Retrospective: Wall Street (Patreon)

Wall Street is obsessed with patriarchy. From the casting of Sheens Martin and Charlie to one of Hollywood's finer nepo babies as one of Hollywood's great psychos to Oliver Stone's clear agony over having been raised by a Wall Street yuppie, the film is replete with dysfunctional father-son relationships. Oliver Stone's America is one of patriarchy, of inter-generational competition, where Boomers vie with their fathers who fail to get With It. Charlie Sheen's Bud Fox loses his soul in Wall Street as his father Carl (Martin Sheen) scrapes together an honest living in a blue collar union job.

It's easy to read the cosmic battle between Gordon Gekko's proto-American Psycho world and the less lucrative but more honest working class life of Carl Fox as Stone's romantic fantasy about Kennedy liberalism triumphing over Reaganomics. It's of course a fundamentally pro-capitalist liberal fantasy (as are most of Stone's films) in which iniquity is punished by law enforcement and avarice isn't rewarded, but given the state of Hollywood in the Eighties, an anti-avarice message is kind of magical. Gordon Gekko is made as good a villain as he is so we can enjoy his implied downfall. A rare fun financial thriller.