Juárez: the New Vice City

For years I have grown up exposed to the Grand Theft Auto franchise. I have every edition of the game, played out through multiple fictional cities. The game has been in my life for so long that everything contained within it passes through my mind as a norm, which disturbs me when I think about it, but I am disturbed even more when I think that it is based on things that happen in some cities in real life.

Horrid things like prostitution exist in most cities all around the world, and as does crime, however I saw a cringe-worthy documentary on the ABC channel just moments ago, Ross Kemp: Extreme World: Juárez, Mexico which altered the way I think about Grand Theft Auto and its effect on me and other video game players around the world. I have never witnessed such trepidation until I viewed most that goes on in Juárez in this documentary. I imagined myself placed in that city and wondered how it would be to go about my usual activities whilst cartel members or enemies or betrayers are being shot down or sliced up and dumped on roads near me, members who could also my members of my family. It is insane to think that this is a norm. That somewhere in the world, within Mexico, gang wars are a norm.

I hear about drug addictions and I begin to sympathise towards all those addicted. The demand for drugs must be so high. I would have never imagined the drug market to be so rapid in money gain and so dominant in a city not that significantly large in size. I know that the drug market brings one good money but hearing about one ex cartel member earning just under seven-hundred thousand dollars from one run then legitimises these peoples' actions, in my eyes, in terms of why they partake in these dangerous ways of life. People who struggle to acquire an education, to acquire a career and to bring money to their households, assuming if there are any, would no doubt turn to selling drugs or joining  cartel.

I do not blame these people. I blame the government. I blame the rich. I blame the world for not believing in equality in every possible way. I believe in he who first created money to be used as a tender and to be valued more than a human's life. Take the movie The Box starring Cameron Diaz as Norma Lewis, for example. This strange human arrives at Norma's doorstep and drops off a box with a big red button. If she was to press the button, she would immediately acquire a million dollars, under one condition: a spontaneous human dies right as the button is pressed; money or a life? She chose the money. That reminds me of the cartel and of society in general.

In a way all those not in the cartel act in a similar way. Take those working on Wall Street for example. Those who exploit others to make fortunes. Or the wolf himself, Jordan Belfort. Exploitation does not only exist in prostitution or drug dealing, rather in big money corporations. Remember that Joseph Kony hoax? Or how about a little hoax that happened quite locally, where a mobile phone recycling company asked students at my school to rid themselves of the burden of keeping their useless old mobile phones. These phones contain fragments of gold, which are the best conductor to place in these devices. This company has so many phones that it pulls out kilograms of gold and other metal goods and sells them to other companies in order to make money off people who do not have a clue about what is happening.

How about those people who act like the homeless? Like that old Asian man who knelt and looked as though he had no feet, and somebody scared him off in a way I could not remember so he stood up revealing his feet and ran away? I wonder how much money he made off people. Or that lady who was caught out asking for money to get back home at petrol stations, but then gets back into the car with her boyfriend and drives off with all of the money she obtains, only to return the next day and the day after for more?

But that Ross Kemp documentary really got to me because of the amount of dead bodies it shows. Grand Theft Auto does not have realistic graphics when it comes to dead bodies, nor do I think it ever will due to how gruesome they would be, however they do, in their simplicity, create a visual world where the goings on in places like Juárez become the norm for the game player.

The Wolf of Wall Street: Reminding the Status Quo that they are Sheep

"There we go, that's the attitude. You can sell anything? Sell me this f*cking pen right here. You can sell anything? Sell that. Sell me the pen!"

"Can I finish eating first?"

"Brad, show 'em how it's done. Sell me that pen. Watch, go on."

"I'll sell this f*cking pen?"

"That's my boy right there. He'll f*cking sell anything."

"Could you do me a favour? Write your name down on that napkin for me."

"I don't have a pen."

"Exactly. Supply and demand."

Life is an act. To live is to be, but to live successfully is to act. If there is anything that The Wolf of Wall Street teaches its audience, it is that one cannot live life to their full potential unless one can fool others, full the status quo who think that 'honesty is the best policy'. Newsflash - honesty was a thing of the past, today, if you are not trying to incriminate yourself, you are not winning.

For the entirety of the three hours that is the film's duration, The Wolf of Wall Street convinces its viewers that any career path they have taken is the wrong one, and that becoming a stock broker will be the best decision they will ever make in their life, despite the display of consequences at the end. If its viewers' decisions are not focused on obtaining millions from the rich and not assisting the poor, then its viewers will, after the viewing, feel as though every step they have ever taken has led them to incompetency. It portrays a destructive line of cause and effect, and displays the effects as glamorous, despite how blemished some effects turn out to be.

Jordan Belfort created a legacy for himself. At twenty-two years old, his life turned around when he realised that in order to become wealthy, he must lose all ethics that he once held. His faithfulness towards his wife, his preference to be abstinent with drugs, with sex, with alcohol, it all faded away when he began to earn more money than he thought possible. Soon his sense of acquiring money turned to a sense of acquiring more money, and a personality that would otherwise not have fit in his old self had he not sold himself to thousands of willing people who ended up funding him with his life earnings. To become quite successful, he firstly stole from the poor, and worked his way up Wall Street to dig into the deep, full pockets of the wealthy, and soon had his pockets dug from.

Staggering down from the top, Belfort begins to watch his life spiral before his eyes. Unfortunately, most people, be it if they even lack the success Belfort once had, also experience glimpses of their lives spiralling downwards at some stages of their existences. All of these spirals are sad, and in unison, can create a sense of community. And that is what Belfort had created. He had recruited all those who were experiencing those negative spirals, and he had assisted them in getting themselves out of it, by placing others in there who have less of a chance of drowning. Belfort before this could not swim, but he sure found a good swimming instructor.

The most daunting scene in the movie is the very end, when Belfort became a motivational speaker. He once again tried to level himself with the status quo, and saw that the status quo had no ability to sell him his pen, the act in itself summarising the entire point being made in the movie - if you cannot sell yourself, you cannot be bought. If there is an item on a shelf for a long time, it will collect dust and be thrown out. The Wolf of Wall Street tells the story of liberating one from the supermarket shelf to rise above all other contending brands and be bought by a foolish customer who deemed them more worthy than the others.