alt Hacker NewsOver the last 10 minutes of Wall Street, the main character gets arrested, breaks down crying, gets punched in the face, and then goes to jail. The last scene has his father (driving the MC to jail) turn almost literally to the camera and tell the viewer which precise moral value he's being punished for not upholding. I don't know how much more embodied in the art the values could be.
The problem is that you have to include people's self-justifications to tell a meaningful story. If Gordon Gekko were an uncharismatic sleazeball who tells everyone "I'm greedy because the misery of others pleases me, haha!", the film wouldn't work as a criticism of Wall Street, because real Wall Street tycoons are usually charismatic and don't say such things in public.
>his father (driving the MC to jail) turn almost literally to the camera and tell the viewer which precise moral value he's being punished for not upholding.
Yes, and there's the scene with Hal Holbrook, I think he lectures Bud Fox just before or after he's arrested? Holbrook made a career of playing moral authority figures.
I think the seductive appeal of Gordon Gekko is meant to illustrate something fundamental about the human condition. We are all susceptible to temptation, whether it involves pleasure, money, status, or power. Success doesn't necessarily satisfy desire, if anything, it intensifies it. Can you eat just one potato chip? Would you return a found wallet full of cash? If you made a million dollars, would that be enough? Gekko is an example of an ordinary human predicament: the difficulty of knowing when we have enough, and the ease with which we rationalize getting more.
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On another note, it's too late to edit my earlier post in this topic.
"delivered in 1986 at The speaker? Ivan Boesky"
should be
"delivered in 1986 at what is now the Haas School of Business of the University of California at Berkeley. The speaker? Ivan Boesky"
The erroneous question mark is in the PDF, but I inadvertently omitted the location clause. Carelessness is another aspect of the human condition.