{"id":6363,"date":"2014-03-15T16:14:42","date_gmt":"2014-03-15T08:14:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chinaworker.info\/?p=6363"},"modified":"2014-03-15T16:14:42","modified_gmt":"2014-03-15T08:14:42","slug":"the-wolf-of-wall-street-film-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chinaworker.info\/en\/2014\/03\/15\/6363\/","title":{"rendered":"The Wolf of Wall Street \u2013 film review"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><b style=\"line-height: 1.5em;\">The Hollywood film The Wolf of\u00a0Wall\u00a0Street\u00a0has generated a lot of controversy<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">This film is based on the memoirs of Jordan Belfort, a finance shark who according to the US government still owes his victims US$100m in restitution. The film is banned in Nepal and Malaysia. Socialist Action is completely against bans and censorship, and strongly defends the right to free expression. But that doesn\u2019t mean we won\u2019t criticise reactionary or regressive ideas that appear in popular culture or art. Here, our reviewer Caroline Holmgren looks at the film\u2019s portrayal of women.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/media.chinaworker.info\/2014\/03\/wallst-eng.jpg\"><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-6364\" alt=\"wallst-eng\" src=\"http:\/\/media.chinaworker.info\/2014\/03\/wallst-eng.jpg\" width=\"303\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https:\/\/media1.chinaworker.info\/2014\/03\/wallst-eng.jpg 303w, https:\/\/media1.chinaworker.info\/2014\/03\/wallst-eng-202x300.jpg 202w, https:\/\/media1.chinaworker.info\/2014\/03\/wallst-eng-37x55.jpg 37w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 303px) 100vw, 303px\" \/><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">The Wolf of\u00a0Wall\u00a0Street\u00a0is about successful men in the fortress of capitalism, New York, as the money they have stolen from ordinary workers buys everything that financial success offers: expensive cars, drugs and naked women.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Never before have I seen a movie where women are portrayed as objects to such an extent as in The Wolf of\u00a0WallStreet. The first thing we see is the main character Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) snorting cocaine from a woman\u2019sbutt cleavage.\u00a0The following scenes arrange women around among the successful men like products on an assembly line, always naked and affectionate.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Director Martin Scorsese marks out his standpoint early: It\u2019s all about suits and successful men in the stronghold of capitalism who buy happiness with money they get by tricking ordinary workers. The film takes us into the world that money and success can give you: expensive cars, endless amounts of drugs and strippers. Of course, it is not far from reality, but the scary thing is the romanticised view that the audience is offered. The incredibly degrading light that the important female characters are placed in reaches an almost absurd level.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Sexism runs like a red thread throughout the film so that it is impossible to ignore it and leave the rest of the story to one side.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">\u201cI filed for a divorce and moved Naomi into the apartment,\u201d says Jordan Bedfort in one scene. Shortly before this he mentions her genitals as \u201chis heroin\u201d and it\u2019s at this point that I wonder why I\u2019m still sitting there in the theatre. But I sit tight and hope that a scene might turn up where one of the female characters says something of value or exchanges a normal conversation with each other.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">But not once during the 3-hour film does the director succeed in portraying the female characters as something more than simple-minded creatures and sex objects whose greatest weapon is their genitalia.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">In popular culture the so-called Bechdel Test (created by cartoonist Alison Bechdel in 1985)\u00a0is\u00a0used as a way to measure how women are depicted. For a movie to \u2018pass\u2019 this test it must fulfil the following criteria:\u00a01) It must have at least two (named) female characters, 2) they should talk to each other, 3) about something other than men.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">It might seem like three pretty simple criteria, but not once in the film were requirements two and three met. However, we must of course give Martin Scorsese a little credit since he named the entire four female characters. Sure, three of them were the wives of the leading male roles.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">It is absurd that a sexist film that portrays women in such a degrading manner has become a critically acclaimed success. Have we really not progressed further than this?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">Shortly after the news broke that Chris Brown had assaulted Rihanna, Chris Brown released a new album. One of the many reviews of that album said something like: \u201cDon\u2019t support violence against women by purchasing this disc.\u201d This was taking a clear position.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;\">A movie is not okay just because big names are on the cast list or a famous director made it. We are surrounded every day by sexist propaganda and objectification of women in the media and that is never okay, no matter who says or does it.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Hollywood film The Wolf of\u00a0Wall\u00a0Street\u00a0has generated a lot of controversy This film is based on the memoirs of Jordan Belfort, a finance shark who according to the US government still owes his victims US$100m in restitution. The film is banned in Nepal and Malaysia. Socialist Action is completely against bans and censorship, and strongly [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":6359,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[408],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-6363","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-reviews"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Wolf of Wall Street \u2013 film review - China Worker<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/chinaworker.info\/en\/2014\/03\/15\/6363\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Wolf of Wall Street \u2013 film review - China Worker\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Hollywood film The Wolf of\u00a0Wall\u00a0Street\u00a0has generated a lot of controversy This film is based on the memoirs of Jordan Belfort, a finance shark who according to the US government still owes his victims US$100m in restitution. 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