Genre investigation into the contextual factors of film inspiration

Contextual Factors

Credit Crunch

This is a prime example of Marxism and Hegemony as the crisis was caused by the people with power of the economy which were the bankers and investors.  They were involved in taking people’s money and investing that money in the economy on risky investments that may make huge amounts of money for the country or cause financial meltdown as it did in 2008. This has enabled people in power to exploit this and make millions of pounds of people through false promises in the stock market and the banks. 

Now it terms of how this affected working class people, their money was left in the hands of their banks and bankers and had no say nor power in how the banks would invest that money so they were pretty much powerless. Films such as Ill Manors, Harry Brown and Adulthood show what the result of a back financial situation does the peoples lives who had little money to start off with.

As a result of the wrong doing of wealthy powerful figures that created the crash, it made it extremely hard for low income people to maintain their lifestyle as prices rose to compensate for everyone not having a lot of money and due to business taking a huge blow due to the crisis they had to make thousands of workers redundant, therefore unemployment levels rose and most of those people were working class.

Gangsters/Crime

A recent trend in the film industry at the moment is using stories and reputations of real life notorious gangsters to create a thrilling, tense film. However, to have this you have to have the real life gangsters to do so and they are using gangsters who are around in modern times today. 

For example the film Legend is based on the lives of the Kray Brothers who were two twins from East London that dominated that area and London for decades. Through the film to reveals and in depth portrayal of their lives and dealings within the criminal world which showed how they able to corrupt some government officials to allow them to get away with their crimes through bribes.

Now this hasn't just happened with the Kray Brothers, gangs in today's society such as the Mafia are still extremely dominated due to their overpowering influence over government and people in power which has set a precedent throughout that world and also in the film industry to make films out of this corruption including Black Mass and The departed. 

Class Barriers

Class and class barriers have also played their part in influencing our genre of films as in today's society the mean so much but yet are intangible. They can determine a persons life before they are even born as people from upper class wealthy family are more likely to live a better, richer lifestyle than someone who belongs to the working class. 

This is because in our society, commonly, the wealthier you are the more opportunities you have to succeed in the world as money enables ,arguably, a better education and the fact your rich means you probably have rich friends and therefore a community a wealthy people is established and they then dominate most high paying jobs and businesses.

However, this has become a hugely debated issue in today's world and this is where the film industries inspiration has come because now it it becoming more common from people who started off in the working class to progress in the world and become successful and wealthy rather than just people from a upper class wealthy family. 

For example Lord Alan sugar started from selling car wind-shield the back of his van to establishing a net worth of £1 Billion pounds and owning numerous businesses. He didn't come from a wealth upper class family which shows how the argument that anyone can become rich does have some validity.

However, in terms of films being inspired by stories such as Lord Alan sugars a significant one is The Wolf of Wall Street that depicts the life of Jordan Belfort. He was a lower class man from an average family who worked is way up through Wall Street to establishing his own firm at 25 years old and having a net worth at the time of $250 million dollars and living an outrageous lifestyle that he wrote about in his biography and thus was turned in a film. 

However, through the film the Riot Club we see the other side of the class debate with rich upper class students from Oxford getting top interviews due to their status. But also seeing how they treat others of a lower class through their act of going to normal restaurants and trashing them in front of the waitresses and owners but still paying for the meal and damage.

But this is based on a real club called the Bullington Club that numerous government officials today belong to including David Cameron, Boris Johnson, George Osborne and many more. Showing this films inspiration  is a form of protest and revealing sensation that is showing the masses that these upper class people aren't untouchable any more and can be exposed to show who they really are. 

Capitalism/'Wall Street' greed 

Under our current system/theory of Capitalism which works on a free market of private owners that drive their innovations to be sold for capital but Adam Smith states that a person’s wealth earns can’t be increased without the expense of other people. In words of John Kenneth Galbralth, “Under Capitalism man exploits man” which is a perfect man to sum the system that we live in today up and links with the way working class people how been turned into ‘chavs’ as due to capitalism the power lies with the wealthy 1% of society and due to that they exploit the most vulnerable in society for economic gain. 

Moreover, through capitalism and the free market it means people can get extremely rich and being rich in a capitalist society gives to access to have the finer things in the life that the media have portrayed to people as being the 'dream' lifestyle. These finer things include: Mansions, Super cars, yachts, designer clothes, designer watches, Private Jets, dinner at Michelin star restaurants etc. When people find out about the people living this lifestyle it creates immense envy and interest into the how they got to such a position and what it would be like to live like one of these people.

This has inspired films such as The Wolf of Wall Street, The Big Short, The Riot Club, The Great Gatsby (to some extent) and TV shows like Entourage, Ballers and suits. All these films and shows present individuals that have become extremely wealthy and live this dream like lifestyle that majority of society are chasing to achieve. But without Capitalism it wouldn't be possible to create films like these as under a different system such as Communism where everyone is financially equal, no one could go out and get massively rich to live a lavish lifestyle that can only be achieved with Capitalism.