Monika Raesch

Women, Gender, and the Financial Markets in Hollywood Films

In Boiler Room (2000), a group of loud, young stockbrokers sit at a bar teasing and joking. One of the jokes is about a feminist submitting to the man: ‘why did the feminist cross the road? To suck my balls.’ This joke illustrates a popular belief that the financial industry is a male-dominated environment. In The Associate (1996), a middle-aged, old-fashioned secretary vents to an African American female executive that Wall Street is a sexist place. She says, ‘[t]he women’s movement, it didn’t make it to Wall Street.’ The executive replies by saying that her achievement is not a result of affirmative action, but of hard work and talent. The financial market is assumed to be a place where anyone — men and women, wealthy and poor — can succeed if one is hard-working, persistent, and money-minded. Given the two contradictory beliefs about the industry, we apply a feminist political economic perspective to analyze how the financial industry is represented in Hollywood films. This approach examines a gendered production, distribution, and consumption of goods and resources. It also critiques how ideology is used to stabilize the unbalanced power relation between the two genders (Lee 2011).

The Miracle of Sight: Understanding What One Sees

At First Sight. Directed by Irwin Winkler. DVD, color, 128mins.; 1999. Distributed in the United States by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM); other distributors listed at http://www.imdb.com/ title/tt0l32512/ companycredits Beed-e majnoon. The WillowTree. Directed by Majid Majidi. DVD, color, 96mins.; 2005. Distributed in the United States by New Yorker Video; other distributors listed at http://www.imdb. com/title/tt0415607/companycredits