Wall Street Sociology

Sociological Essay: Movie Analysis, “Wall Street”
The movie “Wall Street” is a classic movie and one of my personal favorites. It’s a fictional story with real world implications. The movie is about an up and coming junior stockbroker named Bud Fox who I doing whatever it takes to get to the top and make big money, like his hero and eventual mentor, Gordon Gekko. Gekko is a legendary player on Wall Street who’s values and intentions are never clear to anyone but himself, and he is always looking to make money no matter who he hurts in the process. Eventually Bud meets Gekko and impresses him to the point that Gekko takes Bud Fox under his wing. The two begin business together seemingly always using insider information to make deals. Bud Fox
Eventually being charged with insider trading, Bud turns on Gekko further by wearing a tape recorder to gather evidence of insider trading on Gekko himself. When analyzing the movie, the one quote that best sums it all up is Gekko’s statement, “Greed is good”. The social-conflict approach is the best approach to take when analyzing the events and message of the film. The movie was very clear on showing how social standing and class ranking in society, and power allow for certain groups of people to exploit other groups. In this case we are looking at a group of people, in the movie Gordon Gekko and eventually Bud Fox, which have wealth, power, and social prestige to use it to their advantage to gain more wealth and power at the expense of others. Gekko has the power and social standing to get information others cannot, and use them to his advantage to make money while causing others, usually lower class workers to lose money and jobs. One quote he made was, “Money is never gained or lost… but simply transferred.” He tried to rationalize what he did by basically saying money is
When looking at an event early on they were talking about Gekko’s habit of purchasing companies then breaking them apart, firing the workforce and making millions in the process. If nothing else happened in the movie, that would be enough to justify a social-conflict approach analysis. It is the very definition of it. A powerful wealthy man with the ability to purchase the company and profit from it while leaving the working class out of the job, while that working class has no control over it simply because they do not have the same power and wealth. There are also multiple scenes where Bud Fox and Gekko gain insider information to exploit others to make a profit. This again is due to social prestige and the ability to gain access to information that the majority does not have. Due to social prestige, power and wealth, they are able to hide this illegal activity and continue to profit from it. The climax of the movie is when Bud Fox’s fathers employer, Bluestar Airlines, is in trouble and Bud convinces Gekko to get involved to turn the company around and make a profit at the same time, again using inside information. In this case Bud has generally good intentions, though Gekko has other ideas. Without Bud’s knowledge Gekko has arranged to liquidate all the assets and break up the country, causing the workers to lose money from their pensions and lose their jobs. Gekko’s greed is overpowering and this