More than a decade separates American Psycho from The Wolf of Wall Street, but directors continue to make movies about unparalleled consumerism because the topic is still relevant in today’s society. Jordan Belfort and Patrick Bateman are not the same person, they have different stories unto their own, but they both are meant show the extent to which values are placed on money and materialism during the 1980’s time culture, and both have underlying commentary on how these values are still problematic today. Both Bateman and Belfort exemplify the epitome of 1980‘s ‘yuppie’ culture, a term that was first coined in 1980 by Dan Rottenberg of the Chicago magazine. Rottenberg’s aim was to try to explain the massive move from the suburbs back to the…show more content… Thus the term ‘yuppie’ was born, and as time went on, yuppies grew to be a term for money hungry young professionals determined to climb the social latter against all costs. In 1984, which was declared by Newsweek to be “The Year of The Yuppie”, yuppies were now described as “making lots of money, spending it conspicuously” as well as on their own “self-absorbed journey”(“The Year of The Yuppie”). While American Psycho was made about two decades after this initial phenomenon, and The Wolf of Wall Street came out another 13 years later, the message is still the same: American society is becoming more and more greedy and self involved as time goes on. This message is particularly seen in professionals working on Wall Street because qualities such as lack of empathy and remorse, charm, and willingness to take risks(qualities that usually characterize psychopaths) are considered desirable when it comes to dealing with large quantities of other people’s money(Silver). However, the rest of society is just as easily susceptible to greed and the influence of consumer culture. As Svetlana Asanova comments in her article over consumerism and madness, “The indisputable fact is that everyone is involved in consumer culture in one way or
