alternativecandidate: Eyes Wide Shut (1999) “Like his wife (’How do I look?’), Bill Harford is defin
alternativecandidate: Eyes Wide Shut (1999) “Like his wife (’How do I look?’), Bill Harford is defined by his first line: ‘Honey, have you seen my wallet?’ She is a possession; he is a buyer. (’Doctor Bill,’ as both his wife and Domino call him, is a pun, like Jack D. Ripper or Private Joker.) He flashes his credentials and hands out fifty- and hundred-dollar bills to charm, bribe, or intimidate cabbies, clerks, receptionists, and hookers–all members of the vast, compliant service economy on whom the enormous disparities of wealth in America are founded. Including (unconsummated) prostitution, costume rental, assorted bribes, and cab fare, his tab for a single illicit night out totals over seven hundred dollars. He does not seem fazed by the expenditure. His asking Domino ‘Should we talk about money?’ his repeated insistence on paying her for services not quite rendered, his extended haggling with Milich and the cab driver–all these conversations about cash are too frequent, drawn-out, and conspicuous to be included in the interest of verisimilitude. They do not occur in the novel. Doctor Bill is nothing if not a conspicuous consumer; he even tears a hundred-dollar-bill in half with a smirk.”Tim Kreider, Introducing Sociology -- source link