Why films about finance are real­ly tales of male impotence

For­get about the junk bonds, the mort­gage-backed secu­ri­ties and the col­lat­er­alised debt oblig­a­tions. Like all good films set in the world of high finance, The Big Short isn’t real­ly about the green stuff – it’s about men, or, more specif­i­cal­ly, the tragi­com­ic con­se­quences of male impotence.

On the sur­face the film is packed with pop cul­ture ref­er­ences and fourth wall-break­ing mono­logues that attempt to explain the vac­u­ous finan­cial prod­ucts that under­pin the sys­tem. Look beyond these, how­ev­er, and The Big Short is much more inter­est­ing for its rag­tag ensem­ble of male pro­tag­o­nists that dri­ve the story.

From Chris­t­ian Bale’s social­ly awk­ward num­bers bod to Steve Carell’s emo­tion­al­ly spent fund man­ag­er, each man is ostracised because they don’t com­ply with a con­struct of machis­mo forged in the unre­lent­ing, male-dom­i­nat­ed world of finance. These men cement their out­sider sta­tus by expos­ing a fatal flaw in the sys­tem and by bet­ting against it – but, cru­cial­ly, they were mis­fits before they exposed it and remain mis­fits afterwards.

Mis­fits, but not losers. The true losers here are the end­less stream of name­less chumps who appear through­out the film in unblink­ing sup­port of a moral­ly bank­rupt sys­tem. Their impo­tence is defined by their ingrained inabil­i­ty to break con­ven­tion, think inde­pen­dent­ly and chal­lenge per­ceived wis­dom, even when the evi­dence says they should.

The imagery of impo­tence appears through­out, from gun ranges where cock­sure bankers point­less­ly fire off a few rounds, to beau­ti­ful women with zero emo­tion­al inter­est in the men who pay to ogle them – a com­mon device in films on this sub­ject. The Big Short also sub­verts the bull­shit macho ban­ter of the finan­cial main­stream with absurd exchanges between the main char­ac­ters. ​“I smell mon­ey,” says Ryan Gosling’s jester-like banker. Unlike the obliv­i­ous major­i­ty, he is self-aware enough to expro­pri­ate the system’s dis­course as he simul­ta­ne­ous­ly dis­man­tles it.

In this regard, The Big Short fol­lows a num­ber of films that por­tray the finan­cial world as one big joke at the expense of impo­tent men. Oliv­er Stone’s Wall Street, arguably the sem­i­nal film on the sub­ject, is about the desire of its two male leads – ambi­tious stock­bro­ker Bud Fox (Char­lie Sheen) and cut-throat investor Gor­don Gekko (Michael Dou­glas) – to com­mand pow­er and wealth beyond the reach of mere mor­tals. In real­i­ty they cre­ate noth­ing of tan­gi­ble val­ue and are left devoid when their trades unravel.

With his allit­er­a­tive name, slick appear­ance and sharp intel­li­gence, Gekko is ini­tial­ly pre­sent­ed as an alpha male super­hero, seem­ing­ly invin­ci­ble. By the end he is reduced to for­lorn­ly beat­ing Fox for betray­ing him. ​“I gave you Darien,” Gekko yells, refer­ring to the tro­phy girl­friend (Daryl Han­nah) they share between them. ​“I gave you your man­hood.” In this moment Gekko claims to exert con­trol over mas­culin­i­ty itself, when real­ly he is just as pathet­ic as Fox.

Of course, in cer­tain films about financiers you don’t have to look too deep to see these themes emerge. Amer­i­can Psy­cho is about a banker who would rather kill women than have sex with them, while its ​‘busi­ness card’ scene is pos­si­bly the best metaphor for dick-mea­sur­ing ever com­mit­ted to film. Mar­tin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street is one long essay on male degen­er­a­cy and impo­tence. The ​‘Quaaludes over­dose’ scene, in which main char­ac­ter Jor­dan Belfort (Leonar­do DiCaprio) is ren­dered com­i­cal­ly use­less by the drug, is a spec­ta­cle of impotence.

Any­one work­ing in the finance game could prob­a­bly protest that such unkind por­tray­als are typ­i­cal of a left-wing film­mak­ing com­mu­ni­ty that dis­likes cap­i­tal­ist machi­na­tions. They might be right. But even in a more seri­ous treat­ment of the top­ic (see the crim­i­nal­ly under­rat­ed Mar­gin Call) the malig­nant effects of skewed gen­der dynam­ics are laid bare.

Set in a Lehman Broth­ers-esque com­pa­ny, each male char­ac­ter in Mar­gin Call is essen­tial­ly a dif­fer­ent male arche­type, from the ruth­less CEO (Jere­my Irons) to the whips­mart young ana­lyst (Zachary Quin­to) who dis­cov­ers the firm is on the brink of col­lapse. For all their dif­fer­ent attrib­ut­es, each man agrees to close ranks and sell off the company’s worth­less assets as a naked­ly immoral way of pre­serv­ing their col­lec­tive exis­tence. The one female char­ac­ter, Demi Moore’s chief risk offi­cer, is sin­gled out, blamed and sacked.

As with The Big Short, all the chat­ter about lever­age and yields is the fluff that tells you it’s a film about finance. The under­ly­ing mes­sage is the same – don’t blame the sys­tem, blame the impo­tent men who main­tain it.