of them out of their respective films, the film wouldn’t be the same: Ginger wouldn’t govern the events of over half of Casino, and Naomi wouldn’t contribute to Jordan’s life to spin out of control (although he is primarily responsible for this fact owing to his uncontrollable drug addiction). However, Scorsese himself never objectifies the women as nothing more than sexual objects. He never brings to the audience’s attention the women’s gender through camera angles on their bodies. In a review for The Wolf Of Wall Street , student journalist Erin Landau wrote that Naomi was ‘portrayed as a sex-crazed gold-digger who immediately dumps Belfort after he is arrested and loses his money’ 6 . She goes further and says that Naomi and the other women ‘perpetuate stereotypes of females as sexy, helpless, and unable to exist outside of their male counterparts’ 7 . This review is unfair towards the film as Naomi doesn’t fall into this description. When we first meet her, she knows what she wants and she knows how to get it, only to find that what she thought she wanted didn’t turn out to be gold, a common theme in Scorsese films where the supposed ‘American Dream’ collapses around the characters. She isn’t sex-crazed, more that she knows that her sexuality brings her immense power; she can’t be judged for leaving Jordan at the end of the film as it isn’t due to the fact that he loses their money but the fact that he was an abusive husband. In Casino , as Ginger struts through the casino, Scorsese doesn’t need to objectify her; he and she both know all eyes are on her and holding up a mirror to our own preconceptions. The secondary women in The Wolf Of Wall Street are all strippers and prostitutes, causing the film to come under fire for being misogynistic. However, an argument can be made to say that they are used to show the barbaric and animalistic nature of these ‘wolves’ of Wall Street, creating a ‘fierce condemnation of hyper-masculinity and misogyny’ 8 . As the audience watches the bankers fight and scream at each other over these women, they are left with a feeling of discomfort, finding no way to feel that the actions of these bankers are cool or admirable. The constant use of these constantly naked women is to further and always enforce this feeling of discomfort. In Taxi Driver , a film Scorsese called his ‘feminist film’ 9 in the 1970s as it takes ‘macho to its logical conclusion’ 10 and shows the problem men have ‘bouncing back and forth between the goddesses and whores’ 11 , de Niro’s Travis Bickle suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and insomnia coming back from Vietnam, and he can’t function in this supposedly ‘normal’ society. The two main women are idealized by Bickle as the purity that he wants to reach, as ‘points of escape’ 12 out of the hell he is in, but they ‘only drive him further downwards by reminding him of how far upwards he has to climb’ 13 . As Scorsese said, it was very important that Cybill Shepherd’s Betsy be a ‘blonde, blue-eyed goddess’ 14 to show the level of purity that Travis aspires to. Scorsese also uses his women as a social commentary in his films. As mentioned before, the women in The Wolf Of Wall Street are important for this, but so is Lorraine Bracco’s Karen in GoodFellas . The famous scene where Ray Liotta’s Henry leads her through the Copacabana in one long steadicam shot is very important. It shows Henry and the ‘world he was trying to get into’ 15 due to the way ‘everything slipped away, it was like heaven...the camera just glided through this world’ 16 . Scorsese’s revolutionary camera work contributes to Henry being seduced by this lifestyle, and also Henry seducing Karen. Not only is he showing her the world he now inhabits, boasting his power to her, but 6 Landau, E.(2013) ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ is the Year’s Most Misogynistic Blockbuster. URL: http://www.bustle.com/articles/10767-the-wolf-of-wall-street-is-the-years-most-misogynist-blockbuster [4 June 2014] 7 Ibid. 8 O’Hara, H. (2014) The Case For The Wolf Of Wall Street, Surprisingly Feminist Film. URL: http://www.empireonline.com/empireblogs/empire-states/post/p1442 [4 June 2014] 9 Ebert, R (1976). Interview with Martin Scorsese. URL: http://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/interview-with-martin- scorsese [4 June 2014] 10 ibid. 11 ibid. 12 Carvajal, N & Winter, M. (2014) Women in the Works of Martin Scorsese. URL: http://blogs.indiewire.com/pressplay/video-essay-women-in-the-works-of-martin-scorsese [4 June 2014] 13 ibid 14 Ebert, R (1976). Interview with Martin Scorsese. URL: http://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/interview-with-martin- scorsese [4 June 2014] 15 Scorsese, Martin. “Wise Guy.” Total Film Mar. 2011:44-45 16 ibid.
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