Inequality, Greed, Power, and Money in Urban Communities
Roger and Me, Wall Street, and Civil Action are three films that depict the urban lifestyle. The civic dominants, the capitalists, dominate the lives of the people who work in the cities. Low-income people are treated as subjects by the royals; they are only seen but not heard. In reality, low-income residents choose to live in the smaller city suburbs, separate suburban communities outside of the city but close to it. Their way of life is declared and unaffected by local authorities in the areas where they live, based on community awareness and approval by the state’s environmental name board. Despite their geographical location, they can just overlap to the government areas, since they are autonomous on their own. Suburban areas mostly populated with those having low wage income. Unlike urban areas, social amenities like transport, hospitals, schools, business prospect are not easily available
In his drama film, A Civil Action (1998) by Steven Zaillian, he based his valid court concern about environmental pollution. The case majorly revolved around trichloroethylene, which is the halocarbon, commonly used as an industrial solvent. The litigation filed over the manufacturing that seemed to have caused fatal cases of leukemia and cancer. Alongside this, it also caused other related health problems to the people living in the town. For example, environmental toxins contaminated the cities of Woburn and Massachusetts through the water supply, which linked to several deaths among the neighboring children. The case became that grim that an action had to be taken to control the glitches that would arise after that. Presenting the case in the court, Jan, who is from the suburb community represent the families from the contaminated areas. The case turns against him and his partners, and eventually, finds themselves staked about a then incident. Looking at this in keen consideration, Jan realizes that the case is more than just the money. He allows pride to take over, and the case dismissed.
On the other hand, Michael Moore in his film, Roger and Me (1989) primarily explains the economic and the social hub of the town. Similarly, oppression realized in this situation. Rogers Smith decides not to pay the workers who participated in the building GM into mega-power. He does this because he wants to maximize profits for a few at the expense of the whole city. His rich friends enjoy life in the city by playing golf, sipping drinks, while the real people who should enjoy their toil are in disentangle. Correspondingly, social prejudice portrayed when job opportunity is not distributed equally among individuals. Other than using the free city, and the state monies to create the job in unarguably beneficial fields, like shoring up the substructure and replacing them with the old lead pipes, they rather wasted it in an old park that cost millions of money and locked it for six months.
Critic Roger Albert also wrote an article, Attacks on Roger & Me completely miss the point of the film,” which defends Moores operation. He reasons that the point is not to present a complete cut and presentation of the fact, but to create some of the jumping points. The arguments are submitted by the point of interest, and dialogue through humor and irony. On the other hand, Billy Stevenson also criticizes Moore by describing his film as more astonishing. He argues that Moore makes an effort of only to conflate filmmaking and labor. Through this, Moore fully bears the sacrilege of the Flint without transmuting it into a melancholy poverty-spectacle. By so doing, he dissociated from retorting of the town as a simulacrum that covers the most enticing part of the movie.
Wall Street, Money Never Sleep, is also another film directed by Oliver Stone (2010). In the movie, a fledgling Wall Street merchant gets into the partnership with a humiliated former Wall Street. They incorporate themselves into a two-tiered mission, which is the alerting the community of the financial doom, and finding out one who was responsible for the killing of the young traders mentor. Gordon Gekko, a name demarcated after the era, is later known as the public speaker who slanders the nation in greed for money since he participated in the killing of the innocent trader. A hermit, who travels in passageways, is alienated from his daughter Winnie (Carey Mulligan), affianced to a young trader known as Jake Moore (Shia LaBeouf). In continuation, Jane bumps into Gekko and the two forms a mentor-protégé that put Winnie into risk but allows Jane to benefit from the deal. They plot for revenge from Bretton James, who is alleged to be answerable for the suicide of Louis Zabel, who was a close friend and intimate to Jake.
Following the film keenly, there is a mess of the relationship. Greed for money and economic prosperity leads to loss of lives among the allies who were once trusted. In renationalizing the reason overdue the market crash, and relating it to human behavior, it does not sound right; rather it gives a bright appearance of voracity for money in a bid for self-gain. Also, the theme of money scramble expressed is impersonal. The realization comes when none of the typescripts suffers directly from the financial predicament, as opposed to the way it was during the genesis of the film. The fonts are seen to be suffering from their ineffectual ways of making decisions, which is contrary to the way they initially handled and bonded the stock trading with their peculiar gains and losses.
In summing up the three films, it is inherent that the town inhabitants have greed for power and money. Likewise, they also exercise inequality to those with low-income, they are considered as less-beings and subjected to suburb lifestyle. In their private places, they rarely get full access to the services as compared to those staying in the towns. The films Roger and Me, Wall Street and Civil Action, gives a clear view of the urban lifestyle. The oppression to those staying in the suburbs seen in the film Civil Action, where the case turned on Jan, who represented the community of the suburbs, and he is forced to ask for an apology despite the fact that he is the one who was to offer an apology. Second, there is the high maximization of profits from the low-income stipendiaries in the gain of the wealthy. The rich friends enjoy life in the city by playing golf, sipping drinks; while the real people who should enjoy their toil are in disentangle, this expressed in the film, Roger and Me. Lastly, greed for money and economic prosperity is leading to the death of longtime business traders.