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Rating: Q=7, P=8 / Obsession
Scale 1=3, Scale 2=4, Scale 3=4, Scale 4=4
Wall Street, Trading, Scandal, Corruption, Credit/Housing Crisis
This should not come as a surprise to any of my readers but I have to say it again: I seriously love films about groups of guys. And The Big Short is truly a film about guys acting like guys in a guy-centric field (did I say "guy" enough just then?). If I learned anything from my studies on masculinity it is that men are having a harder and harder time understanding their identities in the world today. And so when opportunities arise that help define that unknown or unclear purpose, they are grabbed.
"Masculinity has nothing to prove yet somehow needs constantly to prove itself," Guy Austin once wrote. And this is so true--I even titled the academic portion of my thesis "Watch Me Prove It To You." Yes, the film's story is the few guys who anticipated the credit/housing bubble collapse before it happened (and made serious money off of it). But to me the film is also about proving. It is about grappling with this unclear "masculinity": investigating, risk-taking, being aggressively assertive, exposing the enemy, and then cornering the enemy, pride, power...
But these guys ultimately feel failure or guilt, not success. Even after profiting in the multi-millions. Because the system is broken. And once the proving is done, what then? And what was it all for? Did anyone make a real difference? Broken systems don't start broken, just like corruption doesn't start with power and greed. It all stems from somewhere...
"Masculinity has nothing to prove yet somehow needs constantly to prove itself," Guy Austin once wrote. And this is so true--I even titled the academic portion of my thesis "Watch Me Prove It To You." Yes, the film's story is the few guys who anticipated the credit/housing bubble collapse before it happened (and made serious money off of it). But to me the film is also about proving. It is about grappling with this unclear "masculinity": investigating, risk-taking, being aggressively assertive, exposing the enemy, and then cornering the enemy, pride, power...
But these guys ultimately feel failure or guilt, not success. Even after profiting in the multi-millions. Because the system is broken. And once the proving is done, what then? And what was it all for? Did anyone make a real difference? Broken systems don't start broken, just like corruption doesn't start with power and greed. It all stems from somewhere...
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