Please answer each question in FULL, NEAT sentences to receive
full credit on this assignment. This tests you attention to our movie
and your understanding of the movie and our class discussions.
1. Is Gordon Gekko's larger goal the money he makes on his deals
or making the deal and beating someone else out of their money?
Bud: How much is enough?
Gekko: It's not a question of enough, pal. It's a zero sum game,
somebody wins, somebody loses. Money itself isn't lost or made,
it's simply transferred from one perception to another.
2. Is Gordon Gekko like Donald Trump, who wrote in his
autobiography, The Art of the Deal, " that money no longer
interests him very much....[I am] more motivated by the challenge
of a deal and by the desire to win." Explain how please.
3. What does Gordon Gekko mean in his speech to the Teldar
board when he say: "The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that
greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed
works."
4. Why is Bud Fox so attracted to Gordon Gekko? Why does he
want to be a player?
Gekko: I'm gonna make you rich, Bud Fox. I'm talking about liquid.
Rich enough to have your own jet. Rich enough not to waste time.
Fifty, a hundred million dollars, buddy. A player. Or nothing.
5. Why do "players" need to wear good suits, own fancy highrise
apartments, own the best artwork, and generally flaunt their
wealth? These are the same characteristics associated with
Yuppies. What does this tell us about the Yuppie stereotype?
6. Does Gordon Gekko earn his money honestly? If he uses
"insider information" to buy stocks that are sure things, is he
really playing by the rules? Is the movie Wall Street (1987)
suggesting that stock speculators like Gekko are sharks
feeding off the gullible average investor and mismanaged
corporations? Please explain.
7. Why does Bud Fox keep telling his father to get a better suit?
Why is dress so important to Bud?
8. How does Wall Street illustrate what William Palmer calls "the
yuppie drive to make large amounts of money quickly, to succeed
in a ruthless competitive world, to acquire the most expensive
material goods, to spend rather than save, to party extremely hard
as a reward for working extremely hard, to sacrifice human
relationships for one's job"? Please explain.
9. What is a “yuppie”? Why are “yuppies” like Bud Fox and Darien
Taylor willing to give up or risk their personal relationships, their
emotional integrity, and their characters for money and power and
social status?
10. Why does Bud Fox turn against Gordon Gekko in the end?
Does he side with his father's principles of character, integrity, and
honor over Gekko's obsession with money and power at any cost?
11. What does Bud Fox mean when he tells Gordon Gekko that no
matter how hard he tried he couldn't become Gordon Gekko
because he was still just Bud Fox?
12. When Bud Fox turns against Gekko, Darien tells him that
Gekko will destroy him and take everything he has. Is this the
ultimate yuppie nightmare that money, success, power, and status
will be pulled out from under them despite what they do?
13. Did Gekko really expect Bud Fox to stand by while his father's
company, Bluestar Airlines, was bought and sold off into pieces so
that Gekko could make a killing?
14. Is the American economy described by Gordon Gekko really a
Social Darwinian "survival of the fittest" world in which the
strongest prey on and destroy the weak and innocent?
Gekko: The richest one percent of this country owns half our
country's wealth, five trillion dollars. One third of that comes from
hard work, two thirds comes from inheritance, interest on interest
accumulating to widows and idiot sons and what I do, stock and
real estate speculation. It's bullshit. You got ninety percent of the
American public out there with little or no net worth. I create
nothing. I own.
15. One of the larger yuppie fears portrayed in Wall Street is the
fear that if you're not a player, if you're not on top of the money
game, then you will be one of the losers, one of a great mass of
Americans who are being screwed by the players and the money
men. Is this why Gordon Gekko tells Bud he can either be a player
or be nothing?
16. Bud's father, Carl Fox, says: "Stop going for the easy buck and
start producing something with your life. Create, instead of living
off the buying and selling of others." Is Bud Fox afraid that the
only way to make it is to become a player because the only way to
really make it in this world is to "live off the buying and selling of
others"? If you're not preying on others and exploiting others
weaknesses, then you are just one of the prey for the stronger,
more ruthless players.
17. Why is money and power so much more attractive to Gordon
Gekko than love, family, and emotional and psychological
integrity? Does Gekko see love and emotional relationships as
weaknesses?
18. Does American society really value those who work hard,
produce, and create even though most of these people are not
wealthy, powerful, and socially prominent? Why are Americans so
fascinated with men like Donald Trump?