In the ten years since the film’s release, anti-hero Jordan Belfort has become an idol for legions of straight men
“Sell me this pen”: four words I’ve had countless men quote to me. They’re often wearing suits. Maybe they work in finance. They probably think that they can impress you by saying something witty about the biro in their hand because they watched Leonardo DiCaprio do the same thing in The Wolf of Wall Street. Maybe they even watched a three-minute YouTube clip of Jordan Belfort, the former stockbroker and fraudster that DiCaprio’s character is based on, talking about his sales strategies.
There was a time in the late 2010s when you could ask any given man – or at least any man between the ages of 15 and 35 – his favourite film, and there was a very high chance he would have gone off on a long monologue about The Wolf of Wall Street. The Martin Scorsese film is critically acclaimed for its cinematography, clever writing and satire, but there’s a certain kind of man who has come to see this film as the pinnacle of cinema for all of the wrong reasons – the same sort of man who is trying to sell me a Sharpie in a beer garden.
With a plot that revolves around drugs, sex and scamming, it’s easy to see how the film has cemented its reputation as a fuckboy film in the ten years since its premiere in 2013. Some would go as far as arguing that naming The Wolf Of Wall Street as your favourite film is a glaring red flag. “If you believe The Wolf of Wall Street is the best movie of all time, you should probably rethink your morals,” says one woman interviewed in this TikTok about red flags in men – and this is just one of many TikToks laying into men who like the film. Like American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman, DiCaprio’s Belfort has come to represent a very specific, sinister version of masculinity; it’s no surprise both films were voted as the two most ‘red flaggy’ favourite films in a Reddit thread created by FemaleDatingStrategy. But is it really fair to label any man who likes The Wolf of Wall Street film as toxic?
Ten years ago, when the Martin Scorsese film was released, journalist and culture critic Esther Zuckerman predicted that it would gain this kind of reputation in an article for The Atlantic titled ‘The Wolf of Wall Street Is a Douchebag’s Handbook’. “The Wolf of Wall Street is a well-acted, well-directed, well-written film,” she wrote in the piece. “It also will be idolised for all the wrong reasons.” In the piece, she argues that although the film is supposed to be satirical, many people are bound to miss the point entirely, and it’s a prediction which has evidently proven true. “I do think you can look at the movie and point out all the ways that it is criticising [Belfort] and because obviously that is the intention,” she tells Dazed. “I think Scorsese is someone whose work has often been misinterpreted. But I do think with The Wolf Of Wall Street in particular, it was so easy for a certain type of person to ignore all the satire in favour of the fun.”
And it’s the ‘fun’ of the film that most men claim to love about it – the partying, the sex, the money. 23-year-old George says this is the main reason he counts the film as one of his favourites, which he first watched at around the age of 14. “I remember thinking it was epic: a film about a group of seemingly normal lads becoming obscenely rich and just doing whatever they wanted,” he says. The scenes most people remember from the film – other than the obvious Margot Robbie moments – are those wild, party scenes that include, but aren’t limited to: Belfort and his brokers having a dwarf-throwing contest, a marching band and a group of strippers parading through an office room, and Belfort and Nadine (Robbie’s character) having a sex on a pile of cash.
“The party scenes stick in my head the most. There’s a scene where they pay a girl to shave her hair off which I remember,” says Sean, who is now 28 and remembers idolising the movie when he first watched it at the age of 19. “When you’re impressionable as a young man, it’s easy to soak it all up and think that the peak of manhood is earning lots of money because of everything else that brings with it and how it allows you to act and that’s how the film made me feel.”
“Scorsese is someone whose work has often been misinterpreted. But I do think with The Wolf Of Wall Street in particular, it was so easy for a certain type of person to ignore all the satire in favour of the fun” – Esther Zuckerman
There’s a particular kind of fuckboy who the film has become associated with, one who would almost certainly misunderstand the satire around toxic masculinity in the film and take it for gospel. I’m talking, of course, about finance bros, the exact demographic Zuckerman was thinking about when she was writing about the film ten years ago. “When the article came out, I had just graduated college with a bunch of dudes that had gone into finance at the time and I was really seeing the movie through their eyes,” Zuckerman tells me. “I could just feel those dudes that I knew taking the wrong thing away from it and I do think part of it was the marketing at the time – Paramount did this whole campaign like ‘it’s the Marty party’."
For a generation of men who work in finance and strive to make that part of their identity – usually with a gilet, a pair of loafers and a casual cocaine habit – the film has become their holy grail. “I love the Wolf Of Wall Street because that’s the career I’m trying to go into,” 22-year-old Ronan*, who is studying for a masters in Economics and Finance, tells me. He recognises that the film oversexualizes women and glamorises the lifestyle that comes with working in finance, but even still he aspires to the type of life depicted in the film. “When they make that first IPO sale, when they take that company public – that’s my dream. I want to make money!”
@finlayrowlandd Biggest red flag.
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The film presents a corrupted version of the American Dream – a working-class man makes millions of dollars unethically for a life in which he can do cocaine for breakfast and be in a toxic relationship with Margot Robbie. “I’m talking about normal people, working-class everyday people. Everyone wants to get rich,” Belfort says at one point in the film. “It’s probably a bit tragic now, but when I was 19, I was impressed by the film because this guy went from having a bit of a crap life and turned it round purely by being really driven,” Sean says. “I like the business side of the film,” adds 31-year-old Sammuel. “It shows how any old idiot can make money and live however they want, even if it’s frowned on in day-to-day life.”
Of course, fraudsters and con artists like Jordan Belfort are frowned upon in everyday life, although less so than they used to be. You only have to look at the idolization of figures like Anna Delvey and Elizabeth Holmes to see that people are coming to revere scammers and the way they defy societal expectations to get what they want. That’s the difference between The Wolf Of Wall Street and some of Scorsese’s other films exploring similar themes, such as Goodfellas, or more recently, Killers of The Flower Of The Moon. “If you look at Goodfellas, you see that loneliness of Henry Hill at the end of the film in his suburban life once he goes against his mob colleagues [...] but you never really see that with The Wolf Of Wall Street,” she says. For Belfort in this film, as for many other notorious con artists, most people would agree that their actions are morally wrong but generally forgivable, particularly when they’re undermining systems that benefit the elite.
But clearly, there’s an obvious problem with this outlook on the film: the outlook that says happiness can be achieved through a totally individualistic version of masculinity that involves earning lots of money and doing whatever you need to do to get it. It’s a problem that has become more pervasive in the last decade, with figures such as Andrew Tate gaining more traction, often being put on the exact same pedestal as someone like Jordan Belfort. “I think on social media the overarching message from your Andrew Tates and people like that is ‘don’t settle down with anyone and don’t have feelings’,” Sean says. “They say that you’ve just got to be this distant man earning lots of money and if you don’t do that you’re doing it wrong. I think that’s the message the film puts out too.” Plus, it’s no secret that a big part of the reason why men love this film is because of the character Margot Robbie plays, a character that completely epitomises the male gaze – ask your favourite fuckboy his ultimate fantasy and its bound to be that infamous ‘nothing but short short skirts around the house’ scene. Zuckerman also points out that the movie relishes in the “ogling of women”. With all this in mind, it’s easy to see why many women raise eyebrows when men say the film is their favourite.
As with pens, movies are often mostly what you make of them and how you sell them. And if 28-year-old Clapham-based Brad wants a film about a man who finds paradise in the stock market, that’s what he’s going to buy, no matter how clever the satire. “I think to say that a film that shows fuckboy behaviour encourages fuckboy behaviour, is like saying that watching Saw encourages people to go and torture strangers,” George concludes. But for the women left scarred by one too many situationships with a commitment-phobic man who works at JP Morgan, Jordan Belfort might just make their blood run colder than The Jigsaw Killer.
*Name has been changed