ABSTRACT
The Hollywood "Wall Street movie" has long dramatized the practices and effects of hubris, conspiracy, and excess in destabilizing American corporations, cornering financial markets, and engendering financial crisis. Wall Street passions and machinations have always been key narrative drivers in this genre, and it might well be assumed that film has, for its own purposes, exaggerated some of the more sensational aspects of the finance industry. In the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008, however, it has become unclear whether Hollywood's focus on the "economic" desires and fantasies of elite white men has been hyperbolic at all. Recognizing finance's continued grip on the global economy, this chapter examines the politics of critical visual representations of finance, launched in the wake of the Great Recession, in order to analyze the extent to which they challenged and/or maintained dominant financial norms and assumptions.
