PSYC103 Introduction to Psychology

Question

Answer

Introduction

The purpose of this paper is to analyze a character from a popular American movie The Wolf of Wall Street using various personality theories. In this paper the character of Jordan Belfort is analyzed using behavioral theories to support the discussion. The movie was directed by Martin Scorsese based on the real life character Jordan Belfort who was a stock broker and he got involved in corruption and eventually he became a fraud and that resulted in his downfall. In this assignment the character of Jordan Belfort is analyzed by considering two types of personality theories.

In the movie Jordan Belfort is seen employed as a stockbroker under Mark Hanna, who spots him in the workplace and gave him lessons like the stockbroker’s aim should be fetching money at any cost and introduced him to the sex and drugs fueled culture of the stockbrokers (Yadvizhyna, 2014). Due to a crash in the stock market he lost his job and somehow got himself employed in a stock broking firm which has specialization in penny stocks. In that organization with aggressive selling capability Jordan makes a lot of money and later he befriends with a person named Donnie and soon they became business partners (INTAN, 2015). They founded a company and the job of their organization was pump and dump scam. After getting recognition in Forbes magazine many job seekers joined their organization and that made Jordan even more successful monetarily. After getting huge success, Jordan had an affair with Naomi and eventually got divorced with his previous wife and married Naomi (Goodman, 2014). In the meantime FBI and SEC were after him to gather information about the scams he and Donnie made in the land of USA. Then to hide money Jordan opened an account in Swiss Bank because the American Government would not be able to track his money then. Then seeing the tables have turned he tried to settle the bank accounts in Switzerland he tried to reach there but due to some unavoidable situation he failed to do so. Then he had a settlement with FBI where he was asked to gather evidence of all the scams he and his partners made and then he would not have to serve a prison. Jordan accepted the terms but reaching office wearing a wire, he warned his partners by informing them by writing small notes. Somehow, FBI found out about this incident and arrested Jordan and raided his office and confiscated everything (Suskie, 2015). Then his sentence was a bit lowered as he helped government a bit by wearing a wire and giving them some important information about the scam. Later after serving 22 months in prison he came out clean and now he arranges seminars and workshops on selling skills to earn his living (Fibiarty, 2015)  

Character development

To analyze the character of Jordan Belfort, various personality theories can be used as tools, as the study of personality is based on the necessary insight that every individual is similar in some ways but still different from one another. Personality type refers to the categorization of various types of people (Wulandari et al., 2013). According to personal theories, Jordan Belfort is seen having some strong weak points and strengths. From Friedman’s framework it can be said that Jordan belongs to the Type A personality group and thus he has a competitive streak, he is very much hardworking and thrives in challenges and that sometimes lead to coronary diseases, but in Jordan’s case he took refuge to drugs and other things to bypass the pressure and earned a name, and that is Stress-junkie. He is a genius in his field of work and it is seen that he knows that he is good in broking business but he grooms others too to become great stockbrokers and it is seen that knowing that the results would not be in his favor, he decided to help out his friends and partners from legal issues. He had a go getter attitude that fueled his ambition and helped him to achieve the success that made him the man as we have known him to be. His confidence is something of a spectacle and this helps him to seize any opportunities that come his way. This risk taking attitude does indeed work in his favor and tremendous profits are often yielded. Another thing that is important in Jordan’s personality is his immense power of convincing people that earned him huge success in his career (Wardani, & Mustofa, 2017). Narcissism is evident in his personality and like the most of the successful salesmen he looks at people like pawns who can be manipulated for their own interest.

Carl Jung is another renowned person in the field of personality theories and he came up with an intriguing idea which was different from any other personality theories (Yudha, 2016). According to Jung, any individuals can be categorized in two parts, and those are introvert and extrovert. Introverts gather energy from the internal world that is keeping own self secluded from the outside world. On the other hand, the Extroverts find energy from the outside world or by interacting with others. In today’s world, Jung’s unique ideas are pretty helpful to analyze a person’s character using his theories. According to Jung, Thinking, Feeling, Sensation and Intuition are the most important psychological functions (Allen, 2015). He stated that each of these functions can be experienced by an individual regardless of his category, be it introvert or extrovert, and one function among these four must be dominant in a particular individual. In this case, it can be said that, the function of Intuition is dominant in the case of Belfort and for that he is seen being a huge risk taker and sort of impulsive at some cases.

Jordan’s mind is enriched with the ideas of freedom and motivation that lead to his organization’s huge success. The aggressive desire for success lead him choosing the path of corruption and scams, and that resulted in all the problems of his life. Jordan is seen as immensely enthusiastic in grabbing the opportunities and he made the most out of each opportunities. It can be said that the character of Jordan Belfort is a mixture of opportunism, ambition, sales skills and high entrepreneurship skills (Yudha, 2016).

Conclusion

Thus, it can be said that, as a character Jordan Belfort is an intriguing character with his huge ambition quite like Julius Caesar of Rome and that high ambition lead to their downfall. It is a fact that, Jordan is an extremely interesting character who lives a drug sex and money fueled life that he acquired by implementing his innovative ideas and techniques. He cannot be designated as an antagonist as he did look after his partners and friends, and he did not ever wanted to climb up the ladder of success all alone.

References

Allen, B. P. (2015). Personality theories: Development, growth, and diversity. Psychology Press.

Fibiarty, A. M. (2015). The representation of speech disfluency made by leonardo dicaprio and martin scorsese during interview program in bloomberg TV (Doctoral dissertation, UIN Sunan Ampel Surabaya).

Goodman, D. R. (2014). The Wolf of Wall Street. Journal of Religion & Film, 18(2), 2.

INTAN, M. (2015). The Strategies of Translating Dirty Words and Phrase in The Wolf of the Wall Street Film Subtitles. Skripsi, Fakultas Ilmu Budaya.

Suskie, K. J. (2015). Crossing the Tracks.

Wardani, A. K., & Mustofa, A. (2017). Metrosexual Masculinity Performance in Jordan Belfort’s The Wolf of Wall Street. Litera~ Kultura, 5(2).

Wulandari, R., Kusumawardhani, P., Nurhayati, N., & Nurdini, R. A. (2013). A Literature Analysis Of Ambition Of Jordan Belfort In The Wolf Of Wall Street Movie Directed By Martin Scorsese. Simposium Nasional Ilmu Pengetahuan dan Teknologi (SIMNASIPTEK), 1(1), 1-6.

Yadvizhyna, A. S. (2014). Cult of drugs in contemporary cinema.

Yudha, B. S. (2016). Women’s oppressions as reflected in jordan belfort’s the wolf of wall street (Doctoral dissertation, Diponegoro University).