in China. University of Hawaii Press, 1995.

“Educated groups were convinced that the proper control of sexual desire was the key to restoring the strength of the nation and achieving modernity. Since the rise of evolutionary theories in the late nineteenth century, reformers like Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao had consistently explained national weakness as the result of an inadequate knowledged of human sexuality and reproduction.” (2)

Gendered social roles were thought to be rooted in biology. Gender hierarchy was called natural or progressive, and women and children were portrayed as being at the lower stages of evolution.

Industry was growing in the early 1900s, attracting young people to the cities and increasing their personal and economic independence. The extended family structure began to weaken, as did a young person’s connection to the older generation. Unmarried women started going to college, become politically aware, and participate in public activities. “Human biology was invoked to suggest that woman was endowed with physical characteristics which marked her as the passive counterpart to the more active constitution of man.” (23) During the time, the oppositeness of the man and woman, biologically, was strongly emphasized.

Silet, Charles L. P., editor. Oliver Stone Interviews. University Press of Mississippi, 2001.

“My father believed that America’s business brought peace to the world and built industry through science and research, and that capital is needed for that. But this idea seems to have been perverted to a large degree. I don’t think my father would recognize America today.” (64)

“The Pax Americana, to me, is the dollar sign. It works. It maynot be attractive. It’s not pretty to see American businessmen running all around the world in plaid trousers, drinking whisky. But what they’re doing makes sense.” (65)

Martin S. Fridson

Reviewers said that “Wall Street” lacked emotional depth and that it was inaccessible to audiences because of its fidelity to the details of the security industries and jargon. “Wall Street” came on 2 months after October 19, 1987 (Black Monday, which shattered all previous records for Dow Jones one-day declines).

“The average stockbroker’s life is indeed much duller than Bud Fox’s, but it would be naive to suppose that a faithful depication of the mundance reality could have obtained commercial backing.” (Fridson, 120)

“[The characters] have no subtlety. They practically wear placards – ‘good,’ ‘bad,’ ‘corruptive,’ ‘redeemed’ – tacked to their $2000 suits.” (Hal Lipper of the St. Petersburg Times, “Wall Street: Paper-Thin”, December 11, 1987)

Critics overall saw the film as too black and white in its portrayal of good and bad people, simple-minded, melodramatic, too obvious, two-dimensional, soap opera-like, and thrilling but disposable. Stone did win praise for his cinematography for the enjoyment of the film. Michael Douglas was mostly lauded for his portrayal, but the rest of them (Charlie Sheen and Daryl Hannah) were panned for lacking emotional depth. Some blamed it on the script, asking if any actors could have made the roles palatable.

“Wall Street” was outgrossed by both “Throw Momma From the Train” and “Three Men and a Baby” in its opening weekend. It did well in Manhattan and other big cities, but it did poorly in city suburbs. Fox Studies tried to play up the romantic angle in its second wave of advertising, rather than the financial angle. (Fridson, 124)

Stone actually filmed at the NYSE uring trading hours, used the correct brand of computers for the trading floor (AT&T), and used the correct proportion of women to case for a business meeting (35%). (Fridson, 124) Douglas, Stone, and his staff met with Wall Street executives, takeover artists, and junk bond chiefs. Stone invited investment banker Kenneth Lipper to become chief technical adviser on the film, and he first denied, until Stone granted him the ability to read the script and write a critique. Lipper insisted that Stone keep some of the brokers honest.

Takeover lawyer Arthur Fleischer, Jr. called the film “a ludicrous portrayal and completely unbalanced.” (Geraldine Fabrikant, “Wall Street Reviews ‘Wall Street,’” New York Times, December 10, 1987, D1)

Prosecutions for inside trading soared to 25 cases a year between 1982 and 1987 under SEC chairman John Shad. Whether this increase was just in prosecution, or if the increase in prosecution was due to an increase in insider trading also is debatable. In the early 1980s under Shad, the focus of the SEC shifted from the 1970s focus of protecting investors to the 1980s focus on the prosecution of classic securities law violations (128). “There is no need to posit, as Wall Street does, that greed was the novel element.” (Fridson, 130)

The film accurately portrayed the rise of hostile takeovers in the US, as they trended upwards from 1981 (47 a year) to 1987 (85 a year) (Fridson, 131). This cannot be attributed just to greed or get-rich-quick thinking, as the film implies, but one possibillity is that it was a result of depressed stock prices, as the country recovered from stagflation.

I’ll be using this blog as a way to take notes on my reseach for my project along the way. This first research post is on “Beyond the Stars” by Paul Loukides and Linda K. Fuller, and Carol M. Ward’s article called The Hollywood Yuppie, 1980-1988.

The word yuppie (young urban professional) came about in 1984 and their numbers ranged from 4 to 20 million in that year. However, the numbers are especially hard to figure out since the class was upwardly mobile and constantly expanding. Advertisers began ad campaigns aimed just at the yuppies.

“The Yuppie is a college-educated, upwardly-mobile… workaholic whose main identity an sense of self-worth is often supplied by the success achieved in the professional, technical workplace that he/she dominates.” (Ward, 98)

They want to excel, not just succeed. “Much of the revolutionary sociopolitical zeal of the baby boomers (from the sixties generation in particular) has been channeled into the work environment.” (Ward, 98) Ward argues that this class is motivated by the ME generation’s desires for independence, except that in this case, money gives them that independence.

In Wall Street, Bud Fox has to get a new wardrobe, a new apartment, and a new lifestyle to fit in with his new boss Gordon Gekko. “The image of success is as important as success itself.” (Ward, 99) The emphasis is on one’s peers, not one’s family or culture, as there is often a strained relationship with the family. In Wall Street, Fox is embarassed by his father’s traditional values and middle-class status. The middle-class upbringing is something to ignore/overcome: your worth is your accomplishment, not your heritage.

“Success feels so fragile that there is a deep-rooted fear of breaking out of the prescribed routine.” (Ward, 99) They are afraid of changing the status quo once they have achieved it, but they are encouraged to constantly gamble for greater success. During this period, we get more women into the workplace and the workaholic habits and liberal sexuality drastically changed the relationships between men and women.”[The successful woman] uses her sex to barter for powe or she is unsexed by her attempts to maneuver in the man’s world of business.” (Ward, 104)

As the yuppies become more educated and their careers become more intense, marriage and family are postponed. The yuppies come into adulthood as children, not going through the traditional phases transitioning into adulthood, and their love of personal freedom makes them less likely to have families in their 20s. “The seriousness of the cutthroat world of business is minimized by this childlike vision of what is really important; work can actually be fun.” (Ward, 105)

“Babies become the signifiers of emotional life, in representation, now that women are no longer available for that task.” (Judith Williamson, “Having Your Baby and Eating It”, New Statesman 15 (April 1988), 45)

“The Yuppie lifestyle features rampant consumerism, distrust of the parent generation, fear of the suburbs, unstable intimate relationships, reliance on the peer network, confrontation of the lingering sixties consciousness, difficulty of growing up to accept adult responsibilities, the problems of parenthood, and the desire to have it all.” (Ward, 106)

Select Filmography: The Money Pit (1986), Baby Boom (1987), Broadcast News (1987), Three Men and a Baby (1987), Big (1988), Working Girl (1988)