Wannabe Gordon Gekkos

Are you missing the point by idolizing them?


Every year, thousands of impressionable young people watch movies about Wall Street and decide they want to grow up to be just like the expensively dressed cokeheads they see on-screen. Directors, meanwhile, insist that the last thing they wanted was for audiences to look up to their characters. Here at Jacobin, we believe in building a big tent, so we rated the classics of the genre in the native language of aspiring finance bros: Are we bullish or bearish on these Wall Street films as works of art? And are their critiques of capitalism based or cringe?


Wall Street

Michael Douglas’s iconic turn as Gordon Gekko personifies the Ronald Reagan era’s “greed is good” mentality, but director Oliver Stone romanticizes a previous era of labor-management compromise.

The Big Short

An ensemble comedy in which the 2008 financial crisis could have been avoided if everyone was as clever as Michael Burry, rendered with a populist puckishness that feels overly optimistic today.

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