ABSTRACT

As an economic and cultural process that started in 1980s and continues beyond the 2008 economic crisis, financialization changed Western economies and cultures at both macro and micro levels. Economically, it resulted in an increased influence of financial markets, financial institutions and financial elites over economic policy and outcomes. This chapter presents an overview of brokers' lifestyles in the American financial feature film Boiler Room in order to trace not only how financialization "crept" into the images, dialogues, situations, and character profiles of this film; but also to reveal how values linked to financialization have been embedded in the American culture of the 1980s and 1990s, known also as the deregulation era. The impression of realism engendered by the film gestures toward the development, in the deregulation era, of the social emotion of financial entitlement.