18 Feb 2014
Decadent, obscene, NYC in the 90’s. That’s the NYC I knew. I wasn’t into coke, but I was on my way to being a drunk by then and the drinks just kept flowing. I didn’t have drug-crazed orgies, but I didn’t need an excess of drugs to express myself. I was in hip-hop land and its excesses mirrored the economic sector in that they were comrades.
The film’s soundtrack is full of songs that epitomized the era, while still being the whitewashed commercial versions of them. Glittery pounding hip hop beats that celebrate having a lot of showy, flashy expensive things to prove to the world that you’re smarter, better, stronger than everyone else. I saw an old Friends the other day that had a whole thing about a baby loving the song “Baby Got Back”. It’s ubiquitous in today’s society. And I watched that in the UK. In England I’ve seen commercials with Snoop selling something or another, that part had been more difficult here. Watching how much America’s cultural imperialism is spreading a subtle racism globally…but that’s for another day.
Back to the film. Tons of coke, tons of narcissistic, immature, insecure behavior. Perfect American film. And Patsy was in it as the matriarch character. Perfect. Pats. Looking lovely Joanna Lumley. And that terrifying moment I think I’m going to see a sex scene between Leo and Pats.
He cheated a lot of people, he was a total jackass. He lost, kinda. Three hours later, the end. Because the reality of what happened is that it happened to real people who suffered real consequences http://www.laweekly.com/informer/2013/12/26/an-open-letter-to-the-makers-of-the-wolf-of-wall-street-and-the-wolf-himself?showFullText=true
In this space, the realities of the inequities become crystal clear. The idea that his little dude got to make all this money on nothing is truly the American Dream. To work kinda hard for a lot of material things that have no bearing on, or to obfuscate, one’s true humanity.