Wolf of Wall Street – Bitch Flicks

Bad Girls and (Not-So)-Guilty Pleasures in ‘The Bling Ring’

This guest post by Amy Woolsey appears as part of our theme week on Unlikable Women.

“Empty.” “Wispy.” “Disposable.” These are the kinds of adjectives used to describe The Bling Ring, Sofia Coppola’s cinematic rendering of the real-life Los Angeles robbery spree perpetrated by a clique of celebrity-obsessed teenagers, when it came out in June 2013. Although a smattering of dissent could be heard from various circles, general consensus seemed to maintain that the film was like its protagonists: pretty to look at, without much to say. A couple critics went so far as to ask why Coppola bothered to make it at all, and many others (including Marcia Herring, whose review was posted on Bitch Flicks) made explicit or oblique references to the director’s famously upper-class background, intimating that it impeded her ability to effectively critique her subjects.

In all fairness, it’s easy to see how people would get this impression. With its glittering veneer, ubiquitous (if unavoidable) product placement, and energetic, dance-ready soundtrack, The Bling Ring practically shrieks “pop confection,” a catchy trifle obsessed with imagery and texture perhaps at the expense of substance. It spends more time reveling in obscenely expensive shoes, purses and jewelry than developing the characters. As anyone who endured the heated Wolf of Wall Street debates that waged throughout the 2013-14 awards season can attest, the line between satirizing something and glorifying it is flimsy at best. Lacking an alternate viewpoint to lend perspective to or openly comment on the characters’ behavior, we’re left on our own to decipher what, if any, meaning can be found beneath the surface gloss.

At the same time, I can’t help but detect a disconcertingly gendered undercurrent in much of the criticism. Especially flagrant are the recurring accusations of nepotism that have been leveled at Coppola, daughter of legendary Godfather director Francis Ford Coppola, since her acting days. There’s nothing wrong with interrogating privilege; seeing as people don’t create art in a vacuum, it’s always important to be cognizant of biases and circumstances that might inform filmmakers’ perspectives. The problem is that the targets of complaints concerning class and pedigree are primarily, if not exclusively, women. As IndieWire’s Sam Adams said, even after helming five films and receiving a Best Director Oscar nomination, a feat achieved by only three other women, Coppola is still treated “like an upstart, a spoiled little girl who owes her career to her father” and cannot possibly have any worthwhile insight to contribute to society. By contrast, Jason Reitman (son of Ghostbusters director Ivan Reitman), Tony Gilroy (son of award-winning writer and director Frank D. Gilroy), and Nick Cassavetes (son of independent film pioneer John Cassavetes and actress Gena Rowland) apparently didn’t benefit from their family histories at all.

It’s true that, by devoting her career to scrutinizing the lives and angst of those immersed in wealth, from Bill Murray’s jaded actor in Lost in Translation to Kirsten Dunst’s Marie Antoinette, Coppola draws increased attention to her own wealth. Yet instead of undermining her credibility, her insider status should make her uniquely qualified to comment on the culture and lifestyle of the rich and famous. With The Bling Ring, for example, she follows the brash teenage thieves with the curious yet matter-of-fact eye of a documentarian, neither in awe of nor disgusted by them. She takes for granted that these people and their world exists – the afternoons spent lounging on the beach, the evenings drinking in nightclubs and doing drugs at parties, the inattentive or absent parents, the educational methods based on self-help books – and, as a result, so do we. Only once are we explicitly made aware of the distance between our reality and the one inhabited by the characters, the sheer strangeness of the events unfolding onscreen. In the film’s most memorable sequence, we’re treated to a voyeuristic, unbroken wide shot of a glass house while the titular ring scurries inside, plundering it. It’s a tantalizing reminder that we don’t belong here; we can gawk at the red carpet all we want, but the gala itself is off-limits.

Coppola’s refusal to condemn, explain or apologize for her characters makes for a rather opaque experience. To state the obvious, these are not likable individuals. They exhibit no visible remorse for their crimes, seemingly oblivious to the concept of personal boundaries, and think about little besides fashion and D-list celebrities. Even Marc (Israel Broussard), who is new to the group and expresses alarm when Rebecca (Katie Chang) breaks into Paris Hilton’s home for the first time, protests less out of a sense of morality than a fear of being caught. The youths are excruciatingly vacuous and narcissistic, think-piece millennials on Adderall. Why should we care about what they do or what happens to them? How does Coppola want us to see them – as brats, sociopaths, rebels, misguided kids, or what?

Perhaps a better question is, why are we so repulsed by them in the first place? Robbing celebrities is hardly the worst transgression imaginable, and this isn’t the first movie to center on unruly rich people. Take the aforementioned Wolf of Wall Street, which chronicles the criminal activities and general depravity of Wall Street stockbroker Jordan Belfort. Like The Bling Ring, it rests on the assumption that all people are, to some extent, seduced by the allure of wealth (as Marc says, “I think we just wanted to be part of the lifestyle. The lifestyle that everybody kind of wants”) and strives to implicate the audience in the protagonist’s wrongdoing, suggesting that he’s the product of a larger culture that tolerates or outright encourages such behavior. Both films use repetition to make statements about capitalist excess, bombarding viewers with images of decadence and materialism arguably to the point of overkill. If it conveys the same basic message in half the screen-time (and with a far more consistent tone), why didn’t The Bling Ring have close to the same impact as The Wolf of Wall Street? Yes, Martin Scorsese’s darkly comic epic had its share of detractors, but it still got five Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, which I’m pretty sure qualifies as success.

Let’s face it: people are much more willing to stomach, examine and identify with men who behave badly than women, particularly when they’re affluent and white. The Bling Ring is a rare film that 1) revolves around women 2) who are not admirable or sympathetic and 3) doesn’t treat their misdeeds as either harmless fun or feminist defiance. No wonder so many critics are at a loss for how to interpret it. ReelView.com’s James Berardinelli sums it up:

Spending time with these loathsome, self-absorbed individuals, none of whom has a single endearing characteristic, is an ordeal.

Fine, if you don’t enjoy something, you don’t enjoy it. But what, exactly, are Jordan Belfort’s endearing characteristics? That he looks like Leonardo DiCaprio? Hollywood loves to churn out male scumbags, from Belfort to Patrick Bateman from American Psycho and Lou Bloom from 2013’s Nightcrawler (whose sleek/sleazy vision of contemporary Los Angeles and satirical takedown of American entitlement echoes that in The Bling Ring). While it’s agreed that these characters aren’t good people, their desires and values are always recognized as legitimate, albeit twisted. Even the most vocal members of the anti-Wolf of Wall Street camp acknowledged that Scorsese was trying to say something about greed and power and deserved to be taken seriously. On the other hand, The Bling Ring is dismissed as glamorous fluff and its heroines as spoiled, delusional air-heads, I suppose because they fixate on clothes instead of cocaine and sex. Women who covet money and things are frivolous, whereas men who covet money and things are ambitious.

Yep, men don’t care about how they look at all. — Yep, men don’t care about how they look *at all*.

The key to The Bling Ring ultimately lies in its music. At first glance, the medley of hip-hop, pop, and electronic tunes that Coppola and composer Brian Reitzell have compiled seems to merely complement the flamboyant visuals and shallow characters. Yet they also point to an acute sense of cynicism. It’s impossible to miss the glaring hypocrisy of Rebecca, Marc, and Chloe rocking out to M.I.A.’s “Bad Girls” while aimlessly driving around in a luxury car. They may view themselves as renegades, defying the System by stealing from the uber-rich and giving to themselves, doing whatever they want with zero regard for the consequences, but the fact is that they are the System; they do whatever they want because they can get away with it, and they can get away with it because no one cares. It would be a stretch to say Coppola sympathizes with them (she doesn’t hesitate to poke fun at her characters’ cluelessness, particularly with Emma Watson inhabiting a role that lampoons her real-life persona), but she understands the underlying sadness of their situation. They are, after all, teenagers with nothing and no one to rebel against. They’re not distrustful of authority so much as indifferent to its very existence, so alienated from the rest of the world that they genuinely believe they own it.

Recommended reading: The Narcissistic Postfeminist Millennial Supergirls of ‘The Bling Ring’ and ‘Spring Breakers’ by Judy Berman at Flavorwire; The Bling Ring by Owen Gleiberman at Entertainment Weekly; Rob Jobs “Now You See Me” and “The Bling Ring.” by David Denby at The New Yorker

Amy Woolsey is a writer living in northern Virginia. She plans to graduate from George Mason University with an English degree this year and spends most of her free time consuming, discussing and generally obsessing over pop culture. You can follow her on Twitter and Tumblr, and she keeps a personal blog that is updated irregularly. This is her first time contributing to Bitch Flicks.

Muted Female Power in ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ and ‘American Hustle’

The men get the most attention for their greed and corruption. However, if we look a bit closer, the films’ women are the ones who can be traced to plant bigger, fatter seeds of avarice. This wouldn’t bother me, as I’m always in favor of more complex female characters (even if they’re unsympathetic), but what strikes me is that we barely notice these scenes. The women become victims and damsels, when oftentimes the ideas were their own.

Is this some kind of 21st century version of the femme fatale? A woman who is coercive–not only sexually, but also financially–but who isn’t taken seriously as a power player? Is it just embedded in us to not notice women’s power or ignore their parts in the narrative?

Written by Leigh Kolb.

Two of this year’s Oscars contenders–The Wolf of Wall Street and American Hustle–are based on true stories. These stories center around greed and corruption. The characters cheat and lie their way into and out of the American Dream.

The men get the most attention for their greed and corruption. However, if we look a bit closer, the films’ women are the ones who can be traced to plant bigger, fatter seeds of avarice. This wouldn’t bother me, as I’m always in favor of more complex female characters (even if they’re unsympathetic), but what strikes me is that we barely notice these scenes. The women become victims and damsels, when oftentimes the ideas were their own.

In both The Wolf of Wall Street and American Hustle, women plant the ideas that become the stories themselves. We shouldn’t point at them and scream, “Jezebel!” or blame them entirely for the greed and corruption. Instead, I think it’s important that we recognize them as part of the story, and not as characters who need saving.

The Wolf of Wall Street‘s quiet, victimized femme fatales are harder to identify. In fact, when we watch The Wolf of Wall Street, the power and corruption of bloated, desperate masculinity screams at us from every frame–women are objectified, and men hold the power.

However, some key moments in Jordan’s (Leonardo DiCaprio) professional life are influenced by women. When he loses his first job on Wall Street after Black Monday, his wife Teresa (Cristin Milioti) shows him an ad for a job at the Investors Center, where he goes to sell penny stocks quite successfully. When he starts taking people’s money in earnest, Teresa says, “Wouldn’t you feel better selling to rich people who could afford to lose money?” The rest is history.

Then come the strippers and the marching band, and the scathing “Wolf of Wall Street” article in Forbes. There’s “no such thing as bad publicity,” Teresa says.

Pretty soon, Jordan is hooked on quaaludes. He points out that the history of quaaludes–how they were first prescribed to housewives, and then became recreational drugs (this Paris Review article notes that they were prescribed to “nervous housewives” and went on to be discovered by “curious teenagers” who raided their mothers’ medicine cabinets). Here we have a shift: all of a sudden, what was once a woman’s game was now co-opted, blown out of proportion, and reckless.

Soon, Jordan is with Naomi (Margot Robbie). He goes into her apartment and is beeped by Teresa (“Go home to your wife,” he says to himself). Naomi steps out naked, and they have sex instead.

She didn’t come, though. It’s pointed out that she doesn’t come, which is important–she’s seductive, but not satisfied. She’s sexy, but not sexual. (Or maybe Scorsese was trying to avoid an NC-17 rating, since doing blow out of a prostitute’s ass crack is R material, but female orgasms are just too scandalous.)

The_Wolf_Of_Wall_Street_review_article_story_main — Naomi’s “power”

Teresa and Naomi both are suddenly victims, discarded and consumed by Jordan’s lifestyle. We feel sorry for them, and they seem to be powerless (except for Naomi’s use of withholding sex). Their motivations and their power are erased by misogyny (figuratively in the story, or literally through violence and rape). I suppose this is actually in keeping with history–a history that favors men, and typically erases women’s involvement.

However, in American Hustle, Sydney (Amy Adams) shares center stage. She is a formidable scammer. She fabricates a persona, adopts an accent, and partners with Irving (Christian Bale) as a scam artist. Her power is fairly clear, and her nomination for the Best Actress Academy Award reflects her spotlighted role.

When Sydney and Irving meet, they are both already con artists in their own right. Sydney points out to Irving “how easy it could be to take money from desperate people.” With her involvement, his business takes off. Irving was a small player before Sydney; she takes their business to the next level.

american-hustle-amy-adams-1 — Sydney has control

Before long, though, Sydney is a damsel in distress–needing to be rescued by either Richie (Bradley Cooper) or Irving, and pitted against Irving’s wife, Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence). Her jealousy and cattiness take over, and she and Rosalyn seem at times to be liabilities because of their unbridled passion. All of a sudden, Sydney’s role as a powerful female force is whittled away. I want to be able to look at a female character and fully realize her power and potential, and recognize her role as an agent of change–even if that change is corrupt. It’s unfortunate to watch her weaken because of romantic relationships, and for her adversary to be the wife who almost tears everything down with her jealousy.

There’s a relatively happy ending for Irving and Sydney–they have legal jobs, and share custody of Irving’s adopted son, while Rosalyn has also found a new partnership. I don’t deny that Sydney is a strong character in her own right; however, a viewer could easily see her role as softened, muted somehow because of her jealousy.

It’s simply too easy for viewers to file women away in the “victim” category, or to not take them seriously as power players. Don’t get me wrong–I don’t think the answer to this problem is to always force female characters into leading roles, especially if the story on screen revolves around a male character. But there must be a way to avoid victimizing women and dismissing their motivations and actions, overshadowing them by female tropes. The male supporting characters are able to be seen as complex–American Hustle‘s Richie, Carmine (Jeremy Renner), and Stoddard (Louis C.K.), and The Wolf of Wall Street‘s Donnie (Jonah Hill), Patrick (Kyle Chandler), and Max (Rob Reiner) are likable and despicable, sympathetic and sinister. It’s possible.

I also wouldn’t want viewers to blame the women fully for the men’s actions, seeing them as simply vamps or temptresses who lead men astray. There’s some kind of middle ground that needs to be explored–and that ground is seeing women as complex human beings.

The women in The Wolf of Wall Street and American Hustle have power in pivotal moments, but it seems too easy for the audience to disregard due to cultural expectations and ideas about women and story lines that have them fade–just enough–into stereotypes. When women have formidable power behind the scenes, it would be nice to see that fully realized on the screen. We need a culture shift to move away from the dangerous dichotomies that wedge women into Madonna or whore, damsel or temptress. It’s up to writers and audiences to make that a reality.

Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.

Women’s Bodies in the Oscar-Nominated Films

What is telling is the presence of so many films that either elide or sexualize female bodies in the category that presumably represents the best of the best. The Academy clearly has a critical preference for movies about men, with women present primarily as wives and sex objects.

video-undefined-19A6CE7F00000578-696_636x358 — *The Wolf of Wall Street*

This guest post by Holly Derr previously appeared at Ms. Magazine and is cross-posted with permission.

Jake Flanagin at Pacific Standard and Victoria Dawson Hoff at Elle recently floated an interesting idea: The Oscars should be entirely segregated by gender. Their proposal would create categories such as Best Female Director and Best Female Writer in addition to the already segregated acting awards.

Though this would lead to recognition of more women working in the field, it wouldn’t solve one of the Oscars’ main gender problems: the Academy Award for Best Picture. Most films are produced by teams of both men and women, making segregation in that category impossible. And yet, the Best Picture category is where we can see the clearest evidence of the Academy’s preference for male-driven films. Only three of the nine films nominated this year even have women in leading roles: American Hustle, Gravity and Philomena.

Perhaps as significant as the lack of women characters is the treatment in these films of women’s bodies. The main female character in Her is not even human, allowing the film and its central relationship to avoid dealing with the messy reality of women with bodies. In Dallas Buyers Club, one of the two female-gender-identified characters is played by a cisgender man, effectively replacing a body that would raise interesting questions about the difference between sex and gender with one that is much easier to understand. One cannot help but wonder, if a trans actor had played the role, in which category would she be eligible for a nomination?

Where women’s bodies are present in these films, they are almost always objectified through an emphasis on their sexuality. In The Wolf of Wall Street, one woman has sex on top of a pile of money (the actor says her back was covered with paper cuts after filming) and another woman literally wears money. One could argue that these moments are designed to reveal the callousness of the male characters, but in imagining and glamorizing a world without any female characters who aren’t objectified, the film ultimately endorses its characters’ worldview. The main female character in 12 Years a Slave is literally a possession, and she is repeatedly raped. Unlike with The Wolf of Wall Street, which encourages the audience to identify with criminals, 12 Years a Slave invites us to sympathize with the victim rather than the perpetrator. In this way, the film does at least provide a critique of turning women into objects, rather than an endorsement.

o-12-YEARS-A-SLAVE-PRESS-IMAGE — *12 Years a Slave*

American Hustle provides the clearest example of Hollywood’s inability to deal with women’s bodies without sexualizing them.Though most of the fashions in which the male characters adorn themselves–from the polyester to the conspicuous chest hair to the hairstyles–are quite unsexy, the women are dressed in ways that reveal their every curve. Though plunging necklines were popular for evening wear in the era portrayed in the movie, women also wore formal dresses that, by today’s standards, look like your grandmother’s nightgowns. During the day, women wore button-up shirts with large collars; the most popular woman’s outfit of the decade was the pantsuit, and hair was more commonly worn natural than elaborately styled.

amy_adams_wardrobe_malfunction_a_p — *American Hustle*

It makes sense for Amy Adams’ character to wear a dress cut down to her belly button, but when her character impersonates a British aristocrat, it would have been more logical to have her button up. She would still have been sexy and her talent would have shone just as brightly without an outfit that invites the viewer to spend most of the scene staring at her boobs. Similarly, the notion that a troubled housewife would wear her hair in an updo all the time is incongruent both with Jennifer Lawrence’s character and with the style of the time.

The contrast between the body of Christian Bale’s character and those of his lovers is especially striking. Whereas Bale’s character has an outside that matches his inside–his corrupt, conniving character is manifest in his weight, physical health and unnatural hairpiece–Adams’ and Lawrence’s characters are gorgeous despite their twisted insides. I would love to see a version of this film in which the women’s bodies, the clothes they wear and the hairstyles they sport are as reflective of their unsavory inner selves as the men’s are.

Only two of the nine films nominated for Best Picture are genuinely about women, and the difference in how women’s bodies are treated in those films versus the other seven is telling. Sandra Bullock spends much of Gravity in shorts and a tank top, yet at no point is she sexualized. One might note that she looks strong and healthy, but one’s eyes are not deliberately focused on her breasts either by her costume or the camera. The unnecessary addition of [SPOILER ALERT!] a lost child to Gravity betrays Hollywood’s inability to portray women without reference to their biology, but even the final shot in which the camera slowly pans from Bullock’s feet to her head is much more about showing her strength than it is about showing her girl parts.

Philomena is a film centered around a woman’s reproductive past, yet it trounces the competition in its fully human representation of a woman character. Unlike Jennifer Lawrence in American Hustle, Judi Dench is old enough to conceivably be the woman she portrays. Close-ups of her face make no attempt to hide signs of age, revealing a beautiful woman whose wrinkles only make her intense emotional experience all the more gripping. Though the film is about the woman’s search for her lost child, the woman herself is far more than a mother on a mission. She loves her children, but she also loves sex. She’s a woman of faith, she’s openly accepting of gay people, she loves to read and she makes friends everywhere she goes. This is not to say that every female lead in every movie needs to be a saint; most real women are not. But is there any other female character in this year’s nominees for Best Picture about whom the audience learns so much and in whom they become so deeply invested because of whom she is instead of what?

You might question whether the absence/objectification of women’s bodies in this year’s Best Picture nominees reflects on Hollywood or the culture as a whole. None of these films would necessarily be problematic on its own—12 Years a Slave in particular performs the important function of detailing the violence under which female slaves really lived and showing slave owners to be as oppressive as they really were. What is telling is the presence of so many films that either elide or sexualize female bodies in the category that presumably represents the best of the best. The Academy clearly has a critical preference for movies about men, with women present primarily as wives and sex objects.

Though segregating awards by gender would up the profile of women working in Hollywood, it would also perpetuate the notion that there is something fundamentally different about work created by women and work created by men. And it would not solve the fundamental problem at the heart of Hollywood: Movies about men are more highly valued than those about women.

For more Bitch Flicks commentary on the 2014 Academy Award nominees: 2014 Academy Award Nominations; The Academy: Kind to White Men, Just Like History

________________________

Holly L. Derr is a feminist media critic who writes about theater, film, television, video games and comics. Follow her @hld6oddblend and on her tumblr, Feminist Fandom.

The Academy: Kind to White Men, Just Like History

The hunters write history. The hunters glorify themselves. The hunters’ history infiltrates itself into the very fabric of our cultural narrative, so we’re only comfortable with seeing the complexities of the hunters, and the simplicity of the lions.

It is what we’ve been trained for since birth.

Written by Leigh Kolb.

Last year, after Django Unchained was largely snubbed at the Oscars (compared to the Golden Globes), I looked at the history of the Black actors/characters who were awarded by the Academy over the years. The results were troubling, but not surprising–much like the infographic The Huffington Post posted today about what roles that women won for over the years (here is Feministing‘s take on the findings).

It’s fairly clear what roles Hollywood is most comfortable with: for Black characters, passivity, tired stereotypes, and villainy get the highest awards. For women, wives/daughters/mothers/sisters/girlfriends–all roles in relationship to men–are rewarded.

Black men and women, organized by character type, who have won Academy Awards. (The Black actors up for 2014 Academy Awards--Chiwetel Ejiofor and Lupita Nyong'o--play a kidnapped freed man/slave and slave.) — Black men and women, organized by character type, who have won Academy Awards. (The Black actors up for 2014 Academy Awards–Chiwetel Ejiofor, Lupita Nyong’o, and Barkhad Abdi–play a kidnapped freed man/slave, slave, and Somali pirate, respectively.) *Click to enlarge.*

For men (who are almost all white), the category with the most winners is “Historical.” For men, there are countless historical roles to fill, so filmmakers can tell the stories of those who have shaped our history and culture–or at least, those whom we see and are told about. And this has been a history that has been largely unkind to Black people and women.

In an interview, late author Chinua Achebe quoted the following proverb: “Until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.”

It is what we’ve been trained for since birth.

This is a history that the lions have had to fight and claw their way out of, yet we don’t see them in Hollywood. The lions write, the lions pitch, but the hunters are not interested. (And the hunters have the money, from generations of oppressing the lions.)

I’d be happy to see the hunters start telling the lions’ history, even just a little bit (I salivate at the thought of Quentin Tarantino taking on suffragettes).

Three of this year’s Best Picture nominations (12 Years a Slave, Wolf of Wall Street, and American Hustle) are films that are based on real stories–and each of these stories, on some level, is about white men fucking people over so they can get rich. And at the end of these stories, the white men don’t really get punished. This is our history.

This is our history.

So how can we blame the Academy for reflecting this history back at us? Art is imitating life, and life keeps imitating art. If the two are so inextricably related (which they are), where do we go from here?

I’m not one who argues that it’s all about the Bechdel Test, or that we need to demand the Perfect Feminist Film. Some of the most potentially empowering films that I’ve seen (that feature female and Black protagonists) would be solidly placed in the “exploitation” category (Blaxploitation especially). We need to demand female and Black anti-heroes if we want true, complex characters and stories.

See this, this, and this. (Who gave the lions a dictation machine, anyway?!)

As I argued in regard to 12 Years a Slave, we have barely started to deal with our country’s history, and we need to, desperately. But still–the only white American actor who is prominently featured in the film was Brad Pitt, who plays a heroic Canadian. It’s hard to face.

In American Hustle and Wolf of Wall Street, the white male protagonists are complex–they aren’t good, but they are whole. They are criminals. They are cheaters. But audiences kind of like them–or at the very least, accept them.

Our goal as lions, then, may not be to just tell our stories. We need to become hunters, and find those stories and demand that they be told. We need to face a history in which Black hunters and female hunters have been punished, and white male hunters have prevailed. We may not be able to rewrite that history, but we can live within it, and force it into our cultural narrative. (Or, as my husband said after we sat through previews last weekend, “They could just quit telling World War II stories for a while.”)

But here we are, in 2014, facing how the Academy’s choices clearly reflect our history. What do we do with this? We should get angry at history, and attempt to rewrite our future. We should be angry at an American history that has oppressed women and Blacks since its inception.

If Wolf of Wall Street reflects modern history, which it does, we see that white men are still winning (case in point: I can’t use the term “winning” without thinking about a white male actor who “allegedly assaulted, threatened, harassed, abused, and—in one incident—shot women” and yet still was the highest-paid actor on television in 2010).

If we want to tell revolutionary women’s and Black people’s stories, we’ll have to settle for a lot of tragedies. There aren’t slaps on the wrists or a few months in a cushy white-collar prison for these historical figures. There’s torture, lynching, and shame. And the villains are almost always white men.

So we’re back to the hunter. And what we know about hunters is they don’t come back bragging about their losses; they brag about their wins. It’s time for them to stop winning, and for the lions to be heard. Then, and only then, can we expect the Academy to reflect a new reality.

Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.

‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ and an Audience of Sheep

When Jordan says to his staff, “Stratton Oakmont is America,” he wasn’t, as he typically was, full of shit. That was one of the truest statements in the film. … But even if we are adequately critical of the reality of Jordan Belfort’s story, how much can we expect from audiences who, like the audience at the end of the film, want at some level to know Jordan’s secrets?

Written by Leigh Kolb.

At the end of The Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) gives a motivational sales speech to an audience. The audience members stare at him, slack-jawed, trying to absorb his infinite sales “wisdom.”

They are revering and listening to a criminal–a man who had been indicted and served time for fraud.

The problem with Martin Scorsese’s treatment of the real Jordan Belfort autobiography isn’t the misogyny. It isn’t the drugs, or the perceived celebration of excess.

Instead, the problem with The Wolf of Wall Street is those slack-jawed (or cheering) audiences who don’t seem to understand that this is meant to be a post-modern morality play. The fact that Scorsese doesn’t adequately “punish” Jordan in the film is necessary, because Jordan wasn’t adequately punished in real life.

That audience at the end of the film? That’s us.

This. (Image via College Humor.) — This. (Image via *College Humor*.)

I suppose it’s easy to miss that, since an aspect of America that’s as important as bootstraps and apple pie is to whitewash a white history that’s been written–or rewritten–by greedy white men. When Jordan says to his staff, “Stratton Oakmont is America,” he wasn’t, as he typically was, full of shit. That was one of the truest statements in the film.

From a feminist perspective, I can understand that the three-hours of objectified and largely one-dimensional female characters can seem overwhelming and disappointing. However, how do we think Jordan Belfort sees women? How do we think Wall Street treated/treats women? Feminists should want to be shown and disgusted by this, because we are supposed to be disgusted with everything in Jordan’s world. Our ire should be pointed toward audiences who don’t get it.

But even if we are adequately critical of the reality of Jordan Belfort’s story, how much can we expect from audiences who, like the audience at the end of the film, want at some level to know Jordan’s secrets?

The real tragedy in The Wolf of Wall Street isn’t that it doesn’t pass the Bechdel Test. The tragedy of this film is that it is so real, and that Jordan Belfort is out there, making money, granting interviews, selling his sales techniques, and gaining more and more followers. The reality is what makes me nauseous, not Scorsese and DiCaprio’s treatment of reality. What sent me over the edge was going home and googling “Jordan Belfort,” and then checking my bank account. This is surely how we are supposed to respond–with rage at the injustice of not just Belfort’s case, but also the insidious untouchability of the 1 percent.

In an excellent interview with Deadline, DiCaprio (who also was a producer) says,

I wanted to make an unapologetic film looking at a character in a very entertaining and funny way, and isn’t passing judgment on them but is saying, look, this is obviously a cautionary tale, and what is it that creates people like this? I thought that could somehow be a mirror to ourselves….

That theme has been prevalent in Marty’s work, since Mean Streets. It’s about the pursuit of the American dream, about the re-creation of oneself to achieve that dream, and the hustle that it takes to get there. I see that theme in so many of his films. He’s talking about a darker side of our culture in all these movies, and yet he’s vigilant about not passing judgment on them. He leaves that up to the audience. That’s why it boggles my mind a bit that anyone would ever not realize this is an indictment of that world.

The intent of the filmmakers is clear, and it’s reflected on screen. The humor and lack of judgment has more to do with our culture than with the story itself. And again, if audiences either cheer, or laugh heartily throughout Wolf of Wall Street–they are essentially celebrating a culture that allows this kind of story to happen. If audiences condemn the film itself, I would hope they would instead focus their condemnation on a culture that allows this kind of story to happen and leads audiences to cheer.

In reality, there’s just a little bit of this…

…and then more of this. (But only 22 months of a four-year sentence.)

As the audience at the end of the film is trying to learn something from Jordan Belfort (while further lining his pockets), there’s a distinct sense of hopelessness. DiCaprio points out:

“As we are progressing into the future, things are moving faster and we are way more destructive than we’ve ever been. We have not evolved at all.”

The Wolf of Wall Street is a great film, and features incredible acting. It’s flashy, it’s shiny, it luxuriates in excess while we watch, stunned, powerless. And until we evolve, people will always be laughing and cheering, while desperately seeking Jordan Belfort’s advice.

Leigh Kolb is a composition, literature and journalism instructor at a community college in rural Missouri.

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Check out what we’ve been reading this week–and let us know what you’ve been reading/writing in the comments!

Hollywood Movies With Strong Female Roles Make More Money by Versha Sharma and Hanna Sender at Vocativ

Thoughts on Women and The Wolf of Wall Street by Andi Zeisler at Bitch Media

What The Wolf of Wall Street Is Missing: The Women by Joanne Lipman at TIME

‘Her’ is a Futuristic Tale With 21st Century Sexism by Michelle Juergen at PolicyMic

Girls on Film: Hollywood’s 4 percent problem by Monika Bartyzel at The Week

Make Her as Likeable as Possible and Other Advice Filmmakers Should Ignore by Sarah Knight at Women and Hollywood

Oscars get political with Pussy Riot film setting the pace for best documentary by Vanessa Thorpe at The Guardian

Black Film Theory: Fighting the Illusions of White Supremacy in Cinematic Narration – Part One by Andre Seewood at Shadow and Act

2013 S&A Highlights: ‘Tamango’ – The Dorothy Dandridge Slave Revolt Movie You’ll Probably Never See by Sergio at Shadow and Act

Top Ten Lists of 2013 From Our Contributors by The Editors at RogerEbert.com

Filmmaker Shola Lynch’s New Role in Bringing Our Stories to the Masses by Keli Goff at The Root

The Most Anticipated Films of 2014 by Inkoo Kang at Women and Hollywood

What have you been reading/writing this week? Tell us in the comments!

‘The Wolf of Wall Street’: C’mon Marty, You Can Do Better!

So if I knew all that, why did I even bother? Shame on me, right? Well, I try to keep an open mind when it comes to Scorsese. He’s a brilliant director capable of surprising his audience and expanding our sense of what a cinematic experience can be. He’s so good that I can even forgive him for making films that consistently fail the Bechdel test. The Wolf of Wall Street, though, is not Scorsese at his best. It might even be at his worst. And that’s because we all know how great he can be.

This is a guest post by Heather Brown.

If you’re thinking about going to see The Wolf of Wall Street, you might just consider staying home and watching Goodfellas, which you’re sure to catch on TV (because it’s never not on TV). Or get The Departed on Netflix. Or Raging Bull. Or Taxi Driver. Even better, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. There are numerous other fixes to sate a Scorsese appetite without forking over your holiday cash to this three and a half hour slog through wealth, uppers, downers, hookers, orgies, scumbags, and more scumbags. Let me first say that I went into the film expecting to be disgusted. About all I knew was that the story was based on the memoir The Wolf of Wall Street, written by Jordan Belfort, a former stockbroker convicted of securities fraud and money laundering. Throughout most of the 1990s, Belfort ripped off stock buyers to the tune of $110.4 million dollars. He trafficked in penny stocks, and founded a brokerage house called Stratton Oakmont, and as a result of his scams many people suffered—and continue suffering. So if I knew all that, why did I even bother? Shame on me, right? Well, I try to keep an open mind when it comes to Scorsese. He’s a brilliant director capable of surprising his audience and expanding our sense of what a cinematic experience can be. He’s so good that I can even forgive him for making films that consistently fail the Bechdel test. The Wolf of Wall Street, though, is not Scorsese at his best. It might even be at his worst. And that’s because we all know how great he can be.

Let’s set aside that there are many, many, more beautiful naked women than men in this film, and that they are often acting out porn fantasies for the delight of devastatingly unattractive males (sorry Jonah Hill and Henry Zebrowski!). There’s also much casual misogyny expressed in small talk about women’s shaving habits and a lengthy explanation of the three types of hookers, “classified like publically traded stocks,” which Scorsese couldn’t seem to help but dramatize in particularly cringe-worthy scenes. Worse than all that, though, are the thinly drawn relationships between Jordan (Leonardo DiCaprio) and the women in his life. First, there’s his first wife Teresa, played by Cristin Milioti. When we first meet the couple, Jordan is nowhere near as addicted to drugs, sex, and money as he’ll soon become, and we see them both as young upstarts trying to make their way. Once Jordan gets his penny stock racket under way, so follows the debauchery. Surely, we think, Teresa must know at least some of what the audience knows: that Jordan’s “working late” is not motivated by the pure drive to provide superior service to his customers. Surely there are more than a few popular culture instances of wives being fully aware of the compromises they’re making with their high-powered husbands (Mellie Grant, anyone?). If Teresa knows the score, Scorsese never tells us. It’s not until Naomi, played by Margot Robbie, enters the picture that Teresa finds out Jordan is a dog. Then she disappears from his life and the narrative.

If there was a ever a woman who should know the deal she’s making with a man like Jordan it’s Naomi. She’s every bit as materialistic and entranced by wealth as her husband, yet Scorsese give us nothing like the fire or toughness that Sharon Stone’s Ginger had in Casino or that Lorraine Bracco’s Karen had in Goodfellas. And it’s not Robbie’s fault—she’s tremendous and does the best she could with the role—it’s Scorsese’s for missing the opportunity to go beyond the trope of the trophy wife to a create a character with just a touch a more depth.

The real kicker for me comes in the film’s final act. During the Jordan’s last speech to his staff—and there are more than a few speeches—he turns his attention to a woman named Kimmie, a character we have never met before this scene. He tells the staff Kimmie’s story: she came to him as a desperate single mother in need of a job and a $5,000 cash advance to pay her son’s tuition. She tells everyone that Jordan gave her $25,000, changed her life, made her rich, and tearfully says, “I fucking love you, Jordan!” Is this just another moment of dark comedy, or are we supposed to be manipulated into believing our main character has a generous soul, especially when it comes to women?

I will say there are two good things about this film: 1) Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings are on the soundtrack and make a cameo at Jordan and Naomi’s wedding, and 2) Fran Lebowitz makes an appearance to set Jordan’s $10 million bail. But make no mistake: that’s not a reason to see this film. Just stay home and watch Scorsese’s documentary about her, Public Speaking, a couple of times. That’s just enough to cleanse the palette.

Heather Brown lives in Chicago, Ill., and works as a freelance instructional designer and online writing instructor. She lives for feminism, movies, live music, road trips, and cheese.