As a young girl my parents always told me “If you work hard, you’ll be able to have anything you want in the future.” Which essentially meant that working hard will equate to lots of money and money buys a whole lot of things. Although I now see many flaws in this statement, and realize that not everyone who works hard lives a life of luxury, I nevertheless made a conscious decision to believe that the people who do live an extravagant lifestyle in wealthy New York are indeed people who have worked hard their whole lives and continue working hard to sustain their standard of living (yes I know there are people who have their wonderful lives handed to them, but this belief is what keeps me going so I’m sticking with it).
With this mindset drilled into my head and simultaneously observing artwork that is all about class structure, I grew a certain appreciation for Charlie Sheen’s character Bud Fox in Wall Street. Although Bud didn’t exactly have a legal and honest way of going about his job, he had a dream of transforming himself from being a little boy who lived in middle class Queens to being one of the big guys on top in Uptown Manhattan. His life once he reached that goal of being wealthy was portrayed by Oliver Stone just like I would have imagined it: Bud had a new office with a beautiful view, he had lunch in expensive restaurants, and he had a gigantic penthouse designed with large pieces of artwork. If that didn’t scream wealthy New Yorker I don’t know what would.
However what really stood out to me about this particular film was that Stone also depicted Bud and the other wealthy New Yorkers in the film such as Gekko as men who almost never stopped working. Constantly on the phone, or in a meeting, or on the computer, Bud and Gekko’s characters made one thing very clear: They would NOT have the millions they had if they didn’t work their butts off. Yes they were also greedy liars, and cheaters, but maybe that also comes along with the uptown New York package. Maybe you do have to lose some morals along the way to the top because maybe there’s no other way up there. Maybe this film spoke to me because it reminded me why I stopped thinking like the young girl I was and made me realize that as much as my parents wanted me to live life like the fancy people in uptown New York do, I did not. 
