The American Dream vs Greed

To paraphrase Friedrich Nietzsche "The American Dream is dead. And greed has killed it." Just take a look at this famous speech given by Michael Douglas's character Gorden Gecko in Oliver Stone's 1987 film Wall Street. Which is all the more chilling given the current economic climate, and the state of the banking industry as a whole in this modern age, as it typifies the corruption Jefferson warned about in his famous letter to Madison, over 200 years ago. Horatio Alger Jr. tried to address this as well in his novel Ragged Dick, trying to remind readers that in the heart of the madness that was the Industrial Revolution, the American Dream was all about having a respectable job and being comfortable, not about being super rich. However somewhere down the line that message has been lost, in an America where the rich keep getting richer and the poor, well they get poorer. Where veteran's from a war (2nd Gulf War), which conspiracy theorists believe is all over oil, to make even more money for the super rich, can't find work, and where companies move factories abroad, cutting jobs, just because people in those countries will work for pennies, in order to boost profit margins. It's safe to say Jefferson and the founding father's would be turning in their graves if they could see the country America had become.

Although it's safe to say that the corruption of the American Dream has been going on for much longer than just in recent years, crime has undoubtedly become synonymous with it, and has been romanticised as being the only way to achieve it in some cases - with greed corrupting the dream to be about making as much money as possible, which isn't what de Creveceour and the others originally imagined it as. Just look at the way Jesse James was romanticised in the dime novels as being a Robin Hood type character, stealing from rich and giving to poor, when there was no such evidence he or his gang had done anything of the type. To quote Oscar Wilde "Americans are certainly great hero-worshipers, and always take their hero's from the criminal classes" which goes along with the idea that many believe the American Dream cannot be achieved without committing crimes - glorified bank robbers during the Public Enemy Era  such as Dillinger, Baby Faced Floyd and Bonnie and Clyde, the prohibition era gangsters such as Al Capone and Lucky Luciano and of course the modern day crooks, the bankers up on Wall Street. Which is perhaps why Crime and Gangster films remain popular to this day - Lawless and Killing Them Softly both gangster films came out this year, and The Godfather films, The Departed, Once Upon a Time in America, Goodfellas, and TV show The Sopranos, remain extremely popular to this day. The concept has even been parodied in film, a notable example being the 1983 remake of Scarface, with the traditional rags to riches gangster tale, running parallel to social criticism of excess. 

It's probably safe to say the original vision of the American Dream has long since died, ironically since members of the middle class have achieved that such vision, a respectable job and comfortable life just like in Ragged Dick, but greed has overwhelmed that original vision, to quote Scarface "The American Dream comes with a price tag."