Drugs - lots of em "how the fuck else would you do this job?"
We don't really want what we think we desire - desires money to buy things that will deliver them
As with ever so many Wall Street brokers, Belfort's inherent flaw is his consistent chase for immediate satisfaction in place of authentic methods to achieve an increase to his stable level of happiness. Despite making more and more income, Belfort's stable level of happiness does not also increase. Instead he results to artificial means of momentary happiness; illicit drug usage. This is a classic case of the Hedonic treadmill. This is an observed tendency of Humans to resort back to a stable level of happiness after any major positive or negative events in life.
Fantasies have to be unrealistic, because the moment, the second you get what you seek, you don't, you cant want it anymore. In order to continue to exist, desire must have its objects perpetually absent.
Jordon is free from the chains of the Oedipus complex - why we feel for him. We kind of root for him because he is our reflection of our Id.
Jordan is the Id. He does precisely what he needs to do to get what he thinks he really wants.
In the scene with Mathew's character (the boss) and Jordan at the table, theres irony in the way Mathew talks about the clients. He says: "they're fucking addicted", the exact same could be said about these two characters and others on Wall Street. They enjoy the thrill of achieving their goal; making money.
"I was hooked in seconds" says Jordan over narration as he he's the sound of money: "You wanna know what money sounds like? Go to a trading floor on Wall Street"
At the end of the film Jordan doesn't learn from his mistakes. "Its all about revolutions". He claims to have cleaned up after he crashes his car, yet still chases money.
"The point of Lacan, and what makes Lacan's reading of desire, different from Brooks' and indeed what makes his reading of desire different from that of anyone who thinks of these structuralist issues in psychoanalytic terms, is that Lacan really doesn't believe that we can ever have what we desire. He has no doubt that we can have what we need. He makes the fundamental distinction, between having what we desire and having what we need. The distinction is often put between the distinction of the big "Other" (which one can never appropriate as an object of desire, it is perpetually and always elusive) and the little object of desire (which is not really an object at all, but is available to satisfy need).
Socio-biologically you can get what you need.
Psychoanalytically you can not get what you desire. (The big "Other")
To care is to be anxious - Jordan doesn't care throughout his schemes.
"be careful what you wish for you just might get it"
Notes from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57RhO4ByhcA:
According to french philosopher Gilles Deleuze and militant Felix Guattari the desire for oppression comes from the belief that people should repress their desires. Through this technique of repression, the masses are primed to accept fascism. Fascism is the fascination with and love of power. People yearn to be ruled, humiliated and dominated. They're aroused by their unconscious desires to submit to strength.
Notes from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IehFdgKPJB0:
"Sam Polk, a former Wall Street trader, decided to leave his job at the age of 30 because he realised he'd developed a severe addiction to money and he hated the culture that existed on Wall Street.
In a piece in The New York Times, he was extremely honest and candid about his experiences, he talked about how government officials were like buddy's and the members of wall street were treated like royalty" - Anna Kasparian
Polk stated:
"One of the things I came to realize was I had been using money as this thing that would quell all my fears. So I had this belief that maybe some day I would get enough money that I would no longer be scared ... I would feel successful. And one of the things I learned on Wall Street was no matter how much money I made, the money was never going to do it."
There is no end to greed
you feel like a victim when the guy next to you has gotten a bigger bonus.
Happiness has been taken and twisted by American culture - happiness always has to do with money or career success. You should focus on the things that money cant buy like your health, your family your love, you cant directly get that from money. in this environment people don't get that.
appreciation can be tough when the grass is always green on the other side.
Cenk Uyger - "The paradox of the successful man is what drives him to be successful is that he's never satisfied, but that's precisely what makes his success irrelevant."
From commenter Helghastl33t: "It confirms my suspicions, they don't even know what they are doing. No massive conspiracy, no evil master plan. Pure base vices running wild in a system that not only allows it but encourages it. Active money management should become illegal, institutions trading money for moneys sake or speculating on goods purely for financial gain is a form of parasitism and no good can ever come from it."
Belfort seemed to have little patience when he had little and little gratitude and respect when he had everything.
If we're all greedy we can win together - this is the essence of Wall Street character Gordon Gekko
Greed only works at the expense of others in a connected capitalist society
Belfort unlike Gekko makes no moral argument on screen - he knows what he is doing is wrong yet he does it anyway.
Theres no tragedy haunting his steps like the downfall of Gordon Gekko or the extreme paranoia and eventual disappearance of Henry Hill from Goodfellas.
When Belfort eventually goes to prison in the film he narrates: "see for a brief fleeting moment, I'd forgotten I was rich, and I lived in a place where everything was for sale" he says this as we see him play tennis in jail.
Belforts crimes are met with minimal physical and psychological punishment. The real Jordon even introduces his character as: "the single badest motherfucker I have ever met" - its no surprise the film was deemed to have glorified, unapologetically and endorsing capitalist excess. The film doesn't offer the negative critique like Goodfellas, it doesn't even offer a satirical critique such as in American psycho.
The joke is never on Jordon, its on everyone else.
Like Spring Breakers, the film explores excess and is constructed of excess e.g the three hour runtime, the endless montages.
However refusing to critique doesn't mean by extension Scorsese is endorsing.
His extensive use of close-up reveals his vulgarity of this way of living. The montages exorst instead of glamourize. Pretty is less distracting than disorienting, less desirable than overwhelming.
The excesses of Jordon Belfort are OUR excesses; like him we're too enlightened to know the expensive of which our gazillion products are made, like him we don't make any attempt to moralise our way through the system, like him, we just don't care. The disgust we feel for Belfort is hypocritical. The indignation we inflict on him is less a righteous act than a self-righteous delusion.
The film is so unapologetically excessive that the audience might finally realise that the screen they thought they were watching was in fact a camera.
Freud suggested that there are psychological mechanisms by which we protect ourselves from painful, frightening or guilty feelings (Freud 1894). The mind has a number of such defences at its disposal: denial occurs when we refuse to admit an unpleasant fact, repression involves the inability to remember painful events, displacement involves redirecting a strong emotion such as anger from one person to another, reaction formation takes place when we adopt an attitude opposite to what we really feel. Other defences include sublimation, in which we channel a strong emotion into creative activity and regression, in which we use childlike behaviour to comfort ourselves.
dream sequence in The Big Lebowski -
Opens with an included title sequence - a film within a dream of the character in the film.
"Jackie Treehorn Presents"
"The Dude"
"Maude Lebowski"
"In"
"Gutterballs"
(Lots of sexualised visual innuendoes involving bowling pins and balls)
The dude enters into a large dark grey room of some sorts - entering his unconscious?
His shadow is large
He's dance-walking to the sound of the music
He walks up to seemingly endless shelves of Bowling shoes - a dream come true, in a dream at least.
The imagery of the moon and clouds is surreal - as if it were painted
he's given a golden pair of shoes by none other than someone with the name tag of Saddam (implying its supposed to be Saddam Hussein, the fifth President of Iraq) this is an example of the things bothering The Dude in his unconscious.
This dream sequence is unusual to most as it enters the realm of nonsense and has illogical qualities - like real dreams.
critiscm of id ego super ego:
Not literally how the mind works first of all
its more of a figurative way of looking at whats going on in our brain.
While you may have societal conditioning at the back of your mind such as things youve picked up are taboo
or immoral from society/culture and your parents, the super ego is not really present.
This is because the conscious "Higher" self naturally tries to do good and live up to ideals.
The higher self is where u ultimately want to be. It's not that u should be meddiating betwqeen your higher and lower self
as Freud's model would suggest. The difference is because this higher self is not the moralistic higher self that society and
parents taught u about as Freud says. Its not what the church says that if you lie and cheat and steal that you'll go to Hell.
Instead, where Freud's model really starts to break down is that you were probably coming at it from the more religious and
societal context that was telling you what to do e.i The overbearing father figure. In reality, the way we think it works now is
that when you're doing things for the lower level value just to get pleasure, just to get comfortable. Really what you're doing
is you're behaving in an unconscious way. This is really the evil of the world, this is what is ruining youre life. When you
live unconsciously so much (as I do) you''l end up in bad situations in the long run, you hurt your health your relationships.
When you start to move towards consciousness, you start to become more self-aware and develop more knowledge, then
what happens is that you move towrads your higher self. Your higher self is not a mixture of good and bad elements like
the superego is. The super ego is both good and bad because on the one hand it has ideals, but its also negative in the sense
that its self-critical, like a critical parent. While the critical parent and self might have good intentions: for you to become
greater, but in the end, the critiscms that are put out, the judgements, the constant nagging, thats not healthy. And thats actually
an unconscious behaviour.
If we were to re-formulate Freud's model, the new superego, refered to as our higher self, would have this critical aspect removed and this critical side would belong in
our lower self with the id.
Beating yourself and being annoyed that you're not good enough in any way is not a healthy impulse.
When you stop criticisng yourself you become even more motivated, not lazy. So is the big Lebowski Lazy? or just contempt with life?
When faced with a challenge, a task, he's not lazy - he does his best??? (not sure).
When you're at peace its not like you dont have any motivbvation now, its not like you jjst sit on the couch, its quite th eopposite.
When at peace and you're okay, you have a better healthier foundations to act upon, to achieve your dreams. You're not
attatched to things; outcomes. When you are however, its not healthy, its neurotic as shown in The Wolf Of Wall Street.
In the case of Jordon, it would seem that he is not quite sure what his higher and lower self truly is. It would seem that
Jordon has not done much introspection. As you think about what makes your higher and lower self. It becomes easier for you to become
disaplined. Self-actulisation is easy flowing disapline. A self-actualised person has made this distinction very clear for himself.
and he is naturally, effortlesly gravitating and guiding himself towards what is good.
Jordon is what he repeatedly does. The things that we see are his day-to-day habits - he even says his day to day routine.
You're really only as good as your day-to-day routine. The quality of this routine, is what determines how good you feel
at the end of the day and how much you accomplish. You feel awesome when you've achieved what u set out to do at the
end of the day, when youve reached your full potential. this is the natural mechanism of your body. People that are not
living up to who they know they could be to their full potential, in the end this is a need that they're not meeting.
Besides the basic need of food, shelter, security and friendship, a strong routine is needed to live fully.
Part of what The Dude may not understand/realise is that in the end if you just sit around on the couch and do nothing,
that problems will creep up for you. You can do this for a short period of time, but you can't do that forever like The Dude.
Eventually theres gonna be repocussions. - What are the repocussions of The Dude's way of life?
- He's unemployed. What challenges does this bring to The Dude?
The irony of the anxiety inthe back of your mind caused by knowingly slacking off and coming up with excusses and procrastinating, is that it affects your ability to enjoy slacking off. When you being really comfortable like this, you become afraid that someone or something - perhaps a wife such as in the case of The Wolf Of Wall Street or a mother asking you to carry out chores, will take this away from you - you'll become anxious and act in defensive ways - be reluctant to do so.
The Dude makes stupid decsions as we see of driving under the influence of alchol and drugs as he goes down this sprial of guilt and shame and try and creep his way back out and falling back down. The Dude feels week and disempowered when his phalus is threatened - when his comfort is threatened.
dream sequence in The Big Lebowski -
Opens with an included title sequence - a film within a dream of the character in the film.
"Jackie Treehorn Presents"
"The Dude"
"Maude Lebowski"
"In"
"Gutterballs"
(Lots of sexualised visual innuendoes involving bowling pins and balls)
The dude enters into a large dark grey room of some sorts - entering his unconscious?
His shadow is large
He's dance-walking to the sound of the music
He walks up to seemingly endless shelves of Bowling shoes - a dream come true, in a dream at least.
The imagery of the moon and clouds is surreal - as if it were painted
he's given a golden pair of shoes by none other than someone with the name tag of Saddam (implying its supposed to be Saddam Hussein, the fifth President of Iraq) this is an example of the things bothering The Dude in his unconscious.
This dream sequence is unusual to most as it enters the realm of nonsense and has illogical qualities - like real dreams.
critiscm of id ego super ego:
Not literally how the mind works first of all
its more of a figurative way of looking at whats going on in our brain.
While you may have societal conditioning at the back of your mind such as things youve picked up are taboo
or immoral from society/culture and your parents, the super ego is not really present.
This is because the conscious "Higher" self naturally tries to do good and live up to ideals.
The higher self is where u ultimately want to be. It's not that u should be meddiating betwqeen your higher and lower self
as Freud's model would suggest. The difference is because this higher self is not the moralistic higher self that society and
parents taught u about as Freud says. Its not what the church says that if you lie and cheat and steal that you'll go to Hell.
Instead, where Freud's model really starts to break down is that you were probably coming at it from the more religious and
societal context that was telling you what to do e.i The overbearing father figure. In reality, the way we think it works now is
that when you're doing things for the lower level value just to get pleasure, just to get comfortable. Really what you're doing
is you're behaving in an unconscious way. This is really the evil of the world, this is what is ruining youre life. When you
live unconsciously so much (as I do) you''l end up in bad situations in the long run, you hurt your health your relationships.
When you start to move towards consciousness, you start to become more self-aware and develop more knowledge, then
what happens is that you move towrads your higher self. Your higher self is not a mixture of good and bad elements like
the superego is. The super ego is both good and bad because on the one hand it has ideals, but its also negative in the sense
that its self-critical, like a critical parent. While the critical parent and self might have good intentions: for you to become
greater, but in the end, the critiscms that are put out, the judgements, the constant nagging, thats not healthy. And thats actually
an unconscious behaviour.
If we were to re-formulate Freud's model, the new superego, refered to as our higher self, would have this critical aspect removed and this critical side would belong in
our lower self with the id.
Beating yourself and being annoyed that you're not good enough in any way is not a healthy impulse.
When you stop criticisng yourself you become even more motivated, not lazy. So is the big Lebowski Lazy? or just contempt with life?
When faced with a challenge, a task, he's not lazy - he does his best??? (not sure).
When you're at peace its not like you dont have any motivbvation now, its not like you jjst sit on the couch, its quite th eopposite.
When at peace and you're okay, you have a better healthier foundations to act upon, to achieve your dreams. You're not
attatched to things; outcomes. When you are however, its not healthy, its neurotic as shown in The Wolf Of Wall Street.
In the case of Jordon, it would seem that he is not quite sure what his higher and lower self truly is. It would seem that
Jordon has not done much introspection. As you think about what makes your higher and lower self. It becomes easier for you to become
disaplined. Self-actulisation is easy flowing disapline. A self-actualised person has made this distinction very clear for himself.
and he is naturally, effortlesly gravitating and guiding himself towards what is good.
Jordon is what he repeatedly does. The things that we see are his day-to-day habits - he even says his day to day routine.
You're really only as good as your day-to-day routine. The quality of this routine, is what determines how good you feel
at the end of the day and how much you accomplish. You feel awesome when you've achieved what u set out to do at the
end of the day, when youve reached your full potential. this is the natural mechanism of your body. People that are not
living up to who they know they could be to their full potential, in the end this is a need that they're not meeting.
Besides the basic need of food, shelter, security and friendship, a strong routine is needed to live fully.
Part of what The Dude may not understand/realise is that in the end if you just sit around on the couch and do nothing,
that problems will creep up for you. You can do this for a short period of time, but you can't do that forever like The Dude.
Eventually theres gonna be repocussions. - What are the repocussions of The Dude's way of life?
- He's unemployed. What challenges does this bring to The Dude?
The irony of the anxiety inthe back of your mind caused by knowingly slacking off and coming up with excusses and procrastinating, is that it affects your ability to enjoy slacking off. When you being really comfortable like this, you become afraid that someone or something - perhaps a wife such as in the case of The Wolf Of Wall Street or a mother asking you to carry out chores, will take this away from you - you'll become anxious and act in defensive ways - be reluctant to do so.
The Dude makes stupid decsions as we see of driving under the influence of alchol and drugs as he goes down this sprial of guilt and shame and try and creep his way back out and falling back down. The Dude feels week and disempowered when his phalus is threatened - when his comfort is threatened.
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