Excellence Redefined
The 1980's has been called the "me" generation, the decade of materialism, and was responsible for the greatest number of mergers and takeovers in the history of the US market. People were transformed by the power of money, and tried to take advantage of the opportunities in the stock market. The stock market has never guaranteed a profit, but there were those willing to take the risk. People have lost millions from speculating on what was supposed to be a "sure thing" in the stock market. People would bet their children's college fund, and their retirement money on a stock tip, only to find bankruptcy the next day. But the growing desire for power and money caused people to achieve success by any means necessary, regardless of the legality. Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken bet their money, but they always seemed to win, even when others would lose. It turns out that they had many "sure things," only with one problem: they were all illegal. Boesky and Milken characterize the rest of the financial world at the time, and Wall Street is the movie that exemplifies the such attitudes of the 1980's from Oliver Stones accurate point of view. Boesky and Milken had a great system. They would befriend executives
Michael Milken was in charge of all junk bonds trading at the well known investment firm, Drexel Burnham Lambert, Inc. The junk bonds market(high risk, high yield bond) could have made any man rich if they played it perfectly, but such a feat is impossible because of the limitations of chaos in nature. Like Boesky, people started to wonder where his significant gains were coming from. Unfortunately, the Securities and Exchange Commission was among those questioning the sudden riches, and eventually they found the answer, charging Milken for, "fraudulent conduct involving insider trading, stock manipulation, failure to disclose beneficial ownership of securities and numerous other violations." Milken believed there was not sufficient evidence to convict him, but was proved wrong, and granted a dramatic sentence of long jail time and fines totaling 11 billion dollars. Had Boesky gotten off free? To take this further, Bud Fox and the corporations underwent a transition from spiritualism to materialism. When individuals and companies started to follow the trend of others, the goal became money, power, and material things; the things that had come to define excellence. As Murray Chap said in his critique of the film, "Materialism drivers the main characters to destroy anything and everything in the way of their pursuit of excellence, power and money." This sounds redundant, but materialism had become the driving force in everyone, and it is evident through out the film that as materialism grows and grows, honesty minimalizes, which caused the new definition of success. The scandal of Boesky and Milken was all driven by their greed and desire for money, which was characteristic of the genaration. In Oliver Stone's Wall Street, he parallels real life events with the plot, characters, and technique, to show his interpretation of the 1980's, and how Boesky and Milken were almost role models of the decade. The movie takes Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko, a Wall Street player who powers his way through the world with millions, often at the expense of others. Charlie Sheen plays Bud Fox, who is stuck in a directionless brokerage job with dreams of being like Gekko. Fox eventually works his way into Gekko's office, where he gets swept into a different world of greed and money. Greed overcame him. Finally there is Bud's father, played by Martin Sheen, who represents the good in this movie as a hardworking, middle class worker for Blue Star Airlines, who sees the wrong in what Gekko is doing in the financial world. He tries to explain this to his son, but Bud is so wrapped up in the money that is coming in, that he disregards the advice to get of the business. The basic plot is the interaction of these three characters, and how greed that is already present in Gekko overcomes Bud, only to leave the good of Bud's father disregarded. I have followed the stock market for a few months, and was scared to realize just how much this movie characterized my attitudes and goals toward money. I would watch CNBC everyday and just dream of being one of those billion dollar hedge fund managers, or think about how much profit I could have made from some internet stock. I
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2141
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)
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