‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ and ‘The Winslow Boy’

That’s when we became accomplices to one of the greatest stock scams in American history.

For the next three hours, we were caught up an extravagant epic about the egregious excesses of the 1980s – a seductive film that ended up celebrating an era we thought it would satirize. And the guilty truth of it? We were entertained.

Scorsese has taken the tawdry rags-to-riches-to-rags story of a small-time stockbroker named Jordan Belfort and turned it into a sensational saga, giving it the “full Scorsese treatment” that made Goodfellas a landmark film– including Hollywood stars, slick story-telling, sweeping cinematography and a driving rock musical score.

Limousines vs. the subway

The story follows Belfort’s rise as an investment neophyte who launched his own firm in a Long Island mall and transformed it into “Stratton Oakwood,” an infamous 1980s brokerage house that swindled thousands out of millions while Belfort and his sleazy pals became mega-millionaires in their 20s.

As it happens, Belfort broke every law in the book along the way, and the bubble eventually burst. Belfort’s empire collapsed, taking him and everyone else down with him.

But the point of the story– if there is one, in this morally ambiguous film– is what’s of greatest concern, at least to me. Belfort (played with chilling charm by Leonard DiCaprio) warns the FBI agent who eventually brings him down that no matter what happens, at least Belfort has had a chance to live the “high life” that included mansions, luxury cars, yachts and private helicopters, while the agent, in contrast, has to ride the subway home every night.

Era of greed

It’s that “high life” of the over-the-top Wall Street culture that Scorsese exploits, along with our insatiable, voyeuristic fascination with it. Scene after scene of war-like office rallies, Dionysian group sex orgies, lavish drug-taking, and every kind of imaginable depravity make the last days of the Roman Empire look like a kiddies’ birthday party. (I wonder: Did the film’s collaborators use consultants to advise them on the authenticity of the details? Or did these scenes emanate from their own lurid imaginations?)

Whatever– the makers of this extravagant, hypnotic, hard-hitting film have glamorized an era of greed and dishonesty beyond anyone’s wildest dreams– an era whose fallout continues today, as other Wall Street white-collar criminals thrive, unidentified and unpunished.

Scorsese’s film also glamorizes a man– Jordan Belfort– who doesn’t deserve our attention. If only Belfort were a villain of the magnitude of a Richard III or Iago– or even a colorful psychopath like Gordon Gekko (from Oliver Stone’s 1987 film, Wall Street). But he wasn’t. He was just an ordinary guy who got away with murder, getting rich on the “American Dream,” regardless of the consequences to anyone, including himself.

Schoolboy’s fight

While The Wolf of Wall Street receives this hoopla, Terrence Rattigan’s modest 1946 morality play called The Winslow Boy came and went, almost unnoticed, at the Roundabout Theatre on Broadway this fall. Its unfashionable subject is honesty, and its story is one that our ethics-impoverished culture of greed and corruption urgently needs to hear.

In Rattigan’s old chestnut, a British schoolboy named Ronnie Winslow is expelled from school for allegedly stealing a “postal order” worth five shillings (roughly pennies in value). The boy doggedly insists that he is innocent, so his decent, upper-middle-class parents rally to support him. They hire a distinguished barrister to fight his case, which drags on for years, during which time the Winslows lose their status in society, their friends, their assets and their health. Still, the lawyer refuses to give up. He believes in Ronnie’s integrity, and fights on until, eventually, the boy is declared innocent.

A story that celebrates the value of honesty is the one people should be queuing up to see, instead of the story of how to cheat, lie and steal. But of course they don’t– because that’s not entertainment. And entertainment, apparently, trumps integrity as a story line today.

Campus scandals

Speaking of integrity and honesty, last year Harvard administrators discovered that almost half the 279 students enrolled in a course called “Government 1310: Introduction to Congress” were suspected of cheating on the final exam (70 were suspended). Just this month, another Harvard student phoned in a bomb threat, and the building where his final exam was scheduled had to be evacuated. (Reason: he didn’t want to take the exam.) Recently, a Haverford College student hacked into the school’s computer grading system so as to raise his grade in a course and lower the grades of his classmates.

If this isn’t a crisis, what is?

Haverford is a Quaker school that prides itself on an honor system, featuring an Honor Council run by students. The Council recommended to the administration that the student be “separated from the community”— that is, permanently expelled. Moreover, the Council members held a campus-wide meeting this fall to involve the entire academic community in the issue and its resolution.

Years ago, while I was working toward my Ph.D., I taught at Haverford for a semester. After the final exam in May, I received an urgent call from one of my students (let’s call him Roger). He met with me and confessed that he had cheated on the exam. I followed the honor system protocol and reported the incident to the dean, who contacted the Honor Council. Roger expressed disappointment because his case couldn’t be heard until September. He couldn’t bear to wait that long, he told me— his conscience was too heavy.

“Attention must be paid to such a man,” wrote Arthur Miller in Death of a Salesman. Terrence Rattigan paid attention to the simple but stubborn heroism of the Winslow Boy. But who today will recognize similar heroes at places like Haverford, when it’s so much easier to glorify the wolves of Wall Street?