The University of Texas at Austin

Law in Popular Culture collection

Oklahoma City University Law Review 
Volume 22, Number (1997)
reprinted by permission Oklahoma City University Law Review

BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES (THE THINKING MAN'S REDNECK: AN UPPER CLASS WHITE MAN'S FALL FROM GRACE) 

JOAN VOGEL* 

    Professor Vogel evaluates the 1990 film based on Tom Wolfe's book, Bonfire of the Vanities. Although finanically unsuccessful, the Article concludes that the film performed an important public service. The film version allowed the public to see the reactionary views toward gender, race, and religion that often went unrecognized in Wolfe's book. 

     Few movie productions have received as much scrutiny as Bonfire of the Vanities.1 The movie was the subject of a long and exhaustive study by Julie Salamon, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, who followed the movie production from its inception to its premiere.2 Salamon presents a cautionary tale of Hollywood incompetency and greed, but believes the movie was a disaster because Warner Brothers, the studio who financed the movie, insisted that only certain box office stars play the leading roles and because the studio executives would not allow the director, Brian DePalma, full artistic control of the movie. In essence, the studio ruined the movie by insisting that it be a commercially successful film. In the end, the movie went far over budget and failed at the box office. Salamon indicates that, given the way Hollywood makes movies these days, they could only have ruined the book.3 But, in my view, the movie was in its most important respects faithful to the

[203]

reactionary character of the book, and no one could make a good movie out of a bad book like this one. Not, at least, if they intend to be faithful to Tom Wolfe's vision of 1980s America and New York City. Many of the problems with the movie emanate from the book. 
     The most obvious problems with the book and the movie are the gender, race, ethnic and class stereotypes. Few characters have any depth or three dimensionality. Trying to play any of the characters as written must have been a challenge for the actors. Even the choice of the director, Brian DePalma--best known for his horror and slasher movies where women are the chief victims--indicates that Warner Brothers was only marginally concerned with audience reactions to the stereotypical characters in the book. In fact, if anything, the movie went even further than the book. 
     In this book and in the movie, women fall into only two categories: "lemon tarts" or "social x-rays."4 The women's movement and feminism seems to have never happened. The "lemon tarts," represented by Maria Ruskin, Sherman McCoy's "mistress," are young, voluptuous sex objects whose only purpose is to "service" the wealthy middle aged and older men. The "social x-rays" are the wives: middle-aged, anorexic, sexless harpies who spend all their time decorating, shopping, exercising and dieting. Few women in this story have a serious job or career. They all live off and service the men in the story. Even in the criminal justice system, women play no roles except as witnesses, defendants and jurors. You would never know that women go to law schools, are lawyers and even judges. To Wolfe, women just enhance the position of the men in their lives. Like the presentation of Eve in the Bible, women get men into trouble and will do anything to save themselves when the men in their lives face difficulties. For example, Sherman McCoy only winds up in the criminal justice system because he drives Maria from the airport and gets lost in the Bronx on the way home. When he makes a wrong turn in the Bronx, Maria gets hysterical. (Do women do anything else when problems arise?) She hits a young black male with the car and drives away. Of course, when Sherman wants to go to the police

[204]

to explain what happened, Maria refuses. Later, when the police investigate, she lies about what happened to save herself. Even his wife, Judy, seen in the movie constantly exercising and starving herself, leaves as soon as Sherman is indicted. As in the book, Judy never displays the slightest affection for him, her child or anyone else except herself. As in the biblical creation myth, women are responsible for men's fall from grace. 
     If the gender stereotypes are scandalous, the ethnic and racial stereotypes are even worse. All the African-American characters are criminals, thugs, opportunists and thieves. The Bronx looks like a savage third world country whose inhabitants live to prey on each other, and especially on any white person that comes into their territory. Wolfe and DePalma constantly refer to this community in terms of animal metaphors. The Bronx is a jungle with dangerous and dark beasts waiting for their prey. In the book, Wolfe made the incident in the Bronx more ambiguous. It was not clear that the two black men who approached Sherman's car intended to rob him when he stopped to move an obstruction from the road. Sherman and Maria acted as if this was true and attacked the men first.5 On the other hand, the movie makes the men's intent clear from the beginning. Sherman and Maria are then defending themselves from these "dangerous" predators.6 Thus, the movie reinforces the most insidious image that all black men are or should be treated as criminals. The Bronx criminal justice system is designed to "process" these people and keep them away from decent folk. But, like most conservative commentators, Wolfe does not believe the criminal justice system works to keep these people off the street. It's too overloaded and too lenient. The result is urban bedlam that engulfs even the most prestigious members of society. 
     As if these stereotypes are not enough, the movie gives us two truly odious black characters. The major political activist in the Bronx, a black minister called Reverend Bacon, is presented as a complete confidence man taking personal advantage of the destruction and poverty in the black community and

[205]

white guilt over the state of the inner city. A sleek, dangerous figure in the book,7 he becomes a rotund clown in the movie, modeled on Reverend Al Sharpton. To exaggerate these qualities, Reverend Bacon is shot from exaggerated camera angles surrounded by an adoring black female chorus singing in the background. Since Reverend Bacon is the only character who talks about the racist character of the criminal justice system, a charge well-substantiated elsewhere, this charge, like Reverend Bacon, is made to seem self-interested at best, and ludicrous at worst. Wolfe obviously believes minorities are in the criminal justice system because they deserve to be. Only Sherman McCoy, the upper class white male, seems out of place. He was only dragged into the process because Reverend Bacon put political pressure on the police department and the ambitious district attorney. Even the mother of the injured man does not escape this treatment. The movie includes a scene at the hospital when she asks to go shopping after she discovers that the malpractice action on behalf of her comatose son will yield a million dollar verdict.8 Of course, she does not care about her injured son. Like Reverend Bacon, she wants the publicity and the money. 
     The studio and DePalma were aware that none of the main black characters were decent. To compensate, they went to great trouble to include a scene where a black judge, played by Morgan Freeman, lectures the angry black crowd in court. But of course, since he is the only decent black character, the exception to the rule, he is given the role of lecturing the community on family values and self control. He has "permission" to tell the crowd or mob that they are wrong to want to railroad McCoy when he committed "no crime." In the book, the judge was Jewish. Apparently Wolfe could not even imagine a black person in a legitimate position of authority.9 
     African-Americans were not the only group that Wolfe chose to pillory in the book. After all, Wolfe could not imagine

[206]

that the black community in the Bronx could force political officials in New York City to act. The major politician, the Jewish Bronx District Attorney, Abraham Weiss, concerned over his election campaign, prosecutes Sherman McCoy only to placate and coopt the African-American Community. He has no redeeming personal or administrative skills. He remains in the office only by fanning the passions of the mob. He can't wait to nab a "Wasp" upper-class defendant. Similarly, the assistant District Attorney, Larry Kramer, who actually prosecutes McCoy, is a fawning sycophant who is angling for his own rise to power by doing Weiss' bidding. No courtroom tactic is unacceptable if it puts him in the limelight or provokes the community spectators. The book contained even more repulsive, anti-Semitic characters but the movie plays some of this down because, I suspect, the studio feared accusations of anti-Semitism more than racism or sexism. 
     All these stereotypes, particularly the anti-Semitic ones, are rooted in a conservative vision of society that runs throughout the book and the movie. That outlook is embodied in the character of Sherman McCoy's father, John Campbell McCoy, a former senior partner at a Wall Street law firm. John McCoy is presented as the epitome or symbol of a bygone, lamented era when an ethical ruling class, consisting of Wasp men, ran the major economic and political institutions--before they were corrupted by white ethnic social and political climbers (especially the Jews). In that earlier era of American capitalism, everyone knew his or her place in the order of things, business lenders engaged in productive activity, and crime (phenomena Wolfe associates entirely with minorities, especially AfricanAmericans) remained out of sight and under control. The old Wasp ruling class kept things under control. The new ruling class, represented by Sherman McCoy, other bond traders, and opportunistic politicians, have allowed cities like New York to run into the ground. All Sherman does for a living is engage in speculative excess--casino capitalism--that produces nothing of value. Wolfe sees the 1980s as the epitome of American decline--the triumph of finance capitalism spurred, in large measure, by predominantly Jewish Wall Street bond and stock manipulators like Sherman McCoy's employer, Eugene Lopwitz, who is, of course, Jewish. Wolfe employs one of the oldest anti-Semitic 

[207]

fantasies to explain what he thinks is wrong with America. Because Sherman McCoy fails to take on his father's mantle and instead joins this unseemly activity, he falls from grace and is almost "consumed" by the mob--the media, the residents of the Bronx and the feeding frenzy on the bond market. In this sense, Sherman McCoy is made to pay for his greed and irresponsibility. In the criminal justice system, he is humiliated and thrown in with the "worst elements" in the city. He loses his job, his wife and child, his mistress, his home, and ultimately his class standing. Only his father--the symbol of rectitude--and his lawyer stand by him in the end. 
     The movie allows Sherman to escape the mob in the finale. The judge dismisses the case after Sherman lies about the origin of an audio tape of a conversation where his mistress, Maria, admits driving the car and hitting the young man. Even his father approves of this lie. After all, the prosecutor was a political set-up in the first place. Sherman is justified in lying to protect himself. How else can you behave when every institution--the courts, the media, and the economic system -- is built on lies. 
     The notion of a "golden age" of American capitalism is, of course, preposterous. Speculation "fevers" like the one in the 1980s have occurred throughout American history. The major culprits in these swindles were the very Wasp upper class that Wolfe romanticizes.10 But Wolfe's reactionary vision of American society has nothing to do with real history, real societies or real people. His book and the movie are nasty morality tales stocked with cartoon characters who illustrate the decline and fall of America. Once America was strong and productive. Everyone knew their place in the Wasp-run community or "Gemeinschaft."11 The Wasp ruling class held sway with white

[208]

ethnic groups (especially the Irish) doing their bidding and keeping the lower orders (especially minority groups) in line. But America is now a loose-knit society (Gesellshaft)12 where everyone thinks they have a right to be someone. Class envy runs amok. The civil rights archivists, women's movement, and the opportunistic Jewish politicians and investment bankers have severed all the bonds that kept society together. The mob rules! 
     If all this has a familiar ring, it should. The Nazi and fascist movements in Europe subscribed to similar sentiments.13 But, because Wolfe does not use anti-Semitic or racist epithets, the truly reactionary character of his societal vision is often unrecognized. The movie actually performs one important public service. By turning the book into a ghastly movie, the reactionary character of the book becomes far more apparent for all to see. Perhaps this, and not the casting, caused the movie to fail financially. 

[209]

ENDNOTES

* Professor of Law, Vermont Law School. 

1. (Warner Brothers 1990). Tom Wolfe joked about being described as "the thinking man's redneck." JULIE SALAMON, THE DEVIL'S CANDY: THE BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES GOES TO HOLLYWOOD 399 (1991).

2. SALAMON, supra note 1.

3. Id.

4. TOM WOLFE, BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES 13, 347-48 (1987).

5. See id. at 74-102.

6. See SALAMON, supra note 1, at 71.

7. See WOLFE, supra note 4, at 146-63.

8. This scene was not in the book. See SALAMON supra note 1, at 155.

9. WOLFE, supra note 4, at 638-85; SALAMON, supra note 1, at 55, 111, 127. Wolfe removed the speech the judge made to the courtroom from the book, but the director included it in the movie. See SALAMON, supra note 1, at 372-73.

10. See, e.g., ROBERT SOBEL, THE MONEY MANIAS: THE ERAS GREAT SPECULATION IN AMERICA, 1770-1970. (1973); ROBERT SOBEL, PANIC ON WALL STREET: A HISTORY OF AMERICA'S FINANCIAL DISASTERS (1968).

11. The German term "Gemeinschaft," which literally means "community" comes from the German sociologist, Ferdinand Torries, which he used to describe heiarchical rural, nonindustrial societies where relationships are based on status and sentiment. Everyone knows what is expected of them and everyone knows his or her place. Individuals are subordinated to the group. By contrast, "Gesellschaft," or "society," means a modern industrial society where human relations are one dimensional and contractual. See generally FERDINAND TORRIES, GEMEINSCHAFT AND GESELLSCHAFT (1887). See also R. COSER, IN DEFENSE OF MODERNITY 1-33, 71-75, 13640. Torries's concepts were derived from the work of a notorious German AntiSemite, Paul de Lagarde. Lagarde distinguished between the Nation (exactly like Gemeinschaft) and State (Gesellschaft). Lagarde's notion of a nation was not only antiliberal, but corresponded to a single ethnic (German) group. Needless to say, Lagarde, like Wolfe, considers Jews to be interlopers and outsiders. To Lagarde, Jews could never be Germans. See FRITZ STERN, THE POLITICS OF CULTURAL DESPAIR: A STUDY IN THE RISE OF THE GERMAN'S IDEOLOGY, 27-70 (1961).

12. See TORRIES, supra note 11.

13. See GEORGE MOSSE, THE CRISIS OF GERMAN IDEOLOGY: INTELLECTUAL ORIGINS OF THE THIRD REICH 126-45, 246-53, 294-311 (1964); STERN, supra note 11, at 60-70, 140-42. See generally GEORGE MOSSE, NAZI CULTURE (1966). 

Last Updated: April 05, 2007. | Copyright © 2009 The University of Texas at Austin | Privacy Policy | Usage Statement | For technical problems with this site, please contact .