Often compared as a modern take on Mark Twain’s 19th century novel The Prunce and the Pauper, Trading Places sheds lights on the advantages and disadvantages in socio-economic class and race. Dan Aykroyd plays wealthy, educated, and polished Louis Winthorpe and Eddie Murphy plays a poor street hustler Billy Ray Valentine. In week 4 lecture The Joke is on You (Comedy and Activism), we learned that comedy often works on the principle of setting up audience expectations and then presenting them with someone else. Geoff King points out that comedy is generally disruptive. “It messes things up and undermines normal behavior and conventions.” In this particular movie we see the spectrum of the social hierarchy challenged. Socioeconomic status is commonly conceptualized as the social standing or class of an individual or group. It is often measured as a combination of education, income and occupation. The discussion question for this week asked what truths are these filmmakers asking their audiences to accept, and how are incongruity and exaggeration used to draw humor from what are otherwise very serious issues? So we will explore those themes more in depth as well as how the movie uses comedic relief to shed light on a harsh reality.
Before we jump into the movie lets understand what Socioeconomic Status is and whom it affects. When we view SES through a social class lens, privilege, power, and control are emphasized. SES is broken into three main categories, upper class, middle class, and lower class. The upper class is the highest socioeconomic bracket in the social hierarchy and is defined by its members’ great wealth and power. Those in the upper class accumulate wealth through investments and capital gains, rather than annual salaries. Depending on the class model used, households with net worth of 1 million or more may be identified as members of the upper middle class. Besides receiving capital gains and investments many members of upper middle class are born into wealth. There are families’ heirs to powerful kings and queens as well as major corporations that power the world. The upper class makes up a small percentage of the overall population, but controls a disproportionately large amount of the overall wealth.
The middle class is a class of people in the middle of social hierarchy. Unlike the upper class, those in middle class aren’t born into wealth. In fact most people in the middle class are products of college-educated people. Years ago you need to have a college degree to be considered middle class because most of the population considered middle class were white-collar people; the type of people that dressed up to go to work. The middle class can be furthered broke down into two subcategories; upper middle class and lower middle class. In today’s time the upper middle class are those who went to college and usually averages 51,017 dollars or more a year while the lower middle class has fewer individuals who went to college but secured jobs in the industrial or manufacturing fields, averaging about 25,000 to 51,017 a year. Now this is depending of course on demographics and geographical location. The last class status is the lower class. The lower class consists of those at the bottom of the socioeconomic hierarchy who have low education, low income, and low status jobs. Two of the main reason individuals can either struggle to find work or fall into the lower class are low educational attainment and disabilities. Lower class individuals work easily filled employment positions or the jobs that don’t require workers to have a high school education. Now race plays a large part in the demographics of those in these classes. Usually those who are white makes up the majority of the upper class with small percentages of minorities attaining positions in the upper class. While in the middle class we see more minorities, whites again make up the majority of this class. While for the lower class minorities, African Americans in particular makes up the majority of this class, but there are still people who are white who falls in the lower class.
In Trading Places we see what happens when a wealthy white man who falls in the upper class trades places with a poor black man in the lower class. The movie follows Winthorpe and Valentine as brothers Mortimer and Randolph Duke put them through an experiment; whether it’s a person’s environment or heredity that determines how well they will do in life. So what do they do? They purposely get Winthorpe thrown in jail and gets Valentine to take his place. Now this sounds serious but this is a comedy film and one of the first hilarious scenes is when the Duke brothers are sitting around chatting when their black maid comes up to serve them something to drink when Randolph hands him his Christmas bonus, five dollars. He takes the bonus and replies by saying” Five dollars, maybe I’ll go to the movies by myself”. These gentlemen are very wealthy brokers and all he could give the maid was five dollars. The irony in the scene is that the brokers are white and gives the maid, a black man, five dollars like it was a large bonus. Randolph says that Winthorpe is a product of a good environment.
How true is that in today’s society? Look at the Kardashian family for example; they are a multi million-dollar family born into a rich environment. We see how the dynamics of race plays a major part in the perception of those in a lower class. When the police stop Valentine to tell him of his harassment he smoothly leaves the scene to escape. That’s when he runs into Winthorpe and knocks him down, at this moment Winthrope begins to scream and shout because he thinks Valentine is trying to rob him. Winthorpe says, don’t kill me as if because Valentine is black and poor he is also a killer. Valentine runs from the scene with the briefcase as the police begin to chase him. When he is arrested Winthorpe says he wants to press charges because people like him steals all the time. Even though this movie shows how race can play in the perception of the habits of people, Randolph mimics the reality by believing that race and environment has nothing to do with the skills it takes to be successful. This is contrary to who Mortimer feels about the perception of a negro. So from here Randolph makes a bet that Valentine would be able to run their business regardless of his environment.
Trading places sheds light on a topic that everyone can learn from; does your race and status really play a part in your abilities to succeed. The reasoning for the lack of success of many lower class citizens is their lack of education. But is education the only way to be successful? I personally don’t believe so. I believe is takes a desire and will to turn your circumstances around. According to our lecture, comedy often allows for what is commonly referred to as suspension of disbelief. This is when we are watching a comedy so we accept on some level that basic rules may not apply.
During the 80s when this movie was released people praised this move for its comedy because they took it for just that, a comedy about a rich kid gone poor and a poor kid gone rich. But in today’s time when poverty levels are higher than back then, this isn’t too funny. Especially when you realize that there is a certain perception of people who come from rich and poor back grounds. I you watch this movie today, this is a cultural framework of our society today where people of different classes and races don’t know much about each other and only have perceptions and ideologies of each other all based off money and power. I felt it was important to shed light on Socioeconomic Status because this is a major issue in our society today. You’re class determines the type of life and opportunities you will have, and Trading Places shed light on this issue years ago. The question is, would these two classes really be down to trade places in order to learn that they have more in common than they know?
No comments:
Post a Comment