Michael Douglas is nonplussed at the popularity of his Gordon Gekko character, “Greed is good,” in Wall Street, too. Not everyone, it seems, is anti-capitalist.
A similar thing happened with All in the Family. Archie was not supposed to be popular, but a caricature of leftist fantasies about conservatives. Norman Lear was chagrined.
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Michael Douglas is nonplussed at the popularity of his Gordon Gekko character, “Greed is good,” in Wall Street, too.
Was Gekko really popular? Viewers liked his pithy catch phrase, but did they really like or admire him?
Maybe it was more that people thought of the movie as entertainment rather than as a political statement and Douglas's character as a caricature that one couldn't take wholly seriously as either a hero or a villain.