Yuppies Real and Represented

Young Urban Professionals known as Yuppies were easily distinguished in the 1980s by their overly lavish lifestyles. Yuppies were represented in films of the 80s, Fatal Attraction (1987), Cocktail (1988) and Bright Lights, Big City (1988) but many more films that were released after the 1980's used yuppies as their main characters. In film critic Dominic Corry's list of 'Yuppies in Peril', 8/10 films were released in or after 1990.


Recently, the film The Wolf of Wall Street depicted the life of Jordan Belfort, the real stock broker in the 1980's. This film shows yuppies as drug obsessed, money obsessed and material objects obsessed. Perhaps the most unsurprising representation of these people were re-enacted in The Wolf of Wall Street to reinstate the idea of how yuppies operated in the 1980s, giving a new face of the Yuppie to a new generation.

Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

Jordan Belfort- the real Wolf of Wall Street

 Jordan Belfort wrote two books on his life as a broker and frauder, The Wolf of Wall Street, and Catching the Wolf of Wall Street. Accurately describing the details of all his fraudulent activity. He stole around $200 million of stock owners money by stock fraud in his mid twenties to mid thirties. Holding the definition of Yuppie to heart, Belfort managed to create a successful (illegal) business in his young age that had everyone in awe.References

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=11144035