The GameStop debacle has put the stock market on everyone’s radar this week – even those who rarely pay it any attention. Many are depicting the incident as a David-and-Goliath battle between small investors gathering on Reddit message-boards and Wall Street powerbrokers finding themselves unexpectedly on the back foot at their own game. Billions of dollars are in the balance.
Along with such major news events, though, come the instant internet experts. Let’s face it: most of us understand diddly squat about the stock market and rely on Hollywood to inform us about an industry that it portrays as a place in which, to quote from the tyrannical, fictional Gordan Gekko: “lunch is for wimps”.
Want to join the conversation about GameStop? Here are five films and TV shows that might help you muddle your way through.
1. Black Monday
Don Cheadle turning charm and smarm up to 100. Regina Hall in blue eyeshadow and big 80s hair. Tony-award winning Andrew Rannells adding another besuited straight-edger to his acting credits, along with The Book of Mormon’s Elder Price – at least at first. Black Monday, in this series, refers to 19 October 1987, still the single worst day for America’s stock market. Produced by Seth Rogen, this technicolour comedy purports to tell the story of who caused the crash that day and how. It’s a kind of cocaine-fulled narrative rollercoaster in which everyone is double-crossing everyone else and you’re never quite sure which character to root for – until you realise that the answer is none of them.
2. The Wolf of Wall Street
In this film, Martin Scorsese – a director celebrated for making great gangster movies – turned his focus to Wall Street, applying the same kind of “rise and fall” narrative structure as his films about the Mafia. The Wolf of Wall Street was inspired by former stockbroker Jordan Belfort (adapted from his memoir of the same name), who reacted to the film by suing the financiers and requesting $300m in compensation.
Scorsese’s film is damning in his portrayal of Wall Street culture as a pit of toxic masculinity and various kinds of “isms” – hedonism, chauvinism, sexism. The film suggests succeeding as a big-name stockbroker involves not only being ruthless and calculating but also putting on a show and appealing to people’s base instincts – like an inspirational speaker or a late night TV evangelist. “There is no nobility in poverty”, Leonardo Di Caprio’s Belfort tells his sales team during a shouty pep-talk. In this portrayal, there was no nobility in wealth either.
3. Trading Places
If you think the stock market is wild, just wait until you learn about commodity futures. All will be explained in this vaguely Dickensian Eddie Murphy Christmas comedy that features the price manipulation of oranges, attempted murder, a sex worker with a heart of gold and a live gorilla. If you haven’t guessed by this summary, the answer to your question is yes, this film was made in the 1980s. Viewers be warned: some of the language, politics and visuals of this film would see it very much cancelled in 2001, let alone 2021.
4. American Psycho
This reviewer was never much of a fan of Mary Harron’s frankly disgusting 2000 adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ equally icky novel, about a New York stockbroker (Christian Bale) who commits various hideous crimes that will not be retraced here. For one thing, the ending (spoiler alert!) strongly implies it may have all been a series of hallucinations inside the protagonist’s head, attempting to justify grotesque gratuity by contextualising it as a kind of sick recurring daydream.
The prominence of murders and orgies does however carry an unsubtle metaphorical message about capitalism and the way it works. “This confession has meant nothing,” Bale’s character famously says towards the end, his crimes going unpunished.
5. The Big Short
There were people in Wall Street who saw the global financial crisis coming and dove in. Adam McKay’s playful 2015 film follows sharks who got wind of the impending crash and endeavoured to profit from it, including a shoeless heavy metal enthusiast (Christian Bale) and a self-loathing investment maverick (Steve Carell).
Aware that his subject matter is potentially dry and confusing, McKay breaks the film up with comedy scenes in which various concepts are explained straightforwardly but in wacky contexts. The director includes, for instance, Margot Robbie in a bubble bath, who, glass of champagne in hand, breaks down the ins and outs of subprime mortgages. It’s a trick designed to make you think, by the end of it, that you’ve actually learned something.
Maybe you want some real information?
If you want an actual primer on the global economy – how it works, how it fails, and how it can affect so many people’s lives – try John Lanchester’s easily accessible book about the 2007-2008 global financial crisis, Whoops! Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No-One Can Pay. Or you could reach for the NPR podcast Planet Money, which offers fun, digestible explainers on complex financial questions from Modern Monetary Theory to how antitrust laws work. They even have an episode about Trading Places. You can also listen to Full Story’s episode on modern monetary theory here.
