#Gay definition of wolf full
A gay orgy! Never mind that “Wolf” is full of elaborate heterosexual exploits of all kinds, many of them off-putting, this particular moment is wiped from the screen as fast as possible. Belfort comes back a day early she walks in on a room full of men having sex. Then they go away for the weekend, and when poor Mrs. He’s charming, scents their towels and gets about 15 seconds of screen time to establish that he’s the non-threatening gay archetype. There’s a scene relatively early on in the film in which, fresh with success, Belfort and his wife get a gay butler for their fancy New York apartment. In the theater, however, things are much different. This is, on paper, a reasonable argument to make. Homophobia, misogyny: these are things that Wall Street has created, not Scorsese. Yet what happens if this delicate balance collapses? What if you don’t find any of it funny? What if you find yourself much, much more discomforted than amused? The counterpoint is that the entire film is within Belfort’s perspective, that if you find something offensive that’s only because the protagonist is a jerk. What does that say about America? Nothing good. These men are pigs, and for a brief moment you’d forgotten it. Occasionally the rug will be ripped out from under you, and you’ll look at your own laughter in horror. You laugh at their antics and in the process soften up, maybe enough to see part of yourself in their greed and their excess. Yet on the other hand, if you find what they’re doing funny, that’s a gateway. On the one hand, Belfort and his friends are terrible people doing terrible things.
The purported brilliance of the film is basically in its sense of humor. Is the film glamorizing the wretched behavior of its protagonist, Jordan Belfort, or is it wryly and brutally satirical? Should we be horrified or should we be laughing? Well, as the helpful above quote from Scorsese himself shows, the answer to these questions is “both.”
Much of the heated discussion over “The Wolf of Wall Street” has centered upon this particular point. “We try to be as true to them as possible and maybe see part of ourselves in there that we may not like.” – Martin Scorsese
The Out Take is a bi-weekly column about queer representations in cinema.