How movie making helps us to understand political manipulation
American Eclectic
November 15, 2022
Bias is an odd word, but commonly used and just thrown out there as an expression— “liberal bias,” or less common (just because it is still catching on) “conservative bias.” Bias seems like an odd word, if the intention is to persuade someone or groups of people to see something in a particular way. Instead of bias, or even the word “spin,” the focus should be on manipulation. Manipulation conveys a different way of understanding what is taking place and helps to address consequences which are not there with the word spin. Spin seems innocuous, manipulation addresses behavior and ways of affecting how someone sees political developments.
Oftentimes, when the charge of, say, liberal bias is thrown out there, there is a lack of specifics of what precisely was wrong that would make all the difference. Movies can provide a way of understanding manipulation, often not because of the movie itself but because of ways to see how a movie could have addressed its topic in a different way.
Manipulation, “to change by artful or unfair means so as to serve one’s purpose,” so states the Merriam-Webster dictionary. The movie The Wolf of Wall Street, fits this definition well. The Wolf of Wall Street (2013, starred Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie, and Rob Reiner) was an entertaining and well-made movie. Enormous attention is focused on Jordan Belfort (DiCaprio) and his firm Stratton Oakmont (a name created for the movie). Stratton Oakmont was an over-the-counter brokerage firm created in 1986 that closed in 1996. Over the Counter refers to trading or selling directly between two parties without any supervision by an organized market or exchange.
These are stocks not listed so no need to meet the standards of an exchange. In this market it is difficult to know what a fair price is exactly. A lack of reliable information about a company is a problem with this market. A number of these stock are “penny stock” because many sell for less than one dollar.
Think about buying 1,000 shares at 50 cent each. If the stock goes to $2.00, a huge profit can be made. But, with less, if any, regulation, and a lack of reliable information on a company, it is easy to lose everything.
The common concern here is known as “pump and dump.” A trader buys a lot of a particular stock, maybe under $1.00 then plays it up on social media, for example. Then the stock goes up, the trader sells quickly and makes a handsome profit.
Belfort in watching the movie said of DiCaprio’s portrayal of him:
I wish he played me as if I was Jonas Salk and that was the character that had done wonderful things so it's sort of bittersweet. A little bit because many of the things that the character did - I always say the character because it wasn't all me - some of it was fictionalized but a lot of the actions that are real, what I did do, I'm not proud of.
Belfort spent 22 months locked away for securities fraud and money laundering. After getting out he wrote his memoirs titled, The Wolf of Wall Street, a name he gave himself. Maybe “memoirs” might be the wrong word since there is an issue about the degree of accuracy in his book. Nevertheless, Martin Scorsese then based his movie on the book. Belfort’s former business partner, who was portrayed by Jonah Hill in the movie, said a lot of what Belford wrote was made up.
The movie is based on Belfort’s account of himself, and one article in describing his book stated:
He’s belligerent, obnoxious, and delights in making fun of Japanese accents and graphically describing all sorts of sexual depravity with prostitutes and even a 17-year-old sales assistant.
In making his millions, and spending it lavishly, Belfort piled up victims—not presented anywhere in Scorsese’s movie, which probably would have taken away from the image presented by DiCaprio.
DiCaprio in a TV interview said of Belfort:
Jordan Belfort looks at this as a cautionary tale. He’s sort of reflecting on his wild, debaucherous, hedonistic days on Wall Street, where he was, you know, consumed by greed and excess. But he was so candid and honest about it and I really wanted to put this up on the screen, ‘cause in a lot of ways it felt like a reflection of the time that we were living in. I mean anything goes in this film it is absolutely wild.
More than $200 million was taken from investors, approximately 1,500. In 2018, he was charged that he had only paid back less than $13 million of the $97.5 million he owed back (about half the amount of money he took in). By that point, he had been out of prison twelve years and had failed to keep to his payment schedule. An article in Celebrity Net Worth, stated regarding Belfort’s payment schedule, “Most of the money he has actually paid back comes from the $11 million seized at the time of his arrest by U.S. Marshalls. So, basically, he has paid back almost nothing personally.”
A 2018 federal court case that sought and got a writ of continuing garnishment against Belfort stated regarded the actions of him and his partner Daniel Porush:
They encouraged customers to purchase stock to generate inflated market demand, and sold their stock back into the U.S. marketplace, reaping substantial profits, which they used to buy additional stock in the companies, and then sold shares to their firm to transfer profits from their offshore entities to their firm.
Ken Minor, one of Belfort’s victims gave around $80,000 over several months for an Initial Public Offering (IPO) investment. In a short YouTube video he said, “I’m not an investor, I don’t invest. I have an IRA and stuff like that. Some 401K things.” He lost about $50,000 of that money. In the video he stated he never talked with Belfort. Regarding another victim an article stated:
For many of them — small-business owners and people like Steve Orton, a State Farm insurance agent from Alpharetta, Ga. — the publicity for the movie has brought back the old pain. Still, Mr. Orton said, while “it kind of sickens me, I really feel like I owe it to myself to complete the circle to see it.”
It’s a useful exercise to see beyond the movie making. Scorsese on the making of his movie remarked:
Why bother telling the story of someone…who’s unremarkable who didn’t do anything inspiring wasn’t Michelangelo or Walt Whitman or Roosevelt [or] Lincoln on the one hand [or] on the other hand Rasputin or a Mao or Stalin. On top of that someone who led a life that wasn’t exemplary that wasn’t the kind of pretty ignoble in a way not because they wanted to harm…anybody per se but because they had no real model for leading a decent life because this is what they learned from the world around them so that’s something that I’ve always been attracted to an interest[ed]…in me someone like Jordon [Belfort].
Scorsese sounded completely idiotic—Belfort needed a role model to prevent him from bilking people?
Belfort is still making money off the image portrayed by DiCaprio, as one site states:
If you’ve watched the movie The Wolf of Wall Street, then you must know Jordan Belfort who was played by Leonardo DiCaprio. He has his own training program called the Straight Line Persuasion System.
The image of Belfort portrayed by DiCaprio is what may sell prospective buyers, not the Belfort as Ken Minor presented his operation or a federal court case that led to a continuing garnishment. In 2014, a reporter paid $89, along with several hundred other people, to listen to Belfort babble “a bunch of cliches and aphorisms” and referred to the movie, even stating, “Leo [DiCaprio] was so convincing, not just because he’s a great actor but because I spent months working with him.” The reporter described him as, “less Tony Robbins, more buff guy at the gym who doles out unsolicited workout advice.” As far as any value gained from this seminar, workshop, stage presentation, call it what you like, the conclusion was:
A financial planner and his tax lawyer friend are standing there, arms folded and shaking their heads. The planner tells me he’s going to try to get a refund; he’s insulted by the pitch. Apparently I just missed a woman and her husband who paid $500 each for VIP seats and a one-on-one meet-and-greet. They wanted a refund as well.
Belfort is still at it pitching seminars, workshops, advice even his year. In April he hosted a cryptocurrency workshop held at his estate in Miami. The nine attendees paid in Bitcoin (about $40,000 at the time). In 2018, Belfort did a YouTube video titled, “The Bitcoin Market has Finally Run Out of Greater Fools.” Apparently, he had a change of heart in how he saw cryptocurrency in the four years since that video.
Interestingly, Matthew McConaughey had a small scene in the movie, where he played Belfort’s boss at L.F. Rothschild, Mark Hanna. McConaughey thumps his chest in the movie (although the chest thumbing, apparently, was not real). Hanna, like Belfort, said that the scene made him famous.
The Wolf of Wall Street, was not a movie about politics, but it helps to step back and see this movie in a different way. Understanding something about Belfort’s victims, his lack of remorse or the Jonas Salk nonsense, and Scorsese just sounding foolish in how he looked at Belfort, provide a different perspective beyond DiCaprio’s entertaining character. Maybe all that inanity about Scorsese saying a “real model for leading a decent life,” was there in his movie making and influenced why no pain inflicted on people was depicted in the movie.
Understanding the term manipulation, not spin as a cute word used frequently in politics that doesn’t carry the darkness associated with manipulation needs to be used more. Spin sounds like the expected in politics, it sounds harmless, it carries with it the everyday in politics. Listening to Newt Gingrich open his mouth and saying anything, can be discounted as just political talk or spin—in one ear and out the other. Manipulation is more crafted and carries with it an attempt to influence how people see something—or, worse, how they are coerced into action. Whatever image people may have developed of Belfort after seeing DiCaprio as an almost lovable character and understanding nothing else creates a whole different way of seeing, understanding, and evaluating. The DiCaprio image is helping Belfort to continue making money off people.
Political discussion needs more use of the word manipulation to understand the actual stakes involved in politics and the lives effected—probably like those that Belfort bilked and are still waiting to get their money back. In a comprehensive study of why people participated in the January 6th riots at the U.S. Capitol, slightly more than one-fifth said it was because they supported Trump. Another more than one-fifth said it was because Trump said the 2020 election was rigged and stolen from him: Some 41 percent of the rioters, motivated to act because of Trump. This study concluded:
Trump and his allies convinced an unquantifiable number of Americans that representative democracy in the United States was not only in decline, but in imminent, existential danger. …This belief translated into a widespread fear of democratic and societal breakdown, which, in turn, motivated hundreds of Americans to travel to DC from far corners of the country in what they were convinced was the nation’s most desperate hour.
It seems odd to hear one of the rioters say, “The government did this to us! We were normal, good, law-abiding citizens!” Manipulation involves denial. As one Republican voter stated, “The January 6th attack was not [Republicans] the Democrats were behind it all. There is no way a Republican would act that way.” I guess this particular Republican would have trouble with Mike Pence, Trump’s Vice President saying, about the events of January 6th leading to a mob storming the Capitol, “the president’s words were reckless. It’s clear he decided to be part of the problem.” Guy Reffitt, a Trump supporter and a January 6th rioter was sentenced to more than seven years in prison for bringing a gun into the capitol and threatening Representative Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) Speaker of the House of Representatives. After his sentence he suddenly may have understood how he was manipulated when he said he was a “f-ck-ng idiot.” I wonder if Trump will feel an obligation to cover any of his family expenses as he is locked away, after all Reffitt was there to support him. His children will surely miss him as he spends his years in prison. Jason Chansley, seen as the “QAnon Shamon” as he paraded around on January 6th in headgear with horns, asked then President Trump for a pardon, after all he was there for Trump. No doubt there are lots of suburban Republican women who want an odd-looking guy in a horned fake fur hat as their party’s standard bearer. Chansley might have understood that he was manipulated when he said, “The hardest part about this is to know that I’m to blame. To have to look in the mirror and know, you really messed up. Royally.” He was sentenced to almost three and a half years in prison. Troy Faulkner who was sentenced to five months in prison for his participation in the January 6th riots, oddly said that Trump was “combating human trafficking.” Manipulation could be seen in his statement about why he was part of the crowd that raided the Capitol, “We were told by the president to go [to the Capitol].” He further added, “I wasn’t in my best state of mind.” No doubt Trump appreciates him going to prison for him. And, finally, I was thinking of Ashi Babbitt, an Air Force veteran who was killed on January 6th as she was part of the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol and who was described by her husband as a “strong supporter of President Trump.” I wonder if Trump has any remorse over causing her death. His lies that he won the 2020 election, they were not political spin but manipulation: Manipulation with deadly consequences for a young woman.
Notes
Jordan Belfort victim Ken Minor speaking to Triple M,” YouTube: https://www.youtube.com /watch?v=Yy15uIOKu2w
“Leonardo DiCaprio Discusses ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’,” YouTube: https://www.bing.com /videos/search?q=martin+scorsese+youtube+wolf+of+wall+street&ru=%2fsearch%3fq%3dmartin%2bscorsese%2byoutube%2bwolf%2bof%2bwall%2bstreet%26cvid%3dc742985ab8924011bf262c10cef92509%26aqs%3dedge.1.69i59i450l8...8.1335820314j0j1%26FORM%3dANSPA1%26PC%3dACTS&mmscn=vwrc&view=detail&mid=94B6403CC589470295AA94B6403CC589470295AA&rvsmid=59279D16A89BC5E9EA6759279D16A89BC5E9EA67&FORM=VDQVAP
Miles J. Herszenhorn, “Why Did Trump Supporters Storm the U.S. Capitol on January 6th? Because of Trump, New Harvard Study Finds,” The Harvard Crimson (July 26, 2022): https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2022/7/26/trump-jan-6-hks-study/
Sky Palma, “Jan. 6 rioter questions reporters about Jeffrey Epstein after judge hands him prison sentence,” Raw Story (November 3, 2022): https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/jan-6-rioter-questions-reporters-about-jeffrey-epstein-after-judge-hands-him-prison-sentence/ar-AA13ItlD?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=010af72ad7bd4e1096c893afbe1321b0
Hannah Rabinowitz and Katelyn Polantz, “‘QAnon Shaman’ Jacb Chansley sentenced to 41 months in prison for role in US Capitol riot,” CNN politics (November 17, 2021): https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/17/politics/jacob-chansley-qanon-shaman-january-6-sentencing/index.html
“Real ‘Wolf of Wall Street’ Jordan Belfort says film is ‘bittersweet’,” CBS News (January 14, 2014): https://www.cbsnews.com /news/real-wolf-of-wall-street-jordan-belfort-on-films-portrayal/
Zach Schonfeld, “What the Wolf of Wall Street’s Victims Think of The Wolf of Wall Street’s Movie,” The Atlantic (December 27, 2013): https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2013/12/what-wolf-wall-streets-victims-think-wolf-wall-streets-movie/356530/
Jimmy So, “The Real Wolf of Wall Street: Jordan Belfort’s Vulgar Memoirs,” DailyBeast (July 11, 2017): https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-real-wolf-of-wall-street-jordan-belforts-vulgar-memoirs
Lorenzo Tanos, “How Historically Accurate is The Movie the Wolf of Wall Street?” Grunge (December 9, 2021): https://www.grunge.com /702305/how-historically-accurate-is-the-movie-the-wolf-of-wall-street/
Hannah Towey, “’Wolf of Wall Street’ inspiration Jordan Belford reportedly charged $40,000 for a 2-day crypto workshop at his Miami estate-three years after he called Bitcoin a ‘mass delusion’,” Insider (April 16, 2022): https://www.businessinsider.com /wolf-of-wall-street-jordan-belfort-miami-cryptocurrency-workshop-2022-4
Soo Youn, “My Miserable Night at Jordan Belford’s Groupon Sales Seminar,” The Hollywood Reporter (November 3, 2014): https://www.hollywoodreporter.com /lifestyle/lifestyle-news/jordan-belfort-s-groupon-sales-737331/
“The Wolf of Wall Street Interview-Martin Scorsese (2013),” YouTube: https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=martin+scorsese+youtube+wolf+of+wall+street&cvid=c742985ab8924011bf262c10cef92509&aqs=edge.1.69i59i450l8...8.1335820314j0j1&PC=ACTS&ru=%2fsearch%3fq%3dmartin%2bscorsese%2byoutube%2bwolf%2bof%2bwall%2bstreet%26cvid%3dc742985ab8924011bf262c10cef92509%26aqs%3dedge.1.69i59i450l8...8.1335820314j0j1%26FORM%3dANSPA1%26PC%3dACTS&view=detail&mmscn=vwrc&mid=59279D16A89BC5E9EA6759279D16A89BC5E9EA67&FORM=WRVORC